Cross-Country: The Ozarks
To the Hills (For Alan Mather)
L,
SAFE HERE
in
tho
!harb,
and calm, and things don't
clw>ge.....,
much.
If
the trains (two a day) and the bus (one
a
day) and the truch
and automobiles stopped running and the power were shut off, it wouldn't
, make a great deal of difference. Most of us use coal oil lamps, anyway,
and Grammaw's old candle moulds are up in the attic. We grow our own
food, except for a few things like coffee and sugar, and we chop our own
• wood. We listen to the radio, hut that's more for the weather report
than
for the war news.
Self-sufficiency, I suppose you call it. We don't ship much out
(liTe–
ltodt
and fence posts) and we don't ship much in.
There are 1800 farm families in the county. 1200 of them have a
cub
income of less than $400 a year. 400 families subsist on the beant,
prunes, raisms, flour, lard, com grits, and apples provided by the relief
agency.
The county director of the WPA, apparently suspecting a fifth
column maneuver, refused to tell me how many people are on the WPA
rolls, hut local inhabitants estimate the figure as close to 700.
If we're lucky, we wrest a subsistence from the hill-side plots, where
the drought
is
sure to get you, or from the creek bottoms, where high water
ia
likely to wash away your crop. Only a fifth of the land of the county
ia
onder cultivation, and that includes pasture land. The rest
is
too steep
or too poor to he worth cultivating.
A tenth of the land in this county has been forfeited for delinquent
taxes. You can buy it from the State Land Office for $1.25 an acre. It'a
grand scenery: not mountains, just steep hills and narrow valleys, with
lots of creeks and little rivers.
If
we have a farm, we and the womenfolks and the young uns work
it.
If
we haven't a farm, we try to hire out to somebody else or to get on
relief.
If
we're young and ambitious we
take
out for California or join
the Navy.
If
we're young and not so ambitious, we join the CCC.
It's a man's country. A man is boss in his own family.
When
we go
to town on Saturdays, the women and kids walk behind us, the old woman
carrying the baby. When we have company, we eat at the first table, with
the women waiting on us and shooing the Siea away. When there's any
talking to be done, we do it.
There
is
little mingling of the sexes, except when a young man
ia
courting. Young men are scarce around here, and they usually seek pro·
tection
~numbers.
The boys make intermittent efforts to lay the girls. lt'e
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