THE OZARKS
451
hole in the front door that the Yankee bullet made when it missed Gram–
paw by a frog's whisker.
There are no Negroes in the county, and we won't allow one to stay
overnight here. That applies to practically the whole Ozark country.
Politics means county politics and is based wholly on personalities.
You are born and raised a Democrat (that is taken for granted) and you
vote for Marvin Meadows for shurf because you've known him all your
life and he's a pretty good sort of a fellow, whereas his opponent comes
from the other side of the county and
is
as crooked as a barrel of snakes.
Political quarrels are carried on with intense bitterness, and most of the
enmities in the county arise from political differences.
You vote, that is,
if
you can afford to pay a dollar for poll tax.
If
you're smart, you buy as many poll tax receipts ,as you can afford. It's a
pretty good investment. Only 18.5 percent of the potential voters in
Arkansas vote, but the Arkansas Gazette says the poll tax is a good thing
because registration is too expensive and besides even where they have regis·
tration elections are crooked ·and all the people don't vote. Anyway, we all
know· that the poll tax keeps the Negroes down in the southern part of
the State from voting. How would you like to have a Negro for Governor?
How would you like to have the Negroes going around pushing the white
folks off the sidewalk?
Doctors are few and far between. There is a hospital over in the next
county where you can take your folks to die,
if
you can afford it. Patent
medicines of proven efficacy on man and beast are the mainstay of the
countryside, however. Doctors don't dare give hypodermic injections out
in
the hills, for then they will he held accountable if the patient dies. The
standard prescription for almost everything ia two CC (cathartic com·
pound) pills every hour till about a dozen have been taken. One such pill
would have a disastrous effect on the ordinary person, but that staggering
dose seems to
he
required by the hill people. Quinine is prescribed in
gigantic quantities.
Most people can read and write. Newspapers and mail order catalogs
provide reading material. Books are practically unknown. I think I should
be
quite safe in saying that three-fourths of the inhabitants of the county
have not read a hook through since they left school. Where would they
get a hook, in the first place? There is no bookstore within 150 miles of
here. The county seat has a public library in a corner of the Legion Hut,
but it is never open, and its contents are said to consist of a few volumes
of Dickens. Fayetteville, the site of the State University, the Athens of
Arkansas, has no bookstore, beyond the one dealing in textbooks. The
people who are known as great readers consume detective and cowboy
magazines, and the women read true confession stories.
This used to
he
a great country for moonshiners, and there are said
to he a number of stills yet in operation in the hills. The two liquor stores
in
the county seat do a thriving business. Boys begin to chew or smoke
while they are still children, and many of the older women use snuff.
