452
PARTISAN REVIEW
The thing that makes life in the Ozarks a never-ending delight, aaide
from the beauty of the hills themselves, is the people. They have all
the
vices and most of the virtues that go to make life comfortable and pleasant.
They love to gossip about their neighbors, and a good story on some–
Gne is told with relish for years. People are not just names and faces here.
If
you ask who a person is, you are obligingly furnished with his
com·
plete family history, beginning with his great-grandfather's arrival here
from Tennessee in 1832, the part his family played
in
the Civil War,
all
the memorable doings of his kinfolks up to the present time, a full
account of his life history, biographies and characterisations of his
wife
and children, and a penetrating analysis of his characteristics
and
peculiarities.
If
you are an outsider, they want to know all about you, and somehow
that curiosity is rather flattering. They want to fit you into the community
life.
They have a sense of humor compounded of ludicrous under-state–
ment and the wildest exaggeration. Jokes are very broad, but never in
any
circumstances is a suggestive word spoken in front of a woman. Women
who tell dirty jokes are whores, and that is that. Marital infidelity is very
rare on the part of the women. When a woman marries, she lays aside
powder and paint ·and devotes herself wholeheartedly to the full-time job
of being a good wife and mother. Divorces are extremely rare, and are
resorted to, after prolonged family conferences, only when a couple can
no longer live together without grave danger to life and limb.
There is a strong spirit of neighborliness among the people here.
If
anyone is sick, neighbors volunteer to help with the nursing, or to look
after the children, or to cook for the family, or to help with
~he
spring
plowing. You speak to everyone you meet
in
the street, whether you know
him or not. You can be certain that he knows who you are. Of course,
this
applies only to men. You do not speak to women, unless you know
them,
and then only to exchange "howdy's" with them.
Our little town does not differ greatly from what it was in 1840. It
was smaller then, and there were no electric lights or automobiles, but
the
feeling of the place, to judge from the old inhabitants' accounts of
the
days of their grandfathers, must have been pretty much the same. And
r
dare say that in 2040 it will not be greatly different from what it is now.
The great-grandchildren of my present friends will be here, talking about
their neighbors and discussing crops and politics in the same leisurely
way. They may be cooperative farmers working on State farms, but
their
language and their jokes will be essentially the same.
]OHN
T.
APPLEBY
Yellville, Ark.
