Christ of the Ozarks

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Arkansas, art, Christ of the Ozarks, Eureka Springs, Gerald L. K. Smith, religion, statues, True Detective

In the final episode of the third season of HBO’s crime drama True Detective, there’s a fleeting overhead shot of a landmark that most Ozarkers would instantly recognize.

By Bobak Ha’Eri – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:09-02-06–ChristofOzarks.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2047158

No, that’s not the image you see, nor the image you’ll see if you drive out to this statue. What you’ll see is this:

from TripAdvisor

Yes, Christ is looking the other way. How’s that for a ready-made metaphor?

The “Christ of the Ozarks” statue sort-of overlooks Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It faces in the direction of Eureka Springs, anyway, although it’s hard to see from most parts of the town. It’s an easy statue to criticize, with its oversized head, weirdly neutral expression, and boxy shape, almost as though it’s actually a radio tower disguised to look like a statue of Jesus. And is that a bosom? But aesthetics are not really that statue’s point, anyway.

Religion has played an enormous part in the cultural story of the Ozarks. Historians identify Baptists and Methodists as the largest of the early denominations, with significant pockets of Catholics and Lutherans in particular areas. In later years, Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God and others experienced great growth. By the time the “Christ of the Ozarks” was erected in 1966, the area, like the South in general, had been entrenched for more than a hundred years as a bastion of no-nonsense Protestantism. Even today, a new arrival is likely to experience the “have you found a church home yet?” question within minutes in a conversation with neighbors.

The religious influence has been, pardon the phrase, a mixed blessing for the area. On the one hand, the deep-rooted Christianity of many of the people I have known and loved has been a constant example of our better capabilities, our capacity for kindness, love, generosity, and unselfishness. Unfortunately, there’s also the intolerant and judgmental side as well, and sometimes those two components coexist side by side.

When I look at the statue, I see the weird history behind it. The brainchild of far-right radio evangelist and anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith, the statue was intended to be the centerpiece of a religious theme park that would include a replica version of Jerusalem, a premise that John Mort plays with in his short story “Take the Man Out and Shoot Him” in his new collection Down Along the Piney. Jerusalem never got built, although the park does have a “Holy Land” tour featuring selected replicas of Biblical scenes, the statue, and a Passion Play. I’ve searched their website and can find no mention of the park’s founder. Just as well – the Ozarks don’t really need a designated memorial to a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer who founded the America First Party, in 1943 no less.

This statue has a triumphalist vibe to it, like some kind of Hittite monument, and quite frankly it gives me the willies. Oversized statuary always makes me question the message of the image. Mount Rushmore comes to mind, of course, with its pantheon of heroes; the nobility of expression on those faces recalls us to the potential of America’s greatness, although I’ve sometimes wondered if their crowding on the mountainside also implies that no one will ever achieve that greatness again (Where would we put him/her?). The massive monument at Stone Mountain, Georgia, likewise, places its figures into a setting of godlike heroism, although the meta-message there seems pretty disturbing.

The choice of immensity is intended to be overpowering, to bear down all doubts and questions. Don’t like this Jesus? Too bad. He’s going to be gazing down at you with that blank and inscrutable expression wherever you go. But the question remains: Why erect a two-million-pound Christ over a region that has been unflinchingly Christian for generations? It’s not as though the people down below need inspiration.

Every theme park needs a landmark, I guess.

from TripAdvisor

 

Two Books

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Aaron Ketchell, Arkansas, Branson, Brooks Blevins, Missouri, Missouri State University, murder, Ozarks, religion

I’ve been reading a couple of books this month–Brooks Blevins’ Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South and Aaron Ketchell’s Holy Hills of the Ozarks: Religion and Tourism in Branson, Missouri. I’ve followed Brooks’ work for a long time, but Ketchell’s book is new to me.

Ghost of the Ozarks is the story of one of the strangest murder trials in Ozarks history, a 1929 case in Mountain View, Arkansas, in which the supposed “victim” showed up during the investigation but whose identity was doubted by the prosecutors, who went on with the trial despite the presence of the “victim” as a defense witness. Holy Hills of the Ozarks examines the religious foundations of Branson’s entertainment tourism industry, starting with Harold Bell Wright and working from there to 2007, the date of the book’s publication.

Both are academic works, so I can’t recommend them for casual or light reading, but they’re both terrific pieces of scholarship. It’s reassuring to know that the shelf of books in Ozarks Studies is really quite impressive, once you start hunting around.

Favorite Ozarks Books – 8

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Arkansas, books, Sandy and Wayne, Springfield, Steve Yates

I had the pleasure of attending the Ozarks Studies Symposium in September, where I talked about the language we use to describe some Ozarks conflicts. I also bought three books that I’ve been reading, two new and one old, and I want to talk about them in the coming weeks.

I just finished Steve Yates’ novella this morning, and it left me with that sense of sad pleasure one often feels after finishing a touching and beautifully written book. It’s a slender volume, 155 pages, but it feels like a longer one (in a good way).

Although the title says “Sandy and Wayne,” it’s really Sandy’s book: Sandy Coker, a smart, vulnerable, determined, hard-shelled, aching-for-love lead inspector for the Arkansas Highway Department. The complications of her character grow so naturally out of her actions as she interacts with Wayne Sheridan, the dirt foreman for a Missouri-based contractor that has won the bid to build a section of highway in Sandy’s district, that by the midpoint of the book I felt not only that I knew Sandy, but that she would know me as well. Of course, one never actually gets to meet a fictional character, but such was the richness of her portrayal.

Sandy and Wayne circle each other, bounce off, and come together in unexpected ways, but this is no simple romance. Human longing and loss beat through every page, not just in the title characters, but in the minor characters and incidents, in the landscape itself as it resculpted to let the interstate roar through. Sandy and Wayne has sweetness and sadness in near-equal measures, and in that respect it’s a lot like life itself. It’s available from Dock Street Press or your local bookstore.

Steve Yates is a Springfield native who spent summers of his youth working for the Arkansas Highway Department. You can tell he was an observant summer employee by the wealth of detail, and that’s part of the enjoyment of this novella. He now works for the University Press of Mississippi, but you can tell he still has Ozarks blood in his veins by the things he writes. His next novel is coming out from Unbridled Books next spring, and I can’t wait to read it.

Excellent Resource

Tags

Arkansas, Civil War, history, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ozarks, Springfield

Someone posted this link on Facebook a while back…..I had not run across this site before, despite having done a lot of research into the Civil War in the Ozarks. It’s a wonderful resource! Well organized, good looking, and informative.

Congratulations to the many organizations that contributed to this website. It’s a great example of inter-governmental cooperation – federal funding, administered by the state, and managed by the Springfield-Greene County Library. I just wish its county-by-county coverage ventured farther east!

 

Something Every Modern-Day Float Tripper Can Appreciate

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Arkansas, Bull Shoals, canoeing, float trips, White River

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, describing his passage through the Bull Shoals on the White River in 1819:

“There is a channel through which canoes and even large boats pass with a good depth of water, but being unacquainted with it, we ran the hazard of being sunk, and found our canoe drawn rapidly into the suction of the falls, apprehensive of the result. In a few moments, notwithstanding every effort to keep our barque headed downwards, the conflicting eddies drove us against a rock, and we were instantly thrown broadside upon the rugged peaks which stand thickly in the swiftest part of the first schute, or fall. Luckily it did not fill, but the pressure of the current against a canoe thirty feet in length, lying across the stream, was more than we could counteract, and we had nearly exhausted our strength in vain endeavors to extricate and aright it.”

Been there, done that, although not in January and not with a thirty-foot canoe! Nowadays, of course, Schoolcraft would have to contend with powerboats rather than rocks.

Working Like a Duck

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Arkansas, art, books, creativity, history, Missouri, Missouri State University, music, novels, poetry, West Plains, writing

You know that old saying about how a duck works — calm and still in the visible part, but paddling like heck down below? Well, that’s how I’ve been the last couple of weeks. I’ve been quiet on this blog, on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, because I’ve been focusing on a couple of projects that have taken a lot of time and concentration.

There’s the next book, which is rounding the turn toward home at last, and I’m very excited about that. You hit a moment when things start coming together, when the plot threads that you put down months ago in earlier chapters finally start tying up, and it’s an exciting passage that makes all the groaning of earlier months feel worthwhile. Still some distance to travel, but the finish line is in view.

I’ve also been working on my presentation for the Ozarks Cultural Symposium, which is next week in West Plains. I was honored this year to be asked to be the keynote speaker. I’m hoping to live up to that honor with a talk that will also draw together a lot of the threads of thought that I have about the Ozarks, its image, and its representation in creative culture.

If you’re near the West Plains area, you should definitely come to this symposium! It’s put on every year by the branch campus of Missouri State University there, and they always draw a wonderfully diverse group of presenters from Missouri, Arkansas, and elsewhere. It’s interdisciplinary and includes creative presenters (poetry, music, fiction, etc.) as well as scholarly ones.

Favorite Ozarks Books – 6

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African Americans, Arkansas, Harrison, Joplin, lynching, Missouri, Monett, Ozarks, Pierce City, Springfield, White Man's Heaven

It doesn’t feel right to classify this book as a “favorite,” as its subject is so horrifying and its treatment is so detailed that, frankly, it’s not an easy read. But White Man’s Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909 is definitely a book to be read and reckoned with.

The book draws on copious original sources — testimony, newspaper accounts, witness reports, court records, and more — to detail the circumstances and aftermath of lynchings in the Missouri towns of Pierce City, Joplin, and Springfield, and the Arkansas town of Harrison, to portray the life and racial situation of the time. It’s a grisly picture, one from which author Kimberly Harper does not flinch.

The story repeats itself in town after town: a crime that excites racial antagonism, public officials who are either indifferent or sympathetic to the mob, a lynching in the town square and the subsequent intimidation of the rest of the black population. In reading these accounts, what struck me was the pervading and casual racism of the time. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, because I remember the Ozarks of my youth, seventy years later, as a place where racist attitudes were openly and casually expressed.

When I was young, I took the whiteness of the Ozarks for granted. It was simply a condition of the locale. But after reading White Man’s Heaven, I realize that the racial homogeneity of the Ozarks was not a natural condition, but an enforced one, in which entire towns were depopulated of their African-American population, often through violent means. The word “pogrom” comes to mind.

This book is not one to be read for pleasure, but it’s a valuable read. It was published by the University of Arkansas Press, but for some reason when I do a search on the UAP website, it comes up “not found.” It’s available elsewhere, though.

Genre

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Arkansas, art, books, creativity, fiction, historical fiction, John Williams, novels, writing

I had an interesting e-mail exchange this week. A gentleman who is writing a biography of John Williams, the author of Stoner (among other works), contacted me because he had found a folder in Williams’ papers with my name on it.

I had written to Mr. Williams back in the 1980s, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation, with some questions about Stoner. He answered courteously, and to my surprise I now find that he rarely talked about his own work. So my letter from John Williams was of some worth to his biographer.

One of the things I asked him about was his thoughts on genre. Stoner was published in 1965, when the “academic novel” was in its first heyday, and I had wondered whether he had gone out of his way to flout the conventions of that subgenre. He replied that he was aware of the academic novels, disliked them intensely, but wasn’t consciously setting out to “correct” them. As with all statements of author intention, I took his opinions with a dose of skepticism.

Nowadays, I find myself in a similar situation. I write “historical novels.” But the phrase “historical novel” is all too often a pigeonhole. Calling something a “historical novel” automatically sets up certain expectations in people’s minds, for better and for worse. The challenge for the writer is to use the conventions of a genre without becoming trapped by them — something that Williams did marvelously in many books, but especially well in Butcher’s Crossing, which in my opinion has always been underappreciated.

Favorite Ozarks Books – 5

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Arkansas, books, Current River, history, Missouri, Ozarks, Schoolcraft, Springfield, Steve Yates, writing

The image above is the frontispiece to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s Scenes and Adventures in the Semi-Alpine Region of the Ozarks Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas, published in 1853 and taken from Schoolcraft’s earlier journals from 1818 and 1819. People generally count Schoolcraft’s journals as the first piece of descriptive writing about the Ozarks.

As an explorer, Schoolcraft comes off as a klutz in his journals. His horse is constantly getting away from him, tumbling down a bank or trying to swim a river in a bad place. He and his companion employ local hunters to guide them or bring them provisions, but their guides regularly disappear with their goods or meat. He consistently chooses the wrong stream fork and has to backtrack.

But he’s not really a klutz – he’s a twenty-five-year-old Easterner with a fine education, a keen eye for geology, and a good deal to learn about the frontier. He and his companion spend the three months of their expedition in near-constant fear of the Osage Indians who roamed the Ozarks at the time, and their fear is justifiable. Had they met a band of Osage warriors that deep in their countryside, they would likely have been robbed at the least.

You can read Schoolcraft’s journal at Project Gutenberg, but a better experience is the 1996 edition published by the University of Arkansas Press. The dedicated Ozark geographer Milton D. Rafferty edited this version, and it’s nicely annotated, with Schoolcraft’s route mapped out as best Rafferty could decipher. My friend Steve Yates has written about Schoolcraft here.

Here’s the cover image of the Rafferty-edited version of Schoolcraft’s journal.