Favorite Ozarks Places – 20

Tags

Castor River, favorite_places, Fredericktown, Madison County, Ozarks, Shut-ins, swimming holes

Amidon Memorial Conservation Area, Missouri

When I was a kid, our parents would occasionally take my brother and me to what we called the “Castor River swimming hole” or alternatively, the “Castor River Shut-Ins.” Mom, as usual, fretted about our safety, while we boys just enjoyed the sweep of water through the tight passages of rock, bouncing downstream to where Dad waited to catch us.

There are a couple of swimming holes on the upper Castor, a river that receives much less attention than its more famous cousins to the west, and I honestly can’t remember which one we visited in my childhood. But one of the most unexpectedly beautiful places in the Ozarks is what is now the Amidon Memorial Conservation Area in northeast Madison County.

If you’ve visited Elephant Rocks, you know the remarkable pink granite that crops up in places across Iron, St. Francois, and Madison counties. At Amidon, that pink is lighter than at other places, far more sculpted, and shaped by the flow of water into a remarkable display.

Why doesn’t the Castor get more attention? It’s shorter, for one thing, and it quickly traverses from dramatic shut-ins to a relatively uninteresting, muddy stream, with lots of debris and agricultural runoff. But for several stretches, it’s as beautiful as anywhere in the Ozarks. Its lack of fame means that you’ll probably have the place almost to yourself, although do note that most of the ownership along the Castor is private. So you have to look for access points. The pink granite is unearthly in its strange beauty, and the flooding and debris has created a rich alluvium that lends to the growth of wildflowers in abundance.

I don’t think I’d let my kids bounce down through the shut-ins, though, unless the water was pretty low.

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Juneteenth, Part Two

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Black Lives Matter, Eminence, flag, Fredericktown, Free speech, Madison County, protests, racism, Shannon County

A week ago, I posted some reflections on the Juneteenth observances around the country, and remarked that we still have a long way to go before the legacy of slavery is cleared away, or even rendered less harmful than it remains today. At the time, I wasn’t thinking in particularly immediate terms, but two days ago an event in my hometown brought that observation to life in a particularly ugly way.

A group of (mostly) young folks organized a demonstration in the courthouse square in Fredericktown, Missouri, the place where I grew up for the first ten years of my life and where I still have family connections and strong emotional ties. That’s a picture of them above, and another one here:

Threatening-looking, aren’t they?

Apparently the rumor mill had been active before the event, with the current crazy talk of “busloads of protesters” and such. A local businessman organized a counter-demonstration, and it attracted a sizable crowd of racists, nutcases, curiosity-seekers, and, presumably, some decent-minded people. Here’s a few of them:

The counter-demonstrators, many of whom were heavily armed, attempted to disrupt and intimidate the demonstrators by circling the courthouse square with their speakers blaring, trying to drown them out, and more troubling, they positioned themselves in high positions above the demonstrators with weapons visible:

I’m no weapons expert, but that sure looks like a silencer or flash suppressor on the rifle in that last photo.

The groups exchanged some yelling, but thankfully the police (who were considerably outnumbered) managed to keep the counter-demonstrators from attacking the demonstrators for the most part, although eyewitnesses said the counter-demonstrators were clearly looking for an excuse to start violence. At one point one of the demonstrators attempted to unfurl an American flag and was attacked by one of the counter-demonstrators, who was clearly armed:

You can see the outline of his pistol pretty plainly in this photo. These last two pictures, by the way, are from Ramblin Hamlin Photography, which was on the scene. I took the other pictures from Imgur.

The most aggressive act from the demonstrators, by contrast, might have been a slightly ragged version of the Electric Slide (that’s right, the Electric Slide):

(also from Ramblin Hamlin Photography)

Social media has been burning up since then, with two major themes: Those racists don’t represent our community – we’re good people! (Or at least I’m not a racist) and A lot of those demonstrators weren’t from Fredericktown – why didn’t they protest in their own town? Both good issues to raise. I guess my thought on the first one is that if you don’t want a bunch of racist lunatics to represent your community, at least in the minds of others, then you had better get out there and join the demonstration and make sure that your community comes down firmly on the side of racial justice. Otherwise the people who see the pictures will believe that the racists do represent you, because you have allowed them to. And on the second point, the home location of the demonstrators is not relevant for the same reason. I am told that one of the most obnoxious counter-demonstrators, who made gestures and said things that I will not describe or repeat here, was from Centerville. Well, if he got to come to the Madison County Courthouse and make a fool of himself, then I suppose some kids from Farmington are just as entitled to come down and demonstrate.

It saddens me to see such a disgraceful display in my hometown. Yes, Fredericktown has lots of lovely, non-racist people in it. Some of them showed up in the courthouse square on Wednesday, only to be spat at, threatened, and called vile names. So now the town is branded as a racist haven in the eyes of others, and if the citizens want to have that label removed, they’ll have to do it themselves by their words and deeds.

A COUPLE OF UPDATES: One of the demonstrators contacted me and let me know that some of the heavily armed, camouflage-wearing militia members actually performed a beneficial service, helping to keep the mob away from the demonstrators and escorting them to their cars and to the bathroom. That was good to hear, and it complicates the easy black-and-white narrative.

In addition, the town of Eminence, in Shannon County, came close to out-embarrassing Fredericktown on Saturday, the 27th. The sheriff there, in the midst of a re-election campaign, announced on social media that he had received a “credible threat,” which quickly brought the same unfounded rumors of “busloads of BLM and Antifa rioters” and resulted in about a hundred people, once again armed to the teeth, who parked at the courthouse or circled the square, crowing about their patriotism and vowing violence on any protesters who dared to show up. Video footage of this event shows a weird, carnival-like atmosphere, a combination of party and lynch mob. As it turned out, the “credible threat” was a complaint from a mother who was unhappy with the investigation of the 2018 death of her son, and the whole BLM/Antifa thing was complete baloney.  I’m not sure which community has cast itself in a worse light: the one that had an ugly response to an actual demonstration, or the one that had an ugly response to an imaginary one.

Place

Tags

change, farming, Madison County, memory, rural

When I was a kid, my parents drove us out to visit our relatives on the home place pretty much every weekend, and sometimes during the week as well. My grandparents lived on what everyone called The Old Home Place, and my uncle Bill and aunt Gina lived down the road on why my folks called “Bill’s Place,” but which I understood in the sort of dim way that kids do that it was also part of the Home Place. Not to be confused with the River Place, where my mom had been born, now uninhabited but still part of the farm.

We passed other places – the Thurman Place, the old Kessler Place, the Graner Place (Graners long gone, now occupied by McCreerys, and in the slow process of becoming the McCreery Place). In between were mere houses, occupied by people we didn’t know, or by people we knew but who were yet too brief in their occupancy to merit a Place.

When you had a Place, you were somebody. You were probably just as poor as everybody else – my grandparents’ place was tiny – but people knew who you were, and where you lived. Your Place didn’t change much. Maybe an addition when extra children necessitated it, but the essential plan didn’t change. The house, the barn, the sheds, the pond, the pastures, all existed in a slowed-down version of time, one in which change happened, but on a different rhythm than the rest of the world. Change was more measured, deliberate, its implications considered more broadly. Other farmers considered my grandfather pretty innovative in his time; he was an early adopter of terracing and other practices advocated  by the county agent. But certainly no one would ever have called him hasty.

Needless to say, I don’t have a Place, and at this point in my life probably never will. The contemporary world, and my adjustment to it, doesn’t permit that. But I know that this is a trade and not an unalloyed gain.