The Seed and the Story: ARVAC and VISTA, Folk arts and the War on Poverty in Arkansas.

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The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

Alongside researching the history of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, I’ve been reading In Service to America: A History of Vista in Arkansas 1965-1985.  Written by Marvin Schwartz, this 1988 publication traces the VISTA organization throughout the state.   I’ve been particularly interested in the work of this organization in central Arkansas, including the creation of a craft co-op, which served both Yell and Pope Counties.

Created in 1965, VISTA was an outgrowth of President Johnson’s War on Poverty and Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.  This national legislation sought to provide lasting and locally based solutions to struggling communities.  Operating much like a domestic version of the Peace Corp, volunteers in the VISTA program received a subsistence wage and lived in economically poor areas where they worked in partnership with community members to generate economic initiatives and help residents gain access to health care and adequate food.  VISTA volunteers, many of them college age, worked to help create grassroots programs which focused on local needs, thus making each VISTA program unique to its region.

In 1960 approximately 40% of the population in the river valley was living below the poverty line.  Illiteracy, inadequate housing, and unemployment were rampant.  One of the first VISTA programs in the nation was the Yell County Economic Opportunity Program, a pilot recipient of an OEA grant.  The organization was soon absorbed into its larger sister organization, ARVAC (Arkansas River Valley Area Council), which hosted numerous national and local volunteers.   ARVAC formed programs such as the Housing Development Corporation, an organization utilizing the rural tradition of barn raising to help low income families secure homes, and ARVAC Rural Folkcrafts, a network which provided a market for rural quilters, white oak basket makers, seamstresses, and other artisans, allowing them to sell their traditional wares and earn a living for their families. Another organization, Counseling Associates (formerly known as ARVAC Community Mental Health Program), began under the ARVAC VISTA program and operates independently today.

In its early days VISTA brought in volunteers from around the nation, but in later years became more focused on long-term, locally based volunteers, which helped the programs thrive.   From the beginning, the goal of VISTA programs was to become self-sufficient. ARVAC stuck around and quickly became a model of successful VISTA organizing.   ARVAC’s craft co-op, which began in 1975, continued throughout the 1980s, as did housing initiative, which later became known as Universal, INC.

Schwartz’s book features interviews with a few river valley VISTA workers, including the late Myrtle Cress who worked in Ola and Betty Burnett who organized a housing co-op in Dardanelle.  It also highlights the work of Lou Vitale who was instrumental in founding the crafts co-op. I’d love to learn more about the creation of these initiatives, how people felt about the work, the craftspeople who sold at the co-op, and the use of the barn raising tradition in area housing initiatives.   Were you affiliated with VISTA?  Did you or someone in your family sell crafts at the co-op?  Perhaps your house was built utilizing the barn raising tradition?  I’d love to hear more.   An extra special thanks to Mike Luster of the Arkansas Folklife Program for introducing me to this book.

Also please don’t forget we’re still working on compiling stories of plants and seeds for our book on stories and gardening in the area.  We’d love to include your story!  To learn more visit us here.  To read a little bit about the backstory of the garden book read this column.

The Seed and the Story for March 7: Sulphur Springs

Old hotel. Date unknown. From the Sulphur Springs Cemetery Association, Yell County, Arkansas.

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

Most Arkansans are familiar with the historic healing waters of Hot Springs in Garland County and the former resorts of Eureka Springs in the Carroll County Ozarks.  In the mid to late 1800s Yell County, Arkansas was once home to its own resort community.  Located about ten miles southwest of Dardanelle near the rural communities of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, Sulphur Springs was the site of a two-story hotel and free flowing medicinal springs that attracted folks from as far away as Boston and California.

According to the 1997 book Yell County Heritage published by the Yell County Historical and Genealogical Association, the first hotel was burned by “bushwhackers” during the Civil War.  A new hotel was built in 1867 and completed in 1872. At one point the building was owned by a New York-based company, and in 1878 the thirty-six room structure was filled to capacity, populated by victims of the yellow fever epidemic from Memphis.  By that time the town had grown considerably and boasted multiple streets and several houses.  The hotel itself encompassed an entire block.  Photos of the large wood structure show several white women, and at least one young girl, sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch.

By 1901 the structure and the springs were owned by Judge John F. Choate, a Yell County Clerk who raised a family in the area. According to reports, he gave the springs over to the public, an effort to spread the wealth of the healing waters, which before were reserved only for visitors with great wealth.  By 1926 fire claimed the hotel once again and the structure was never rebuilt.  According to written reports, both members of the Harkey and Tucker families worked at the hotel in the early 1900s, but very few oral histories of the town have been recorded.  Chickalah native Bud Rector, born in 1914, remembers the hotel, but says that as a young boy he never had occasion to venture down into the town itself, which was a considerable distance from Harkey’s Valley when your only mode of transpiration was walking.  He does, however, remember the strong smell of sulphur, as do many others who were raised in the area long after the hotel burned.

As I learn more about the community, several questions come to mind that I suspect many of you could answer.  How and when were the springs discovered and how many locals were able to access their supposed healing powers? What information is out there to help flesh out our understanding of what drew people to the location?  Is there anyone still living who worked at, or visited, the hotel and the spring?  Perhaps you were a child when the hotel was around and remember growing up in the vicinity.

And what about those outside the community?  Surely in an attic somewhere in Boston, Chicago, or New Orleans there must be a dusty shoebox and inside a postcard from a deceased relative who attempted to find healing in a rural Arkansas community so far from home.  I’d love to hear your stories.  I look forward to learning more.

The Seed and the Story for January 25, 2012: Visiting with Bud Rector

Bud Rector and J.L. Martin Chickalah, Arkansas, 2012

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

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Before I get into this week’s column, I want to thank all those who called or wrote in response to the previous column about the history of Chickalah.  It’s such an honor to hear from readers with memories and stories to share, and I’m thankful to all of you who took the time to tell me about the places you call home.  I learned from Carolyn Garner that back in the 1940s people would gather to watch outdoor movies on the back wall of Neil Cowger’s Chickalah store.  And I had several people tell me about the rural baseball league from the area, including the days when the Dean brothers lived on Chickalah Mountain.  So this week’s column is a continuation of the recent Chickalah research and will highlight just few stories I learned from a man many of you know and love: Bud Rector.

My father and I recently had the opportunity to visit with Bud in his home on Harkey’s Valley road in Chickalah where we were greeted by his friendly dog who got up from her cozy front porch chair to come say hello.  Bud Rector was born in 1914 and has lived in the Harkey’s Valley area all of his life.  He’s hauled logs in the timber woods, raised chickens and cows, worked for the WPA, driven the rural bus route for Dardanelle Schools for decades, and traveled throughout the area singing in a gospel quartet.  He’s also an excellent storyteller and a joy to be around.  I can’t begin to do justice to all his stories in this short column, so I’ll just highlight a few.

For decades the Chickalah area was home to a thriving timber economy, and Bud recalled many of the early logging operations and sawmills that dotted the mountains.  He and my father swapped memories of those days when, as Bud recalled, “everybody was going around with the chopping ax and cross cut saw.”  While my father recalled skidding logs, Bud and his brother Buford found work hauling the lumber to town.  He mentioned his short stint with the WPA where men were given shovels to help dig out the bluff and told of the well known store in Sulpher Springs operated by a man with, quite possibly, one of the best names I’ve ever come across: Bonaparte Rutledge.  Come to find out, my own grandparents were married in front of Mr. Rutledge store.

Thanks your suggestions, I was sure to ask him about the rural baseball leagues that were so popular in the area during the 1930s and 1940s.  He recalled teams from Spring Creek, Chickalah Mountain, Chicklalah Village, Slo Fork, Pisgah, Casa, Sulpher Springs, Ard, and Harkey’s Valley, the team for which he played.  While he never had the chance to play with Dizzy, he did play with Paul and their younger brother, often known as “Poodle.” The teams played at places like the old Gatley ball field near Sulphar Springs and in numerous cow pastures all around the county.  Readers might recall the team’s manager Pete McMullan and some of well-known players like Burt Tucker, Roger Harkey, Grover Martin, John Martin, and Ame Bates.

In the near future I’ll have some of the audio of Bud up online so you can listen to Bud telling these and other stories in his own words.   Do you remember the ball teams, the logging woods, or Bonepart’s store?  I’d love to hear from you!  A very special thank you to Mr. Bud Rector for allowing me to visit and share some of his stories here.

The Renaissance Front Street Restoration in Dardanelle, Arkansas and River Walk

My hometown of Dardanelle, Arkansas has a wonderful downtown. Filled with historic buildings, a WPA post Office and mural, and a riverfront view, Front Street has immense potential to become an increasingly lively-center for local business and culture.

In recent years the downtown has seen the arrival of a few new businesses, such as Savannah’s Resteraunt which boasts a beautiful view of the river and the increasingly popular Tarascos, arguably the best Mexican food in the state.  And of course, there’s the Rivertown Bank, Liberty Bank, and Millyn’s, all of which have been around for decades now.

I am especially excited about the Renaissance Front Street Restoration Project that’s underway to help strengthen and sustain our beautiful, historic downtown. Coming up this June 24th Renaissance Front Street Restoration will host their second River Walk from 5:00-8:00 P.M. Featuring live music, local artists, and more this is a great opportunity to come out and see what’s going on in downtown Dardanelle and see how you can support these efforts and your local community.

And if you are a musician, artist, or craftsperson your skills are needed!   Call the phone number above to see how you can be a part of this event!   Support local and pass along the word!

The Seed and the Story—-Decoration Days

Decoration Day at Brearly Cemetery, Dardanelle Arkansas 2011.

I have recently been given the wonderful opportunity of writing a regular column for the Post Dispatch,a weekly paper based in Dardanelle, Arkansas which is also the oldest newspaper in Arkansas.   It’s been a long-time dream of mine to contribute to this paper, and I am beyond thankful for this opportunity. I’ll be writing a column entitled “The Seed and the Story,” which will discuss topics such as folklife, memory, community, family, sense of place, sustainability, community-based action, intergenerational dialog, and who knows what else.

I’m sure every now and then I’ll have something to say about dogs and mules or babies  and flowers or guitars and clotheslines or human rights activism and compost. I don’t want to put too fine a point on what the column is about because more than anything I want it to be open to new ideas and reflective of the diverse communities within my Dardanelle home as well as ideas and concepts I’m learning from my new Little Rock experience.

Most importantly I want the column to be interactive. My goals is to contribute, in my own small way, to spurring discussion in my home community and possibly even other places as well. So, I hope you’ll join me in sharing your stories, ideas, thoughts, concerns, you name it. I truly believe the best way for dialoging about home (the good and the bad aspects of it) is starting with what we know—our own stories and experiences.

Continue reading »

What’s In the Works ~ The McElroy House: Center for Regional Oral History and Folklife Research

After much thought and time spent wondering where to go from here, I have decided to begin the process of creating a small oral history and folklife research center in my hometown. I have included my plans and ideas for the Center listed at the bottom of this post. I welcome any feedback! Continue reading »

Dardanelle Post Office Mural and Arkansas Post Office Mural Project

In conducting some preliminary research about Post Office Murals in Arkansas, I came across this helpful resource:

Arkansas Post Office Mural Project

The webpage is currently under construction, but still contains helpful information. I discovered that the Dardanelle post office mural was created by an artist who was originally from Armenia.

This mural plays important role in my life. I can remember my mother pointing out the artwork to me when I was a small child and telling me about my grandparents (her parents) who, just like the people in the mural, had picked cotton in the Cardon Bottoms.

I am currently beginning preparatory work for a radio piece about Dardanelle’s mural and what it means to those who live here. I am in search of personal stories and any deep background information that might be related. If you have any ideas, comments, suggestions, please let me know!

I will be updating this entry as the research continues.

See also:
“Off the Wall: New Deal Post Office Murals” by Patricia Raynorhttp://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/resources/6a2q_postalmurals.html