Tourists. You can’t live with them. You can’t live without them.

My wife, Diane, recalls a disgruntled tourist years ago complaining about having driven all the way out to Dinosaur World/Land of Kong and the dinosaurs weren’t even alive. Another time a lady was impressed that Diane could read and write, considering that Arkansas didn’t have schools.

Used to be, one of the recurring questions asked was where were all the “real” hillbillies? Do the tourists still ask that? I’ve heard stories of years ago how disappointed they’d be that the locals wore shoes and didn’t smoke corn cob pipes.

I remember when my brother was a teenager and would visit from Washington, D.C., he’d borrow Uncle Arlie’s old Willys Jeep to drive around. He’d dress in overalls without shirt or shoes and go down Spring Street for the tourists to see a hillbilly.

Fred Muller tells of being asked if the Christ of the Ozarks statue was manmade or a natural occurring formation. As jokes, kids used to tell gullible visitors that the Christ of the Ozarks statue had a revolving restaurant housed in Jesus’s head, or that you could take an elevator up to the top of the statue and look out Jesus’s eyes. Others told tourists that the statue would sometimes turn and wave.

I’ve heard of frantic tourists rushing into the emergency room at the Eureka Springs Hospital because their child had a tick and threatening lawsuits over it.

I remember being told by a tourist that they were tired of driving on the curvy, hilly roads and would I tell them how to get on the interstate. When I explained the distance to the nearest interstate, he argued that all towns had interstates and would I just tell him where it was.

I like this one. Jessica Ross tells of a tourist calling the front desk of the Matterhorn Towers one night to say, “The frogs are quaint and all, but could you please turn off the recording?”

Tell me your story at steve@steveweems.com or P.O. Box 43 in Eureka Springs.

On the Berryville Public Square is a memorial to those of Carroll County who died in the wars of the 20th century. The names of the dead are organized by war and engraved on the monument. Fifty-two of the fifty-nine names listed died in World War II, while three died in World War I, one in Korea and three in Vietnam.

While in the US Navy, my father served three consecutive tours to Vietnam on the destroyer the USS McKean. It spent time in the coastal waters off Vietnam, but also on the river deltas and up the rivers.

Donnie Weems died December 24, 2011 at the age of 70 of health complications linked to Agent Orange exposure. Agent Orange was a defoliant manufactured by Monsanto and Dow Chemical and sprayed by aircraft in Vietnam to eliminate cover that could be used by enemy forces.

My father was initially skeptical of his Agent Orange exposure, but it was his nature to be initially skeptical of everything. The Veterans Administration said that his contact with Agent Orange would have been during his time on land in Vietnam or on the rivers and river deltas. But the USS McKean would also float off the coast of North Vietnam to coordinate communications for downed pilots and the wind would blow the sprayed poisons out to sea, contaminating everything. My father described standing on the deck of the ship and the wind washing over him.

The government admitted his extensive heart damage and blindness were directly related to the Vietnam War. The Veterans Administration rated him as 540 percent disabled, as if that were possible. I do not recall him ever saying that he felt like he was in grave danger during Vietnam (not that he would have), but I’ve read online that his ship took fire (which he never mentioned.) However, the war apparently had a hand in killing him, though it was more than 40 years later.

The obvious point I am making is that war has costs that go on long after the conflict ends. There is a message on the memorial at the Berryville Public Square, the first line of which is, “That we not forget.”

The mean dirt roads of the little hollow we live in may not be ruled by a proper street gang, but the air is. For many years, the sky over the hollow was the domain of a pair of hawks, regal and proud, but a coup by the crows has changed all of that.

The rebellion was not immediate, but incremental. First, I saw a few brave crows challenging the hawks in flight, but as time passed, more and more of the crows joined in. Then a neighbor told me they witnessed the crows tormenting a downed hawk. Later, in the woods, I listened from a distance to the pitiful sounds of the remaining hawk as crows surrounded it and finished it off. The “meep, meep, meep” of the once powerful bird of prey became weaker and weaker. A group of crows is called a murder, and perhaps for good reason. Nature is not all happiness and party balloons.

My nephew Brandon and I once stood high up on the ridge overlooking the Kings River Valley with his remote control game call. Brandon was very hands on when it came to the natural world and, though less than half my age, he taught me much more than I taught him. He set up his electronic gizmo and we retreated a distance. He had the little machine make the sounds of an injured crow. I thought this process would be hit and miss, but, no, Brandon guaranteed that there would be a response. He had no doubt.

Within a couple of minutes, about 15 crows arrived looking for their injured comrade. A lookout was posted and the others called out and searched in vain. Then a big hawk swooped in and watched the proceedings from a distance in the top of a tall tree down the ridge. And then other smaller birds congregated, much like humans do when they have a chance to look at the aftermath of a automobile accident or a house fire. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed.

All this reminds me that I keep meaning to check and see if the Carnegie Library has a DVD copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Usually I read old issues of the Eureka Springs Times-Echo to get a glimpse of our town’s past and generally I write about events from before my birth. This week is different, as March 5, 1985, doesn’t seem all that long ago.

And it isn’t the Times-Echo I have spread before me, but the inaugural issue of the Eureka & North Arkansas Journal, published and edited by Mary Stockslager. It says a group of spectators applauded when Jim Abbott hung the Journal sign above the door to the newspaper’s offices at the junction of Spring and Main. Other newspaper staff listed are Business Manager Bob Holley and Office Manager Jolene Dunn.

The first letters to the editor are all of a congratulatory nature. Those wishing the Eureka & North Arkansas Journal the best of luck are Mayor Don Thurman, John F. Cross, Thomas H. Dees, Rex A. Gustin, Dave Drennon and Bob Purvis. Wheeler Printing has a big ad in the newspaper giving congratulations, also.

In political news, Jerry Ferguson, Ken Smith, Jack Tuttle and Pat Thurman were running for positions on the Eureka Springs School Board.

At the city council meeting, Louise Mesa presented a proposal on how to “combat the city-wide problem of trash” to Aldermen Chris Bonewitz, Bill Featherstone, Sam Reeves, Al Westphal, Randy Wolfinbarger and David Zimmermann.

Nearby in the town of Beaver, the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology was investigating possible gasoline in five wells and in the Beaver Spring. According to long-time resident Dewey French, it had been a problem since 1973.

More than anything else, it is the advertisements in the Eureka & North Arkansas Journal that transport me back to my youth. Tastee Freeze was taking applications and the Eureka Flower Shop was located back at 67 Kingshighway. Builders Supply, Greenlee Pearson Funeral Home and E & E Steakhouse were all still in business.

I remember reading the Eureka & North Arkansas Journal while in high school, but it must have ceased publication while I was away. If you know what happened, please tell me at steve@steveweems.com or P.O. Box 43 in Eureka Springs.

Duane O’Connor ran a wrecker service in Eureka Springs for 25 years, pulling vehicles out of holes and from over bluffs, helping people stuck in the mud, snow and ice in the middle of the night. He even helped a bus out of St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church. His first wrecker was a red, one-ton, 4-wheel drive 1946 Dodge Power Wagon he bought in 1955. Later, he purchased larger, more modern wrecker trucks, most of them red as well.

One winter, Duane and Tommy Walker drove out west of town to get a car that had slid off US 62. They left the wrecker parked on the ice-covered asphalt and were going down to hook onto the car when they heard a noise. They turned just in time to see the big parked wrecker sliding off the road towards them.

In the 1950s there was a circus coming through on US 62 from the west, and state police had Duane O’Connor and his wrecker on standby at the top of the mountain at Inspiration Point in case any of the old rattle-trap circus trucks couldn’t make it up the hill. When the truck carrying the elephants made it to the top, Duane was sent home and from then on, the elephants pulled the trucks that had trouble.

When Bill Clinton was first elected governor, he visited Eureka and his state trooper driver locked the car keys in the state Cadillac on Spring Street across from Basin Park. The trooper came to Duane and asked for help, stating they’d have to hurry as they only had 30 minutes before the governor had to be somewhere. Duane was able to break into the car and retrieve the keys.

Duane has an album full of pictures of bent, buckled and smashed cars, photographs taken by Michael Mountjoy and Wayne Brashear over the years, at just a few of the many wrecks he worked. And all these years later, the accidents that Duane O’Connor remembers most distinctly are those in which people were seriously injured or killed.

I invite your stories at steve@steveweems.com or P.O. Box 43 in Eureka Springs.

Except for her childhood in Kansas, Lena Wilson lived her life just off Pivot Rock Road near Eureka Springs. The trash and junk she collected around town was carried back to what she called “the farm.” She did have livestock over the years, including the pigs to which she fed the garbage. 

When Lena Wilson and her horse, cart and dogs (she particularly liked Dalmatians) commuted daily through Dairy Hollow from Pivot Rock Road, Doris (Groblebe) O’Connor remembers that Lena would usually be walking beside the horse, one hand holding the reins and the other hand grasping a book or magazine that she was reading. 

I’d heard that Lena Wilson was a talented artist. There is evidence that she won prizes for her watercolor landscapes, including a first place at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo. 

So, the question remains, why would Lena Wilson, an intelligent, educated and talented woman resort to collecting trash as a means of survival? This very question was posed to Lena in a 1949 Associated Press news story. Her response was that collecting garbage was not only more profitable than teaching, but healthier, too. In the article, she said that it took her six hours to make her daily rounds through Eureka Springs and though she was then 66 years old and only 120 pounds, she was stronger than when she quit teaching school. 

But to many this does not adequately explain why she left the teaching profession and lived much of her life as a recluse. The persistent story among those who knew her was that it was a broken heart that prompted her to pursue the life she did. Some of the details have been lost over the years, but it seems that Lena Wilson was in love with an area businessman, but after her family lost its wealth, the relationship ended and she was never the same. 

Lena Wilson was buried next to her father in the Eureka Springs Cemetery in 1963, though to this day the grave is without a tombstone. The last sentence in her short obituary was the following: “She has no known survivors.”

The hillbilly comic strip Li’l Abner made Connecticut-native Al Capp wealthy. I read that at one time the strip was carried in nearly a thousand newspapers worldwide with a daily circulation of 60 million, which spawned a Broadway musical, two movies and a great deal of merchandising.

During its 43-year run, the comic strip also reinforced the hillbilly stereotype to a global audience. Writing in The Ozarks Mountaineer , the late Phyllis Rossiter- Modeland blamed Al Capp for “negatively influencing and ignorantly prejudicing millions of others about hillbillies through his comic strip.”

Perhaps based on my childhood visit to the now defunct Dogpatch amusement park south of Harrison, I wrongly assumed that Li’l Abner had some connection to the Arkansas Ozarks. Instead, the comic strip town of Dogpatch was actually set in Kentucky.

While researching the column on Lena Wilson, I stopped in at the Eureka Springs Historical Museum to see what was in their files. A hand-written note said that Charles Kappen told the story of Al Capp sitting on a bench in Basin Park one day when Lena Wilson traveled down the street. Al Capp asked a young boy who she was and was told, “Oh, that’s Lena the Hyena.” Soon after, “Lena the Hyena” was an off-screen character in the Li’l Abner comic strip. Later, Al Capp staged an art contest for the best design of the character, which  was judged by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Boris Karloff and Salvador Dalí. It caused a sensation.

Though Lena Wilson may have had the appearance of what tourists expected a hillbilly to be (overalls or eccentric combinations of clothes), she was actually an only child born in Kansas to a prosperous family. She and her parents moved to Eureka Springs in the 1890s, purchasing and renovating a nice large house on Pivot Rock Road. Before attending college and becoming a school teacher, Lena graduated from Eureka Springs High School in 1900.

As Mary Margaret Torok said, “I never thought of Lena as a hillbilly in any way. She had class, a bit of style and a bit of grace.”

People are not always as they appear. Tom Hughes tells of driving the Crescent Hotel tour bus and happening upon Lena Wilson and her two-wheeled cart. Tourists would want to have their photograph taken with a “real hillbilly” so Tom would stop. Lena Wilson would accommodate them by posing for pictures. After returning to the bus, the tourists’ attitudes would be entirely different because they were so impressed by her intelligence and knowledge. They didn’t realize that she was college educated and a former schoolteacher.

For several decades, Lena Wilson drove her horse or mule drawn cart through the streets of Eureka Springs collecting garbage and junk in a black overcoat year-‘round or in a fur coat during the winter. I am told that sometimes both Lena and her horse would wear straw hats. She always had dogs that went through town with her, though they usually rode in the cart.

She had a penchant for quoting Shakespeare and others, but she also (according to multiple, first-hand accounts) would eat directly from garbage cans on the streets of Eureka Springs. Several tell how their mothers started  preparing food for Lena and leaving it wrapped on the lids of garbage cans.

Many were scared of her as children, some thinking her a witch, while others knew her as a kind and gentle lady. Kay Plouch Kelley remembers waving to her as a child and Miss Lena would either wave back or tip her head in greeting. She once gave Kay’s sister and cousin each an antique china doll.

While employed by Fay Higgins at the Lion’s Station, my Uncle Don Sisco fixed the flats on Lena Wilson’s rubber-tired cart. He did report the cart had a terrible smell. Others say that, especially in the heat of the summer, you could smell Lena and her cart before you saw them.

Lena Wilson died before I was born, but I grew up hearing stories about her and her eccentricities. If you have information about her, let me know at steve@steveweems.com or P.O. Box 43 in Eureka Springs. There is more of her story to be written.