Eureka Springs Independent Column

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I’ve always thought that it isn’t the height of her hills that make the Ozarks unique, but rather the depth of her hollows. Twenty years ago, I had been to Seligman, Missouri via federally funded pavement when I decided to return home using the rough, scenic shortcut through Butler Hollow.

It must have recently rained, because when I drove down a dip in the road and crossed a creek branch, the engine of my little gray Chevy pickup stalled. Because that wasn’t my first dead engine after crossing water, I decided to give it some time to dry out. I waited and turned the key. No luck. I tinkered and waited and turned the key. Still no good. Finally, darkness came upon me. Because this happened during that primitive time before widespread cellular communication, I decided to knock on doors and beg assistance.

I walked down the road enjoying the night sounds. With no particular place to be, I was rather enjoying my little adventure. I heard the call of a whip-poor-will and when it came into view, the distinct squat bird was in the middle of the road in a pool of clear moonlight. I tried to skirt the bird the best I could so as not to disturb it, when suddenly it was up off the ground and I felt its body slam into the side of my head. Startled, I ducked down and trotted into the deep shadows of the trees ahead, when the bird slammed into the back of my head. I now ran full speed down the dark country road. The bird swooped in and landed on top of my head either pecking or clawing. I escaped alive. Ground nesting birds are either tough or dead, I suppose.

There are a handful of houses along the east side of the road in that Arkansas section of Butler Hollow, but no one seemed to be home, except maybe at the house with the pack of inhospitable canines. Five miles from where I broke down, I did find Smead Walden at home watching the ten o’clock news. After quizzing me about my family tree, he allowed me to use the telephone. Help arrived and we returned to my pickup. It started up without problem.

Eureka Springs Independent Column

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Awhile back, Reggie Sanchez scored 37 points for the Eureka Springs High School Highlanders basketball team in a game against Magazine. His older brother Ryan was a star player for the Highlanders last year and now plays on the college level for Avila University in Kansas City.

This got me to wondering about who some of the best players have been through the history of the Highlanders. I did some informal and wholly unscientific polling of various people that have been associated with Eureka Springs basketball over the years. This subject was also recently discussed on social media. Between these two sources of information, I amassed a list of about 60 names that came up time and time again as being the best players for the Highlanders. I’m sorry there isn’t room to list them all.

For the girls, the names that were mentioned the most were (alphabetically with year of graduation): Tanya Ashford (1988), Ramona Capps (1978), Mitzi Clemons (1978), Bobbie Cross (1979), Frances Fargo (1982), Gaye Lynn Head (1980) and Kim Hull (1985).

For the boys, the names brought up most were: Lynn Ray Brashear (1958), Mike Butler (1974), Billy Clark (1982), James Nall (1980),  Bobby Pyatt (1955), Joe Sheets (1973), Marvin Siebert (1990), Chris Wise (1994) and Scott Young (1989).

Realizing that these players were mostly of fairly recent vintage, I asked McKinley Weems who the best players were from his time as a Highlander. He replied brothers Charles Freeman (1936) and Bob Freeman (1939).

Instead of naming individuals, some people brought up certain teams that played well together, such as the boys teams from 1989 and 1994 that went to the state tournament. Others named off families known for producing quality basketball players over multiple generations, notably the Cross, Freeman, Morrell and Wolfinbarger families.

I saw in an old Times-Echo newspaper that L.B. Wilson scored 46 points in a game in 1967 for the Highlanders. I wonder if that is the school record? By the way, basketball runs in that family, too, as his daughter Kimberly Wilson Jenkins coaches at Valley Springs High School.

Eureka Springs Independent Column – Granny

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A quiet and shy girl, Betty Southerland was born on the last day of 1914 in the remote Mason Bend of Kings River located between Eureka Springs and Rockhouse. Her education started at the tiny Cedar Grove School located on her father’s farm just a short walk from the log house in which she was born. The school was comprised of Betty and her siblings and the children of a couple other farm families.

Betty’s isolated existence was expanded when the decision was made to consolidate her school with the larger West Concord School District closer to Eureka Springs. A nervous wreck at the thought of the change, Betty now travelled six miles every morning to attend the unfamiliar school. Little did she know that it was at Concord  that she would become dear friends with schoolmate Dorothy Wolfinbarger.

The Concord School was located on Rockhouse Road near Keels Creek where the Concord Fire Station now stands. Behind it loomed a bald knob that is now being covered by cedars. My understanding is that the view from the top is borderline spectacular, but that isn’t why Betty and Dorothy would climb the steep trail. No, they climbed that steep mountain because the acoustics were so good. As was the rage at the time, both girls yodeled and they would make the rugged trek to the top to do so. They’d yodel together or take turns and then listen as their voices bounced around and echoed back. They’d shout or sing songs and listen.

Betty was my “Granny,” my mother’s mother, and I used to badger her for stories. Several times she told me about her school closing, but she would then recall Dorothy with as much affection as anyone I ever heard her talk about. When Granny would recount this story, it was with a fondness and wistfulness I rarely saw her display when she recollected the events of her physically hard life. The power of childhood friendships came to mind recently with the news that Dorothy had passed away at the age of 98. (Incidentally, Dorothy was the sister of my paternal grandmother Lola Weems.)

Eureka Springs Independent Column

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My wife Diane grew up where the Pig Trail Kart n Golf (formerly The Fun Spot) is located on Highway 62 East in Eureka Springs. If you go back to the early 1980s, it was still a beautiful family home place, with an abundance of flowers, bushes and large old trees around a house with a big yard. There was some pasture and Duane O’Connor sometimes ran a few cows. Diane and her brother Doug would play in the front yard and periodically a car would pull up and tourists would ask for directions to the Passion Play. After being given directions, the tourists would sometimes ask how many blocks away it was. Diane didn’t know how to answer that.

Thirty years ago, we kept my Uncle Don Sisco’s mare Lulabell at our place and I spent many a happy hour riding across the countryside. I wanted to go to my grandparents’ farm, but didn’t want to ride down through the curves on the shoulderless highway. (I’d done that before and didn’t want to repeat it.) My Grandpa Jack McCall knew all kinds of shortcuts, so I asked him for directions. He suggested I take the old road over the mountain and through the woods. Turns out his definition of a road and mine were different (mine undoubtedly influenced by living in East Coast suburbia.)

I still remember his directions. I was to turn left at the red oak snag. I found it. I was to stay straight at the giant dead elm. I found it. I was to watch for the dogs at the house where the hippies grew dope. Those dogs found me before I found them. Lulabell and I made it through that section pretty quick. Looking back, I realize that she and I did a lot of trespassing without a second thought.

Speaking of Grandpa and hippies, he told me once that he’d heard that there were hippies in Eureka that didn’t get out of bed until nine in the morning. He was incredulous. I’m glad he didn’t know what time I got up.

Eureka Springs Independent Column

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Can Christmas really be the same without Larry Evans driving around with a lit tree on the back of his vehicle? Or does he still do that and I just don’t see it?

Someone mentioned that I wrote that Eureka Springs was a small town where everyone knows everyone else. I hope I didn’t say that because I don’t believe it to be true. Eureka is full of various cliques and factions that don’t necessarily mix with each other. I see many familiar faces around town, but I often don’t know names. I do believe that if two residents were placed in a locked room, they’d come up with a list of mutual acquaintances.

Eureka does have a permanent population of a certain size and many of those people know each other. Several times in my life I’ve found someone looking intently at my face and they follow with the question, “Are you a Weems?” Maybe it is the nose.

If people ask my name now, occasionally they know that I write. Other times they say, “Are you related to Arlie?” or “Mac” or “Mary” or “Terri” or “Diane at the bank” or “Diane the nurse.” Or they have a blank look on their faces and they ask where I’m from. It makes me sad when I say, “I’m from Eureka, born in the hospital,” and the response is, “I didn’t know there were any of those.”

I’ve told this before. I was behind a man in line at a local convenience store and a tourist asked him if he was a Eureka Springs native. The man answered, “I’ve lived here five years, I think that makes me a native.” That’s a curious statement.

But this is a Christmas column, so never mind all that. I was trying to remember Larry Evans’ vehicle that he’d decorate every year, so I asked someone with a better memory than mine. Scott Schmitz confirmed that it was a blue 1953 Willys Jeep wagon with a Ford 289 cubic inch V8. I hope Larry Evans knows that people appreciated his Christmas cheer. It made a lasting impression.

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for December 10, 2014 by Steve Weems

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Perhaps one doesn’t hear the name Groblebe around Eureka Springs as often as years ago, but they’re an old local family. They inhabited these hills and hollows before the town did.

Ed Groblebe was born about the same time as Eureka Springs and spent his professional career as an engineer with the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad. Growing up, he worked around sawmills, loading and unloading railroad ties and lumber onto wagons. This kind of work either cripples you or makes you strong. I understand that he was like most Groblebe men – tall and easy going with a ready grin.

When Ed Groblebe was about 17, he was driving a lumber wagon pulled by two mules up Main Street in Eureka Springs. When he reached the bottom of Planer Hill, a man jumped out and grabbed the reins of one of the mules and yelled, “I’m going to kick you to pieces.” Or maybe what he said wasn’t quite that polite. Ed Groblebe knew him and had no reason to doubt that he wouldn’t or couldn’t do what he said. The man was known to be a bully and downright mean. I’ll not repeat his name in case you’re kin: I’m not looking for trouble.

Fearing for his life, Ed Groblebe jumped down off the wagon and, as he landed, he drove his fist into the jaw of the bully as hard as he could. The man promptly fell to the ground as if shot. Stunned by the turn of events, Ed Groblebe felt sure he’d just committed murder. He climbed back on the wagon and left town as fast as possible. He did not show his face in Eureka Springs for a full month.

When he finally returned, the law wasn’t waiting to arrest him for murder. In fact, his adversary wasn’t even dead. The only thing Ed Groblebe ever heard about the incident was that when the local bully was questioned by the attending doctor, he claimed that he’d been kicked by a mule.

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for December 3, 2014 by Steve Weems

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I’ve heard that a domesticated turkey will stare at the sky with its mouth open in a heavy rain and drown. I worked as a farmhand on a turkey farm in my youth and I never saw this happen, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I had the impression that the turkeys weren’t so much stupid as just being slow thinkers. I couldn’t help but identify with them at times.

To be honest, I was a mediocre farmhand. Monotonous physical labor gave me time to think, which I liked, but I’d become so engrossed in the personalities of my charges that my work would slow. Or a soft, spring breeze might distract me, or the beauty of the bucolic Ozarkian landscape.

Of course, most of my dealings with turkeys were inside long metal buildings. However, on occasion, they were herded from one structure to another. I remember one particular day with a biting subzero wind chill that the turkeys had to be moved. When they stepped out of their warm home and the first blast of cold air hit them, their inclination was to immediately settle down onto the ground despite the humans yelling and flapping their arms behind them.

In Army basic training, a drill sergeant accused me of thinking too much, an activity better left to higher pay grades, and I saw the point. In combat, if you stop and slowly and thoughtfully consider your predicament, the odds increase you’ll get yourself or someone else killed. That is a time for your training to kick in, a time for that obedience to the experienced sergeant directing your actions.

As it is with herding turkeys in a bone-numbing wind. The obedient turkeys made it to the next warm building and lived. The turkeys who ignored the frantic humans and settled down to conserve body heat while they slowly and thoughtfully considered their predicament, froze to death by the dozens.

It has been thirty years since that day at the turkey farm and I’m still trying to determine the inherent risks of being a slow but independent thinker.

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for November 19, 2014 by Steve Weems

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On a day of heavy rains in the Spring of 1990, new local residents David and Jane Reuter attended a fundraiser at the Winona School and Church on Rockhouse Road. Attendees, including the Reuters, brought pies that an auctioneer sold to the highest bidder to help pay someone’s medical bills. David remembers bluegrass-style music provided by a fiddler, banjo-player and others. At the conclusion of the event, those driving north towards Eureka Springs found the low water bridge impassable. Drivers climbed out of their vehicles and congregated at the water’s edge and decided to give the creek time to fall rather than taking the risk.

Located in the long, narrow Winona Hollow, the historic Winona building has been a place of learning and worship, as well as voting, meetings, homecomings and weddings. There have also been community pie suppers and dinners on the grounds.

If one peruses old maps, it is found that Winona Springs was the name of this community. Besides the school and church, at one time Winona Springs had about 20 houses, a post office, and a mill.

I’ve read that George Washington Pinkley had a hand in the building of the Winona School and Church sometime before 1893. His daughter, Luella, married my great-grandfather Walter Weems there in 1901.

I live in Winona Township and we used to vote at the Winona School and Church, but it was eliminated as a polling location several years ago. If you were handicapped and couldn’t make it into the building, a poll worker would bring a ballot out. Often, voting on a chilly November morning, a roaring fire in the General-Wesco Jumbo woodstove kept things warm. It was a pleasant and friendly place in which to participate in democracy. I miss it. We now vote in town and it just isn’t the same.

Now this historic building is needing a new roof and repairs. An old-fashioned pie supper and silent auction will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, November 20, at the ECHO Clinic. You can also donate at the First National Bank of North Arkansas or mail donations to P.O. Box 367 in Berryville, Arkansas 72616.

Eureka Springs Independent Newspaper Column for November 12, 2014 by Steve Weems

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The first step is to admit I have a problem: I think I’m living in the past. These old Eureka Springs Times-Echo newspapers keep calling to me and I can’t stop looking through their brittle yellow pages. Many of these newspapers date from before my birth and yet so many of the names are familiar; people I’ve heard about my whole life.

The bulk of my habit has been supplied by Kay Kelley. She and Richard had quite a collection of Eureka Springs memorabilia and I was lucky enough to get a couple of boxes of newspapers. Recently, Genevieve Bowman kindly passed along a bundle of old newspapers also. Others have slipped me individual clippings and odds and ends.

Sometimes I read the old newspapers so much that I find I don’t have time to keep up with current news. I may not know much of what is happening today, but I can tell you that LB Wilson scored 23 points in a winning effort for the Highlander boys against Reed Spring on November 17, 1967.

The main photograph on the front page of the November 23, 1967 Eureka Springs Times-Echo is that of the recently completed statue of the American Mastodon at Ola Farwell’s Dinosaur Park near Beaver Dam. I’m sorry that the park is now closed.

Norma Scates column, Busch News, recounts the killing of a tame deer called “John Deer” the second day of hunting season. His bloody collar was found down behind Huffman’s Rock Shop at Busch.

Today, with nearly a thousand killed annually in Carroll County, deer are taken for granted. They are thick everywhere it seems. But in 1967, as the resident deer population was still rebounding, the animal still held novelty value. The 109 hunters that killed deer in Carroll County during the first segment of the November, 1967 season are listed on the front page of the newspaper. Winifred Prior killed a 13 point buck.

Just as now, not everyone welcomed deer hunters on their property. Included in the “No Hunting” classified ads is this one: “Anyone trespassing on my property for any reason does so at his own risk. Mary Jane Fritsch.”