History
Last week, I was interviewed on a St. Louis radio program, “Authors’ Edge,” about The Way We Were, my book with the first fifty articles from this column. I was asked where I got my ideas for the newspaper stories.
After mentioning previous subjects, I explained new topics could be elusive and...
Among the earliest historical sources of Howell County is a speech written and publicly read in West Plains by the pioneer newspaper editor Samuel A. Risley for the one-hundredth anniversary of our nation's founding on July 4, 1876. Over the years, myself, and other local historians have quoted...
One of the things I find interesting in writing these articles, and I hope interesting for readers, is learning history I didn’t know. Invariably, even the smallest amount of research reveals new information. Venerable WSHS teacher John Finley is yet another example of how little I really did...
Can it already be that time of the year again? Well, it should not come as a surprise because the yuletide TV advertisements have been hawking the latest “must-have” toys since Halloween.
The Chicago Tribune published a list of the best toys for 2023. The second one in the “best of the best”...
In my quest to find out what happened to the population of Howell County during the Civil War, we take a look at a family who tried to avoid involvement but were destroyed by the conflict. From my reading of the war here, I’ve found the worst thing to do was to not declare a side and be under the...
In Mrs. Munford’s WSHS English class in the 1960s, I vaguely recall reading an abridged version of “The Purloined Letter” by Edgar Allen Poe. My memory is either faulty, or Poe’s efforts did not make much of an impression on several schoolmates, whose recollections are vaguer than mine....
For this story, we go to opposite ends of Howell County. Around the turn of the century, as our earliest pioneers were at an age to reminiscence, local newspapers began carrying their stories. The West Plains Journal did a series in 1904 and 1905 recounting those times in the participants' own...
Sometime in early 2001, I began my adventure in writing. It was not something I planned or had thought much about. Sitting in the waiting room of a medical office, I perused a copy of Missouri Life magazine to pass the time. A story, written by owner/publisher Greg Wood, about a country barn of...
I live between two of the oldest communities in Howell County, and less than two miles from the location of events and people in this story. The north end of our county developed later than the areas where land was better for farming. It took a hardy set of people who came and farmed the dry...
Earlier this year, alongside 20 other inductees including notables such as Bret Saberhagen (Kansas City Royals pitcher), Tyler Hansbrough (Poplar Bluff High School/University of North Carolina basketball star), and Sean Weatherspoon (University of Missouri, all-American linebacker), the Mizzou...