History
The old WSHS gymnasium has always reminded me of a swimming pool, a natatorium of the 1930s, set below street level and surrounded above by concrete bleachers with backless, slatted seats. Reprising the lines of the school song, it was “a place of many blessed memories.”
With the smell of...
One hundred years ago this week, the Thursday, January 27, 1921, edition of the West Plains Journal-Gazette newspaper, on its front page and leading column, reported the: "Largest Funeral in West Plains. One Thousand People Witness Soldier Heroes' Burial." The headline also announced, "Business...
Many worked on the idea worldwide, but Alexander Graham Bell was the first to be awarded a successful patent on the telephone in 1875. The utility of his device wasn't immediately seen but soon caught on, and by the turn of the century, phone service reached the Ozarks.
In Howell County,...
It is the time of year when we frequently hear words taken from the second chapter of Luke telling of the birth of Jesus, that read, "In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius...
During my junior year at Mizzou, my friend Steve and I had two buddies who spent a summer in Europe. They returned with hair growing over their ears, daring and radical in 1967 in the Midwest, and with fabulous tales of their adventures. Paris. Rome. Munich. And Rickey’s Bar in Sitges, Spain. ...
Are we headed for another civil war? Are events today analogous to those one hundred sixty years ago, when a contentious election divided the population and ushered in the worst turmoil we have experienced as a nation? My purpose in this article isn't to render a political opinion or determine...
In many ways, the 1950s lingered another five years beyond its closing date, keeping its hold on the first half of the sixties. Acid hadn’t yet hit rock and roll, and folk music often topped the charts. Still, beatniks and coffeehouse poets preached that the times were changing.
But in...
Following the announcement a month ago of the purchase of the "Tumble Down Main Street Building" (100 East Main) by the Main Street Willow Springs group, I received many inquiries from several persons interested in the building's history. Because of the loss over the years of the earliest Willow...
It recently came to my attention that October 29th was National Cat Day. With the abounding number of odd “national” commemorative days, it isn’t surprising that I missed it. But it caused me to reflect on some of the feline friends I’ve known.
Some folks don’t like cats. Some claim to be...
In July 1925, The West Plains Journal Gazette interviewed Ephraim J. Buford of Mansfield, Arkansas, and wrote a lengthy article that gives us a significant window into the earliest pioneer life of Howell County. The report, used as a source for some of the county's earliest historians, might be...