On the Edge of the Ozarks: Oral Histories from the Arkansas River Valley

By Kristen Kloss Ulsperger, Jason S. Ulsperger and Kayla Osborne

On the Edge of the Ozarks details the lives of 15 elderly people who live in the Arkansas River Valley. Beginning with commentary on how we all age and why we should never ignore the stories of elders, it subsequently dives into vivid accounts from interviewees about childhood, family dynamics, school life, military service, employment, and growing old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493119738

Kristen Kloss Ulsperger

Jason S. Ulsperger is an associate professor of sociology at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas, where he teaches social gerontology. He obtained his doctorate from Oklahoma State University. His research appears in journals such as Sociological Spectrum and the Journal of Applied Social Sciences. In 2008, he won the Mid-South Sociological Association’s award for publication of the year for an article written with J. David Knottnerus called “The Social Dynamics of Elder Care.” He was the 2013 recipient of Arkansas Tech University’s Faculty Award for Scholarship and Creative Activity. Kristen Kloss Ulsperger is a visiting instructor of sociology at Arkansas Tech University. She obtained her master’s degree from Arkansas State University. She and Jason are the editors of two other oral history collections - Voices of Pope County and River Valley Reflections. Kayla Osborne is a graduate of Arkansas Tech University. In addition to contributing to various oral history projects, she recently completed a study examining the dynamics of farmers’ markets in the Arkansas River Valley.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Jason S. Ulsperger, Ph.D., Kristen Kloss Ulsperger, M.A.,

and Kayla Osborne.

ISBN:                  Softcover                              978-1-4931-1972-1

                            Ebook                                   978-1-4931-1973-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/05/2013

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1: Take Away the Ipods

Chapter 2: Tall, Red Headed, and Nice Looking

Chapter 3: This Is Where Jimmie Lou Is

Chapter 4: Missing Jack

Chapter 5: That Red Hair Turned to Fire

Chapter 6: It’s Not Just a Painting

Chapter 7: I Grew Weed

Chapter 8: The Ice Sign

Chapter 9: No

Chapter 10: Get Your Sideburns Cut or Get a Guitar

Chapter 11: Still Alive and That’s About It

Chapter 12: We Would All Turn Over

Chapter 13: My Chevrolet Was Better Than His Ford

Chapter 14: Way to Go Howdy Doody

Chapter 15: Calling the Cows in Early

References

Here is a true story I thought you might get a laugh from…

My sister and I worry all the time, afraid we’re getting Alzheimer’s. She’s 82 and I’m 80. She called me the other day and said she had done something so weird, she just knew she had it. I’ve forgotten what she did. I told her I had done something several months ago that scared me too.

I decided at the time to keep a record of the crazy things I do. So, I bought a little notebook and titled it Journey to Nowhere. [When I told my sister about it], she asked me what kinds of things I wrote in my journal. I told her, I don’t know. I’ve forgotten what I wrote in it, and on top of that, I forgot where I put it. That ended my journey right there!

Leona Dorflinger Kloss

Lifelong Arkansas Resident

DEDICATION

We dedicate this book to Ray Kloss. The stories he told, and the way he told them, always had an abundant reflection of Arkansas in them. In addition, we dedicate it to all of the people who work with elders in the Arkansas River Valley. This includes, but is not limited to, individuals employed by local nursing homes, the Area Agency on Aging, Alzheimer’s Arkansas, and Arkansas Hospice. Your commitment to the aged certainly deserves more recognition than it normally receives.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are highly appreciative of all of the interviewees involved in this project. We know some of you did not grow up in this area, but appreciate your willingness to talk about the path that led you to the Arkansas River Valley. We want to express gratitude to the students who conducted interviews. You all transcribed interviews to the best of your ability. Though we know audio quality of taped recordings and general communication issues cause transcription problems, we appreciate your attempts at definitive accuracy. We also extend thanks to administrators of organizations who allowed students to come into their facilities and carry out interviews. We thank Greg Chappell for allowing us the use of his property for the cover art. Finally, we are tremendously appreciative to anthropology faculty within the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Arkansas Tech University. Joshua Lockyer and Eric Bowne provided a series of questions for interviews relating to the heritage of the region. We believe those questions greatly enhanced the quality of the interviews included in this collection.

FOREWORD

Generalizations rarely represent the complexity of the real world. Brooks Blevins argues that this is especially true of Arkansas. Outside of Arkansas, writers, social commentators, cartoonists, and filmmakers have gazed upon Arkansaw and have tended toward one of two polarized images… : a land of backward and most often buffoonish hillbillies whose very existence underscores the superiority of the Puritan-Progressive strand of American society or the habitat of the upretentious, hearty natural man whose very survival amid the homogenizing influences of a materialistic and hyper-civilized society offers a glimmer of hope for those still harboring alternative visions of life in America, an antithesis to the American myth (Blevins 2009:193-194). One of the greatest values of oral history collections such On the Edge of the Ozarks is that they belie the falsity of stereotypes in favor of the details of remembered lives.

Arkansas might benefit from placing greater value on our elders’ remembrances of their lives. In other cultures, past and present, elders are often revered as repositories of wisdom, their life histories and experiences the embodiment of valued lessons that can help succeeding generations navigate life. In recent decades, characterized by shorter attention spans, faster technology, and ever more absurd gimmicks for capturing young people’s attention and directing their energies, we seem to have cast history itself into the dustbin of history. This third volume of oral histories generated by the Ulspergers and their students as part of a nascent interdisciplinary program in Ozark-Ouachita Studies at Arkansas Tech University is a welcome counter to this trend. My hope is that collections like this gain widespread use and increasing traction as the people of the Ozark-Ouachita region work together to better understand their own history and build an enlightened, empowered, just, and sustainable future upon the memories contained in it.

Joshua Lockyer, Ph.D.

PREFACE

We All Grow Old

I usually begin the semester in my social gerontology class by stating, We all grow old. People who study aging realize such a phrase is multifaceted. Aging is something that affects our biological characteristics, psychological wellbeing, and social relations (Quadagno 2014). On the Edge of the Ozarks is a collection of oral histories from elders living in the Arkansas River Valley that touches on each of these areas. Like many people in our culture who are aging, elders in the River Valley miss their youthful skin, have problems remembering things, and are struggling with loved ones who need long-term care. However, they also realize the pleasures of having a life full of cherished memories, the positive sense of self that comes from being a grandparent, and an abundance of leisure time.

I started teaching social gerontology when I took a sociology position at Arkansas Tech University in the fall of 2006. I never taught on the topic before. However, I did have a personal, academic, and research background in aging related issues. As a teenager, I loved to visit my great-grandmother, Effie Blasingame. Though I remember visiting her at the various houses she lived in through the years, most of our visits took place in nursing homes. Before dementia took away her vibrancy, I loved seeing the snuff sneak out of the side of her mouth, while she recited short songs from her childhood. I can see myself chuckling at the corner of her bed while she sang one of my favorites, Two little boys walking up a hill. Their butts cracked open like a sausage mill. Those visits created a soft place in my heart for the elderly. They also led me to intern at a Jonesboro nursing home while I was working on a graduate degree in sociology at Arkansas State University.

I thought I wanted to be a nursing home administrator, but soon realized that the business side of working with the aged, emphasized by the director I was working for, was less appealing to me than the social psychological side. I loved visiting with residents. I could not wait to get into their rooms, hear about what it was like for them growing up, and indulge with them on fond memories. Maybe it was because my wife and I were in a new town without many acquaintances. Maybe it was because I longed to talk to my great-grandmother who passed a few years earlier. Whatever the reason, I think the experience was good for me, and I like to think it benefited the people I visited with as well. When I entered Oklahoma State University’s doctorate program in sociology the next year, there was little debate in my mind as to what my dissertation and subsequent research would focus on—nursing home residents (see Ulsperger and Knottnerus 2011).

We all grow old. I do not think that many of my social gerontology students give that idea much thought before I say it the first day of class. We work through the semester discussing changes in cellular structure, altered thinking ability, and retirement related issues, but for a certain percentage of students, aging is still something that does not seem real. To battle that, I have them go out and interview someone from the River Valley who is 65 or older. When I was younger, I do not think growing old was something I thought about much, until I visited with my great-grandmother. Some young adults do not depend on, and subsequently do not visit with, elders as much as in the past (Ulsperger 2001). Even if they do, they do not ask deep questions about the lives of elders. Interviewing someone over the age of 65 gives them intergenerational contact and a better connection to what we talk about in the classroom.

I decided quickly that taking the interviews and publishing them in a collection was a great idea. It would give elders a documented source of information to pass on to family members. Moreover, donating the collections to the Pope County Library would preserve stories from the community that would have otherwise slid through the cracks of time. The collection of interviews from students led to two previous oral history projects I helped to edit—Voices of Pope County (2008) and River Valley Reflections (2009).

Students and interviewees benefit from an oral history collection like On the Edge of the Ozarks, but this book is for anyone who is interested in the elderly, historical information, or Arkansas culture and its people. I also encourage the casual reader to note the structure of each interview. I hope you are inspired to collect your own oral histories from family or community members. As reflected in this book, you do not have to be overly technical to get some good information. If you decided to collect your own oral histories, I recommend you check out a piece Kristen and I wrote for the Arkansas Library Association’s journal (see Ulsperger and Ulsperger 2011). It offers a simplistic, systematic guide for the oral history novice.

I want to close with some information I pass along in every one of these collections. First, the editors finalized all of the interviews in this book to reflect the actual words of interviewees to the best of our ability. From interviewees mouths, to interviewers recorders, and then