Osage History by Joshua Heston A summer rain is coming. Clouds gathering over dusty streets, the old brick buildings of downtown and the white Moorish spires and porticos of the Coleman Theatre — a lavish movie palace built by mining dollars back in 1929. The wind dies and main street is still, save for the…
PLATE 1. U.S. MARINES WITH COMBAT LOGISTICS BATTALION 22, 22ND MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT WAIT FOR A CH-53E SUPER STALLION HELICOPTER, APRIL 25, 2014. Yankee Whiskey, Mike by Lauren Hembree I wrote a poem once. It was about you and how you had decided to run off to the military instead of marry my cousin (or…
Artwork above courtesy of Raine Clotfelter, Branson, Missouri US Navy Swift Boat PCF 43 by Joshua Heston The mission was code-named Silver Mace II. The day was April 12, 1969, and the United States was at war in the mangrove swamps and rice paddies of Vietnam. Songs like Hey Jude by The Beatles and Mrs.…
PLATE 1. A simple bonfire takes on otherworldly tones, hinting of a darker past. Ozark Magic & Hoodoo by Joshua Heston Our rational, scientific world filled with textbook knowledge and an overabundance of electronic equipment has little room for the unknown or inexplicable. “Faith” is carefully relegated to quiet, predictable corners of our lives…
PLATE 1. Smallin Cave entrance at night. Smallin Cave BY JOSHUA HESTON (STATE OF THE OZARKS JOURNAL, OCTOBER 29, 2010) Here in this dark holler of the Ozarks is a cave of great and powerful majesty. The Osage people called this the Place of the Underground Spirit — Winoca. And here I sit in the…
PLATE 1. Missouri winter and spring branch. The Eau de Vie by Joshua Heston The spring branch still runs at the Eau de Vie, (pronounced O-divy), that desolate Missouri ghost town abandoned by the mid-1890s. Remants, and there are few, are scattered over three lonely, beautiful hillsides, thick with oak and cedar. PLATE 2. The…
PLATE 1. Southern Gospel group buses line the back parking lot of Louisville’s Kentucky Fair and Expo Center. End of an Era: Louisville’s National Quartet Convention 2013 by Joshua Heston LOUISVILLE, KY —The National Quartet Convention, known simply as “NQC,” is the iconic event of the year for Southern Gospel music. For the last 20…
PLATE 1. A seemingly bemused Sir Walter Raleigh — complete with banjo — presides over IBMA’s 2013 World of Bluegrass (September 24-28) in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. PLATE 2. A multi-story banner announces the World of Bluegrass to Raleigh. Many attendees were gratified to see IBMA signage all over town. Bluegrass Town by Joshua Heston…
Autumn Requiem BY JOSHUA HESTON Early morning cast the Ozarks in shades of blue. A perfect sky dawning, billows of fog in the White River Valley. Lake Taneycomo’s vaporous effluence drew a shroud across Branson, obscuring condos, telephone poles and roadways. The coldwater lake regularly exceeds its banks, not with water but with fog, creating…
Original artwork by Lydia Hoskins. Ozark Strawberries by Dale Grubaugh These Ozark Hills can sure produce some mighty fine vittles. Blackberries, dewberries, gooseberries, huckleberries and strawberries. All of these berries grow wild ’round the Ozarks. Most, except for the dewberry, have been tamed. But none have been tamed like the strawberry. The wild strawberry, sometimes…