{"id":10535,"date":"2023-01-16T22:22:54","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T04:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/?p=10535"},"modified":"2023-01-20T15:49:54","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T21:49:54","slug":"red-oak-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/2023\/01\/16\/red-oak-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Oak II"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Red Oak II<\/strong><\/h1>\n

by Joshua Heston<\/strong><\/p>\n

[JASPER COUNTY, MISSOURI] \u2014 A sharp wind whistles across the rolling Missouri plains east of Carthage. Here, less than a mile north of famed Route 66, is Red Oak II, a community that isn\u2019t a town, but a tourist attraction that is a homey neighborhood of museum-esque eccentricity. The place is easy enough to find. Just turn north on County Road 120 after you see the \u201cCrap Duster\u201d at the Flying W Truck Stop (if you\u2019re traveling west-to-east on the Mother Road).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re traveling east-to-west, you ought to turn around at the \u201cCrap Duster,\u201d but not before studying the green barnstormer towering firmly over the shrubbery. The body of the plane is clearly an old-fashioned manure spreader.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10530″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10524″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]The first Red Oak was not far away as the crow flies, north of Plew and east of Avilla. Today, that town is gone, a victim of post-war industrialization and for having the misfortune of being platted just a little too far north of Route 66.<\/p>\n

Red Oak II exists because one of Red Oak\u2019s sons, Lowell Davis, would all-but recreate his hometown in a cow pasture, a monument to nostalgia \u2014 and something more besides.<\/p>\n

Davis was born in 1937, flunked his high school art class, and joined the Air Force where he served with pride until an Algerian landing mishap sent him through an instrument panel. He would return, not to Missouri, but to Dallas, Texas, working for an advertising firm and finding time to provide art direction for Sex to Sexty<\/em>, an American novelty magazine dedicated to all things bawdy, albeit under the pen name Pierre Davis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Davis hated the big city of Dallas. He returned to Missouri, remaking himself as the \u201cNorman Rockwell of Rural Art,\u201d and merchandising figurines, paintings, prints, bronzes, and storybooks. The inspiration? His \u201cFoxfire Farm,\u201d where he began moving the remaining buildings of Red Oak, replanting the blacksmith shop, general store, and schoolmarm house to the low-lying and often-swampy farm ground.<\/p>\n

Much like the pick-pocket crows he immortalized in a Red Oak II sculpture, Davis began procuring stranger and more unique buildings. The farm became subdivided, with many properties becoming others\u2019 private residences, while at the same time, Red Oak II became a notable Route 66 destination.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10532″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10521″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Red Oak II resident, parson, farmer and part-time showman, Jeremy Morris, lives \u201cmidtown\u201d in the Parsonage \u201cII.\u201d The home may have once been a brothel. Morris often gives visitors impromptu tours of the acreage. Catty-corned from the Parsonage is the Dalton House, childhood home to the boys who grew up to be infamous outlaws, moved here from Vinita, Oklahoma. Out back of the house, an amusement park train gathers dust in the barn and a jalopy is parked next to the windmill.<\/p>\n

The log cabin next to the Dalton\u2019s is the newest to Red Oak II, and the oldest building in this \u201copen-air museum.\u201d It is the log cabin of George Hornback and the first courthouse of Jasper County, Missouri. Had the cabin not been moved here, it would have been torn down.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10520″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10517″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]\u201cWe call this the Civil War House,\u201d says Morris, gesturing to the white farmhouse with black shutters. \u201cIt was originally built near [where] the White Oak Massacre [took place]. We call it our Amityville House.\u201d Flickering lights have been seen. Strange noises heard. \u201cIf anything is haunted, it\u2019s that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across \u201ctown\u201d a rickety Lockheed Electra 120 stands poised as though ready for flight, even as it is missing an engine. Red Oak II is a strange monument to quirky Americana, often exactly that for which Mother Road tourists clamor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international tourists spend, like, a month, touring Route 66. They do it slow. They may live next to the Coliseum but they\u2019re excited by a real American chicken egg.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou learn to adapt, go with the quirkiness, lean into it, don\u2019t fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once Morris jumped at the chance to \u201chop into an old \u201951 Cessna\u201d for aerial photographs of Red Oak II. It was Saturday evening. The pilot buzzed the town so low the church\u2019s jam session musicians ran outside as the building’s windows shook. Such an incident seems more expected here, somehow encapsulating the American sense of an irrelevance for conformity.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10528″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10531″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Red Oak II has two gas stations. The more easily overlooked Standard Oil may be the oldest on all of Route 66. \u201cIt was a kit. Somebody got home from World War I and needed a business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three women in their early 20s are busily photographing themselves in front of the nostalgic gas pumps. \u201cSomething happened after 2020. Young people are into Route 66 now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u201cPrairie-style\u201d house stands in ocean-front colors, notable for its exterior stairs to the second floor. \u201cThat usually means a brothel,\u201d notes historian and author Lisa Livingston Martin drily.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10529″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10518″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]A centerpiece of Red Oak II is the green-sided Belle Starr home. Born in Jasper County as Myra Shirley, the \u201cbandit queen of the west\u201d nursed dying soldiers on the Carthage Square as the Union shelled her town. She was murdered at age 40 near Eufaula, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cabin [portion] was added to make it a replica of the house where she died.\u201d The green portion is the original Shirley farm house. Starr\u2019s father was the largest landholder and slaveholder in Jasper County before the Civil War.<\/p>\n

Today, Starr\u2019s backyard is accessed by the Bird Song Gallery. Here the blue shell wind chimes rattle and a mannequin with an oddly familiar outline stares quizzically from behind a counter. The art gallery is in the mill-like barn upon which Harley Warrick painted one of his last \u201cMail Pouch Tobacco\u201d signs in 1993.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10560″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10545″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10522″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]\u201cIt\u2019s literally an art piece,\u201d exclaims Morris, gesturing to include the entire farm. \u201cI\u2019ve lived here five years and keep finding new stuff. There\u2019s a man\u2019s ashes buried in the fountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the south end of the \u201cbayou\u201d (actually one of two extensive frog ponds), something resembling a witch\u2019s cottage rises precariously from the cattails. Inside, all is strange angles in green. The ladder to the loft was removed recently. \u201cWe found a couple up there, uh, trying to stay warm,\u201d murmurs Morris.<\/p>\n

Back up the gravel road, the fantasy turns decidedly western. The marshal\u2019s office is a popular location for low budget filmmakers, the carefully planted yucca lilies standing in admirably for real desert cactus.<\/p>\n

Next to the law office is another old-time cabin. \u201cLowell said that was a slave cabin but I don\u2019t know.\u201d Across the street is the jail, an imposing iron cage believed to be the turn-of-the-century drunk tank used for rowdy Joplin, Missouri miners and ne\u2019er do\u2019wells. From behind, a covey of peacocks call. Davis\u2019 real-life farm was used as inspiration for his art.[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10525″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10527″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Hidden between the Belle Starr house and the slave cabin is Morris\u2019 favorite of Red Oak II\u2019s 10 outhouses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Lowell would get awards, all that stuff, this is where he would put them.\u201d The outhouse is littered with various trophies and plaques.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only exception is the painting Andy Thomas gave him, painted in Lowell\u2019s style.\u201d Davis had mentored Thomas, now an internationally collected artist. When Davis received the painting, Morris recalls, \u201cLowell started crying and then said \u2018If I\u2019d have known Andy was gonna be a better artist than me, I would have broken his hands.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Scant yards beyond the outhouse, a green mound of graves rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople ask if it\u2019s a real cemetery,\u201d explains Morris. \u201cThe people were real. They\u2019re not buried here. When stones were replaced by monument companies, we got permission to use them.\u201d[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10519″ img_size=”full”][vc_single_image image=”10523″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]There is one exception. Surrounded by his art and on the farm he loved, the remains of Lowell Davis are interred. Davis passed in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a place for the creative,\u201d Davis said once. \u201cJeremy, keep it art. It don\u2019t have to be my art. But keep it art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sun sets on Red Oak II and the wind is still blowing. Last light of winter\u2019s day flickers over Davis\u2019 rendition of himself driving \u201cEmery,\u201d his beloved Ford pickup. Lowell Davis may have gone on but his dream is not yet dead.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Red Oak II by Joshua Heston [JASPER COUNTY, MISSOURI] \u2014 A sharp wind whistles across the rolling Missouri plains east of Carthage. Here, less than a mile north of famed Route 66, is Red Oak II, a community that isn\u2019t a town, but a tourist attraction that is a homey neighborhood of museum-esque eccentricity.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[581],"tags":[1776,1773,1768,1652,1763,1761,1772,1775,1762,1771,137,1764,1758,1777,1778,1769,1770,1767,1756,1779,1757,1774,1759,1760,1765,1780,1766],"class_list":["post-10535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sotofeature","tag-bayou","tag-belle-starr-house","tag-bordello","tag-carthage-missouri","tag-civil-war-house","tag-dalton-gang","tag-duke-the-dog","tag-green-witch-house","tag-jasper-county-courthouse","tag-jeremy-morris","tag-joplin","tag-lockheed-model-10-electra","tag-lowell-davis","tag-marshalls-office","tag-outhouse","tag-parsonage","tag-parsonage-at-red-oak-ii","tag-prairie-style-home","tag-red-oak-ii","tag-red-oak-ii-cemetery","tag-red-oak-missouri","tag-red-oak-town-hall","tag-route-66","tag-sex-to-sexty","tag-standard-oil","tag-sunset","tag-webb-city-trolley","category-581","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10535"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10561,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10535\/revisions\/10561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}