Guest writer

Arkansas road trip

Holiday drive shows our path

A day's drive over the July 4th holiday provided some observations on contemporary Arkansas that reflect our state's geographic diversity, cultural heritage, and the economic incentive for progressive change.

The travel was prompted by the appetite for an essential Arkansas cuisine. My wife and I drove north on U.S. Highway 65 to Coursey's at St. Joe, a landmark business that has sold hams, bacon and other hickory-smoked delicacies for more than 50 years.

Highway 65 once passed directly in front of the store, but a few years ago state planners rebuilt the road on the north side of the Buffalo River and Coursey's lost its frontage on the main route. With its original high-traffic location now hidden by trees on a small side road, the business seemed a likely candidate for failure. But progress does not necessarily diminish quality or popularity. And in the case of this tenacious Ozark venture, business is strong as ever, evidenced the large number of cars in the parking lot and the sold-out status of summer sausage and jerky the day we arrived.

A bit further up Highway 65, the former St. Joe railroad depot offered a different perspective of progress. Preserved as a historical site, the once-active Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad depot now sits in a cleared area, its railroad tracks removed long after the area's rich timber reserves and lead and zinc mines played out. Today, the old section of St. Joe is little more than a handful of small, stone-walled buildings and gravel streets. The town's meager economic stimulus comes primarily from Buffalo River tourism, though large outfitters located south of the river seem to dominate that market.

Our drive continued north on Highway 65, passing two Branson Visitor Information Centers, each with a clutter of roadside signs offering discount tickets to motels and shows more than 60 miles away. But our route veered south onto Arkansas Highway 123 at Western Grove for a winding drive through the Ozark highlands.

The towns of Hasty, Mount Judea, and Pelsor are on this curving road, but they have minimal presence among the area's stunning mountain vistas, bluffs, and valleys. This is a sparsely populated region, still mostly pristine, that has shown little change in the modern era. Here, economic sustainability was evidenced in well-maintained roadside homes and pastures where herds of cattle and rolled bales of hay offered postcard images of rural providence. The people, the land, and the enterprises that sustained the social fabric seemed to be in balance.

The landscape changed when we left the mountains and entered the Arkansas River Valley on the way to Clarksville and then to Dardanelle. Our destinations were the post offices in those towns where in 1939 the federal Works Progress Administration commissioned professional artists to paint murals. Twenty-one Arkansas post offices had original paintings installed that year, many of them more than 12 feet wide and three feet tall. The paintings depicted Arkansas historic events, idealized rural scenes, and agricultural and industrial workings.

The mural in the Dardanelle post office is considered by art historians as one of the best in the state. Don't be misled by its mundane title, Cotton Growing, Manufacture and Export. The highly detailed painting includes striking images of black and white cotton pickers working in the field, cotton gins and industrial looms. The Dardanelle mural and others have been on the walls of our post offices for more than 70 years. They are an Arkansas cultural treasure.

While towns such as Dardanelle and Clarksville seem economically stable in comparison to many small towns in the Arkansas Delta, the two river valley communities shared a disturbing trait that is repeated across Arkansas and the U.S. Abandoned factories and empty warehouses of a once-prosperous industrial era have been part of the town grid for decades. Vacant or boarded-up storefronts abound along their Main Streets.

The social apathy produced by these landscapes is demonstrated by low levels of health and education, most particularly in local young people and their young adult parents. Generations have come of age for which this emptiness is the norm.

Areas of prosperity and growth evolve into progressive regions of innovation. We have these in many Arkansas communities. But our cultural divide is staggering.

There are no easy answers or simplistic strategies for our future prosperity. But in this, our nation's 240th year of unity, my hope is we will work together to link our innate intelligence, our grit and tenacity, our willingness to help all who are deserving, to achieve a common goal.

Happy Birthday, America!

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Marvin Schwartz lives in Little Rock.

Editorial on 07/08/2016

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