I’ve never considered myself a highly partisan person even though I spent almost a decade working for Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee and another four years in the administration of President George W. Bush. As one who loves Arkansas history, though, it has been fascinating to follow the demise of rural yellow dog Democrats. These are the conservatives who once dominated the Arkansas Legislature. There are still plenty of rural conservatives at the state Capitol. It’s just that most of them now run as Republicans.
Harmon Seawel, a former state representative from Pocahontas, is among the last of the yellow dogs. A retired school superintendent, Seawel was on the Randolph County Quorum Court before being elected to the House in 1998 when I worked in the governor’s office. He served three terms. Seawel recently mailed me a copy of his book The Fourche River Valley. Before I opened it, I read his handwritten letter, which was a delight.
He said of his decision to send me a book: “I have made this decision in spite of your being a Republican. My father made an assessment once for which you are a perfect fit. A female cousin married a Yankee, which occasioned Dad’s typically pithy and perceptive remark: ‘That boy is a Yankee, but I don’t think he means anything by it.’”
Seawel is my kind of yellow dog. And he’s a talented writer, telling the stories of a part of Arkansas that I find fascinating. When it comes to the Arkansas Ozarks, the counties in the west such as Washington, Benton, Madison, Newton, Carroll and Boone get most of the attention. Ozark counties to the east, near where the hills give way to the Delta, have their own charms. Randolph, Sharp, Izard and Fulton counties are filled with spring-fed streams. As a smallmouth bass fisherman, I’ve had the pleasure of floating these streams through the years.
“The same qualities that drew our upland Southern forebears to the Fourche have spawned a hunting and fishing culture that, for many generations, has been a way of life and an enduring legacy,” Seawel writes. “Fertile land, virgin timber, elevation above the swamps and mosquitoes of the Delta, abundant game and a river teeming with game fish, catfish and esteemed rough fish attracted the avid outdoor sportsmen as well as the determined tillers of the soil. Though I have been honored by many leadership roles in a varied career—school superintendent, preacher, president of the chamber of commerce, House of Representatives majority leader—I have always experienced nervousness and frustration to the point of unmanageable anxiety when the dogwood was in full bloom and I was not on the Fourche with gig in hand or grab hooks (large treble hooks for snagging) at the ready.
“This stage of the dogwood’s flowering, usually in the period from April 15-25, coincides unerringly with the spawning or ‘shoaling’ of the redhorse sucker. I am describing no simple desire to go fishing but a compelling urge absolutely ingrained in the blood and nothing short of tribal in its intensity. As old men in the valley communities of Palestine, Vernon, Brakebill and Ingram often explained: ‘There are some things a feller can’t get over to somebody from off or even from east of Fourche.’”
There were rural Arkansans in other parts of the state who also anticipated the redhorse run. My grandmother, a Saline County resident who lived to age 98, used to say: “Dogwood white, redhorse bite.”
From 1940-60, Arkansas lost a higher percentage of its population than any other state. The mechanization of agriculture led to the loss of jobs, but there were plenty of factory jobs in states such as Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. Seawel was among those who had relatives move to the Upper Midwest.
“My cousins, the Longs, migrated to Rockford, Ill., in the early 1950s for factory employment,” he writes. “After somber and prolonged deliberations with their kinsmen, the Ramseys, who were the arbiters of all hunting and fishing issues, Uncle Hubert and cousins Rayford and Eddie settled on April 18 as the most fail-safe night to float the river and gig redhorse. They drove all night on April 17 each year and arrived at Uncle Theo and Aunt Maud Long Ramsey’s home in time for strong coffee, country ham, fried eggs, homemade biscuits, ‘thicken gravy’ and an array of jams and jellies as well as the upland South staple, sorghum molasses. April 18 would be spent sharpening gigs, rigging lights, running the boats upriver, watching anxiously for storm clouds and speculating on the whereabouts of the game warden.
“Staying at most three days, they faced another 530-mile, all-night drive to Rockford on April 19 or 20. If readers could have seen the excitement on their faces when standing up in a jonboat in swift water gigging at fast-moving fish, heard their whoops when they scored or tasted fresh red-horse, fried potatoes, hushpuppies and garden-fresh onions and radishes, all doubt would be eliminated about the propriety of the enterprise or whether the ordeal was adequately compensated.”
When I worked in the governor’s office, I always noticed on cold, gray winter days that no one seemed in a hurry for a legislative session to end. But it was amazing how quickly issues would get solved, I would always say, once the dogwood trees bloomed, the wild turkeys gobbled and the crappie began biting. I’ll add the redhorse spawn to that list.
Of the early settlers, Seawel writes: “When they came together in the Fourche Valley, they found a sportsman’s paradise that was irresistible.”
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.