Road Trip, vol. 2

This is part two of a series taken from the journal of Uncle Alvin, who traveled with three friends from Minnesota to California in 1933.

January 10, 1933 The next morning we left Buffalo about 8:00 o’clock and after going through Springfield we really entered the Ozark Mountains. The hills really turned into mountains for height; though they were still composed largely of ground and were covered with forest. The towns became more and more back-woodsy. At Harrison, Arkansas we took a short cut to Hot Springs, going over State highway No.7. The road was very crooked and up hill and down, so that we made very poor time, but the delay was recompensed by the beautiful scenery we saw.

Shortly after, we passed through Jasper, which was really a one-horse town. We stopped there for a little while and just took notice of the inhabitants for a while. The people really seemed dull and might one say “backward”.

Going through the Ozark hills in Arkansas, we saw quite a few mountaineer’s shacks. They didn’t seem to have very much as means of support beyond a few acres of poorly cultivated land. In places we saw land so stony that we couldn’t understand how they could cultivate it, or how anything could grow. Most places the fields contained boulders and dead trees in profusion. I suppose the largest support the inhabitants have is moonshining.

We believed that we had a real depression in Minnesota, but after going through the Ozarks and after leaving them, we had changed our minds. We stopped at a filling station at Perry and spoke to the man there, who happened to be a German and who had traveled “right smart”. We had seen quite a few teams of mules hitched to an old lumber wagon and with four or five people riding on it. He said that it was getting to be quite an event when the people could borrow a mule and wagon, and make the trip to town. Most of them had owned Fords, but had to junk them. Most of the crop there is cotton, so that it could only be sold. Each man could farm about 30 or 35 acres alone, and as it could produce only from 1/3 to perhaps 2 bales per acre, and white cotton was only about 5 or 6 dollars a bale, it could be seen that it is very hard to earn enough to live on. Incidentally, or perhaps more a matter of necessity, the people had returned to the practice of raising as much of their food as they possibly could.

At this time we had been forced to detour because of an unfinished highway and just about dusk we got onto a very poor road. To add to our troubles, in several places the bridges on the road had never been built and so we had to go on old ones that happened to be there. In one place there was not an old one so we had to ford a small stream. Beyond this just a ways we went over a road that resembled a roller coaster because of innumerable dips and curves in the road.

We finally got onto paved road again and entered Hot Springs at 10 o’clock that night. We walked up and down the streets for a while before we hunted a camping ground. We finally stopped at a place where a house had burned down. We thought the place deserted but found out the next morning that it was not. It was so warm there that we camped without setting up the tent.