When Grandpa Delivered Babies and Other Ozarks Vignettes

Benjamin G. Rader is James L. Sellers Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His books include Down on Mahans Creek: A History of an Ozarks Neighborhood and Baseball: A History of America’s Game, fourth edition.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I. The Clear, Cold Water of Mahans Creek



“You’d Better Treat Her Right!”
I Was Born in a Veil
Learning the Hard Way
The Artifacts of Shannon County’s Golden Age
Every Child Needs a Grandpa
When Uncle Hub Put Down the Great Delaware School Uprising of 1941
“Yes, and Alta Won’t Like It Either”
The Preacher’s Complaint
“Come ’n’ Get It”
Family Keepsakes
“My ___, She Is Holding a Python!”
When I Kissed My Sister

Part II. The People There Even Drank Water from Cisterns

The Hilltop of the Dead
You Can’t Take the Country Out of the Country Boy
Walking to School
When Miss Delores Read Us a Novel
The Punishment of Curley Pliler
When We Danced Naked in the Rain
How Harry Caray Punctured Our Innocence
“Let There Be Light”
An Ozarks Book Burning

Part III. “I Would Choose to Live in Town or beside a County Road”

An Ozarks Rite of Passage
The Green Beans Were Raw!
The Art of Ozarks Bullfighting
“Mom, We Shot Old Polly!”
The Failure of the Great Multiflora Rose Experiment
When Mom Awoke to the Roar of a Chain Saw
How Clarence Renfro Failed to Make His Case
And Barbara Said That He Looked like Mickey Mantle
Thank You, Mr. Fernetti”
“I’m from Missouri, and You Have Got to Show Me”
“I Must Go to the Eleanor”
A Day in the Life of a Jig Builder

Part IV. Are We in the Ozarks Now?

“And I Was the Only Sober One in the Group”
Barbara Learns about High Finance in the Ozarks
I Took Her Hands in Mine

Epilogue: The Ozarks of the American Imagination

Notes