Summer is here. Temps turn up and those afternoon thunderheads pop up on the horizon and somewhere a shower appears. Deep green colors paint these hills. Round cylinders of hay stand out parked in the fresh cut meadows and polka-dot calves buck and play. A yearling doe had a fawn in my backyard during the first days of June. I went outside to get something in the predawn and spooked him across the flower bed. She found him later in the morning and re-hid him. If a person can’t count their blessings living in the Ozarks, I guess they’re plumb hard to please.
This August marks my half century living in this country. In 1960, Monty Smith and I arrived in Northwest Arkansas. We were looking for something to do so we could live on our 700-acre ranch west of Winslow. Cambell Soup wouldn’t hire me as a pea inspector on their frozen chicken dinner line ’cause I had too much education. I learned next time you apply for a non-management job, you leave off you have a BS from Arizona State University. But Arkansas really needed teachers, and in those days you could teach school if you had graduated from high school. So I can recall that first day driving up old Highway 71 from Fort Smith to Winslow, with the windows down and learning it was at least five degrees cooler on top of the Boston Mountains than down in the river valley. There was no A/C in those days, after all.
We were just two big old cowboys looking for work. We talked to several school superintendents and the Washington County School Supervisor told us to go to Madison County and look for work; he didn’t need us because he could hire all the fresh teacher grads he needed, especially those whose husbands still had more school to finish up.
Finding ourselves in one of those spotty, hard afternoon rains on 62 Highway, we still somehow ended up in Huntsville and talked to the school supervisor there, Mr. Flowers. He needed a science teacher very badly, but had no job for Monty and we told him there was no way one of us could accept a job and the other one not have one. He took our names and addresses and we went on. It looked like after ten days we weren’t going to find a job, so in our ’56 Ford pickup we headed back to Arizona.
We had some friends over at Green Forest, Ken and Madge Rose, who at one time were neighbors of the Smiths in Phoenix. Many readers know Ken from the Westville area. Ken later moved over there, and his son, Terry, taught school for several years. Ken was sure knowledgeable about life and things and gave two greenhands some good advice. So, Monty and I headed back west, although we were still resolved to come back to Arkansas. We simply needed a bigger nest egg to get started.
One lady we met ran a café in Winslow. Mae Reed said later she though we were “wolfers” when we walked in her restaurant that July. “Big ol’ cowboys under ten gallon hats and cowboys boots and you had a big German Shepherd in that pickup,” she told us later.
Back in Phoenix, Monty and I were over at his folks house ready to go to apply for jobs in the steel yard one morning when he received a call and went back inside to take it. Next thing I knew, Monty came bursting outside shouting at me, “We’ve both got teaching jobs in Arkansas!”
So here we came back, as school started the last week in August. Monty taught the sixth grade and I taught biology and physical science. I can best describe that experience as this: “I was one chapter ahead of those kids.” But to this day former students still stop me and laugh about those days. I was learning and so were they.
I did meet a young lady fresh out of nurse’s training who a year later became my wife, Pat Donahoe. Her wonderful family quickly absorbed both Monty and I in their lives.
Perhaps the thing I recall most was that fall at Pat’s brother Charles’ going away to the army party, a man in bib overalls told me, “You two boys will soon spend all your money and be going back to Texas.” A little ruffled by his prediction, I spoke up and said, “We didn’t come from Texas. We spent our last dollar for gas in Tulsa. We’re here with you all.”
I hope all your days are sunny.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
