Vanished River Guide
(From snapshot of Pa when young)

Vincent's Ghost
(Study for "Gathering of the Guides")

Note (October 24 "03): Pa launched his fishing career in boyhood as a camp monkey ("go-fer") on riverboat floats from Galena, Missouri—reportedly all the way to Calico Rock, Arkansas --on the James and White rivers. (This was before a series of dams obstructed the way and began attracting to the landscape-leveling lakes a creeping urbanization by touring strangers.) He grew up as one among the legendary boatmen who guided these early fishing floats. I like to remember him as "dawn" man. A natural aristocrat of the mountains and genuine gentleman.

My cousin Charles McCord (newscaster on the Imus program) owns a large oil painting--"Gathering of the Guides"--which I based on a 1920's snapshot. These scrappy "river rats" were remnants of the American frontier.

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Mouth of Beaver Creek
(Gateway to beautiful Booger County)

Note (October 24 '03): The published JOURNAL of explorer Henry Schoolcraft reported (around 1817) that early settlers of this region were hard cases. They may join the Asian Ainu as the least "civilized" white people disclosed in recent times by anthropology. They stayed that way too, relatively well into my youth, when all road signs were riddled with bullet holes. When a group of them showed up in Springfield the saloons could expect a lot of action.

Of course everything has tamed down now that Beaver Creek has been inundated by Bull Shoals Lake as a tourist attraction. In the old days though its passage mapped out the toughest towns in the Ozarks—from Protem upstream toward Ava. (The latter designation was allegedly adopted in the 1800's because it was easier to spell than an original name.) The old towns are now interlaced with homogenous chains of McDonald and Walmart. The frontier is finally gone. Some newspaper people named Godsey from Branson have published a photographic portrait of old-time hillfolk entitled THESE WERE THE LAST.

(The Old Man as Jungian archetype)