Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

I last left you with a question about the Legion Hall in Yellville, Arkansas and what that had to do with the three Andrews boys and their cousin, Oliver.  We’ll let that hang just a bit longer.  First, you need to be properly introduced to the really yucky – ugly – tacky – interesting town by means of their greeting to one and all.  That is, if you can find it in the clutter below:

You will note, when you squeeze your eyes really hard to read the sign, that you are not only “welcome,” but that they want you to drive safely.  You will also note in the photo, if you look hard enough, that there is a green sign to the left of the welcome sign that says “Shawnee Town Branch.”  That is (so you’ll be in the know) the town branch of the Shawnee River.  I suppose, although there were no tour guidebooks to inform us, that the “other” or the rest of the branches of the Shawnee River are out in the country around, rather in town.  Although, I would imagine that in the beginning when (again I suppose not having a guidebook) the Shawnee Indians named the creek/river, there was no town, so alas, I know not whence the name came.  From a bunch of white men wanting to settle the area, I imagine, and saying, “Look.  Here’s a nice creek we can put our town around and not have to worry about where our sewage runs off to,” or some such.  Just imagining.

Uh – back to our trip.

The photo above was taken from the front yard of the aforementioned Legion Hall, which is a log cabin, you’ll note.  (I’ll post it again here.)

Looking straight on at this photo, the Town Branch of the Shawnee River/Creek is to the left.  We stopped here and spent some time because (1) there was a nice big area for parking, (2) the “boys” all wanted to go down by the creek next to the cabin and pick up rocks as souvenirs of their trip back to this place (some people are more easily satisfied with simple remembrances than others and they all thought rocks might be just the thing to bring home), (3) they wanted to throw some rocks, as well, and (4) the main reason we stopped here – this is where their dad’s movie theater was.  I know.  The rest of us were really surprised.  And, it was even the Legion Hall back then.  Mr. Andrews leased the building to run his theater/movies two nights a week there in town.

There is a small “add on” at the back of the building (about the size of the “throne room” in the back of the Flippin jail, but a bit deeper) where the projection booth was.  They sold concessions and everything there.  This part of Yellville I thought was most quaint.

The next photo I’m going to show you (and the next story) has to do with the little cafe right across the creek on the other side of where the log cabin was and the town sign.

The cafe was in that building behind the H&R Block sign on the “town” side of the Shawnee Creek with the theater in the background.  Dickie told us there was a big scuffle and shoot out there one time in which the police chief intervened.  Several people were shot, including the police chief, and he never was the same again.  Messed him up in the head, Dickie said.  I don’t know whether that was from being shot in the head or from the trauma of having a shoot out in the local cafe in such a small place as Yellville.  Hard to say.

Another big story Dickie & Jimmy both told had to do with either the bank or the post office over on the other side of the big courthouse (look back up at the Welcome to Yellville sign photo and you will see the tall courthouse through the trees in the background.  Either Bonnie & Clyde robbed the bank – or the post office – or the film “Bonnie & Clyde” was filmed in one of those buildings portraying their “real” robbery years before at either/or establishment.  As usual, Dickie & Jimmy had vastly different “facts” to support their individual stories and the rest of us (nor you, I would imagine) could ever get it all straight.

But the two old, historic buildings were very interesting and beautiful, actually, and if you tried hard enough, you could imagine Bonnie & Clyde on the sideboards of their fast car making an even faster getaway from whichever one they robbed, the bank or the post office.  Or, you might even imagine a movie set being there in downtown Yellville.  Made me want to go back and watch Bonnie & Clyde the movie again just to see if I could recognize Yellville in it.  Or not.

Moving on – we drove around to where the boys thought they “might have” lived there.  It was either a duplex or like one, with the Andrews family living on one side and the Jollys (Tom’s mother’s sister & husband & son, Oliver) living on the other.  Times had obviously gotten hard by then as the place looked really run down, except for some bright blue paint.

We had now been to the four little towns the boys had most wanted to visit.  Gassville, Cotter, Flippin and Yellville.  Now we went in search of more touristy things to see.  We couldn’t go anywhere around, though, without seeing references to trains, as they were such a large part of the communities there back then.  On our way back over to the Bull Shoals Lake and Dam we passed these train cars and the guys just had to stop.

Oliver especially loves trains and just had to explore these old cars.  He & Tom went over to see all they could while we sat in the van with the doors open enjoying a little quiet time.  Oliver has a huge train track/trains set up in his home, or at least did at one time.  He loves trains.  Here he is thinking back to how it used to be in those days when people rode the train a lot.

Tom talks a lot about raining trains when he was a little boy, starting as young as five, by himself.  He apparently wasn’t scared or afraid at all to ride the trains from where they lived here and later in south Arkansas over to Memphis to see and stay with his dad.  Amazes me.  Completely.  Scares me to death to even think about putting a five year old little boy on a train by himself to ride several hours to Memphis from whatever little Arkansas town he started in.  But, that would have been 1949 or 1950 and times were way different.

Sometimes, Tom says, his dad was late to pick him up at the train station, so little Tommy would go inside and find someone nice there who worked there (traveler’s aid, or something) to give him something to drink and/or eat while he waited for his dad.  I wonder if I would have been so grown up feeling and so brave.  Do you think you would have been?

That’s it for today.  Next time we’ll take a scenic tour of the Bull Shoals Dam/Lake area and see exactly how the dam was built back then beginning in 1947.  Interesting stuff and gorgeous country.

Cheers!  And many blessings to each of you today!  Dee