The Ghost Whispers
On the disappearance of the Ford Fairlane, the Gospel Singing, and wild Quail Coveys
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The Ghost Whispers
— Émile Durkheim
What is the role of the storyteller, the documentarian, the photographer, the historian? In a recent video, documentarian photographer and Chief Blurb Apologist, Daniel Milnor, said that the role of the documentarian is to “see, experience, record, compile present, and preserve.” Milnor’s comment speaks for itself (together with his experience and his genius), and it puts words to what I’ve felt for some time: Someone—or someones—needs to see, experience, record, compile, present, and preserve this very specific time in history, Ozark history most particularly.
I’ll gladly be one of those someones.
Consider this truth: Just east of Eden—which is to say Fayetteville, Arkansas—the Ozarks return to their roots. These hills have always been alive with the music of morning tractors, lunch-counter laughter, and Sunday morning singing. Now, that music is muffled by the hum of construction hardware, the buzzing of business, the cough of viral progress hacked from eighteen-wheelers’ throats.
What was once a sleepy, hillbilly region, is now home to three Fortune 500 companies, one of which bears the distinction of the largest retailer in the world. We’ve brought in Target, Whole Foods, Bass Pro, and I’ve heard a rumor that a Costco is on its way. A garish fence rises next to the highway, protecting six-figure luxury cars from balls shanked by Top-Golf patrons. The new buildings rise and rise and rise, each out-rising the next. Housing prices have gone through the roof. (Last week, Fayetteville earned a spot in a recent Nasdaq article titled “In Less Than a Decade, You Won’t be Able to Afford a Home in These Cities.”)
There are specific stories to be told about progress and its effects on the region—stories about development plans for the Buffalo River valley, the destruction of Native sacred sites, and the disappearance of quail coveys. Others are telling those stories, and they’re doing it well. (I’ll share more of these stories in the coming days.) But progress isn’t the whole story, and it’s not the story that most interests me. I’m interested in recording what I’ll call “The Ghost Whispers,” the things that speak to a different time, a time that’s passing away.
Bill Williams Gospel Singing
This week, I cut out of the office early and made my way down State Highway 295, a crooked spine of a road running from Hindsville to Wesley. The clouds were a velvet blanket, folding back in places, allowing the sun to peek through. Wind whipped through bare oak branches, a cold and dark whistle. It was the kind of December day you grow to expect in these parts, one my friend Brian called “the most Arkansas Winter Day of Arkansas Winter Days.” It was gothic, even without Flanery’s freaks.
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