Ernie Raney hails from Dogpatch USA
Monday, October 31, 2005
Ernie Raney hails from Dogpatch USA
Monday, October 31, 2005 10:50 AM CST
Written by: Chris Houston, LCL staff writer
BROOKFIELD - While scores of baby boomers have been to the place from which Brookfield R-3's Elementary Principal came, few of them have made his epic journey from the stereotyped hollows of hillbilly semiliteracy to the summit of formal educational attainment.
Ironically, although his ancestral home was constructed so deep within a rural "holler" its television could only receive one station, the local public school administrator learned some of life's most fundamental lessons sitting atop "a bluff that overlooked the entire park."
Ernie Gene Raney was born and raised in Dogpatch USA, a theme park developed within a thousand acre tract of Ozark splendor and based on a comic strip that satirized Northwestern Arkansas's threadbare hill folk.
In a day before political correctness would have otherwise hushed cartoonist Al Capp's humorous tales of simple-minded caricatures like Li'l Abner, Ernie was more interested in exploring nature than lingering around Dogpatch's man-made amusements.
"What do you do for fun as a boy in the middle of a theme park?" he asks already knowing the answer full-well in his heart. "Well, I enjoyed riding the train and seeing the skits hillbilly characters like Mammy and Pappy Yokum and Daisy Mae and Abner would put on, but I realized they were real people just playing fictional characters, doing a job and leaving the park to go home somewhere else when they were done."
As Ernie explains, the true joy was to be had after the theme park shut down for the day.
He recalls, "You would walk through the silence of the woods and hollows, and it was then that the natural sounds would reveal themselves."
Describing the vast expanses around the park that were never tamed and commercialized, Ernie continues, "There were two streams flowing through the park, and one came out of the mouth of a cave. You could sit on this big rock at the mouth of that cave, getting cooled on warm summer evenings by the mist that would blow out. Then I would go down to this waterfall called Marble Falls, watch the rushing water and immerse myself in the total feeling of freedom and wonder."
Reflecting on his beginnings that were humble but free of want, Ernie says, "We didn't have name-brand clothes or fancy cars. We could rarely eat out and only went on one vacation I can ever remember, but we had so much of what nature could provide us... And we had each other."
Explaining "there are some things you just feel that provide you with support your whole life," he says he and his kid brother, Scott, "had a love-hate relationship" but shared many memorable adventures in their Ozark paradise.
"In the summer,' Ernie recalls, 'he and I would inflate our [rubber] raft and float down the big stream...We would catch crayfish, pull their tails off and boil them. Not a meal fit for a king, just a few victuals that also made great bait for catching trout. And in the winter until well after dark, we would sled down the ice-covered hill the stream would freeze into, the steel sled rails throwing sparks like Halley's comet when they would strike rock."
He continues, "We didn't have backup electricity and our little two-bedroom house was heated by a wood stove. When it snowed a lot and the power went out, the fireplace, wood stove, and candles worked just fine."
Ernie remembers cutting wood every weekend, his dad, Ernest, wielding the axe while he tossed cut logs into the bed of their truck and his brother stacked them, singing all the while. "Dad and I would try to keep the pace brisk to distract Scott from his singing," he recalls.
In the idyllic wilderness of their childhood, Ernie and Scott explored every cave, hill, and hollow, narrowly avoiding the peril of falling into one seemingly bottomless sinkhole and crawling through forbidden subterranean dens to collect ancient Indian arrowheads and "soda straws" (stalactites).
Other potential dangers included a few bears and a mountain lion only glimpsed on occasion. "We didn't really worry about them," says Ernie. "We belonged there with them. It was our home."
Always more intrigued as a boy by what he could find off the beaten path than by what attracted tourists to the developed area of Dogpatch, the now-grown elementary school principal observes, "The whole art of teaching a child involves gaining access to the backroads of his heart and mind, allowing him to be what he is and waiting to help him take that next step when he is ready."
That sentiment hearkens back to the educational romanticism of philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau as well as the importance of schooling Ernie's own father patiently stressed during his formative years.
Like the naturalism that permeated the principal's boyhood, the "state of nature" the 18th Century philosopher equated with childhood has provided the educational foundation upon which the biography of the Ozark lad and the history of all modern children-at least in the Western world-has been built.
Modern American educators from John Dewey forward have taken account of Rousseau's admonition to allow a child to be what he naturally is at his present stage of development, and that lesson hasn't been lost on Ernie Raney.
Never straying far from his roots, Ernie still often returns to the hills of his fabled childhood.
The remnants of Dogpatch, the theme park, rest silently in ruins after years of disuse. Gone are the tourists. Gone are Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe, although the cave where they were supposed to have brewed Kickapoo Joy Juice can still be found there.
But what is left of the old attractions that have since been eclipsed by more technologically sophisticated parks like those at Six Flags and in Branson aren't important to Ernie.
"I like to take my boys to see the clubhouse my brother and I built by stacking limestones and the bluff my granddad once fell off of," he relates. "I want them to see the land my family homesteaded, the place where I couldn't imagine living right next door to someone with a tiny yard."
The boy reared in the lap of so-called hillbilly ignorance-the man who has since earned five college degrees, the principal who is presently leading the way in implementing a literacy improvement program at Brookfield R-3-is still carefree when he pauses at memory's doorway to the past.
"I have consumed myself with work as an adult," he confesses. "But all that labor has helped me appreciate the freedom to play I had as a child in Dogpatch."
Monday, October 31, 2005 10:50 AM CST
Written by: Chris Houston, LCL staff writer
BROOKFIELD - While scores of baby boomers have been to the place from which Brookfield R-3's Elementary Principal came, few of them have made his epic journey from the stereotyped hollows of hillbilly semiliteracy to the summit of formal educational attainment.
Ironically, although his ancestral home was constructed so deep within a rural "holler" its television could only receive one station, the local public school administrator learned some of life's most fundamental lessons sitting atop "a bluff that overlooked the entire park."
Ernie Gene Raney was born and raised in Dogpatch USA, a theme park developed within a thousand acre tract of Ozark splendor and based on a comic strip that satirized Northwestern Arkansas's threadbare hill folk.
In a day before political correctness would have otherwise hushed cartoonist Al Capp's humorous tales of simple-minded caricatures like Li'l Abner, Ernie was more interested in exploring nature than lingering around Dogpatch's man-made amusements.
"What do you do for fun as a boy in the middle of a theme park?" he asks already knowing the answer full-well in his heart. "Well, I enjoyed riding the train and seeing the skits hillbilly characters like Mammy and Pappy Yokum and Daisy Mae and Abner would put on, but I realized they were real people just playing fictional characters, doing a job and leaving the park to go home somewhere else when they were done."
As Ernie explains, the true joy was to be had after the theme park shut down for the day.
He recalls, "You would walk through the silence of the woods and hollows, and it was then that the natural sounds would reveal themselves."
Describing the vast expanses around the park that were never tamed and commercialized, Ernie continues, "There were two streams flowing through the park, and one came out of the mouth of a cave. You could sit on this big rock at the mouth of that cave, getting cooled on warm summer evenings by the mist that would blow out. Then I would go down to this waterfall called Marble Falls, watch the rushing water and immerse myself in the total feeling of freedom and wonder."
Reflecting on his beginnings that were humble but free of want, Ernie says, "We didn't have name-brand clothes or fancy cars. We could rarely eat out and only went on one vacation I can ever remember, but we had so much of what nature could provide us... And we had each other."
Explaining "there are some things you just feel that provide you with support your whole life," he says he and his kid brother, Scott, "had a love-hate relationship" but shared many memorable adventures in their Ozark paradise.
"In the summer,' Ernie recalls, 'he and I would inflate our [rubber] raft and float down the big stream...We would catch crayfish, pull their tails off and boil them. Not a meal fit for a king, just a few victuals that also made great bait for catching trout. And in the winter until well after dark, we would sled down the ice-covered hill the stream would freeze into, the steel sled rails throwing sparks like Halley's comet when they would strike rock."
He continues, "We didn't have backup electricity and our little two-bedroom house was heated by a wood stove. When it snowed a lot and the power went out, the fireplace, wood stove, and candles worked just fine."
Ernie remembers cutting wood every weekend, his dad, Ernest, wielding the axe while he tossed cut logs into the bed of their truck and his brother stacked them, singing all the while. "Dad and I would try to keep the pace brisk to distract Scott from his singing," he recalls.
In the idyllic wilderness of their childhood, Ernie and Scott explored every cave, hill, and hollow, narrowly avoiding the peril of falling into one seemingly bottomless sinkhole and crawling through forbidden subterranean dens to collect ancient Indian arrowheads and "soda straws" (stalactites).
Other potential dangers included a few bears and a mountain lion only glimpsed on occasion. "We didn't really worry about them," says Ernie. "We belonged there with them. It was our home."
Always more intrigued as a boy by what he could find off the beaten path than by what attracted tourists to the developed area of Dogpatch, the now-grown elementary school principal observes, "The whole art of teaching a child involves gaining access to the backroads of his heart and mind, allowing him to be what he is and waiting to help him take that next step when he is ready."
That sentiment hearkens back to the educational romanticism of philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau as well as the importance of schooling Ernie's own father patiently stressed during his formative years.
Like the naturalism that permeated the principal's boyhood, the "state of nature" the 18th Century philosopher equated with childhood has provided the educational foundation upon which the biography of the Ozark lad and the history of all modern children-at least in the Western world-has been built.
Modern American educators from John Dewey forward have taken account of Rousseau's admonition to allow a child to be what he naturally is at his present stage of development, and that lesson hasn't been lost on Ernie Raney.
Never straying far from his roots, Ernie still often returns to the hills of his fabled childhood.
The remnants of Dogpatch, the theme park, rest silently in ruins after years of disuse. Gone are the tourists. Gone are Lonesome Polecat and Hairless Joe, although the cave where they were supposed to have brewed Kickapoo Joy Juice can still be found there.
But what is left of the old attractions that have since been eclipsed by more technologically sophisticated parks like those at Six Flags and in Branson aren't important to Ernie.
"I like to take my boys to see the clubhouse my brother and I built by stacking limestones and the bluff my granddad once fell off of," he relates. "I want them to see the land my family homesteaded, the place where I couldn't imagine living right next door to someone with a tiny yard."
The boy reared in the lap of so-called hillbilly ignorance-the man who has since earned five college degrees, the principal who is presently leading the way in implementing a literacy improvement program at Brookfield R-3-is still carefree when he pauses at memory's doorway to the past.
"I have consumed myself with work as an adult," he confesses. "But all that labor has helped me appreciate the freedom to play I had as a child in Dogpatch."
Branson Negotiates Eminent Domain
Branson, land owner grapple in eminent domain case
By Dee Dee Nilsen
Springfield Business Journal Staff
10/28/2005
The city of Branson is stepping in to expedite negotiations between Branson School District and the owner of property that district officials have their eyes on.
The Branson Board of Aldermen Oct. 24 gave initial approval on first reading of an ordinance that would begin the process power of eminent domain for the creation of a road requested by the district.
The district has been searching for several years for a solution to traffic congestion and the resulting safety hazards surrounding Cedar Ridge Elementary School, said superintendent Doug Hayter. Earlier this year, the district opted to create a second access to the school by building a road west of it that turns northward and connects with Highway 248 at Gretna Road.
“We’ve looked at numbers of options around the campus, we’ve talked to several land owners and after years of looking at it, that’s just about the only and best option we have at this time,” Hayter said.
However, there’s a catch. Branson resident Darrell Ledbetter owns the land and a golf driving range on the property where the road is to be built.
Hayter said negotiations to acquire the land have been ongoing for several months, but Ledbetter said he’s waiting for an offer to be made.
“To me, a negotiation is where they offer you $5, you say no, I’ll take $20, and they offer $12,” Ledbetter said. “There hasn’t been anything done like that yet.”
David Miller, Branson city engineer, said the city had included the new road in its master plan at one time and met with Ledbetter on several occasions. The project has since been dropped from the city’s list of priorities, Miller said, and the school district has taken it on.
The major holdup in negotiations is the determination of the road’s location, Hayter said.
“I told them in the beginning I had no objection to the road being built, but I would like to have it built to where I could save the business I have on the property,” Ledbetter said.
Miller said that, even in early negotiations, plans for the road have always put it through Ledbetter’s business because avoiding it would pose driving risks.
“The only way to avoid going through the golf driving range would be to put an extremely sharp turn in the road, go a short distance and put another extremely sharp turn in the road,” he said. “All the curves wouldn’t meet the ability for cars to drive around at a safe speed – you just physically can’t do it.”
If the district and Ledbetter do not come to an agreement by the board’s Nov. 14 meeting, the eminent domain ordinance will go up for a final vote.
By Dee Dee Nilsen
Springfield Business Journal Staff
10/28/2005
The city of Branson is stepping in to expedite negotiations between Branson School District and the owner of property that district officials have their eyes on.
The Branson Board of Aldermen Oct. 24 gave initial approval on first reading of an ordinance that would begin the process power of eminent domain for the creation of a road requested by the district.
The district has been searching for several years for a solution to traffic congestion and the resulting safety hazards surrounding Cedar Ridge Elementary School, said superintendent Doug Hayter. Earlier this year, the district opted to create a second access to the school by building a road west of it that turns northward and connects with Highway 248 at Gretna Road.
“We’ve looked at numbers of options around the campus, we’ve talked to several land owners and after years of looking at it, that’s just about the only and best option we have at this time,” Hayter said.
However, there’s a catch. Branson resident Darrell Ledbetter owns the land and a golf driving range on the property where the road is to be built.
Hayter said negotiations to acquire the land have been ongoing for several months, but Ledbetter said he’s waiting for an offer to be made.
“To me, a negotiation is where they offer you $5, you say no, I’ll take $20, and they offer $12,” Ledbetter said. “There hasn’t been anything done like that yet.”
David Miller, Branson city engineer, said the city had included the new road in its master plan at one time and met with Ledbetter on several occasions. The project has since been dropped from the city’s list of priorities, Miller said, and the school district has taken it on.
The major holdup in negotiations is the determination of the road’s location, Hayter said.
“I told them in the beginning I had no objection to the road being built, but I would like to have it built to where I could save the business I have on the property,” Ledbetter said.
Miller said that, even in early negotiations, plans for the road have always put it through Ledbetter’s business because avoiding it would pose driving risks.
“The only way to avoid going through the golf driving range would be to put an extremely sharp turn in the road, go a short distance and put another extremely sharp turn in the road,” he said. “All the curves wouldn’t meet the ability for cars to drive around at a safe speed – you just physically can’t do it.”
If the district and Ledbetter do not come to an agreement by the board’s Nov. 14 meeting, the eminent domain ordinance will go up for a final vote.
Can't Take It With You - Stealing New Orleans
Friday, October 28, 2005
CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
The buzzards are swarming to pick at the pieces of New Orleans culture left in the ruins
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Chris Rose
This is only my second column here in the esteemed pages of Lagniappe but I fear it may be near my last.
The reason is not what might seem obvious: Poor job performance.
No, the real reason is that, in a matter of weeks, there, in fact, will be no events to report in these pages. No sports. No festivals. No parades. No music. No food listings.
It appears that while this city drowns under water, negligence, helplessness and poverty, the civic scavengers from other states are circling around us, trying to pick at the rotting corpse that is New Orleans.
The most obvious culprit is the sleazy and verbose mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger, whose gleeful dance over our communal devastation almost makes Tom Benson look like a nice guy. He says the Saints belong to his city now. Done deal. And he's probably right.
Then, of course, the wags in Las Vegas announced that they would be happy to host Mardi Gras this year and why not? Since that city has done its best to turn New York City, Paris and Venice into theme parks, why not let them have the greatest free show on Earth?
Problem is, nothing in Vegas is free -- unless you lose a fat wad at the craps table and then they give you some steak and eggs for breakfast.
I just want to see the looks on the Vegas high school band tuba players when somebody tells them they have to march six miles every night for three weeks.
And then we have Austin, Texas, which will be hosting the Flaming Arrows Mardi Gras Indian celebrations next year. An event, which I can only assume, will be steeped in the grand themes of typical Indian parades -- culture, history, neighborhood, family, corner bars and go-cups.
If the Indians thought they had trouble with New Orleans cops, wait until a couple of Spy Boys get liquored up and start blocking downtown traffic in their beaded finery.
Iko, Iko, pod'ner, and off to jail we go.
And Galatoire's is opening in Baton Rouge. Personally, I can't imagine a city that is in more need of a four-hour Friday lunch consisting of a Godchaux Salad and seven martinis. But, are you kidding me? Galatoire's in Red Stick?
What are they going to take from us next? Certainly there's more of the carcass left. For instance, contrary to the graffiti on his house that says "R.I.P. Fats," it turns out that Fats Domino is, in fact, still alive, so certainly Branson, Mo., ought to come down here and scoop up the Fat Man so he can join Mel Tillis and the Captain and Tennille up there on the strip.
I hear that folks in Topeka are going to start burying their dead in above-ground mausoleums as a way of boosting their tourist industry.
And since the brimstone ministers tell us it was New Orleans' accommodation of gay citizens that caused the hurricane in the first place, maybe we'd better send Southern Decadence abroad as well.
I'm picturing Salt Lake City for that one.
Just who the hell are these people who are trying to pick and choose among our cultural touchstones and lay claim to them in their towns?
I mean, some are just plain stupid; I give the Baton Rouge Galatoire's eight months survival, a year at most. I mean, are there really enough alcoholic former queens of Carnival in Baton Rouge to keep that place afloat?
As for San Antonio: It's galling. I know you probably think so, too, so I'm doing the public service of giving you the mayor's phone number so you can apprise him of your thoughts on the matter.
It's (210) 207-7060. In case you're stuck in the '90s, the fax is (210) 207-4168.
Give Phil a call. See what else he needs from us. Like, maybe a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse? Or maybe the carousel from City Park. Or, what the hell -- why not see if he just wants to come over and cart that whole damn park away and put it on the Rio Grande.
Bam!
Oh, that reminds me: They can take that guy, too. What the hell. As long as we've got our front stoops, a couple of guitars and some Abita Amber, I guess we'll be OK.
Or did I just hear that Miller bought Abita?
Anyway, that's the end of my rant. My time here is done. That's because the Las Vegas Sun is going to start publishing Lagniappe in its paper starting next Friday.
So thanks for all your support for all these years and hopefully our paths will cross again some day. Say, maybe next week at the Bridge City Gumbo Festival in Tuscon.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309.
The buzzards are swarming to pick at the pieces of New Orleans culture left in the ruins
Friday, October 28, 2005
By Chris Rose
This is only my second column here in the esteemed pages of Lagniappe but I fear it may be near my last.
The reason is not what might seem obvious: Poor job performance.
No, the real reason is that, in a matter of weeks, there, in fact, will be no events to report in these pages. No sports. No festivals. No parades. No music. No food listings.
It appears that while this city drowns under water, negligence, helplessness and poverty, the civic scavengers from other states are circling around us, trying to pick at the rotting corpse that is New Orleans.
The most obvious culprit is the sleazy and verbose mayor of San Antonio, Phil Hardberger, whose gleeful dance over our communal devastation almost makes Tom Benson look like a nice guy. He says the Saints belong to his city now. Done deal. And he's probably right.
Then, of course, the wags in Las Vegas announced that they would be happy to host Mardi Gras this year and why not? Since that city has done its best to turn New York City, Paris and Venice into theme parks, why not let them have the greatest free show on Earth?
Problem is, nothing in Vegas is free -- unless you lose a fat wad at the craps table and then they give you some steak and eggs for breakfast.
I just want to see the looks on the Vegas high school band tuba players when somebody tells them they have to march six miles every night for three weeks.
And then we have Austin, Texas, which will be hosting the Flaming Arrows Mardi Gras Indian celebrations next year. An event, which I can only assume, will be steeped in the grand themes of typical Indian parades -- culture, history, neighborhood, family, corner bars and go-cups.
If the Indians thought they had trouble with New Orleans cops, wait until a couple of Spy Boys get liquored up and start blocking downtown traffic in their beaded finery.
Iko, Iko, pod'ner, and off to jail we go.
And Galatoire's is opening in Baton Rouge. Personally, I can't imagine a city that is in more need of a four-hour Friday lunch consisting of a Godchaux Salad and seven martinis. But, are you kidding me? Galatoire's in Red Stick?
What are they going to take from us next? Certainly there's more of the carcass left. For instance, contrary to the graffiti on his house that says "R.I.P. Fats," it turns out that Fats Domino is, in fact, still alive, so certainly Branson, Mo., ought to come down here and scoop up the Fat Man so he can join Mel Tillis and the Captain and Tennille up there on the strip.
I hear that folks in Topeka are going to start burying their dead in above-ground mausoleums as a way of boosting their tourist industry.
And since the brimstone ministers tell us it was New Orleans' accommodation of gay citizens that caused the hurricane in the first place, maybe we'd better send Southern Decadence abroad as well.
I'm picturing Salt Lake City for that one.
Just who the hell are these people who are trying to pick and choose among our cultural touchstones and lay claim to them in their towns?
I mean, some are just plain stupid; I give the Baton Rouge Galatoire's eight months survival, a year at most. I mean, are there really enough alcoholic former queens of Carnival in Baton Rouge to keep that place afloat?
As for San Antonio: It's galling. I know you probably think so, too, so I'm doing the public service of giving you the mayor's phone number so you can apprise him of your thoughts on the matter.
It's (210) 207-7060. In case you're stuck in the '90s, the fax is (210) 207-4168.
Give Phil a call. See what else he needs from us. Like, maybe a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse? Or maybe the carousel from City Park. Or, what the hell -- why not see if he just wants to come over and cart that whole damn park away and put it on the Rio Grande.
Bam!
Oh, that reminds me: They can take that guy, too. What the hell. As long as we've got our front stoops, a couple of guitars and some Abita Amber, I guess we'll be OK.
Or did I just hear that Miller bought Abita?
Anyway, that's the end of my rant. My time here is done. That's because the Las Vegas Sun is going to start publishing Lagniappe in its paper starting next Friday.
So thanks for all your support for all these years and hopefully our paths will cross again some day. Say, maybe next week at the Bridge City Gumbo Festival in Tuscon.
. . . . . . .
Columnist Chris Rose can be reached at chris.rose@timespicayune.com; or at (504) 352-2535 or (504) 826-3309.
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