When Grandpa Delivered Babies and Other Ozarks Vignettes

Benjamin G. Rader is James L. Sellers Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His books include Down on Mahans Creek: A History of an Ozarks Neighborhood and Baseball: A History of America’s Game, fourth edition.

"How many celebrated American historians began life in a remote log cabin in the Depression-era Ozarks? Ben Rader's probably the only one. It may start in territory occupied by stereotype and romance, but his story humbly and skillfully illuminates the lives of common Ozarkers navigating the furious changes of the mid-twentieth century. A terrific collection of vignettes."--Brooks Blevins, author of A History of the Ozarks, Vol. 3: The Ozarkers

• Preface Acknowledgments Part I. The Clear, Cold Water of Mahans Creek “You’d Better Treat Her Right!” I Was Born in a Veil Learning the Hard Way The Artifacts of Shannon County’s Golden Age Every Child Needs a Grandpa When Uncle Hub Put Down the Great Delaware School Uprising of 1941 “Yes, and Alta Won’t Like It Either” The Preacher’s Complaint “Come ’n’ Get It” Family Keepsakes “My ___, She Is Holding a Python!” When I Kissed My Sister Part II. The People There Even Drank Water from Cisterns The Hilltop of the Dead You Can’t Take the Country Out of the Country Boy Walking to School When Miss Delores Read Us a Novel The Punishment of Curley Pliler When We Danced Naked in the Rain How Harry Caray Punctured Our Innocence “Let There Be Light” An Ozarks Book Burning Part III. “I Would Choose to Live in Town or beside a County Road” An Ozarks Rite of Passage The Green Beans Were Raw! The Art of Ozarks Bullfighting “Mom, We Shot Old Polly!” The Failure of the Great Multiflora Rose Experiment When Mom Awoke to the Roar of a Chain Saw How Clarence Renfro Failed to Make His Case And Barbara Said That He Looked like Mickey Mantle Thank You, Mr. Fernetti” “I’m from Missouri, and You Have Got to Show Me” “I Must Go to the Eleanor” A Day in the Life of a Jig Builder Part IV. Are We in the Ozarks Now? “And I Was the Only Sober One in the Group” Barbara Learns about High Finance in the Ozarks I Took Her Hands in Mine Epilogue: The Ozarks of the American Imagination Notes