The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [139]
He had no heart for searching further for moonshiners, not for several days at least, so he checked into a hotel at Jasper, where, several days later, the Jasper Disaster noted the fact under a headline reading MANIAC AT LARGE IN TOWN. People barred their doors and the sheriff got up a posse. The man in the brown shirt was run to earth on the courthouse lawn. He flashed his I.R.S. badge. The sheriff asked him what he had been drinking, and he replied, “Chism’s Tea.” “Wal, did ye cut down his still?” the sheriff wanted to know. “What for?” the revenuer said. “That tea is the best stuff I ever drunk.” The sheriff and his posse looked at one another and grinned, and winked. “I’ll let ye go,” said the sheriff, “but next time don’t drink a whole gourdful,” The revenuer went on his way, busting up stills all over the Ozarks, but after a few weeks of such hard work, he developed an overpowering thirst for some more tea, so he returned to Stay More again and hiked up the Ring Prong road to Waymon Chism’s. He asked if he could buy just half a gourdful, explaining that the county sheriff had ordered him not to drink a whole gourd. Waymon said he was sorry but a gourd was the least amount he could see his way to sell. The revenuer asked if Waymon would loan him a Mason jar to pour half of it in; Waymon didn’t have any Mason jars but he poured half of the gourd into a stone jug stoppered with a corncob and gave it to the revenuer, who drank the other half and went off swinging the jug in his hand. He found that taking a small nip from the jug just before raiding a still gave him energy, and he went on busting up stills all over the Ozarks and returning periodically to Stay More to refill his jug with Chism’s tea, and he would have lived happily ever after, but he was a bachelor with no dependents and because of that fact he was drafted into the army and shipped overseas, where he died at Verdun.
Bachelors with no dependents made up the entire United States Army, and almost all the Ingledews were bachelors without dependents, but none of them were drafted, and if they had been they would not have served, because they couldn’t see any sense in going across the sea to fight some other countries’ battles for them. When the Jasper Disaster ran a banner headline, AMERICA ENTERS WAR, the people of Stay More assembled at Isaac’s mill and discussed the situation for three-and-a-half minutes, then put it out of their minds. They had nothing personal against the Germans. Stay Morons were not isolationists because of their isolation but because of their patriotism, which they thought of as loving and protecting their country, and they couldn’t see any way that fighting in France had to do with their country. There were only two Stay Morons who fought in France during that war, and they were not drafted but volunteered. One was Raymond Ingledew, whom we met in the previous chapter, he of the libidinous urges, which were not gratified at the age of fifteen, nor at any time by the city women. At the age of sixteen, however, following a square dance at which much of Chism’s Dew was consumed, he successfully enticed a somewhat homely Dinsmore girl off into the bushes, and removed both their virginities. At seventeen, he attended a pie supper, and was the highest bidder on a pie that had been baked by one of the Whitter girls, not as homely as the Dinsmore girl but still not a “looker”; she yielded easily to his debauchment. At