The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [86]
Jacob hired a carriage to take him home to Stay More. When he entered it, he found Sarah and his daughters already there. He also found his ladyfriend there, dressed for travel and holding her hat-box in her lap.
“Where do ye think you’re a-headin?” he asked her.
“She’s goin with us, Jake!” Sarah exclaimed. “I ast her to, and she said she would! I jist couldn’t never git along without her!”
Jacob took his seat. It was crowded, five of them in a carriage meant for four, and it was a long way to Stay More. “Hhmmph,” he was moved to comment. But as the carriage pulled away from the governor’s mansion and moved north out of the city of Little Rock, he began to chuckle, and then to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Jake?” Sarah asked.
He gained control of himself and replied, “Nothin. I’m jist right glad to git out of that town.”
“Me too,” said Sarah.
“Me too,” chorused their daughters.
And, “Me too,” said the ladyfriend. It is one of the few things we have heard her say; it is all we will.
Our illustration for this chapter is of a house which is, therefore, trigeminal rather than bigeminal, a treble rather than a duple, although I doubt if anybody ever consciously thought of the symbolism of it: that the left door, as we face the house, is Sarah’s, the center door, Jacob’s, the right door, Whom We Cannot Name’s. There were interior connecting doors between the center and both sides. A later occupant, in our century, removed the partition between the left and center chambers, making one large living room, and that is the way it may be seen today. Jacob, in concession to the amenities of his ladyfriend’s former environment, constructed the first “outhouse” or privy in Stay More. Heretofore, everybody in Stay More had simply “gone out” and used the woods or bushes, or the open, and children were taught not to foul a path lest they get a “sty” on their bottoms or cause the death of their sisters. The expression “go out” was so clearly understood that one might even remark of an incontinent child or drunken man, “He went out in his britches.” But now, on a little knoll behind his house, Jacob built Stay More’s first privy, which was also trigeminal, in a way: it had three holes, the possible significance of which I must leave to the speculation of my students. The people of Stay More thought that Jacob was “puttin on airs” by constructing a privy, but they did not think anything unseemly about his ladyfriend. To all of them, forever, she was only “Sarey’s friend,” or “Aunt Sarey’s friend,” or “Grammaw Sarey’s friend,” or “Great-Grammaw Sarey’s friend.” Indeed, the only words on her tombstone are “Sarah’s Friend.” But she was not to die until well into our own century. Jacob himself lived until the first year of our century, and Sarah survived him by one day. The words on Jacob’s tombstone are: “He done his damndest.” Harry Truman, the only Ozarker ever to make it all the way to the Presidency, liked to quote those words, and requested that they be put on his own tombstone, although for some reason they were not.
The buildings in our study thus far have been medieval, with gable roofs; Jacob’s trigeminal house is a hip-roofed Victorian example of “steamboat gothic.” Facing the main road in the exact center of downtown Stay More, it is…
But we have had enough, for now, of the generation of Jacob; if generations generate, we must move on.
Chapter eight
Being taciturn, Isaac Ingledew (called—never to his face—“Colonel Coon” for the rest of his life), became a miller, and here we see his mill. A miller didn’t have to talk if he didn’t feel like it, although most millers did. Isaac’s customers chatted