People in the Ozarks have long told humorous vignettes that make sense of triumph and tragedy, relay family and local history, and of course entertain. Benjamin G. Rader’s memoir offers a loving portrait of the Ozarks of his youth, where his grandfather midwifed babies and his great uncle Jerry Rader laughed so hard at one of his own stories that he choked to death on a pork chop. As he reveals the Ozarks of the 1930s through 1950s, Rader dispels the myths of the region’s people as isolated and sharing a single set of values and behaviors. He also takes readers inside the life of the extended Rader family and its neighborhoods, each of which drew on storytelling to strengthen resolve in lives roiled by change, economic depression, and the shift of daily life from the country to the city.

An alluring blend of remembering and reflection, When Grandpa Delivered Babies and Other Ozarks Vignettes provides a vivid portrait of a fading time.

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.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I. The Clear, Cold Water of Mahans Creek

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

Epilogue: The Ozarks of the American Imagination

Notes