VIOLET HILL, ARK. – Aside from a store, a school and a historical marker a few miles from town, there’s little to see around Violet Hill, Ark., a place where purple flowers come forth each year to keep the town honest. But despite its not-always-great-for-growing shallow soil, it has the ability to seed deep roots when it matters – and to the region, it matters because it’s where a young Brooks Blevins first began pondering about an Ozarks past.
That child who looked at outhouses and wondered of their place in days before grew into the Ozarks’ preeminent historian whose spoken and written words have defined academic study of the region.
“I just remember everything about the past intrigued me,” says Blevins, now with “Dr.” in front of his name, of seeing old-time relics on the farm growing up. “The outhouse was interesting to me. I was interested in the stories that I heard my grandparents and the old-timers tell
Read the full article at OzarksAlive.com.
Brooks Blevins is the Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University. He published with the University of Illinois Press his capstone work—three volumes constituting the definitive history of the Ozarks. He is also the author or editor of ten other books, including Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State and a forthcoming collection of essays: Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins, available in December from the University of Arkansas Press.