[Old Fossil]

Originally Posted by Dr. Clinton Willis

Hello I need help I finding J. Randall Houp I want to talk to him about his very good book "The 24th Missouri Volunteer Infantry "Lyon Legion". I would like to buy one. Thank you. Clinton Willis 716 S Maple Siloam Springs, Arkansas, 72761 Phone 1-479-524-3923.

I'll send Randall your info.

[Old Fossil]

I got to wondering about the size of the Trout Homestead house so dug out more papers. It faced north at the north foot of a mountain. Each of the two rooms were 20 X 20 feet and the dog-trot was 8 feet wide and ran the length of the house front to back. The lean-to front porch was the width of the house (48 feet) and 8 feet deep. There was a fireplace on each side of the house. At some unknown date a lean-to, 10 feet deep, back porch was added to the width of the house and 20 feet of the east end was enclosed as a bed room. Probably at that time the 10 X 20 foot separate kitchen was added.

A Sidebar: I once told Mother that I could truthfully say I was born in a "log cabin" and she blew a gasket saying that it was NOT a cabin, it was one of the finest homes in that part of Pike County! And it really was, compared to the others in the area at that time.

[Old Fossil]

Hot Springs, Garland County - Here are more scenes that the average tourist to H.S. will not see unless they check out the side streets. This was the power plant to the Army Navy Hospital (now the Arkansas Rehab Center). The smoke stack is over 100 feet tall, in fact, so tall I couldn't get a view of the whole thing because of the tree limbs. The second photo is of the base which is 20/30 feet in diameter, and the third is one end of the building with open windows. I don't know if it still used as a power plant. The second photo also shows the beautiful cast iron fence running all the way down this side of the property.

[Old Fossil]

Ouachita National Forest, Montgomery County - Several years ago I worked several archeology contracts for the ONF and on this one we were surveying a burned over area that was burned by a wild-fire. This particular fire was called the "no mans land wildfire" for good reason. In some areas we had to climb up a mountain on our hands and knees and pull on trees to get up, then to get down the other side had to slide down on our because it was so steep. At this particular location we had found quarry debris down the side of the mountain and what we thought was a possible Indian trail going up the mountain in the direction the debris came from. We found the quarry but all the outcrop was quarried away except this rock I'm sitting on (and hanging onto to keep from rolling down the steep slope). I call this photo "tired George" 'cause by then my was dragin'.

[Old Fossil]

Cinnabar mines, East Pike County - O.K., after all these years I'm throwing in the towel in exploring steep mountains. These may be the last, current, photos you'll see here of such terrain. Yesterday we were to get GPS shots of specific mines to see how two of them tied together. This mountain side is about a 55 degree slope, about 100 meters down to our destination, and is rocky and covered with loose leaves and pine straw. During the past 40 years there is no telling how many times I have been up and down it but yesterday I fell two times before I got half way down. I gave up where I fell the second time and my buddy went on down and took the shots. The only injury I received was to my ego and my firm belief that I am indestructible . When my buddy came back we headed to the top but I had to crawl on my hands and knees for quite a ways. There were two problems; 1. I had on new boots and to save weight I had bought them with smooth soles instead of the heavy lugged ones. Smooth soles are not compatible with loose leaves and straw, I found out . 2. The other problem is that when I'm home I'm usually sitting here with my face in this computer and seldom out of this chair, so, I now have very weak legs, surprise .

So, when I got home and told my wife what happened, the tore me a "new one", but not because I had fallen, but because I sit here day-in-day-out.

Gotta go get my shoes on and go for a walk . I'll be back.

30 minutes later; Welllll, it wasn't too bad - I guess?!

[latunafish]

keep walking my friend, it will be good for your physical and mental health!

oh yeah, and keep sharing the pics and narratives.

[Old Fossil]

Originally Posted by latunafish

keep walking my friend, it will be good for your physical and mental health!

oh yeah, and keep sharing the pics and narratives.

Thanks. I needed that !

[Old Fossil]

Walkin'. The photo with the concrete walk is where I'm walking now and is about 300 meters round trip. The other two photos are where I'd prefer to be walking - the muddy road through the trees is in Nevada County near the Little Missouri River and probably was under water during the floods last month - and our gang sitting (badly needed rest) in a cave on Leader Mountain, northwest of the Winding Stair Trailhead, Montgomery County on the Ouachita National Forest. That's me outside the cave leaning on my hiking stick to keep from falling down the side of the mountain. We were searching for Indian quarries and found this one. They had quarried this cave inside an outcrop while obtaining the novaculite rock for their tool. Behind me in the distance you can see another outcrop. Originally that was one continuous outcrop but while quarrying they had quarried away everything between the two, and the debris from their work is scattered for at least a hundred meters down the mountainside.

I need to go back there

[Old Fossil]

Hot Springs, Garland County - Here's something else the tourist will never see if they don't look at the side streets in H.S.. It is across Reserve Street from the old Army Navy Hospital. The sign says it all.

Even as late as the 1960s H.S. was full of quack doctors that were using weird methods to cure anything that was causing you problems. Or at least made you think so. Some of them were Medical Doctors who, for whatever reason, were practicing quack medicine, and many were people who just added "Doctor" to their name and pretended to be doctors. There was little oversight back then. Most of these would have offices upstairs on Central Avenue and I remember seeing one who had his name painted on his window, and "colonic irrigation". That was a popular treatment at that time that they said would cleanse your body of impurities and solve most medical complaints. I'll not go into gory detail, for obvious reasons, and I never had one but friends told me about it. It was simply a "sophisticated" enema and they used machines with lots of "bells and whistles" to make the patient think they were getting something special. And they were getting something special; getting relieved of their hard earned cash.

[wxurbanite]

Just bought this for when I start exploring Arkansas soon:

Arkansas Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff (Curiosities Series): Janie Jones, Wyatt Jones: 9780762748945: Amazon.com: Books


Hope it's good! xD