By Bruce Hammock and edited by Brian Thompson
I grew up during the “fight to save the Buffalo from being dammed.” As I was a teenager, I was rather low key in my opposition, contributing a little money (very little in my case) and kidding my uncle, who worked for the Corps of Engineers, telling him that if they saw still water, they wanted to drain it, and if the water moved, they wanted to dam it. It was good natured since he rated a dam on the Buffalo as about as dumb as trying to change the course of the Mississippi River (the corps lost there as well).
As you know, southerners tell tales, tall tales, lies, and damn lies. I have told this tale a few times, and my daughter wanted me to send it to the Ozark Society. As best as I could, I removed the lies.
I grew up in Little Rock and loved wandering the hills as a kid, but my favorite activity was when I traveled once or twice a year to the Buffalo River State Park with my folks. This love intensified when my folks bought me a used canoe (that I still have) and I started teaching canoeing though the Boy Scouts. Swimming, canoeing, hiking, pot holing, and being with my parents and an occasional friend was the high point of the summer. I have the most wonderful memories and a couple that turned into real adventure. One of these adventures was better in the reliving than being there at seventeen years old, and this is the Buffalo River story I am about to relate.
My parents were well aware of my infatuation with canoeing and also my enthusiasm in supporting the Ozark Society. As a high school graduation gift, my parents entered me in the first (and as far as I know the last) Arkansas Statewide Canoe Race. The race was to be from Ponca to Pruitt. In the spring the Buffalo River is not a trivial run in an open canoe, but neither is it a highly challenging. I was thrilled with their gift and recruited my high school buddy Wayne Johnston to go as well. Wayne was not just a Boy Scout buddy but a budding environmentalist, a mass of muscle and state decathlon champ. Well into his 70s Wayne still stands out.
My Parents rented us a motel room near the river, and on the Friday before the race Wayne and I did a Ponca to Pruitt run. With a high spring flow it was beautiful with a few technical challenges but an easy fast run with lots of wild flowers and no surprises.
On the day of the race the organizers had bragged that there would be 150 canoes, but only seven boats showed up. Upon examining the competition, one canoe was crewed by a couple of burley fellows who appeared to know what they were doing. A second canoe held two river guides who growled that we were to stay out of their way. The other canoes were paddled by what appeared to be an array of determined young men. Upon the firing of the starting gun, and thanks to Wayne’s muscle, we quickly took the lead, followed by curses from the river guides. Then, as we approached a sharp turn and gravel bar on the left, we eased the river guides into shallow water and ran them aground. This allowed us to pull on ahead followed by curses of what they would do when they caught us. We had no desire to be caught, and that was the last we saw of other participants until the finish was almost in sight.
My father had paid a $7 entry fee to the Ozark Society Race and wondered why they had never cashed the check, assuming they had misplaced it. Then, in conversation with other entrants, my parents discovered that all of the other contestants received letters saying that if they showed up, they would be shot. We knew that feelings ran high with regard to the dam controversy, but we had not realized the Ozark Society was running the race to provide support for opposing it. Nor did we know there was a war between farmers with poor land who wanted a dam and the people with good land (and a few others) who wanted a national river. The river guides, now behind us on the gravel bar, pointed out that several contestants had weapons, and ominously suggested that they intended to “kick some ass.”
Of course, all of this new information terrified my parents who were told to not go to the police because the county sheriff was pro dam. Wayne and I continued on down the river knowing none of this, enjoying our commanding lead, the riffles, the breeze, and the spring wild flowers.
The first few miles were easy. Thanks to Wayne, the other contestants were behind us and out of sight. As we entered a narrow canyon, a fisherman on shore hollered at us, telling us to turn back, that it was “too dangerous.” We yelled back that we could handle it and left him behind, still yelling, “no, no, turn back.” Of course, one cannot easily turn back in a narrow fast river with brush on both sides.
We went around the next bend and suddenly, we encountered barb wire strung across the river at neck height. After dodging under a couple of the wires, the river narrowed and we came upon several wires in one spot. I caught a low hanging limb and hung onto it desperately, while Wayne negotiated with carefully lifting the wire over the boat. Then a couple of guys with shot guns came out of the woods to tell us to turn back and that we were on “their” river. Of course, we couldn’t exactly paddle up stream. Wayne got the wire raised up and I let go, but as we scooted under, I caught my arm and my life jacket on that danged wire. As we paddled away, I heard a gun go off and we heard what I hoped was bird shot peppering our canoe.
The gash in my arm was not bad, and with our adrenaline pumping we paddled even harder. Oddly, more people appeared on the bluffs and were yelling at us. I later found out that we were down the river and passed them before they could react, as they were intending to throw rocks at us and turn us back with shotguns. Then around the corner from the rock throwers were rolls of concertina wire in the river itself. We dodged some it because it was not strung across the river well. Then around a bend, more concertina was most of the way across. In trying to pass, we were pushed into it by the strong current and leaning away from it, we shipped water. This slowed us so much that at the next gravel bar we had to stop to empty the canoe. As we were emptying, we were caught first by the guides, then by another boat. The paddlers informed us that we were lucky. The people on shore had not been ready for us, and the paddlers who came afterwards had rocks thrown at them punctuated by gunshots. There was real concern for the remaining racers.
Wayne and I paddled madly to make up for being left behind. At last, the first three boats finished with Wayne and I in third place. The other four canoes came in much later with several paddlers badly injured by the wire barriers.
Seldom had I been so exhausted, and only at the end did it dawn on me that we had been in real danger. I was too tired to get out of the boat and I noticed Wayne trembling. My parents were both crying along with several other spectators. The winners were the river guides who had passed us at the second concertina barrier. They told us that we had real spunk, then offered Wayne and I baseball bats so we could go back and “whup ass up river.” “We know them ol’ boys,” they claimed. Wayne being of good judgement, declined, and I could but grunt and gasp from exhaustion. With great bravado the river guides and their bats, vanished in their pickup truck. We never heard how they fared.
The Ozark Society got a little bit of publicity, but they never did cash Dad’s check. There were lots of cuts and scrapes from the wire, and a doctor there suggested strongly that two of the contestants needed stitches. My torn life jacket hung in the garage for years. I still have my paddles and I still have the trophy somewhere from the “First Annual Buffalo River Canoe Race.”
Anyway, it is good that the pro-river people won because in reality we all won, a wonderful national resource saved. That evening we drove back to Little Rock, and too sun burned to wear clothes under my gown, I graduated from high school. I went back to the Buffalo a few times with my parents. Then the next summer with some buddies, we canoed from Ponca to the White and up Sylamore Creek to Blanchard Springs – an idyllic trip without barbed wire. Then nothing in the Ozark for decades until I went back to the Buffalo River for a week in the fall of 1999 with my daughter. The park clears out in October, and it was as beautiful as I remembered. As a surprise, my daughter and I found a pothole in the forest above the river. I think she understands now why the area has such a warm spot in my heart and why it is important to the entire nation.
The Buffalo River changed me. Thanks again for your work with the Ozark Society.