That's Judsonia: An Informal History of a Small Town in Arkansas by W. E. OrrReview by: Ted R. WorleyThe Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1957), pp. 409-410Published by: Arkansas Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40018903 .

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BOOK REVIEWS .qq

of such men as Hugh Park that many worthwhile books in this field see the light of day.

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That's Judsonia: An Informal History of a Small Town in Arkansas. By W. E. Orr. White County Printing Company, Judsonia, 1957. 328 pp. Good local history depends on a rare combination of

circumstances. The writer, ideally, should be a native; he should make intelligent use of all sources bearing on his subject, and he should have writing skill. That's Judsonia resulted from just such a happy combination. W. E. Orr is Judsonian to the bone. He used all the usual kinds of records and several more, and either his newspaper experi- ence or nature endowed him with a quite uncommon order of craftsmanship. To the essential ingredients of local his- tory, in this case, were added historical perspective, ob- jectivity, good judgement, and a sense of humor. Without perspective, author Orr might hiave seen Judsonia as unique, and certainly a subjective attitude would have tended to glorify the town's virtues and ignore its faults, while absence of humor would have left unleavened what turns put to be a highly readable description of small-town social and economic evolution.

Mr. Orr writes of Judsonia as one of several thousand small American towns with only one reservation - this is his small town. As the cover says, Judsonia's story isn't just for Judsonians. "It's for anyone who ever lived in a small town. . . ."Elsewhere he writes, "On these pages progress and folly walk hand in hand."

Judsonia began as Prospect Bluff, a steamboat town on Little Red River in White County. After the war northern immigrants changed its name to Judsonia and in some degree changed the character of the community, for they brought with them a school, Judsonia University. Something of the Mid- West combined with an element of the Old South, and the grafted tree flourished. Union and Confederate soldiers learned to live together more or less peaceably. Enough Union veterans lived in the commun-

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a10 ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

ity to form a chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic. Coming of the railroad and strawberry farming made big chapters in Judsonia history, as the town left the river front and spread hopefully north on Main Street. All these changes and more are detailed interestingly.

Chapter headings are a fair indication of both the in- formality and pungency of style. Some of them are: The Great Oil Boom, Not by a Dam Site, Between Strife and Storm, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Big Show To- night. The author had his history nearly finished when the great tornado in 1952 tore away his landmarks and made a good part of the manuscript unintelligible. But the ill wind blew some good. The chapter on the storm is prob- ably destined to become a classic of its kind. After a thrill- ing suspense the storm breaks on the reader in these words :

And suddenly it was on the town - howling like a multitude of madmen . . . sucking the giant oaks up by the roots and sending them sprawling with crashes which were not to be heard above the bellow- ing of the ten thousand demons seemingly unleashed at the end of the world. Brick buildings disintegrated from the pressure of their interiors, and settled as do the little mud houses children make and then destroy with the touch of their hands.

Colorful people and events, some dramatic and some amusing, enliven the story. Everybody almost got rich in the 1 92 1 oil boom, but there was no oil. Hopes soared with dedication of the big dam, but there was never a dam, not even a little one. The reader watches the construction of the town's first auto in a blacksmith shop, stands near first base and tries to rattle the opposing pitcher, picks straw- berries with the Glomers, and rides with the "callithump- ians" in the Fourth of July parade.

That's Judsonia is a hometown product, written and printed at Judsonia, and the cover design was done by a White County resident. The type, illustrations, and format in general are attractive. Judsonia now differs in at least one important way from a thousand other little towns; it has a history done up in a substantial book.

Ted R. Worley

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