When I went to School of the Ozarks College in the early summer of ‘65, I was only 17 years old. A counselor in high school had applied for me and in late May of that year I was notified that I hadn’t been accepted.
If you want to talk about miracles, consider this one. In early June the registrar at S of O called and told me that five students had quit the first week. I didn’t understand what he was telling me until he said I was number five on the waiting list.
School of the Ozarks then was a college for poor kids. They gave you a job where you went to classes a half day and worked a half-day to pay the tuition and room and board. Here’s another miracle for you! The president, Dr. M. Graham Clark called me into his office the second day I was there and declared that on the application where it asked what I had worked at I listed so many jobs he suspected that either no student that ever went to school there had ever had so many jobs or that I was the biggest liar ever on campus up to then.
It wasn’t actually lying; I had just listed everything I had done for an hour or so since I was 13 years old. Like where I said I had done roofing I had really done it because Dad made me help him put a roof on a shed. My job as a commercial fisherman came down to selling a half dozen catfish illegally to Churchill Hoyt at the pool hall the year before. But that day I got the most coveted job on campus, Dr. Clark’s right-hand man.
When he had to go to the airport I drove his Lincoln Continental back home. I watched his grandsons when they swam in his pool, I took them arrowhead hunting and I mowed his lawn with a tractor mower. On occasion one of the half dozen girls who worked inside for Mrs. Clark would bring out some fresh-baked cookies for me to sample. I was envied all right and amongst the construction workers and the grounds crew students and the cannery workers, I wasn’t all that popular. But I still made two or three friends. One of them was so much like me he might have been a brother. In fact he became one! In the evening of the first month, my roommate took me down to a big gravel bar and showed me how to catch trout on Lake Taneycomo. His name was Darrel Hamby... from Piedmont Mo, where he still lives.
The best thing about S of O was Lake Taneycomo, full of trout and ducks. The School sat on a bluff right above it. I knew nothing about fishing anywhere but the Big Piney where I had grown up. And I had taken my rod and reel to school with me… a Shakespeare casting reel with ten-pound line. Darrel taught me about trout and how to catch them with a spin-casting outfit and 4 pound line. It was easy fishing and no backlashes. Plus, you could cast way out there with a light treble hook and salmon eggs or cheese and catch 12- to 14-inch trout like you could catch black perch (green sunfish) back home on the Piney. Darrel had grown up on the Little Black and St. Francis Rivers and he took me back there on several occasions to fish. A few years ago Darrel made his first fishing trip to Canada with me. And I consider that my third miracle of 1965, meeting a life-long friend and fishing partner. Before this summer ends, when it cools down some, I am heading over to fish again with my old friend. He says he thinks we might catch a big catfish or two. Wouldn’t that be miracle?
You can read all about those days at School of the Ozarks in one of my books entitled, “The Prince of Point Lookout…Life and Learning at School of the Ozarks”. I intended to give the school, now known as College of the Ozarks, 500 free copies of the book to sell. That would give the school about seven thousand dollars in profit to some kid out in the Ozarks like me, an education. But the school president at the time turned down the offer. If you want to read about those years I spent there, and all about the times with Darrel and Woody P. Snow, Just call me at 417 777 5227 and I will sell you one at half price. Or you can send 9 dollars and 2 dollars worth of postage stamps and I will send you a book inscribed to you and signed by Darrel and woody and me! That address is… Pt. Lookout, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613. If you don’t get a few laughs out of the reading of it, I will return your money.
