From The President of The Wilderness Road Of The Ozarks James F. (Jim) Barrett    Wilderness Road Dinner Theater       History moves so slow and is so boring, history is dull and dry, history is full of old men with swords and beards cutting each other up over in some country we’ve never heard of. Dates and names, ugh!" I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard young children, and some older ones, too, say these and similar words. When I was in high school and college I got straight A’s because that’s what you did in those days or your mother told your dad to beat the living snot out of you. But I thought the very same thing that kids and some oldsters do today, it’s dull, dry, boring, slooooow and most uninteresting! But, folks and dear reader friends, that was before I moved to the Ozarks and ran straight, smack dab into history, in action, up front, face to face, and happening every day – all around me – and TO me as well! Talk about one of Editor Ed’s now world famous epiphanies, wow!       When I moved from Kansas City to Kimberling City, I thought I was God’s gift to the Ozarks. I was a young, intelligent, semi-well-healed Electrical Engineer, but with recently operated on throat cancer. (That’s why I had to move, lost my voice for three months, which terminated my rising-star and very-tenuous Engineering career.) Now then, here I was among all these uneducated hillbillies, ready to start over and become the Bull of the Woods. Well, friends, history brought me down hard and "learnt me a lesson, right quick like."       I arrived upon the shores of Table Rock Lake at a most unique and propitious moment, though I didn’t realize, nor care about it, at that time. Did any of you folks happen to see the fine, but frightening, movie "Deliverance?" That movie was about some young people who happened to pop into the historical time-stream of a "backwards" civilization, just as it was about to be changed radically and forever by a great, Corps of Engineers dam and the resulting backed-up lake. They didn’t mean to get cross-wise with the natives, they were just there to "run" the river one last time and have fun before it was all gone and covered up by the coming lake. But, because of their lack of understanding of the dangers they were walking through, they didn’t take the precautions they very well should have. Had they, instead, been in the depths of the worst of some big city ghetto they would have been more alert, cautious, watchful and even frightened. But not in the deep, dark, beautiful woods of the South – ha!       Such was much of the deep, dark, beautiful woods of the Mid-Ozarks at the time of my arrival here, upon the shores of the brand new, gigantic, sparkling clear Table Rock Lake. Though I was, like the Deliverance guys, totally unaware of what I was getting into. Kimberling City was so new that the parking lots were just thin gravel over the dozed-out clay beds beneath the now vanished oak tree woods. The night lighting consisted of a couple of 150 watt floods up on the top of a piece of old water-pipe. The buildings were so new the yellow pine dripped pitch and the rough cedar still smelled fresh cut, like the inside of a cedar closet. It was all based around John Q. Hammons very first, tiny, Holiday Inn, sixty units and an office building. The newspapers made tongue in cheek fun of John’s "New City in a Forest." But it looked very good to me, a place to set up operations, a place obviously on the grow, a place sure to attract investment money. It was a place that was young, bodacious, vigorous, and just ripe for an energetic, equally bodacious and ready to roll Engineer from the Big City - me.       Little did I know then concerning the thousands of years of pre-history that had taken place upon the site of Kimberling City, and in the woods of the Mid-Ozarks. Little did I know of the even more exciting, sometimes frightening, current history of this plateau above Table Rock Lake, once above the roaring and dangerous White River. I didn’t know about the many different Indian tribes, about the wagon trains, about the Civil War armies rushing back and forth right here. I didn’t know about the Bald Knobbers, the Bush Whackers, the feuds, the hangings, the killings, the angers, conflicts, hatreds, loves, passions, grief, woe, ecstasies and joy that had taken place for hundreds of years right where I set up my offices. And little did I know of the unbelievable rush of history that would soon flow all around me, sometimes taking me with it, sometimes pushing me aside, as it thundered through the days, months and years I would live here in the Mid-Ozarks of America’s historic Western Frontier.       I was about to experience exactly what historical people have experienced over and over again when one sort of civilization infringed upon, moved into the midst of, endeavored to replace and totally ignored an in-place civilization of hundreds of years standing – conflict – and often – danger! I blithely intended to be God’s Gift to the Ozarks and to become The Bull of the Woods. I had been on my way to doing so in Kansas City, I thought, so why not here? But the native population was a very great force to be reckoned with, as I soon learned. When the lake became a certainty, many of the native families packed up and left the area in disgust, in anger, or because of uncertainty, or because they were suddenly rather rich from the proceeds of river-bottom land sales. But a vast amount of the native population, Ozark Mountain citizens for over two hundred years, did not intend to give up quite so easily. The lake might take their family lands, cover over their homes and inundate the place that they had worked upon for generations, but they didn’t intend to have their entire way of life overthrown and trampled under foot every day. Which is just what the incoming "lake people" intended to do, though most of them didn’t know they were doing that, nor did most of them give a damn as long as their citified interests were served and their bottom-line increased.       I very much want to tell you folks about the conflict, the dangerous confrontations, the actual shedding of blood, the passions, angers, joys and pleasures that resulted from this unlikely mix as two entirely different and most potent civilizations cracked heads, right here in quite recent times. Two great river barriers causing unbelievable currents and thunderous cataracts in the unstoppable flow of history – and contributing greatly to the color and interest to that historic flow, right here in America’s Ozark Mountain Country. And I can’t seem to get it done, as I’d really like to, just doing it all totally in print. I very much enjoy the times I can meet folks face to face when I travel across the country on behalf of the Missouri Humanities Council and others who solicit and pay for my services, speaking in costume as Joe Philibert, the first white permanent settler in the Mid-Ozarks Region. But I’m getting much too old to pack up a ton of costumery, huge maps and suitcases full of artifacts and drive all day to speak at a historical gathering. Then repack everything, sleep in a lonely motel and drive home. So, now I’ve come up with what I hope is a good idea – good for me and good for my widespread reading audience.       My stepson, Randy Thamm, has re-acquired his grandfather’s restaurant built forty years ago in the old Hillbilly Bowl, in Kimberling City, MO. He now calls it RT’s Family Restaurant. I’ve spent months helping him get it restored, decorated with genuine local historic artifacts and pictures, and reopened to a large and marvelously appreciative following of diners. At the end of the long and somewhat narrow "Blue Room" dining area therein, he has graciously permitted me to construct and (soon) to open my ambitious dream, The Wilderness Road Dinner Theater. With the help of my good friend and Hollywood Emmy Award winner, John Anderson, we hope to bring Mid-Ozark and Missouri history to life for you there, with story telling, song, music, recitation, re-enactments, script reading, marvelous old slide shows, and of course, me, telling the stories I’ve spent over forty years researching and collecting. I intend to bring our audiences with us, back into the history of one of America’s most violent and colorful times. I also intend to bring them to see the color, humor, pathos, love, mystery and excitement of the Ozark frontier and the more than 200 years of settlement in the mountains from then until now.       I most sincerely hope you can come to join us in this endeavor, to listen, watch and enjoy all that we will work very hard to bring forward for your enjoyment, amusement, entertainment and, hopefully, a bit of education. If you can’t come to Kimberling to be with us in person, well, we intend to videotape the better programs and will then be able to send these along to you so you can enjoy them in your own home, at your leisure, as often as you wish, and to share them with your historically attuned friends and family. So, that’s our hopeful and ambitious program. Keep your fingers crossed for us and keep us in your prayers. We’ll need all the help, enthusiasm and encouragement we can possibly get. But we’re quite confident that we’ll succeed because everyone we know loves a good, rousing story – and we certainly intend to see that they (and you) get all you desire. We’ll look forward to seeing you there, or hearing from you, telling us what you think and making suggestions.   Much love and thanks to you, one and all! James F. (Jim) Barrett President, The Wilderness Road of the Ozarks Association, Inc.