Talk: The Salubrious Air From Independence County, Arkansas

Collected by Mary Celestia Parler; Transcribed by Neil Byer W. T. Dethero Batesville, Ark. April 13, 1955 Reel 224, Item 5 The Salubrious Air From Independence County, Arkansas I live in Independence County, Arkansas, in about four miles from one of the nicest little towns of about 7,000 population you ever saw. And it's an awfully healthy climate here, and I'm going to tell you something about it. We had an old man here that was ninety years old. And he got word from his mother in California in that sunny climate out there that she was just about dead. And he wanted to go and see her. And he went to the old automobile junk yard, picked up scraps of automobiles, wheels and one part and another, and rigged him up a car. And pumped up the wheels and put 'em in, and drove through by hisself. Well, when he got out there, he went in and his mother was tickled to see him, and she was just about dead. But she said, "How did you come?" He says, "I come in a car." But she said, "1-want to see something from Arkansas." And he said, "Well, it would kill you to take you out there; you couldn't stand bo be carried out there." And she said, "Well, I just won't die satisfied until I see that car." Well, they put her on a stretcher, and they carried her out there, and the tire blew out. And she got a whiff of the Independence County air, and got up and walked straight back into the house by herself. And the next morning, she got in the car with her son, and they took time about driving back to Arkansas. Don't ask me now whether they're still a-living or not.Funding for digitization provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council and the Happy Hollow Foundation