Stockton native relases new book

Peter Nichols, who lives in Stockton, Mo., and is Past-President and present Board Member of the Missouri Folklore Society and active in the El Dorado Springs writers group, has written an unusual book. "Let the Faces Speak" is a pictorial directory of the residents of a fictitious county in Missouri from 1860-1910, Bear County is in west central Missouri where, "the Ozarks meet the prairie. It is a land of rolling hills covered with oak-hickory forests and prairies of tall grasses."

Nichols has collected photographs of actual people in this time period. He doesn't know any of them and few had names on the back. He has created new names for the subjects and written poems under each to tell about their character, exploits and sometimes their problems.

The poems represent historical and geographical truths but are fictitious. They recreate the period, which was "not a time of peace and quiet in these counties. Beginning with the border troubles of the 1850s, the Civil War was devastating. This was followed by a steady out-migration of males to the gold and silver strikes in Colorado, Nevada, and Alaska and land rushes in Oklahoma."

At a farm auction in the early 1960s Nichols bought a box of miscellaneous books, and an envelope with six old pictures in it. This began his collection. He did not know what he would do with them until recently he began looking at them and the photographs spoke to him.

We will share a few of the poems that came from viewing the old photos.

"Kermit Alexander"

"They said that Kermit's dad,

Old Man Alex,

could drive nails with his bare fist,

drink straight moonshine

and never blink,

put a two hundred pound shoat on his shoulder, and run a hundred yards.

Kermit never even tried to fill, those shoes.

Unseemly behavior wasnot for him.

He went to school,

read Tennyson and Longfellow,

went to Methodist Revivals,

(not the shouting free singing Baptists),

and drank loganberry juice with his grandmother Percy.

Kermit thought he had a passion,

and her name was Ginny Powell.

For Ginny he grew a moustache.

For Ginny he drove a high stepping trotter that made him blush.

For Ginny he had this photograph taken.

But it was for naught,

Ginny went off with a traveling drummer, Ginny wanted to have more of the world than a loganberry juice

drinking Methodist could give her.

So Kermit stayed in Bear Creek.

After his grandmother died he drank loganberry juice

with his spinster sister and the minister's wife.

He was such a nice young man."

Under a picture of three different women of varying ages he has this poem:

"Three Friends"

"They too heard the call,

they too wanted to see the Rocky Mountains,

But they didn't,

they waited,

and they waited.

They watched down the road,

they listened for hoof beats

and a horse whinny.

They became aunts,

and godmothers,

they sat together in church,

they could always be counted on."

After reading through the attractive book there is no question but that the faces do speak. They tell of a past time and past events. But they also tell about lives that were lived -- even in the imagination of Peter Nichols.