Commonplace Things into Silver and Gold:
Commonplace Things into Silver and Gold:Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey 1877-1948
by Ellen Gray Massey
I stick smart weed and beggar liceIn with my bouquetAnd then I smileWhen my friends say,"How beautiful, how delicate!What can those blossoms be?
From childhood until her death in 1948, in her weekly and monthly columns in Taney County and Springfield newspapers, Mary Elizabeth did just what the poem says. She showed the beauty, charm, and grace of ordinary people and things. Her crystal vase was her writing which we today can still enjoy. Through the years in her prose and poetry, she encouraged the people of the Ozarks to be proud of themselves and their region. With imagination and dedicated work, she transformed "the commonest of commonplace things into silver and gold."
To appreciate her accomplishment, we need to understand the Ozarks of the first half of the century. Its present popularity with thousands of daily visitors belies the fact that until the last few years it had been scorned by the rest of Missouri and the country. During her life, Ozark people were ignored or ridiculed as backward, lazy, and ignorant. Though this stereotyped picture was the exact opposite of the self-sufficient, hard-working men and women, Ozarkers often belittled themselves or felt ashamed of their isolated, backwoods living.
Sometimes so did Mary Elizabeth. For most of her life, she herself lived in what outsiders would consider backwoods homes. During the 1930s, she lived in Oasis, population twenty-seven, a village covered now by Table Rock Lake. She and her husband, Pres, ran a crossroads country store that was fifteen miles from a railroad, eight miles from a highway on rough country roads, and twenty hilly miles from Forsyth (which had then a population of about 300). Experiencing this prejudice herself, she was shy, avoiding important people. Country people were her kind--the ones she wrote for. But some outsiders were all right.
He was a high-hat, pompous and stately.(In anguish I twisted my apron stringsWealth and dignity are fearsome things.)Wondering what I should try to sayTo this potentate who had come my way.(Twisting and folding my apron stringWealth and dignity are fearsome things.)Then he stooped to caress my flowering mossHe smiled at my rose on its cedar cross.And I dropped my twisted apron stringsFor roses and gardens are kindred things.
Through the metaphors in her poem--gardens for beauty and apron strings for ordinary labor--she shows the commonality of humankind through the kinship of daily tasks and aesthetics.
During her life she received some outside awards and recognition. Perhaps the greatest was in July 1935 when she became the first recipient of Crowell Publishing Company's award for the best rural correspondent in the United States and Canada. Part of her prize was a trip to New York City. Editors and reporters there expected to interview quite a different person from the intelligent, soft-speaking grandmother they interviewed. She did not fit the stereotype at all. News items about her appeared in many important papers in the United States and Canada. Not only her writing, but also her presence began to dispel the stigma of the hills.
Recognition continues to come to her forty-six years after her death. In the last two years, she has been the subject of several articles, talks, and dramatic readings. In 1970 she was in the first group to be inducted in the Hall of Fame at the College of the Ozarks. She was listed on the "Literary Map of Missouri," Reynolds and Patterson, Central Missouri State University, 1989, and her biography was included in Show-me Missouri Women, published by the Missouri Chapter of the American Association of University Women, 1990.
Mary Elizabeth lived the life of a typical Ozark country girl and woman at the turn of the century. The oldest girl in a large family, she learned housekeeping duties. She received little formal schooling. She married a farmer and country storekeeper, had four children and eight grandchildren. She was a vital part of her community, teaching Sunday school, helping with neighborhood social gatherings, and being a good neighbor in times of sickness and death.
But Mary Elizabeth was atypical. Her educated parents wrote both privately and for publication and encouraged reading so that she was self-educated far beyond most of her neighbors. Her family moved often within the area, thus exposing her to many people, places, and experiences. She also attended business college in Springfield for a short time and completed two teachers' institutes to enable her to teach three schools in Taney County. During a time when women did not work outside the house, she was a business partner with her husband in the store and postmaster in her own name.
But the greatest difference from her neighbors was that she was a published writer. Recording daily life, she wrote creative, original, retrospective "pieces," as she called them, for fifty-seven years in Taney County papers, eighteen years with her "In the Hills" column in Springfield dailies, and one year as columnist for New York's Country Home. She was a regular contributor to Missouri Magazine and to Hill and Holler News, the White River Electrical Cooperative publication. Her poetry appeared in national anthologies. For the most part of this writing she received only subscriptions to the publication, and sometimes paper and stamps.
Radio personalities such as Miranda from National Farm and Home Hour from Chicago in the 1930s and May Kennedy McCord of Springfield radio used her for source material. In 1934, to raise money to start a library, the Taneyhills Study club of Branson and Hollister published Ozark Lyrics, a small book of her poems. The club published three editions. The School of the Ozarks Book Division brought out revised editions in 1972 and 1980. Cliff Edom of Little Photo Gallery of Forsyth put out a volume in 1985. The latest edition of her poetry was in 1990 when Bittersweet, Inc., of Lebanon, MO, published a larger collection, Marigold Gold.
Mary Elizabeth's writing lets us view the true character of the Ozarks and its people from the inside. She wrote much about men, but what she wrote about women is especially valuable since so little has been written from their perspective. During her lifetime, there were few native Ozark writers. Notable ones like Harold Bell Wright and Vance Randolph were outsiders. There were even fewer women writers. Rose O'Neill, writer and artist of Kewpie Doll fame, and Marguerite Lyon, Take to the Hills (1941) and Green Grows the Grass All Around (1942), both moved into the area. Though they enjoyed the Ozarks and wrote about it, their portrayal, especially Lyon's, had a patronizing tone to it, as of some superior voice describing experiences with the amusing natives.
Few local women wrote. Writing wasn't women's work and didn't put food on the table. The strong work ethic left no time for indulging in artistic pastimes. Most women were busy, uneducated, poor. Mary Elizabeth agonized over spending five cents for pen points. Though her parents encouraged her, her husband neither encouraged nor discouraged her. He worked hard to make a living and set money aside for old age, because the specter of the Poor House was real in the era before old age pensions and Social Security. He had no time for foolishness like "scribblings," as Mary Elizabeth called her own work. Yet he never objected to her writing and turned first in the weekly paper to her column.
Living in this unlikely climate--non-literary, subsistence living, and male-oriented--it is a wonder she did write. Instead of discouraging her, her surroundings inspired her. At any moment, she could look up from her work to admire the trees and hills or listen to the birds or creek waters. Subjects walked into her store. She looked, listened, and recorded. She said she wrote because she had to. Her mission was to bring a smile to an old man's face, to help the people of the hills value what they had, and to show the silver and gold of the commonplace.
She could not explain how the words for her poems came to her. "It was almost mystical," she said. She tried to explain it in "My Poems":
They come when I am churningOr when I'm making bread,Or when I'm hanging out the clothesAdancing 'round my headLike flocks of golden butterfliesAdancing in the sun,And with clumsy toilworn fingersI try to capture one.But I mar the golddust beautyOf the fragile fluttering wings.I can not capture butterfliesbut I love the joyous things.
Even when explaining the mystery of inspiration, she dignified women's chores--baking bread and washing. Using symbols of beautiful things--butterflies--for aspirations higher than basic needs, she quietly reminds people of the importance of beauty in human relationships.
She was not satisfied with her poems. As she said in the poem, she could never capture the beauty. Most literary people in her day ignored or criticized her verses. Many still today give them only grudging comment. Is it still the old prejudice against the hill people?
However, some of her contemporaries who lived in the Ozarks recognized her worth. Noted folklorist Vance Randolph wrote that her poems were the "only verses in which I have ever heard the authentic music of the hills."
May Kennedy McCord, after reading Mary Elizabeth's column in the Springfield paper, braved the rough roads to Oasis to meet her. McCord later wrote, "We came away silent and admiring, withal a bit subdued, but with no words to describe this woman with the light in her face from the candle within her soul."
But more than what academia said, Mary Elizabeth valued the opinions of her readers, neighbors and friends, for whom she wrote. They read her column avidly, some cutting it out and posting it on their walls. Naturally there were some who weren't interested. When Mary Elizabeth went to New York to receive her award as best rural correspondent, one woman said, "What's all this fuss about ole Mrs. Mahnkey's scribblings?"
Mary Elizabeth agreed. She did nothing special. As most rural correspondents do, she wrote what happened in her family and neighborhood. But she did more. She recorded social history--sayings, cures, superstitions, and customs of her time. Rarely preaching, her writing encouraged her readers to understand human behavior with tolerance, sympathy, and love. Along with people's goodness and beauty, she recorded their imperfections, their violent nature, their snobbery, and intolerance.
For example, in a time when childbirth outside of marriage meant life-long disgrace for the mother, Mary Elizabeth helped dispel the shame by publishing "Two Dresses":
I had three dressesBut now I've got two,For the plain little white oneTrimmed in bright blueI cut into garments,So tiny and small,For my poor little babyA-comin' this fall.the boy that I worshippedTold me black liesAn' run off an' left meWith tears in my eyes.O, poor little babyWith no name at all,Maybe God will forgive meAnd help me this fall.
Mary Elizabeth showed respect for traditional ways and their place in a changing world. This quality is what makes her work valuable today, such as this example remembered from her childhood:
"One August day, when the threshers were at Captain Van Zandt's place, the next farm to ours, little sister and I asked Mother if we could go over there to see the marvelous machinery in action. But when Grandma saw where we were headed, she stopped her stirring, mixing, beating, and oven-door slamming to say sternly, 'No, you'll not go a'near, for they say the man are all working with their shirt tails out.' Shocking! We were overcome with embarrassment and did not go."
She captured the local speech. "The onliest way to get along with that gang is to give 'em a good lettin' alone."
Or, "After an unusually hard winter, a neighbor drove down to the mill and store, and his horses were piteously thin. One of the ubiquitous humorists said, 'Well, well, you've done somethin' the buzzards couldn't a-done. You've picked them hosses bones and never busted their hides."
Since outsiders made fun of the Ozark people, Ozarkers enjoyed retaliating such as in this incident. The Mahnkey store at Oasis overlooked Long Creek. Only pedestrians could cross the one'lane steel bridge across the creek since it had no fill leading to it on the valley side and its other end abutted against the bluff. The useless bridge was often the subject of conversation for newcomers. Wondering why there was a high bridge with no access on either end, a salesman at the store asked, "Why do you have a bridge like that? To make fools ask questions?"
"Yes," Mary Elizabeth answered, "and it works every time."
The humor of the Ozarks appeared in her poetry as well.
I knew men in youthThey were lovers, friends, companions.At sixty-six, the ghastly truth,The men I knowAre my dentist, optician, physician,And the one who says shortly,"Is dinner ready?"
Treating with humor serious subjects such as old age and prolonged droughts, as in the following verse, helped her readers through hard times:
I was aimin' to get some nice false teeth,Said Uncle Amos TrooBut I reckon I'll jes wait a spellFor there's nothin much to chew.
Even the smallest achievement is valuable. Though not one to give advice, Mary Elizabeth makes this recommendation "To a Melancholy Lady":
Raise some guineasRaise some gourdsMake a little gesture towardsA richer life in service passedTo leave some imprint that may last.If not great deedsOr golden words,Then raise some guineasRaise some gourds.
Life is full of beautiful things. "Birds will sing/ And flowers will bloom," she wrote in her poem, "Let's Be Cheerful." She encourages all to enjoy life, for "Only bats and owls/ Rejoice in gloom."
Though she published many of her poems in her columns and elsewhere, she didn't think too highly of them. She said that she was an "Imposter":
"Do you write of moods?""No, I write of woodsOr dogs or an old stone wall.By this you know,Ere you further go,That I am no poet at all."
Is she belittling her work, or is she asking us to look more closely? Though shy and retiring around important people, she undoubtedly knew she was gifted. So let's assume she wants us to examine the meaning behind the words. When she says, "I write of woods," she may have meant the beauty of an Ozark fall as in "October":
There's a murmur in the woods of mystery.There's a ripple on the water as of tears.And all this blaze of royal, glorious colorsCannot allay our vague and nameless fears.For it is a funeral train of solemn splendor;Sweet summer soon will rest upon that bier,And summer's friends are terrified and fainting.The end for for them is drawing very near.
In this verse she describes more than woods and scenery. Perhaps it is a metaphor for the end of life?
She says, "I write of dogs." In "Prisoner," she tells about her dog's night hunting forays. She ends the poem by comparing herself to the dog, a comment on women's place in her society: "This may be envy that I feel/ That I must stay at home/ Tied to convention's high stone wall/ Never free to roam."
And "old stone walls"? In the verse above, the stone wall is a metaphor for society's restrictions. In the following poem, Mary Elizabeth uses a real stone wall to show that a man labeled a failure is really a "Benefactor." Even he makes life richer for everyone:
They said old Steve BaileyWas not much goodBut he cleared all brushFrom the white oak wood.He walled with stoneThe dripping springWhere birds alightTo bathe and sing.He planted grape vinesAnd a walnut treeThen left this beautyFor you and me.
If Mary Elizabeth is right when she says, "I am no poet at all," then we wonder what it takes to be a poet. Loved by her readers of the greater Springfield area but ignored by most serious literary people, Mary Elizabeth continued year after year to spread her love of the Ozarks and of beauty to an ever widening audience.
Her poem "Service," simple words written a few years before her death from cancer in 1948, blends her mission and her message:
When they put away my silken scarf,My beads and thin worn rings,Will they think of my old washtub,My broom and other things?The little hoe I kept for flowers,The basket for dead leavesNo one will use them any more,And so my spirit grieves.
The spirit of Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey should not grieve. Her verses continue to touch us and remind us of our need for beauty and commonplace values. In this poem, she says we need to treasure not only the valuable silk and jewelry (beauty and finer things), but also essential for a satisfying life, we must preserve simple household tools. Washtub and broom for cleanliness (purity, virtue), a hoe to cultivate the good and remove the undesirable, and a basket for dead leaves (end of season, memories, life).
Powerless in many ways and tied to her man and his decisions, she uses simple things (over which she had power) to express larger issues that never become outdated. She was her own person, went her own way, quietly rebelling, but never going beyond the limits of "convention's high stone walls."
Because of her writings, maybe the world has become a better place for all Ozarkers, especially rural women. Her subtle message may have changed men to become more sensitive to women's problems, thoughts, importance, as well as to let women understand and be proud of their own worth. Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey was a woman obeying every social standard ("stay at home" and "never free to roam"), yet through her writings and by example as a business woman, she helped women move out of their secondary place.
By writing about commonplace things, opening her readers' eyes to the beauty around them, to the dignity of their way of life, and to the value of each person's contribution, Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey continues to help us see the silver and gold of life.
Photographs and article courtesy of Gaye Lisby, Branson Living Magazine
