Commentary: Television Network 'Discovers' Arkansas' Hardy

DISCOVERY CHANNEL A promotional photograph from “Clash of the Ozarks” shows Jimmy Haney, described as a mountain man who doesn’t own a pair of shoes and hasn’t lived in a house for years.
DISCOVERY CHANNEL A promotional photograph from “Clash of the Ozarks” shows Jimmy Haney, described as a mountain man who doesn’t own a pair of shoes and hasn’t lived in a house for years.

Although I have lived much of my life in Northwest Arkansas, I have lived or spent considerable time in a number of other places in the state and elsewhere.

One of the Arkansas communities with which I am particularly familiar has received some special attention lately.

I always thought of Hardy, in Northeast Arkansas, as a tranquil town -- until I "discovered" something quite different: "It still very much resembles a town right out of the Wild West." My discovery came on the Discovery Channel.

The area around Hardy was a second home for me for many years. And I never realized that it was an outpost of the Wild West.

I saw Hardy, on the Spring River, as a quaint and picturesque community. It originally developed as a railroad construction camp and was on the old "Frisco" rail route. The accessibility by train helped make it a popular summer spot for visitors from my boyhood hometown of Jonesboro and eastern Arkansas, but especially from Memphis. Memphians played a key role in establishing the Hardy area as a river resort, with many summer-time residences centered around Wahpeton hill and Rio Vista. Later, camps for scouts and other youth groups were situated in the area, although they eventually gave way or moved to make room for the first Cooper Communities retirement/recreation community, Cherokee Village, founded in 1954. (Cooper later developed Bella Vista and Hot Springs Village.)

Cherokee Village is a few miles outside Hardy and its golf courses and lakes added to the area, and the residential development generated more business activity.

However, for me and for many others, Hardy and the Spring River remained the focal points.

Hardy's main street retains much of its old-time character and is on the National Register of Historic Places. There are arts, crafts, and antique shops and other tourist attractions. More recently a somewhat authentic British pub, the Pig 'n Whistle, has been located there.

Decades ago my mother had one of the first arts and crafts shops in "downtown" Hardy, located in the old ice house. And my optometrist dad had an office in Hardy besides his main office in Jonesboro. Over the years, the family had various residences and weekend retreats nearby before my parents eventually retired there.

For me, I associate Hardy with the Spring River, and those icy-cold waters flowing down from Mammoth Spring, just inside the Arkansas-Missouri border. With family and friends I spent many hours enjoying the river – swimming, fishing, canoeing, floating. Like many others, I marked a rite of passage by jumping into that frigid stream from the old Hardy bridge, a classic two-span truss bridge with wooden planks, built in 1916. It was washed away in the 1982 flood, one of several that have damaged the area.

It was on a bluff overlooking the South Fork of the Spring at old Camp Cedar Valley that I was presented my Eagle Scout badge, with many of the merit badges having been achieved in the nearby woods and waters.

So it is hard for me to accept the version of Hardy portrayed by the Discovery Channel. In fact, little if any of what goes on in this fictionalized reality show is presented as actually occurring in Hardy, although Discovery says "this town is a lawless place" and that Hardy is "a land where emotions and territory conflicts outweigh a law-abiding society." The six-part series is called "Clash of the Ozarks" and is said to be about a local "war" that has continued more than 100 years.

Arkansas has often been depicted as a backwoods and backwards hillbilly haven, but these episodes may be even more ridiculous and inauthentic than "The Simple Life" with Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie, the farcical reality show on Fox a decade ago, some of which was based in Arkansas, with those two airheads supposedly working on a farm.

"Clash of the Ozarks" is the opposite of reality and tells me why I haven't watched the Discovery Channel in years, although it once was considered a relatively serious cable channel exploring scientific issues instead of the joke it is becoming.

I had never heard about the feuding factions and "grudges born out of inter-clan murder" which Discovery presents as the way things are in Hardy. I don't doubt that in the hills and hollows around Hardy there are some outcasts and soreheads, grudge-bearers and ne'er do wells. I've met a few of them.

But why besmirch the name and reputation of a treasured little town for the purpose of pretending fiction is reality?

I know that we need diversions from some of the realities of the world, but there are enough true and entertaining stories and creative fiction to provide that.

Discovery is out of touch with reality.

Commentary on 03/23/2014

Upcoming Events