YELLVILLE -- Violet Hensley has spent much of her life preserving the musical traditions of an Ozarks most today have never known.
The 100-year-old fiddler grew up in the backwoods of Arkansas and learned to play -- and make instruments, too -- from her father.
She became a Silver Dollar City celebrity in the 1960s for her fiddling and whittling skills, which propelled her into the national TV spotlight. Her work has been lauded time and again, compliments that live through plaques in her living room, including the 2004 Arkansas Living Treasure designation.
Even at 100, Hensley is still practicing the art of musical preservation. She's still performing at Silver Dollar City. She's still carving wooden spoons, used to provide Ozarks-style percussion. And earlier this year, she accomplished a lifelong dream.
It all began a century ago, in a little log cabin in west Arkansas.
Hensley was born Oct. 21, 1916, in Montgomery County at "a little spot that wouldn't even sprout a pea," as she puts it. She came to life in the same cabin where her father was born in 1874, the same cabin her grandfather built.
She was born into a life of farming, one that was laced with poverty.
"I said, 'We's so poor, if the flies had anything to eat, they'd bring their own food,'" she recalled.
Her hands began the work of farming early -- but that was OK. "I loved farmin'," says Hensley. "I loved to plow and watch the dirt turn over. I loved to plant and see the plants grow. Then, the harvest."
She'd let her horses run as fast as they pleased while she plowed. She also chopped wood -- so well, in fact, that some visitors commented on it.
"They said, 'That girl wields an ax just like a man!'" Hensley recalled with pride. "I could do pretty good with that chopping ax and crosscut saw, too."
Back then, such skills were viewed with more value -- and perhaps as more educational -- than school.
"I didn't go a year of any of it," she said. "Started in August in 1922 and then got in the colder part we didn't go, or if it was rainin', didn't go. Come spring, I had to get out in the fields.
"When I was 15, I should've been in the seventh or eighth grade, but I barely had part of the third-grade education. ... [Dad] just said he couldn't afford to buy us books anymore, so that was the end of my schooling."
Looking back, Hensley said she has no regrets.
"Don't think so," she says. "Dad'd say, 'All you need to know is how to figure your money and make a living by the sweat of your brow.' Didn't help to have all that book work."
Life, however, wasn't all work. Simple joys, such as whittling and fiddling, offered outlets from the pressure of everyday life. Those were things done by Hensley's father, who also formed the instruments himself, something that helped support the family.
"Well, he traded one for a wagon," says Hensley. "Traded one for a shotgun. Traded one for a milk cow, with a baby calf by her side. And you could sell one for $1 back then. Now, one he'd make'd be worth, oh, $5,000."
To some people, that is.
"I've got one, I wouldn't take $5,000 for it," she says.
It was that influence that led Hensley to start fiddling as a child.
"And I picked up the fiddle, and if I was a missin' a note, the way he played, he'd show me that, but he didn't show me much," she says. "Just come natural. People ask me how hard it is to learn to play the fiddle. It depends on how much you think you can do it, and how much you want to do it. If you want to do it bad enough to work at it, you're gonna learn it."
When she was about 15 years old, Hensley took it a step further.
"I told my dad one day I wanted to make a fiddle," she says. "He said, 'There's the tools, wood, just help yourself.' And I did."
She kept making fiddles, numbering each one as she went.
Milestones marked the next few years, beginning when two boys showed up at the family farm out of the blue. One of those young men was Adren Hensley.
"That was the first day I seen him, but I saw him a lot after that," says Hensley. "We never went on a date, but he kept coming back to my house. And we got married six months later."
It wasn't long before the teenage bride became a mother, and there wasn't much time for fiddle-making as the children -- 10 of them -- came along. The family eventually moved to Oregon to pick produce such as strawberries, potatoes and prunes.
But in 1959, they heard of an offer near Yellville too good to pass up: a man selling 40-acre plots of land for $250.
"So we came here," she says. "But he'd just sold his last 40 acres for $250. So we paid $500 for 40 acres."
She's been in Yellville ever since.
Despite life's busyness, fiddling wasn't far from Hensley's heart. During a quiet moment in life, Hensley picked up the instrument again, beginning a soundtrack that would play for the rest of her life.
Hensley's "citizenship" at Silver Dollar City began in 1967 after she was discovered by the park's former publicist, Don Richardson. He wanted Hensley to work there as a woodcarver.
But the folks at Silver Dollar City soon changed their tune; instead of simply whittling, they wanted her to fiddle. That venture ultimately pushed Hensley onto a national stage: Select Silver Dollar City citizens hit the road, appearing on national TV programs to bring awareness to the park, and Hensley was one of them.
Some of those experiences live through photos on her living room walls. One time, she danced with Mr. Green Jeans on The Captain Kangaroo Show. Another moment, frozen in time, shows her on The Art Linkletter Show with Shad Heller, Silver Dollar City's longtime blacksmith and mayor. And when The Beverly Hillbillies filmed several episodes at the park, she was there -- "walking along and eatin' an ice cream cone with 'Granny,'" Hensley recalls.
Despite her accomplishments, Hensley always had a dream: She wanted to play at the Grand Ole Opry, a weekly country-music stage concert in Nashville, Tenn. She grew up listening to the program, which debuted when she was 9 years old. But it was something that seemed never to be.
Until this year, that is.
Things changed when Tim Crouch, musician and familiar face at the Opry, read Hensley's autobiography and found mention of her dream of playing there.
"When he got to that part, he said, 'I'm going to make it so,'" Hensley recounts.
Crouch contacted Opry star Mike Snider, who arranged for Hensley to be his guest during a show. And then they contacted Hensley's daughter, Sandra Flagg, who broke the news to her mother.
"Sandy come over, and she said, 'What's the greatest thing you wanna do?' says Hensley. "And I said, 'Play the fiddle on the Grand Ole Opry.'
"She said, 'You're gonna do it!'"
On Aug. 6 she did just that: On the stage where stars shine, Hensley wowed the crowd, jubilation beaming across her face. It was a moment that took a lifetime to achieve and resulted in thunderous applause from the audience in the 4,400-seat auditorium.
Despite the thousands of people in the audience -- and even more tuning in from elsewhere -- Hensley doesn't recall being nervous that night.
After all, "I've been on so many shows that it's just somethin' else," she says.
What flabbergasted her, however, were the friends and neighbors who traveled to Nashville to hear her perform.
"It's amazing to go somewhere and have somebody followin' you around," she said.
But realizing her dream hasn't changed Hensley.
"I was just me," she says. "Pleased? Of course, yes, I was pleased. But it's still just me. You don't want to try to be somebody you're not."
Even though she still plays, Hensley doesn't make fiddles these days. After building more than 70 of the instruments, she reluctantly called it quits: Her sight is just too bad for the tiny detail work required.
"I don't make nothing but spoons," she says of her current creations -- for playing, not eating. She has made so many that she doesn't need to see. Her fingers know.
"I can feel it," she says. "I know right where I'm cutting 'cause I've done enough of it."
And while macular degeneration has stolen her sight, age hasn't taken her sharp mind. Hensley's memory time travels easily, recalling events to the date, and taking her far from her kitchen to the world, free from modern convenience, where she began.
Just like when she picks up a fiddle. With a quick snap of the case, she takes out the brown-hued beauty -- the one she created in 1934 -- adorned with floral carvings. Then she brings it to her neck and prepares to play.
"When you're used to it, your finger goes right there without you even looking," she says.
She begins to sing, harmonizing with both bow and voice, foot stomping as she goes.
Her little dog, Smiley, stays and listens. As it's easy to do when Hensley plays, he seems to smile.
Metro on 12/25/2016