Religion: Walkin Preacher

One evening in February 1942 Harper & Brothers’ Board Chairman Henry Hoyns tuned in on We, the People, heard the easygoing drawl of a preacher recounting his experiences in the Ozark Mountains. The publishers promptly asked the parson to write his autobiography. Last week it was published. Walkin’ Preacher of the Ozarks ($2.50) by the Rev. Guy Howard, crammed with colorful hillbilly tales, is a lively account of an itinerant minister’s work in isolated Ozark hamlets of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas.

“Furriner” in the Ozarks. A onetime farmer and teacher in his native Iowa, 52-year-old Guy Howard felt the Gospel call ten years ago. Although his Ozark people love him now, many of them resented him at first, even to the extent of burning down his school. He was “a furriner” and it took him a long time to live down the mountaineers’ suspicion that his Bible was just a disguise to hide a revenue officer’s badge.

Preacher Howard was a Quaker when he started out (he is now an ordained Disciples of Christ minister), but he was short on denominationalism, long on the love of God. He walked up & down the hills, holding revival meetings wherever he could gather a crowd.

Unlike some Ozark preachers, Howard never whipped his listeners into frenzied praying and testimony. He spoke gently of redemption, taught that Christianity is greater than any single church, that its great message is brotherly love and service.

Said one mountaineer: “Shorely must be aworkin’ fer the Lord fer ye hain’t beggin’ fer money nor atalkin’ denomination.”

In his decade of preaching and teaching, Howard has walked some 4,000 miles a year. His people have often given him clothing and food, but his actual salary has averaged $14 a month. Last week the first printing (5,000 copies) of his book was nearly exhausted, a second printing was in preparation, and a Hollywood producer was dickering for the cinema rights.

Moonshine and Confession. Longtime curse of the Ozarks, and Preacher Howard’s knottiest problem, has been moonshining. One of his book’s most poignant chapters concerns his watch by the bedside of a delirious 14-year-old boy dying in agony of fusel-oil poisoning after drinking moonshine. The boy’s eyeballs bled and he screamed: “Git my eyes, Pappy; they’s rollin’ off the bed.” When the boy died, Preacher Howard had a hard time dissuading an uncle from going out with his shotgun to find the man who gave the boy the liquor. Said the uncle after Howard prayed and pleaded with him for two hours: “Here take this gun lest I change my mind—killin’s too good for them Saxons.”

Preacher Howard has baptized hundreds of Ozark people. One of his strangest converts was an old granny. The blind old woman summoned him to her cabin, said: “From what I heerd about ye, preacher, I reckon I kin trust ye ter keep a secret. Hit’s always been a deep sorrer in my life, I kin tell ye. My own children don’t know and nobody else here knows. But, preacher, I feel I ain’t much longer fer this world and I jist gotta confess hit ter somebody.”

The confession: Granny was 15 when her mother died. Her father had made her live with him, and she had borne him eleven children. “Do you believe I’ll git to heaven after alivin’ thataway?” she asked. Preacher Howard assured her that she would if she confessed Christ and was baptized. She agreed: “Folks allers say nobody gits sick from being baptized and I believes hit; but ’tain’t cold today, nohow.”

Preacher Howard guided Granny to nearby Turkey Creek. He put a handkerchief over her mouth and nose so that the shock of the immersion would not strangle her. Then he baptized her. “Hallelujah!” she spluttered as she bobbed up. “I’m blind now but some day I’ll see the Lord in all His glory.”

Rough but True. Author Howard has given his characters fictitious names, changed a few circumstances to preserve family secrets. But, says he: “Some of it is rough, but it’s all true.” There is only one mean character in the book: penny-pinching Missoury, with whom Howard boarded briefly when he first went to the Ozarks. When Missoury tried to marry her daughter Arabella off to him, a neighbor warned of Arabella: “Better watch out, teacher, she’ll shore marry you whether you want her or not; she shore is looking for a man.”