Mr. and Mrs. Hazell standing in their yard.
Some of the Hazell kids in front of Harry's automobile.
Harry and some of the kids standing outside the workshop.
Hazell general store, somewhere near Ava.
Mr. and Mrs. Hazell standing in their yard.
Some of the Hazell kids in front of Harry's automobile.
Harry and some of the kids standing outside the workshop.
Hazell general store, somewhere near Ava.
The Ozarks is my favorite place in the world. It’s where I live and what I know. It’s where my family planted its roots many, many years ago. This is a brief account of the Hazell family of Branson; one whose way of life is likely relatable to many generational families from the area.
Harry and Lavina (Mary) Hazell, my maternal grandparents, began their journey together, a young married couple in Kansas. Harry, a railroad worker, lived with his then small family in a boxcar behind the train depot, where he worked. When word of great dust storms reached him, my grandpa made the choice to move his family, for fear of their safety.
My Uncle Don Hazell wrote his account of the storms in a book titled, “Midnight at Noon: A Pictorial Review of the Dust Bowl”.
“My father would not risk the lives of his family, and he had moved them from the plains into the Ozarks. I was to go back to the plains with him so that he might have some company at the station during the many long, black days ahead,” Don wrote.
The Dust Bowl of 1935 wreaked havoc on the state of Kansas while my grandfather and uncle holed up inside the train depot. To me, the fact that my grandpa would stay with the depot after he got his family to safety, says something about his character. Most people would have probably abandoned it and never looked back.
At some point after the turmoil of the great dust storms, my grandpa and uncle made their way back to the Missouri Ozarks to be with family.
The Hazell family had settled somewhere near Ava, Missouri and grandpa opened a general store of sorts, selling food and other necessities. Typically, a grocery store in current times takes up acres of land and one can get just about all they need in one place. Harry’s store would have taken up a fraction of that; comparable to about a fourth of today’s average bedroom. Harry’s job required delivering groceries and goods to customers’ homes; most notably, Laura Ingalls Wilder. After a few years, the Hazell family sought opportunity elsewhere, and migrated to the Branson area.
A jack of all trades, Harry was clever, inventive and intelligent, and enjoyed working with his hands. He was known to construct many things, from playground equipment for the kids, to his own automobile. A skilled woodworker, he built a shop next to their house on the homestead and made a living from selling furniture and souvenir cedar novelties.
In order to reduce the amount of sawdust in the shop, he created a motorized pulley system, in which the sawdust would be loaded into a bucket and sent to the valley below. Once it reached the bottom, the bucket would hit something and tip over, causing the sawdust to be dumped. From there, the bucket would make its way up the hill, ready for use the next time.
The shop sat where the now empty Red Rooster store is located on Highway 248 in Branson. It was one of several similar shops in the area. The Branson area’s growing popularity as a tourism destination as well as its natural beauty, created an outlet for such businesses to thrive. Out of towners and passers by could stop and pick up a souvenir or grab a refreshment. Some shops like my grandpa’s also catered to other businesses by offering items at wholesale cost.
My grandpa’s shop supported the Hazell family for many years. My mother has told me it wasn’t always easy, and when grandma said they were short of some much needed money, grandpa would ramp up production and sell more.
The White River Valley Electric Cooperative loved my grandpa, thanks to the amount of electricity being used in his shop. He was once featured in their “Hill and Holler News’’ magazine in an article named, “Electricity Aids Novelty Business”.
Personally, I believe it should have been, “Novelty Business Aids Electric Company”.
While grandpa was making furniture and novelty items to support his family, grandma stayed busy raising a battalion of children; 18 in total. It should be noted, not all of the children lived in the household at the same time. My mother, the youngest, had fully grown adult brothers and sisters as she grew up. Nevertheless, there were plenty of children and plenty of chores for them to do.
Everybody had chores around the house, from feeding chickens to emptying the chamber pot. There was no running water or toilet in the house. Vegetables had to be picked and canned, chickens tended to. Things had to be scrubbed. Laundry had to be washed. The laundry was done on Wednesdays at 4 a.m. and had to be finished before school began. Back then, trips had to be made to the well to get water for the old ringer style clothes washer. Each child also had a station in the wood shop. I recall my mother saying she was in charge of the drill press.
On a side note, bath water came from the well too. The Hazells had a bath day and if anyone wanted their own fresh water, they’d be going to the well to fetch it, bucket by bucket.
Grandma always made sure the children were presentable for school; lining them up and checking behind their ears for dirt before they left the house. These were salt of the earth, humble hill folk, but their momma still wanted her children clean.
Grandma made skirts from empty feed sacks. This was a common practice back then, so much so that the companies who produced and sacked the feed began adding patterns to sacks for that very purpose. Once a year, grandma ordered clothes from the Sears catalog for the kids and they would have to last all year long. Everyone knew they were lucky to have gotten new clothes.
The Sears catalog, by the way, was used for toilet paper in the outhouse once everyone was finished looking through it. Hill folk have always been resourceful.
This way of life was common practice for a lot of families in the Ozarks region back then. There was a lot of work to be done, and most weren’t getting rich from it. What all the hard work did though, was build good character and strong work ethic. It taught life lessons. I imagine it probably made a lot of people appreciate things that would be seemingly insignificant these days.
I’ve been asked before, if any of grandma and grandpa’s children were adopted or were twins. There were no twins, and they all had one mother and father, who just loved each other a lot. Grandpa passed away in 1963, and Grandma in 1974. I, unfortunately, never had an opportunity to meet either of them, but I feel as if I know them. My grandpa lives in me in a way I can’t quite explain, and he is one of my heroes. My understanding is grandma wasn’t quite as nice as grandpa, but I believe you have to take birthing 18 children into consideration.
We are fortunate in our current times, to have such luxuries as running water, air conditioning and advanced technology. I admit, I’m rather thankful for those things and probably would not enjoy going back to the way of life my mom’s family had. That’s just how things were back then though, and a lot of folks probably didn’t think much of it. For what they lacked in the gentle comforts of life, they surely made up for in spirit.
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