The town where the misfits fit, redux
“President McKinley’s name is on the deed to this house, and I got in here about ‘75-‘76. Something like that. Every hippie in town has worked on this house at one time or another,” musician and journalist Vernon Tucker said as he took me on a tour of his house.
Vernon has documented Eureka Springs for more than 50 years.
“Not bad you know, you got nine lots and a house for ten grand in 1975. I think I was the fifth hippie in Eureka Springs.” Vernon and Jane Tucker arrived in Eureka Springs in 1970, five years before purchasing his current home.
Before coming to Eureka Springs, Vernon worked for SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] in Little Rock. “I led the first anti-Vietnam protest in Arkansas back in the sixties, we picked MacArthur Park as the venue. We were outnumbered by federal agents. I carried a sign that said ‘Negotiate with the NLF’ [National Liberation Front]. Pretty outrageous, huh?”
When one of his friends blew up in a Weatherman Underground bomb factory, Vernon realized that killing for peace was not the idea he had in mind. “That’s the point when I was coming through Eureka to spend one night and day. Fifty-five years later I realized, that’s when I dropped out. I was the 5th hippie.
“Jane Tucker and I went through Eureka and ended up spending the night out at Beaver campground. We came back into town the next day, driving through. A guy stopped us and said he got us an apartment. It was five rooms with a store, right in the middle of downtown. $35 a month. We’re both still here. It’s tempting to say that there’s something out of your control about whether or not you are here. Could be true. Who knows?
“I had been interested in photography all my life. When I moved here two of my best friends were the two guys that had the best pot in town. They were photographers. I started hanging out with them in the darkroom and before you knew it, I was doing that. Now, fifty-five years later, I’ve got 20,000 black and white 35 mm negatives. I’ve been trying to put a book out for twenty years.” Vernon specializes in pinhole-style photography.
I had to ask how a former U.S. President’s name is on the abstract of an old hippie’s house.
“Well, what happened was Reconstruction,” Vernon replied. “During the Civil War there were both Confederate sympathizers and Union sympathizers living around the springs. Eureka wasn’t founded until after the Civil War. When McKinley appointed Powell Clayton, the one-armed Union general, to be the Reconstruction governor of Arkansas, he and his carpetbagger buddies looted the state for three-and-a-half years before they were finally driven out before their term was over. Riverside Drive in Little Rock is where all the carpetbaggers lived.”
Clayton had lost his left hand while hunting outside Little Rock when his rifle discharged.
“What they were able to do was take money out of the state and ship it up here. This is why within 10-15 years of being founded we had modern, expensive things.” Tucker claims this began the schism between the Old South and Eureka Springs, carpetbaggers versus the powers that be in Little Rock. Clayton was accused of corruption in issuing railroad bonds, and was impeached in 1871, but the case never went before the state legislature.
“You used to be able to walk down Spring Street to Basin Park and play music and people would give you money. You walked back up the street paid the electric company, gas company and phone company. You’d end up at the Hi-Hat. There were two bars downtown then, the Wagon Wheel which had the ABC [Arkansas Beverage Control] Number 1 permit in the state of Arkansas. That was the redneck bar where you went to get beat up. And halfway up the street was the Hi-Hat.
“The Hi-Hat was the bar it was safe for everybody to go to. You’d look around the room and you’d see the president of the Bank of Berryville. He comes over here to have a beer. He’s sitting next to a drag queen named Mufty, looking normal. Sitting at the same table playing dominos with ‘Oh I know that guy because I get dope from him. He grows great pot.’ Everybody went there. It was the people’s bar. It inspired me.
“I started five or six newspapers in this town over a period of forty years,” Vernon said. I’ve done everything except sell ads and run the press.” Vernon became editor of the Lovely County Citizen after Mary Pat Boian, Bill King and John Rankine sold it to Rust Communications.
We talked about how the conglomeration of media is a threat to free press. “I spent forty years watching it fall apart. When I first started in the press world, we were still using hot lead. I’ve watched computers come into that. And then I watched advertising take over editorial. And that was the end of newspapers.”
Vernon was a part of Greasy Greens, a performance art-collective band. They were the house band for three Arkansas governors and played in the Rose Garden for Bill Clinton at the White House.
He reminisces about one of his children being in the first class of Clear Spring students, a school that was started in a living room. He credits Larry Evans for fixing all the hippies’ cars and keeping them going.
Vernon said he believes that Eureka Springs has been run more like a business than a town, that residents are being put behind tourism. He says that he has watched free community gatherings dwindle away, one-by-one.
He also said that he believes the local 2026 election will be a defining moment for Eureka Springs. “If you want to have a thriving art community in an Arkansas town, you need one thing, cheap rent.” He added that Eureka Springs should petition to be its own county to prevent getting constantly outvoted by towns east of the Kings River. There are currently 75 counties in Arkansas.
Vernon would like to organize neighborhood gatherings, Yard Parties, to bring the community together to discuss local issues and choose local representation. He suggested that people should even start a political party called the Yard Party, a collective, grassroots movement. He said that a single leader is not what we need, but rather a group of people committed to the same cause.
Vernon Tucker will be presenting a slideshow of 200 photos on Friday, August 8, during the Longhair Invasion at the Inn of the Ozarks Convention Center. The event is from 5 –10 p.m. Admission is $55, designated for the Eureka Springs Historical Museum.