Land in our Hands

Nights turned into mornings, friends turned into family

“These are all volunteers,” Albert Skiles reflected while reminiscing on one of his photographs from 1973 at the Ozark Mountain Folk Fair.  “My payment was getting to play drums with John Lee Hooker. 45 minutes of fame. It was all a lot of fun. We were all doing it for the fun, the excitement, the adventure.”

Albert Skiles designed the Oakhill Eco-Park, the venue for the Ozark Mountain Folk Fair on Memorial Day weekend 1973, for Edd Jeffords. Albert told Edd that the venue’s capacity was 50,000. The venue ended up holding a reported 30,000 attendees.

“How often do you get to design something like that?” Albert asked. “It was a natural bowl. It had the right angles, and created its own aisles. We looked at a lot of Roman amphitheaters. It was an ancient idea with a hippie spirit.

“I designed the site plan. We had vendors at the top of the knoll. It took about eight months to clear the bowl and get the idea. Edd had the vision that we could do this outdoors.

“See, nobody had done this before, had ever played in the woods. It was not a stadium. You were sitting on the ground. It was way cool. It rained an inch-and-a-half and we were thinking everybody would leave. But nobody left.”

Albert is a bit of a polymath. He’s an architect, a photographer and the drummer in a band called Night Owl. Night Owl played last Friday at the Basin Spring Park in the bandshell. He draws all his architectural designs by hand. When the Little Portion Monastery burned down, former Mason Proffit guitarist-turned-priest John Michael Talbot, hired Albert to design his current monastery, including the new chapel.

Albert designed and built the first passive solar home in Arkansas in the mid-1970s. “I built a solar house. Then I became part of a group to try and promote solar design. Then, I got lucky when Bill Clinton got elected governor and started his energy department in 1978. I got my job as director of solar design for the state of Arkansas, because I had a house. I could say, ‘I knew how to do this, man.’ I made it up.

“It was a two year gig to go around the state and give grants to communities towards building solar greenhouses. On their senior centers or daycare centers. Where elders or kids could grow stuff. It started my career. I do historic renovations. It’s been a good ride.”

Albert arrived in town in 1972. I asked him how he initially heard of Eureka Springs.

“I saw a sign in Austin that said land in the Ozarks for a hundred bucks an acre. I couldn’t wait to get out of Texas. This was perfect man. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.

“The first week I was here, I rented a house for sixty dollars a month. I was playing drums in two rock-n-roll bands. I had a job drawing pictures for the newspaper. I drew the covers. I got a job in architecture from the current mayor, my buddy, Butch. I got this drumming thing, photography thing and architecture thing. It keeps me awake.”

Albert left in 1975-1976, saying, “Nobody could stand Eureka if you were raising a family. It was great when I was single and 22. About when I was 24 and got married, I built a house in the woods in Madison County.”

Not only is Albert responsible for designing the Ozark Folk Fair, he is also responsible for the majority of this event’s documentation. Albert credits Michael Shah for helping him develop the majority of his photo collection from the Ozark Mountain Folk Fair.  

They stayed up late each of the three nights of the event to develop film that Albert captured each day. “Mike helped me develop a lot of these pictures. He had this old house on Pine Street. Mike Shah is a great photographer, did he tell you that? That’s how I met him. He did his own film development. Every day after the festival we’d come back and develop ten rolls a night. We got fifteen hundred photos.”

Albert turned those photos into a roughly 15-minute film, with the help of this son. 

“It’s got a great soundtrack. Most of the tunes were played by the people at that concert. It starts off with the Georgia Sea Island Singers. This starts off with the building of the venue. So, it’s like a slave chant. Showing the workers. Trying to express the energy.

“Then, we go into the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. A bunch of damn hippies, man. Having a good time. Slopping around in the mud. Building all this infrastructure in the middle of nowhere was kind of a great feat.

“One of the vendors that I didn’t get a picture of, was a guy selling nitrous oxide hits in balloons for 50 cents. You’d laugh and go crazy for 5-10 minutes. He was some kind of dental assistant. He had these big tanks. I’ve never heard of that before or since. You know, that was a good one. I just don’t have a picture. I promise it happened. I know it did.”

 “What happened to the stage and amphitheater?” I asked.

“Afterwards, there was a cultural clash. They didn’t pay the lumber bill so a lot of the people came and got the lumber.”

 “Why did this event never happen again?”

“I kind of lost track of what happened afterward except it didn’t happen again. We thought it was going to. But evidently it was just too overwhelming. You know, it worked once. 

“I wasn’t in charge of the logistics of getting everybody there. But I think they ended up charging eleven bucks for three days. After the first day, there was no more security, so everybody just walked in. It didn’t make enough money from ticket sales. But it was a really great success for those who experienced it, just being there. Everybody thought it was going to last forever, but we didn’t know. 

“So everybody was just blowing it out. You know. The Vietnam War. Nixon. And Gerald L.K. Smith. It all came together, where we showed up and said to hell with that. We’re done with that. If you don’t like it, you know, get used to it. Get over it. It was great. It was a great time, because we had folks here that were locals who really bonded with us.

“It was the best time anybody ever had in Eureka Springs, I’ll tell you that. Just look at the pictures!”