The Road to Hokum

Capp's trip was national news. Dogpatch USA, the first theme park based on his wildly successful comic strip "Li'l Abner," was finally open for the tourist trade. The Lt. Governor was there. Miss Arkansas was there. In nearby Harrison, the merchants celebrated with "special bargain sales," dressing up employees in "appropriate Dogpatch-style outfits." With the snip of a ribbon and a slug of Kickapoo Joy Juice, Capp declared Dogpatch finally "real," and began welcoming the first of an expected torrent of tourists.

The boom was even bigger than anticipated. "Tourists here in Droves," the Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times declared. The promise of Dogpatch was fulfilled. Local motel owners held a "council of war" to find a way to accommodate the tourists pouring into north Arkansas' piece of the Ozarks at the rate of 5,000 a day to see blacksmiths, beekeepers, shinglemakers, and the surreal hillbillies of Capp's world famous comic strip come to life. What most of the visitors didn't fully realize, however, was that they were participating in a moment rich with a sort of postmodern poetics which today are commonplace. The Arkansas syndicate that built Dogpatch USA was peddling colonial stereotypes as family entertainment, and at the core of the park's attraction was a complex melody conjured by the dueling banjos of simulation and authenticity.

Dogpatch USA is the site of museum-quality cultural politics drawn so boldly and audaciously that it is almost a pity to see the park now, 25 years later, humbled, nearly forgotten, skating the edge near bankruptcy, shadowed by an idling bulldozer.

NEARLY everything is going wrong," said Shirley Cooper, the gray-haired, motherly general manager of Dogpatch U.S.A. Mrs. Cooper is from the nearby Ozark town of Deer. She used to sell her quilts at Dogpatch. Then employees started to leave. Mrs. Cooper was asked to help with an inventory control system. Then she was made director of accounting. Then director of personnel. Now, after a financial crisis and a final crippling exodus by long-time staff a couple years ago, she runs the park.

Her management style is a kindly chaos. It's like Aunt Bea is in charge. A young woman who works for her tells me, "For someone who doesn't have any kids, she gets more Mother's Day cards than anybody I know." For the past few days she and her exhausted skeleton crew of half a dozen--five young women, one man--have been working overtime to ready the 1993 summer season. This is Friday. They open on Saturday. And they're shorthanded.

There's nobody to staff the Hillbilly Burger stand. The park's personnel director is outside in the parking lot pressure washing garbage cans. The talent coordinator is wielding a weed-eater around the beaver-gnawed fallen tree by Dogpatch Creek. The state inspector hasn't been there yet to certify the safety of the thrill rides in Honest Abe's Kidventure Land.

At least Rottin' Ralphie's Rick-O-Shay Rifle Range is coin-operated.

I am sitting in Mrs. Cooper's office. A sultry and voluptuous Moonbeam McSwine gazes down from a painting behind Mrs. Cooper's desk. Small statues of Li'l Abner and Daisy Mae stand amid stacks of papers on her file cabinet. A wall clock advertises the fantasy brew of Kickapoo Joy Juice. This is Dogpatch Central--from here via pickup truck and walkie talkie Mrs. Cooper coaches the crew. Someone still has to pick up fish food for the trout, and someone still has to make fudge and someone might as well go tell them in the kitchen that they're not going to be cooking fish tomorrow because they just aren't going to be able to get that together in time.

Dogpatch USA is a classic American roadside attraction. It's a basket of cornpone and hillbilly hokum in a beautiful Ozark mountain setting that attracts a couple hundred thousand visitors each summer. Nearby are limestone caverns and a spring that flows clear and steadily into a creek that has powered a gristmill for more than 150 years. At the heart of the park is a trout farm where visitors can catch and cook rainbow trout, "the gamest of all inland fish." The decor is bumpkin kitsch. The faux-illiterate signs read like a Po Folk's menu: "Onbelievablee delishus Fish Vittles Kooked fo' Sail."

Dogpatch was finally opening two weeks late. The delay has sparked pessimistic scuttlebutt. Up and down Arkansas' Scenic Highway 7, along which Dogpatch is located, from I-40 north to the "Hillbilly Las Vegas" of Branson, Missouri, and across the Ozarks from Booger Hollow Trading Post to the seven-story tall statue of Christ at Eureka Springs, the rumors have been rampant in the tourism industry that finally, after all these years, Dogpatch USA is roadkill.

But Mrs. Cooper is proving them wrong.

"I don't know why, but every year there's rumors that the park's not going to open. We won't have the rides, and we won't be cooking fish, but we'll be open," Mrs. Cooper says as she and a woman with a ring of keys on her hip pause on their way carrying a heavy metal desk down a hallway. "They say it's gone bankrupt, or Dolly Parton bought it, or Johnny Cash bought it. But none of it's true. And this year, everyone was sure this was it because we are behind schedule. But we're still here.

Just barely. Even though this summer is Dogpatch's 25th anniversary, they have nothing planned. Where most businesses or institutions would be boasting of tradition and heritage and trumpeting their longevity, Dogpatch is lucky to still be getting electricity.