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November/December 1971
By Victor A. Croley
Old log cabins and barns are fast disappearing from the Ozarks and few modern builders or carpenters will take the time—or even know how—to restore the structures. Hand-hewn roof shakes, originally rived with an iron froe and wooden mallet from white oak blocks, are now difficult to come by and it's much easier to cut the ancient timbers of a log building into stove wood than it is to repair them. If one log building is a find, then, two of the structures are a positive windfall.
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Carol and Nicole were determined, though, and finally happened on a sagging log barn near Georges Creek, Arkansas. Since the owner considered the outbuilding an eyesore, she was happy to sell it for twenty dollars.
It cost another eighty dollars to have the heavy,squared oak beams dismantled and hauled to the cabin's site near Green Forest . . . but there they proved to be a real treasure for they closely matched the logs of that building. With the "new" wood, the teachers constructed a second room, joined it to the original cabin with a dog-trot or breezeway and added a wide, covered porch to give themselves ample living space by even today's spacious standards.
Pioneer parents, untroubled with claustrophobia, often kept house and raised a large family on no more than 120-square feet of floor space and an open yard swept daily with a broomsedge whisk . . . while some of today's modern ranch houses seem to sprawl over half a mountainside. Carol and Nicole's snug lodge lies somewhere between the two extremes . . . the humble but happy product of some dreams, a little money, a bit of ingenuity and a healthy respect for the traditions and resources of yesterday.
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