Wilna Hervey boarding the Toonerville Trolly c.1920.
By David Rose
I was born and raised just outside of Woodstock, NY. It’s famous now, but back then it was just a small mountain town. Despite its diminutive size, it was filled with progressive, imaginative, and just plain interesting people.
To get from my house down to the main road where I could hitch a ride into town, I had to go by my grandmother’s house, through a bit of woods, across Betty and Ian’s lawn, past Wilna Hervey’s house and on down to the hard road.
I had to sneak past my grandmother’s. If she spotted me, she’d have me in the house helping her get something down off a high shelf or putting something up on a high shelf. Betty and Ian were almost like family, I had to sneak by their house as well. Wilna was fairly self-sufficient. She’d just wave as I went past.
It wasn’t until I was grown that I realized that Betty and Ian Ballentine were pioneers of the paperback book industry and Wilna Hervey was a silent film star in the 1920s. Woodstock, even in the days before the famed ‘69 festival, was full of inspirational people. Being young and naive, I thought the world was that way as well. My stint in the army soon dissuaded me of such utopian notions.
It’s been my fortune to find myself among other assemblies of kindred spirits. I stumbled into one when I moved to Hot Springs back in the 1990s. The art scene, of which our esteemed editor was part, was unparalleled.
A year ago, I stumbled into another such gathering out on Spring Street when I first attended the Unitarian Universalist Church. Accepting, joyous, and dogma-free. What’s not to love. I call it the Un-church.
As an artist, David Rose won both the Arkansas Governor’s Award and the Delta Award. His works are in the collections of Tim Robbins, Bruce Springsteen, & Susan Sarandon. As a writer he flunked every English class he ever sat in. Born in Woodstock, NY, he is very much a product of the 1960s and never really managed to escape that fabled decade. Visit Rose at www.amazon.com/David-Malcolm-Rose/e/B019GBJI9C/ and on Facebook: David Malcolm Rose.
