Listening to the Jar Flies

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To the casual visitor, Wheaton and Rocky Comfort, Missouri, are just two tiny towns on the edge of the Ozark hill country. In “Listening to the Jar Flies,” author Jimmy R. Lewis narrates stories about the extraordinary and colorful characters who lived there between 1907 and 1960.

There’s an aging former cowboy who bested Old West legend Tom Horn in a knife fight and a faith-healing preacher who came to town seeking converts on busy Saturdays with a four-foot bull snake slithering around his shoulders. Lewis tells about the one-eyed newspaper editor who sparked a community to build a first-class high-school gymnasium for $20,000 with donated labor and lumber salvaged from old army barracks. Another chapter shares the story of an air force fighter pilot from Wheaton who narrowly averted firing a missile that could have started World War III.

“Listening to the Jar Flies” details a conflict that actually was waged in Wheaton in 1953–the Great Banana War–and it narrates how Wheaton’s citizens reacted to a vicious and bloody strike against the Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad shortly after World War I. From disastrous fires to a world-class loafer, Lewis presents a series of colorful vignettes that offer insight into a piece of rural America’s history.