The Mena weekly star., 1921-06-09
VETERAN ED|TOR'S
 FAVOR|TE RESORT
J. T. Dixon of Quincy, Fla, Visits Each Year With Jim" and Char lie" at Hermitage Near Red Bird
 Montgomery County.

J. T. Dixon, a newspaper man of Quincy, Fla, we'll advanced in years, who takes his annual vacation in che mountains of Western Arkansas, is in Mena on his way to the northwestern part of the state and will remain here for a few days enjoying the park and other pleasant features of city which he entered for the first time 25 years ago, ahead of the iron horse, and where only few tents and hasti- ly erected shacks and shanties marked the site of the present flourishing metropolis of this section of Arkan- sas.
 On request of The Star, the veteran editor supplies the following:
 For the past three weeks l have been over near Red Bird in Montgom- cry county paying my fourth annual visit to my old friends, Jim Walsh and Charlie Otto, two interesting and pie turesque characters who entered a homestead under the government laws in the hills of this section twenty years ago and have lived there togeth- CT ever since in one-room cabin in a palship never broken for a moment, nor disturbed by serious difference of opinion on any subject, although one
 s Irish and the other German, and they are entirely unlike in temper
 ment. Both sophisticated with abun- dant experience of the world and well weary of it before they buried them selves in the hills of Western Arkan- sas, they are singularly interesting pair of old men, scrupulously honest, kindly and genial and highly esteemed by all who know them.
 There is a rare charm in the loca- tion they cose for their cabin--a mar row valley between well-wooded hills, a brook of clear, cold water flowing down the center, while hardby is a group of remarkably fine springs, one of them of undoubted medicinal value, which they call "Blood Spring" from the deep red sediment deposited at the bottom. They have improved the sur roundings in many ways without im- pairing the effect of soothing solitude and Arcadian simplicity, and if they had the means the place could be made a popular sunm.S4 resort, for nature has supplied all that could be asked The float rock indicates the hills around the spring are mineral-bearing, and Jim and Charlie have been peck ng holes all over them for many years past, but lack the money to go deep and unearth the treasure which they feel sure, with good reason is waiting to be opened up.
 "Old Jim is badly bitten with the mineral bug and will talk for a month to anyone who will listen to him on the subject. And when he gets fairly under way he is well worth l. 1, ,x,A dialect, his grand enthusiasm, his fascinating coinage of strange new words never heard before, his sputter- ing scorn of all consideration of syn tax in the heat of his discourse, his hearty hatred of the dam billionaires who are in conspiracy to keep the peo- pie down"-and all this with no tone of real malice or pessimism in it, and shot thru with gleams of Irish wit and humor, while old Charlie sits sol emnly by and listens with grave, voiceless indulgence to what he has heard innumerable times before from the same source.
 "Blessings on the two dear old boysl | They are what the highbrows would call ian anachronism' in this age of the world they left twenty years ago, and their proper setting is in the cheerful silences of the foothills of the Ozarks where they illustrate all the virtues of the simple life without any of the bigotry and intolerance of those who never had wider point of view.
 "In me Old Jim found new sub ject when we first met, and after deluging me with conversation for about four hours, remarked as be bade me good night: I'll say this for you, Mister-you're the ablest listener I've met since I came to Arkansas" And I will seek the company of Old Jim every year that l am able to get out there, for his conversation is no less a tonic than the hills and water and green solitudes where he and Charlie hold forth as the hermits of the Ozarksn