He’s 89, and Has He Got a Story to Tell!

Looking dapper in a gray suit with an American flag pin on his lapel, Douglas Mahnkey pauses between bites of fried catfish and hush puppies at a cafe to explain why he decided to become an attorney.

“Growing up, I noticed the lawyers in Forsyth dressed better and didn’t work very hard,” he said with an impish grin.

At 89, Mahnkey still puts in a half-day five days a week in his office across from the Taney County Courthouse in this town of 1,000 people.

He handles a few wills or an occasional divorce case, but many times Mahnkey can be found leaning back in his chair regaling visitors with tales of his beloved Ozark hills and the folks who have lived in them.

Mahnkey is one of the last of the old-time Ozarks storytellers, a man with a razor-sharp mind and wit to match who has witnessed a lot of the history he recounts.

The former country schoolteacher, county clerk, prosecutor and state legislator was born on his grandfather’s farm on Swan Creek, a few miles north of Forsyth, and has spent a lifetime in these hills.

He spins stories of his grandfather, a co-founder of the notorious Bald Knobber gang, of riding horseback through the wilderness in the 1920s campaigning for votes, of meeting President Harry Truman and Sir Winston Churchill in Fulton in 1946.

Interspersed in his stories are long-forgotten towns such as Kirbyville, Mincy, Oasis, North Lone Star, Melva.

“I never forget a story,” Mahnkey said. “I may forget to buy gasoline.”

As a child, Mahnkey listened as pioneer settlers gathered around the stove at his parents’ country store and told stories of hunting, elections, sickness and death, murders and lawsuits, pranks, fights and even ghosts.

He has woven his tales in a storytelling competition beneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and in the Capitol in Jefferson City. Mahnkey is still in demand by civic groups as a dinner speaker.

He has written two books on Ozarks life, “Bright Glowed My Hills” and “Hill and Holler Stories.” He is a historical consultant to The Ozark Mountaineer and has written for the magazine for five decades.

Mahnkey has a deep admiration for the people from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia who traveled up the White River and by wagon to settle in the rocky, beautiful and remote Ozark hills of Missouri and Arkansas.

“They were independent people,” he said. “They liked to hunt and fish in these wide, clear streams. They were hill farmers and artisans.”

Mahnkey bristles at the notion that the gently rolling mountains were settled by or are still inhabited by hillbillies, as suggested by comedians.

“I resent being called a hillbilly,” he said. “It’s all right for one of my friends to call me hillbilly, but once somebody from Chicago called me hillbilly. We’re mountain people.”

Some of the traditions that Mahnkey cherished as a child continue in these parts, and he says, “I suppose they still make some moonshine. Hell, I know they do.”

Which brings to mind a story.

Years ago, a man walked into Mahnkey’s law office and boasted that he was helping federal agents crack down on moonshining. John Persinger’s still was to be raided next.

Later that day, Mahnkey stepped into the local watering hole and saw Persinger sitting at the end of the bar.

“I sat down beside him and said ‘John, I don’t suppose you’re making whiskey, but if you are, you better get out of the business because I just got a tip,’ ” Mahnkey recalled. “He set his bottle of beer down, said thanks and away he went.”

Two days later, the informant stopped by Mahnkey’s office.

“He said, ‘Well, we went down to raid John Persinger’s still but all we found was a little pile of ashes. Some s.o.b. squealed on us.’ ”