Rural Missouri - January 2022 - 14

The office of the Monroe County Appeal has changed considerably since the time when Norman Rockwell visited. Left: Jack worked at this roll-top
desk, banging away at a Remington typewriter. Right: Today's publisher, Robin Gregg, can knock out pages for the weekly paper from the office or
anywhere with an internet connection. The paper livestreams events around Monroe and Ralls counties and can be found online and on Facebook.
falling and Jack was the most popular man in Monroe
County.
An article on the editor printed in Country Gentleman
magazine and widely reprinted around the state told the
rest of the story. " Unfortunately, the rain continued to fall.
Crops rotted in the field. Fall plowing couldn't be done. By
Thanksgiving Blanton was being shunned by friends and
by New Year's Eve, with rains still falling and fields knee
deep in mud, he was regarded as public enemy No. 1. He
had, however, achieved a reputation as a drought breaker,
and eventually that long wet spell was forgotten. "
Years later, the corn crop was again dying in the fields
due to lack of rain. " Blanton's farmer friends, cocking an
eye to a cloudless sky from which no moisture had fallen
for a month, began to hint that something ought to be
done - but nothing too drastic, mind, " the Country Gentleman
story related. " The editor acceded but refrained from
couching his appeal to heaven in a banner headline. This
time he printed a prayer - a modest and humble prayer -
in a 2-column box. "
True to form, Jack wrote about the result in his weekly
column. " A million-dollar rain fell in Monroe County Sunday
night. Hundreds of people feel it was in answer to a
prayer that was featured on the first page of last week's
Appeal. Comments on every hand indicate a deep-seated
belief in the efficacy of prayer, though as stated last week,
the average citizen would rather do without rain than go to
that much trouble. "
Jack also mentioned the incident in one of his GlobeDemocrat
columns, writing " The farmers still come to me
when we are having droughts. 'But please, this time don't
put it in 60-point type.' "
A devout Baptist and stalwart Democrat, Jack never
shied away from religion or politics. He once wrote that
" Democrats are staying up nights to keep Republicans
from shooting Santa Claus. " But he also added a Republican
perspective to the paper.
14 RURAL MISSOURI | JANUARY 2022
" I kept getting so exasperated at the treatment we Democrats
get from city papers that one day it just occurred
to me that some of our local Republicans might have the
same feeling about the way we treated them, " he said of
the conservative column.
He blasted papers that did not take a political stand one
way or the other, writing, " A newspaper without political
convictions outspokenly expressed is like meat without
salt or pepper on it. "
Jack also unashamedly did his best to put Paris on the
map. When he learned that " a squad of the old boys " was
planning a fiddle contest, Jack turned it into the Missouri
State Fiddling Championship with the champion crowned,
of course, in Paris. He convinced cities around the state to
hold contests to select regional representatives to the final
showdown. Then he invited the mayors of St. Louis and
Kansas City to be the judges.
The event ended up on the front page of every paper in
the state.
The excitement of the fiddle contest had barely died
down when Jack again put Paris in the news. This time
he was acting as president of the Mark Twain Park Association
organized to save the writer's birthplace in nearby
Florida, Missouri. A picnic he organized - complete with
a modern pressroom with photos and necessary statistics
- became a national event and led to the creation of the
Mark Twain Birthplace State Historic Site.
His columns were routinely reprinted in papers around
the state, especially the Sikeston Standard where his
brother, C.L. Blanton, was the " Polecat Editor. " The Standard
wrote a tongue-in-cheek column about Jack's premature
death gleaned from the county financial records,
which noted " Pauper coffin for Jack Blanton - $17. " It
turned out Jack had convinced the county to pay the funeral
expenses for a poor man whose family had no money
and his name was substituted in the accounting.
The Rev. Harold Hunt, pastor of the First Baptist

Rural Missouri - January 2022

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