How the O Lordy Curve Got Its Name

Driving through the Boston Mountains for Thanksgiving dinner, I decided to relate an old family story about that route while there's still someone alive to remember it.

The seventeen miles from Winslow to Mountainburg is very crooked and steep, and my family calls the sharpest curve the O Lordy Curve.

It got its name back in the '50s when my Aunt Alma and Uncle Ivan went down to Ft. Chaffee to bring my Uncle Dale up to Springdale on leave from the Army. The road was narrower and more dangerous back then, and Uncle Ivan drove pretty fast and recklessly. Alma was a large bosomy woman, and Ivan was a lanky man with bony elbows. Dale sat in the middle, and kept getting tossed back and forth against Alma and Ivan as the latter whipped around the curves.

Every time Ivan sped around a bad curve, Alma would moan "O Lordy, Ivan, you're going to kill us all!" And when they went around the sharpest S-curve on the route, Alma started hollering "O Lordy O Lordy O Lordy O Lordy!"

That's how the O Lordy Curve got its name.

Addendum. The 17-mile Boston Mountain route is anchored on its south end by Mountainburg Hill,  a steep, winding pathway about two miles long just outside Mountainburg. It can overhead an old car engine even today. In my grandfather's time, the old men used to sit in the cafe and compare their time getting up Mountainburg Hill with a wagon and team of mules.