Welcome to Issue 2

The Joplin Toad is an independently run online magazine, released quarterly and centered around the city of Joplin Missouri.

We’re out to create a new kind of community based publication, providing Joplincentric entertainment in the form of top-notch interviews, journalism, history, humor pieces, art, photography, reviews, and other forms of quirky and creative collaboration. We hope you enjoy issue 2.

Start scrolling to take it all in!

Issue 2 Index

Yours are the roads (an honest love poem about joplin)

by Sophie Miller

Mixed media illustration by Aubrey prunty. This original artwork was inspired by, and created to accompany, the poem below.

Walter MElvin harold Raymond reads actual joplin reviews

 another round of real life reviews of our fair city.

Question 1: Tell us about our cover toad. Who is this toad? What's he thinking? Where does he find smoking jackets that can be tailored down to his dimensions?

"Oh, he's a very good friend of mine! Here, I'll let the amphibian himself answer these ones."

[from the artists’ imagination…]

The Toad hops up politely.

"Today? Rib. I'm thinking about spring breeze over a serene lake. Ribbit. Barely rippling the water, just enough to cause a stir. Roak. That's a good way to describe my life. Ibbit. Spring breeze over a lake. Rrrrr-ribb."

His throat bubbles thoughtfully.

"Smoking jackets that are my size?

Rrrrr-ribb. Easy. Ibbit. Lots of thrift stores in Joplin. Lots of old doll clothes. Croak."

He smooths the front of his jacket with obvious pride.

Question 2: How would you describe the art that you create? What does the process look like for you?

"I have a hard time finding the right word for such a unique medium, but papercutting seems to fit at the moment. Typically I sketch or trace the picture I want, then lay it over colored cardstock and cut directly into that in a sort of destructive copy technique. I have to keep the layers firmly in mind as I go, or things can get pretty wonky."

Question 3: What inspired you to take on the creative pursuits that you're currently a part of?
"My creative output is widely varied, and is typically focused on the market, but sometimes I let myself play with ideas that stick in my head. I, like most artists, can't say where they come from exactly, but my biggest source of inspiration has always been stories. Books, movies, games, comics, friends - I thrive on stories."

Question 4: How has living in the city of Joplin affected your life as an artist?

"I've never lived anywhere else, so it's kind of hard to say what's special without a frame of reference, but my close community has made an enormous impact on me as an artist. I just wouldn't be actively creating and pushing boundaries without these good people surrounding me with encouragement and stability."

Question 5: What's your favorite toad?

"Our very own Joplin Toad, of course!"

The Toad rises elegantly, then abruptly dabs.

 TOADS over 70: an interview with may

Each issue, we consider it important to feature a longtime Joplin resident and hear their story. Celebration of heritage is just as important as celebration of the new and now. So we built the Toad with this section being one of our cornerstone features.

If I had to pick one person that I felt embodied the heart of Joplin, I think of my grandma May Cottrell. Not only was she born and raised in Joplin and has a deep love and admiration for the city and its people, but she is humble, kind, gentle and loving. She has always been there for me through the good, the bad and the boring. And to me, she is home. That is why I chose to interview her; I wanted to capture some of her stories of what it was like to grow up here in this small city. 

-Austin

interview conducted by Austin Spencer, with his grandmother May. Transcribed by Theresa Schorr. Current photographs by John Laude, historic photos of May and her family obtained with permission.

How long have you lived in Joplin?

May “Since 1942, I was born here in Joplin out on 1906 West 4th street.”

So you were born there and you grew up over there for the most part, when did you move away from Joplin and then move back?

May “When I got married in October of 1964, my husband Grant and I moved to Topeka in 1965. After the tornado in Topeka we went to Manhattan and lived there for a little while and then we went to Omaha. And then we moved back to Joplin in 1971.”

Before moving to Topeka, the other day you were telling me about how every other day you would come into town, what day was that?

May “Every saturday. That was the day we got to come to town and daddy would give us a nickel or a dime and we’d come to the dime stores and look around and when we got older we’d go to the new dixie shop or the clothes shop. Momma would buy some of our clothes there, Pennies was down on 5th and main and that one side where the church is now. And we would buy a lot of our material to make clothes there because mom made all of our clothes when we were young. Then she would take us over to the dime store and she’d buy us our favorite candy of whatever we wanted with our nickel or dime. There was a fountain where you could buy drinks and you could get a coke for a nickel and she would buy us one of those. Then we would get on the bus and go home.”

How old were you then?

May  “It was probably in the 50’s. I don’t really remember how old we were, I remember more after I was nine or ten. The only time I remember when I was young was when I was about five or six I guess cause I didn’t go to school till I was six, but I remember getting new shoes and walking around cause I was really proud of them. The biggest thing I remember was just playing around the house, we didn’t do a lot of stuff, we went on Saturday to town and I used to walk and just play around all down by our house out on West 4th street.”

How different was it then compared to how it is now?

May “I just think of 4th to 7th street was our territory where we shopped, I don’t remember a whole lot more than that. I don’t even remember when the Frisco building was a train station.

Even though I was around when It was that. I remember when we had to come here for doctor and dentist visits. I didn’t go to the dentist until I was in like Highschool. Well, I did go to a dentist but that was back when I was in school. They would take a group of kids from the school to the dentist to have their teeth checked and you had to have your parents signature to say that you could go so we did. And they pulled my two front teeth, I guess the dentist just wanted to do something to say that he did something so that they would pay him.” 

joplin toad haikus

haikus by MAtt otey / illustrations by Austin spencer

PODCAST: interview with a joplin painter

Feature 1

Taylor and host Mark Neuenschwander talk about both local and general culture, how the culture affects our creative work, and how our creativity can in turn affect the culture.

They also touch on Taylor’s personal journey and topics such as the Joplin ska scene in the 90s, what’s next for Joplin, and how Taylor’s first painted typewriter was inspired by sounds from his musical endeavors.

You can see a quick sampling of Taylor’s work in the mural photo above and the slideshow below; we’d certainly encourage you to take a look at even more at taylorkubicek.com.
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Editorial: art for arts’ sake

by Zach Spiering

On Mother’s Day Eve, I bought my three kids a fresh box of 24 Crayolas (too cheap to spring for the 64) and handed out blank sheets of paper. I sent them off to joyfully express their love to the woman who bore their developing bodies for nine months and has tenderly provided so much since. 

I bought her a card. 

Refrigerators around the country are covered with these hand-drawn crayon-colored expressions, this childhood right of passage. Without a doubt, my six-dollar Hallmark paled in comparison to the outpouring of love in my children's carefully constructed creations. For some reason, despite the fact that we adults have superior fine motor skills and higher levels of verbal reasoning, we insist on passing on pieces of paper full of other people’s expressions to the ones who most need to hear our heartfelt appreciation. Meanwhile, we deprive ourselves of the joy of creating something. When is the last time you took out a piece of blank paper and drew a picture for the joy of it? We’ve lost our sense of art for art’s sake.

We can probably all agree that the worst part of being an adult is paying bills. That is what I constantly threaten my children with when they start to get too big for their britches. Most of my daily activities revolve around financial production. There is my job, which takes half my waking hours. I have to get to my job, which requires keeping my car in good condition.  We organize childcare while my wife and I are at work. Then there is laundry so we have appropriate clothes for work, meals to prepare, and shopping to make each dollar stretch. There is little joy to be had in traveling, dressing or eating. Their value is consigned to their efficacy toward our financial goals. The means to many things has become the end of all things. 

In civic life, we have similarly reduced the arts to their pecuniary value. We hold an art walk to promote downtown businesses. Murals are known to boost property values. Live music brings in customers. In Joplin we are celebrating a fund-raising milestone that will allow us to build a new performing arts center that will doubtlessly be an asset to our community. While I am certain that many of the proponents of the Cornell Complex genuinely love the arts, the center is largely being promoted in the local press for its value to downtown businesses and its ability to attract talent.

What if we just want an art complex because art is good? What if we love music and performances, and think it would be fun to take our kids to a show? Do we need to define it with dollars to make it a worthwhile endeavor? We all know that art benefits us, whether we make it or just consume it. Just viewing art, studies show, increases blood flow to the brain. Creating art has been shown to reduce stress and clears the mind. Music teaches our brains’ hemispheres to communicate. The mental health benefits of art are well documented. Art makes us healthier and happier. It likely makes us smarter.

I am sure we could find a way to monetize those benefits to art as well. We could talk about how its health perks can reduce health care expenditures or something boring like that. But we would be missing the point. Art can be defined as precisely those things which we create that have no utilitarian value. A Winslow Homer painting does nothing to put food in my belly or clothes on my back. But I love it as I love the dragons my eleven year old son creates with colored pencils on the back of his school work. The dragons do not help him figure out multiplying decimals, but they do something at least as valuable. They demonstrate his humanity.

Creation, not profit is at the core of what it means to be human. Mark Rothko compares, “the man who spends his entire life turning the wheels of industry” to the one who develops art. ”[The artist] understands that man must have bread to live, while the other cannot understand that you cannot live by bread alone.” Yet for some reason our society has dubbed the industrious person sane, and admired their ambition. We have, meanwhile, turned the starving artist and the literature major into punchlines. 

There are few who would claim creativity as the fast track to success. Most budding creative ventures (including this one) are not instantly profitable. Of course, many industrial ventures are in the same boat. The ride-hailing service, Uber takes in $50 billion a year from fares but has yet to earn its shareholders a dime. And while Uber has questionable social value (its claims of reducing car ownership and congestion have proved dubious), the arts add verifiable value to both those who make them and those who enjoy them. Our city is full of talented creatives producing high quality visuals, performances, and writings. Most of them would appreciate earning a fair profit for the value they add, but they have chosen not to limit their creative output to that which can be defined on a balance sheet. They create as they were created to do, for the joy of creation. 

If creation is the essence of our humanity, then, for the joy of creation, gaze upon a painting. Don’t just let it pass before your eyes; really revel in its beauty and design. Listen to music. Don’t let music play in the background while you do some more “productive” activity; saturate yourself in the beauty of manipulated sound. For art’s sake, attend a concert or a play. Learn a new crochet stitch or how to cook a new food. Pick up that dusty saxophone you once loved to play, and by all means grab a pack of crayons and a blank piece of paper, and go make something. 

original short story: ∞ falls 1 stand

by Lance Schaubert

“The Grand Falls do not exist, Earthson,” Drez said. 

“Of course they do. I’ll take you there and see.”

“We cannot leave Reygloa’s system, Earthbrother,” Yorvo said. “And what sort of Earthbrother name is Stacy? Our data shows no Earthbrothers named Stacy.”

“Sexist,” Stacy said. 

“Yes,” Yorvo said, “Indeed I am a person who has sex as I am also machinist who machines parts, but I know not what this has to do with your having taken Earthsister’s name.”

Drez vocalized a rebuke tone at Yorvo and asked, “What does Stacy mean, Earthbrother?”

“Anastasis. Stacy for short.”

“An Earthsister’s name,” Yorvo said.

Drez said, “Cease. What proof have you for the Grand Falls?”

“Why does no one like falls anymore?” Stacy asked.

It had not started out so weird. Stacy had spent his morning normally: tending to the wild chickens in the audubon center, taking a nap in the hammock he’d erected across the branches of the great Redwoods that now grew where oaks and sycamores once permeated the shale in the rainforest climate. He’d been trailblazing near the falls when they’d picked him up. The initial shock of alien abuduction went about how you’d expect and ended with Stacy having blue blood soaked kale sticking out of his right ear and a temporary tattoo of an eighties cartoon on his thigh complete with a life fox they’d fuzed into his back. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to  do much of anything other than meditate on how he’d been trailblazing when they’d picked him up. How badly he missed it now. 

and now, a quick break to let you know:

toad merch is on the way. follow us on social media to find out when and where! @joplintoad

ORIGINAL COMIC: HOw to be a postmodern artist

by Brennan Davis

AUDIO: Luke sheafer goes toe to toe with HBO

In a bonus toadcast episode for the month of July, Mark N interviews Luke Sheafer about his humorous experiences utilizing his true hidden talent- taking on corporate injustices through the formidable arena of phone support. Luke not only tells his past tales of glory, but takes on HBO themselves during the episode.

Listen here, or look up “the joplin toadcast” on Spotify.

historic rangeline: where to eat

by retrogal

Rangeline Road: Joplin, MO.  It has everything anyone could possibly want - great food, places to shop, things to do, and lodging galore!  But y'know, it used to be....different. Rangeline has always been host to great places to eat, but have you ever wondered where we used to go to grab a bite when the  hunger pangs struck? Yes, you say?  Well wonder no longer, because I am here to fill you in on Rangeline’s amazing foodie past!

The 1960’s and 70’s gave rise to the Rangeline we know today- the Joplin mainstay and place to go to find about anything.  Who knew such a rich history also started on this same strip of road? Everything from fire breathing dragons, to a controversial restaurant to come under fire for racism, to one of the longest standing eating establishments in Joplin.  Yep, the 60’s and 70’s were charged times, but wow...great eating

Henry’s

The best place to start is at the South end of Rangeline- what was then considered the “newer” part.  Rangeline road was still just a two-lane road, and really not terribly busy.  At the far end was a restaurant known as Henry’s.  A humble name for an anything-but-humble eating place!  

Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the spectacle to be found,  but I personally still remember first entering the city and seeing the flames- REAL ones- shooting several feet in front of the glowing dragon.  As a kid, I can’t remember if I was horrified or fascinated, but I always begged to eat there! To my recollection we only visited Henry’s a couple of times because it was one of those “upper end” restaurants to which you didn’t necessarily want to take your kids.

Henry’s Fine Foods--3535 S. Rangeline

Now: Empty.  Former location of a gas station, and next to Drury Inn

Howard Johnson’s

Next is the famous orange roof of Howard Johnson’s, which also featured a full hotel.  On Rangeline though, this is where you went for a great ice cream sundae! 

I am having serious price envy here!  This restaurant was one of the early mainstays of the vacationer.  You knew you could come here to get a good meal and bring the family along. This HJ closed sometime in the early 80’s, but had a good long run starting in the 60’s.

Location: 3500 S. Rangeline

Now: nothing on that exact location, nearby is Days Inn