February 23, 1892

Folklorist Vance Randolph was born in Pittsburg, Kansas. Soon after earning his MA in psychology at Clark University, he moved to the hills of Arkansas and spent most of his life writing and studying the folklore of the Ozarks. In March 1962, Randolph married his second wife, Mary Celestia Parler, a folklore researcher and English professor at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). He later published a collection of Ozark jokes and jests, Hot Springs and Hell (1965), and Ozark Folklore: A Bibliography (1972). Pissing in the Snow (1976), a collection of bawdy folk tales, became far and away his most popular book.