Arkansas: Orval's Pad

At $1.25 a head, it is one of the best tourist treats in the Ozarks. Visitors get to poke around the house, an imposing structure of native stone, redwood and glass that extends 214 ft. along a precipice overlooking Huntsville, Ark. With any kind of luck, they may see the lord of the manor himself, who will, in the fashion of a hard-pressed British peer, show off the ten rooms, five baths and four fireplaces that make up his new pad, and take them for a stroll down Farkleberry Trail. For no extra charge, visitors also get a whiff of a fragrant political issue in the making.

The homeowner happens to be former Governor Orval Faubus, who served six two-year terms before stepping down, voluntarily, in 1966. The boy from Greasy Creek—the ruins of his log cabin birthplace are just 15 miles from his present home—came into office in 1955, owning one weekly newspaper. By being "frugal" with his $10,000-a-year gubernatorial salary, as he puts it, he managed to acquire four more weeklies, and some real estate in Huntsville, as well as the big house on the hill (which drew 1,100 paying guests during the first weekend it was open, for a $1,375 gross).

"That," says Republican State Executive Secretary Truman Altenbaumer, "is what I call a real slick trick." The Republicans claim that the house cost at least $250,000, plus $60,000 to furnish, keep wondering aloud where the money came from. "Let 'em wonder," says Faubus, who insists that it cost only $100,000 and carries a $75,000 mortgage. "When the time is ripe, I'll explode all their myths."