Rainbow at Dawn

Rainbow at Dawn

Many times over the years I have stood watching a storm gathering overhead, rumbling deep within and below at its base lightening flashed to slowly descend on the land. Nealy always fear of the unknown stirs within in me. It is a fear that is as nessary as the breath of life. I have stood at the threshold of death and felt the coldness of it around me. Yet each time I became aware of an intense disire to live on and with fear at my side I fought to survive and won for a time. I would rather walk through a field of flowers, not to leave a trail or pick one bloom for fear that I would change a wonderful creation. I would rather sit on the back steps with my hound drinking a cup of coffee than be in a crowd drinking wine, for fear of missing something as beautiful as a rainbow at dawn.Adios

Germs and More Germs

Could This Critter be an Adult Seven Year Itch Bug?

A Time to Remember
Germs and More Germs
By Ronnie Powell
It seems these days there is an enormous battle waging against germs and rightly so I suppose. I wonder however, what would happen if all the germs were slain, would humankind also perish? We are advised to wash our hands repeatedly during the day; to spray and wipe everything down with disinfectant, to boil water, overcook food and the list goes on. Personal hygiene is of course important, but are we dirtier today than we were back in the old days, say from the 1930”s to the beginning of the great industrial revolution after World War Two?
I was born and reared on a farm that lays along the South bank of the Dousinberry Creek about three miles from Long Lane, Missouri. We were in my opinion a typical farm family of those golden years, poor, innovative, honest and hard working folks. Shoes for the children were a luxury, worn exclusively in the winter and on Sundays. It was not unusual to strike out barefoot on a cold frosty morning to bring in the milk cows. Calloused toes and feet are tough, but are no match for Jack Frost and once behind the cattle I took advantage of warm cow piles which were usually abundant. I of course later washed my feet, but I doubt if that would be an accepted alternative to warming ones feet at the present.
Fried chicken a staple in those days and occasionally, especially on Sundays chicken and dumplings. Whether fried, baked or boiled anything left over was covered with an oil cloth and remained on the table most of the day. (No refrigeration) We never considered bacteria or other forms of germs, but happily in passing grabbed a left over biscuit and a chicken neck or wing for a snack.
Milk and butter were usually abundant straight from the cow’s udder, cooled in a spring, rich in butterfat and I suppose loaded with germs. Other meat sources were pork, rabbit, squirrel and a rare treat young groundhog and fish from the creek. All of these meat sources were handled freely and yes we washed our hands in a granite pan at the well and dried off with a feed sack towel.
Hog butchering nearly always took place at the end of summer, early autumn and was a bit messy to say the least but later when fresh liver was frying in a cast iron skillet the aroma of that indulgence made it all worth while. Most of the meat was preserved with a mixture of brown sugar and salt and left to cure in the back of the well house. The meat generally lasted until late June of the following year. I must say by late spring the remaining meat did not look to appetizing for much of it had turned green on the surface, but once sliced open and the green removed the remaining meat although a bit sharp to the taste was quite delicious. There had to be some germs in there somewhere.
It was not unusual to drink from the creek in those days, closely watching a big fat crawdad with a pincher up and ready to strike. Many times during the summer we bathed in the creek, adding our germs to the water and acquiring others I suppose.
Canned goods were plentiful in Mason fruit jars and on occasion one was found that had spoiled. I’ve often wondered how many were borderline and consumed by the family, loaded with germs. Fresh garden produce was for the taking and many times while passing by or performing the duty of dreaded weeding I’d pull a fat carrot from the ground, brush it against a pant leg and go on my way eating it. The ground had been fortified with chicken and cow manure and probably a haven for many species of germs.
Times have changed and much of the land, air and water are undoubtedly more polluted in the rural areas than it was in my youth and diligent care should be taken and perhaps those of us who were reared in the country before electricity should have been more careful, but there was little sickness among us. An occasional cold and a rare bout of pneumonia were present at times. For the most part healthy people thrived in the country environment in those days coexisting among the dreaded germs.
I realize the term germ is a broad statement in this writing and not exactly correct, but I see no valid reason to get into details of what is and what is not, just grin and go on. Adios

Heidi's Journey Continues

Miss Heidi, The Last Rose of Summer is Blooming

Heidi's Bed

Heidi's completed House

Heidi's Cage soon to be moved away

Miss Heidi’s Journey Continued

I will never know if Miss Heidi’s first few months of life were intolerable for her, but I strongly believe they were. She is extremely fearful of humans, but has begun to trust me and my wife and youngest daughter, but that trust is still very fragile. She did not know how to play when she first arrived and wanted only to be in a secure place by herself. We set up a huge wire cage for her and when the door was closed did she seem at ease. She did not appear to know what dog treats were and for the most part refused them. Cheese was her preference and with it I slowly began to control her panic attacks. But even now she won’t come when called, but will meet me halfway by going to her cage. In the mean time I began building her a home, actually a small cabin. After finishing it I left small pieces of cheese in the cabin and behold she began going inside and appeared to be very much at ease in the building. A few days ago a heavy rain with lightening came and I assumed she would go inside her new house, but she didn’t and remained outside cowering and looking for me to come outside to put her up. I cannot express how I felt watching her out in the rain, but wanted her to make the decision herself. She finally went inside but would dash out and set in the rain watching the back door. I had enough and told her to go inside the cage which was very wet. I then led her to her house and dried her off with towels. Perhaps this experience changed her mind set and now she has moved in the cabin and soon I will remove the wire cage. She is learning, trusting me more each day, but the journey is not completed for she can for seemingly no reason become very frightened. But at least she has a big yard and secure warm place to live and spends each night there with the door closed. She is truly a beautiful, gentle creature and those pretty brown eyes of hers have captured my heart and soul. Adios

Farewell Winona

Taking a Bath at Rendezvous in Granny Hollow

View From Cave McKee in Summer

Barefoot Pass in Summer

Butcher's Forty Four

Butcher at Osage Fork Camp

Butcher at Fort Albert Camp

A Time to Remember
Farewell Winona
By Ronnie Powell

This saga began midday December Eighth, in Eighty Four on Ridge McKee overlooking the River Niangua. Butcher Redoak, Twinkles John and Banjo Boats bid a fond Farewell to Winona. They headed out on an outlaw trace, carrying everything they needed on their backs. The evening shadows were waiting in the timber, soon to be close on their heels. Their destination, Barefoot Pass.
Twinkles John carried a bad thirty six, six shot of powder and round ball lead. On Butcher’s right hip, hung a Forty Four revolver, the last of the Colt Dragoons. Banjo fondly carried a Fifty One Colt, the brass frame fashioned from a Macon County church bell.
They talked a lot, chawed tobacco and smoked a cigarette or two as they slowly made their way toward Barefoot Pass. Butcher held up a hand and pointed north and then beckoned them on. He led them through tangled vines and scrub brush along a trail barely visible.
Hours past and they came to the edge of an ancient limestone bluff; the North face of Ridge McKee. It was a place where only an eagle should be. Below they could see the River Niangua, a dark ribbon of water, three hundred feet down a treacherous slope.
A cold wind tugged at their packs and tried to chill their bones. But these hearty Ozark men laughed at the wind and hitched up their packs and started down the bluff.
“No armchair mountain man got the steel to be here, I reckon!” Twinkles John shouted and cussed a bit.
A devilish grin spread across Banjo’s face and he nodded, sat down and slid a ways down the perilous incline.
Butcher foraged ahead though a mighty vine and came at last to a rock outcrop and motioned for the other two to join him there. They dropped their packs and cut a chew, a figuring on resting a bit.
Suddenly Butcher squalled loud and clear. “Oh no.”
“What is it Butcher you’re fretting about?” You sound like a flatlander in a rain storm.
“My canteen came loose and is falling to the river,” Butcher answered. “Look below and you will se it among those rocks at river’s edge.”
“Yeah reckon I see it,” Twinkles replied. “We can do without it and besides it was better it than you, Yankee.”
“I ain’t leaving it behind, you mangy Reb and soon we’ll go down to where it lies. “But for now we rest a bit at Cave McKee around that ledge.
Several minutes later they stood at the entrance of the legendary cave a gawking at the dark wide expanse of its mouth. They could see sprits there a moving back into the darkness of the cave. Sprits of old they were, Indians, white men and a few they could not identify. Twinkles shivered, as did Banjo, but Butcher just grinned and dropped his pack.
“Settle down friends,” he said, and rest a bit. I got a tale or two to tell.”
They all sat down by a large stone near the entrance and drank cold coffee, chewed tobacco and smoked. Butcher recalled tales of pilgrims who had fallen to their death and of men who had been shot and buried on a lonely hilltop above them. He swore the tales were true.
It was time to go, for evening shadows were very close by and they hefted their packs and again headed down toward the River Niangua. They stumbled and slid along the steep slope and turned up river a looking for a place to spend the night. They would not make Barefoot Pass.
Twinkles stopped and growled like a bear. “Butcher,” he said. “Look up the slope to the south, a fine place to spend the night.”
“On the North face of Ridge McKee I ask? It will be blue cold up there my friend.”
Twinkles grunted and headed up the slope. “They ain’t no other place.”
When at last they reached the barren point, Twinkles dropped his pack and looked out over the land and grinned. It was a place where only God could have made such a view and all agreed it was home for the night.
Twinkles with flint and steel, struck a fire and soon it rose into the cold night air. Butcher, gathered wood and Banjo piled up bedding leaves. The aroma of biscuits, stew and coffee beckoned to the man and they sat down to feast and watched clouds race the moon.
It wasn’t long and night crept around them held back by the light of the camp fire. Higher and higher the flames rose and danced a rhythm as old as time, when other men of old rested as they would. To the south, near Ridge Liga, a hound bawled on trail of a fox or raccoon. Far below at river’s edge, coyotes sang and the night inched closer to the dwindling flames and sleeping men.
The first light of dawn was but a faint hue on the horizon when Butcher Redoak, Twinkles John and Banjo Boats cast aside their covers of fleece and goose down and they stood shivering for a time next to a kindling fire. A cold wind blew the flames higher until at last it warmed the hearty men. Soon bacon, taters and biscuits lay heaped on their plates warming both body and soul.
The travelers tarred not on that cold, barren hill and shouldered their packs and quickly passed from view into river fog toward Barefoot Pass. They came at last to a crossing at River Niangua, where fast moving water flowed around a bend. They stood for a spell, each to their own thoughts looking across the mighty stream to Barefoot Pass, a narrow trail between two sentries of stone.
Twinkles John hefted his pack and without a word strode into the icy waters of the river. He grunted and groaned a couple of times, tripped and stumbled, but with head held high and the water lapping around his thighs, Twinkles headed straight for shore. When at last he reached the bar, he stomped about, turned and grinned.
“Pilgrims, I say to you, cause you ain’t over here yet,” he shouted, “watch your step. That river will try and take you down. It will numb your legs and chill your bones. Now come on gents, don’t stand there like flatlanders.”
Banjo grimaced and picked up his pack and pushed the Fifty One deeper into its holster. He glanced at Butcher, and then walked into the cold water of River Niangua. He howled and hollered, but kept moving and soon staggered ashore and ran to where Twinkles sat before a fire.
The last to cross the swift water, Butcher grumbled, a bit ashamed to be the last one across and with an audience that would watch every step he took. He smiled real peaceful like and strode boldly into the water. He clenched his teeth, moaned a mournful sound and tipped his hat to Twinkles a looking at him. The Forty Four was now only an inch above the water, but he carefully moved on a shivering from head to toe. He found the bar and waded to shore and hurried to the fire.
“Well you ain’t no pilgrim or flatlander, Butcher,” Twinkles laughed. “That river is mean and mighty cold today.”
Put on the Pot and let’s warm a bit,” Butcher replied. I reckon then we’ll head through Bare Foot Pass and turn East to the Valley of the Moon, where I here there is Rendezvous and a shooting match. It will take most of the day to get there.”
How long did it take some have asked for Butcher Redoak, Twinkles John and Banjo Boats to trek to the Valley of the Moon, Corkry, Osage Fork and beyond and at last back to Barefoot Pass? Well I have heard it told a time or two, I guess it’s the truth, about two hundred years, give or take a day or two. Adios

A chance Encounter

A Chance Encounter
By chance I happened on a Chicago street.
It seemed to beckon me.
There were shops, once bright where neon lights used to be.
I saw shadows there, and faces gaunt and weary.
I heard mournful weeping where they lay in a gutter bed.
Forgotten souls in anguish immersed in the hell of wine.
There were no prayers from their lips but they asked, “You got a dime?
When I reached the end of the street, I just walked away. Adios

Time Traveler

Time Traveler

A Time to Remember
Where Trails Cross
By Ronnie Powell

Most folks passing through the Ozarks are led more often than not directly to tourist attractions where food, lodging and entertainment are provided at a premium cost. There are also many residents who turn a blind eye to the natural wonders of this unique and beautiful land known as the Ozarks. Once a highland comparable to the present day Rocky Mountains and inhabited by people long since gone where their secrets abound in the remnants of secluded areas, some ageless and are endangered and perhaps will slip into infinity undiscovered and much worse completely destroyed.
Without the past, humans would do little more than mill about each day without collective memories, starting anew with nothing. Without foundation, society would crumble to begin again with the same errors never learning; never achieving culture and never knowing reason, for without the past to learn from our intellect would be little more than the creatures we share this planet with.
Several years ago while floating the Osage Fork River I discovered a cave, a very large opening with a massive overhang jutting out overlooking the river well above the flood plain. The entrance to this cave is at least thirty feet in height and at least sixty feet in width. I have no actual knowledge of how deep it is, but was informed later the cave exceeded ten miles in. I decided to have a look and beached the canoe and what I saw next was startling to say the least. Pot hunters as I shall call them had completely devastated an area in front of the opening digging for prehistory artifact. Three majors excavations were noted, one at least twelve feet deep, shored up in places to prevent it from collapsing. Potsherd lay everywhere around the dig, along with bones of which many were human. The site represented total disregard for the knowledge it once harbored of the past.
Near one side of the entrance a few feet inside the cave was a pile of discarded beer and soft drink cans and other related debris. This very small aspect of the site was the only place I saw that had not been disturbed. Working quickly with the aid of a stout stick and my hands I cleared away most of the debris and found loose dry earth and began excavating it. To my surprise I discovered a layer of stones and several minutes later found beneath them the skeletal remains of a human wrapped in a very thick hide, (buffalo I believe). The deceased lay face up with hands across the chest and most remarkable of all it was near perfectly preserved in a mummy like state. The face was of a man staring up at me through hooded eye lids, the lips drawn tight revealing teeth in a state of remarkable preservation. A large earthen bowl lay upside down on his chest. The huge hands weathered by time appeared claw like, yet strangely beautiful. At his left lay three arrow shafts containing stone points and it was at this aspect of the dig I ceased the excavation. I quickly conducted a rough measurement of the ancient man at or near seven feet in length.
I am reasonably certain the remains were that of a Prehistory Osage Indian. They were gentle folks I’ve read, but in the end when trails crossed their own by people who came like a tidal wave sweeping them aside forcing them to leave their dead behind in a sacred land. The burial sites too are slowly and or have been destroyed from this ancestral land of the Osage.
I sat for a time observing the fellow looking into the vacant eye sockets of a once magnificent human who had lived in a wilderness few today can or will comprehend. There was little of course he could reveal to me, void of life and soul and the rest of the story lay around me in shambles, defiled and in those parting moments I experienced a profound sadness.
I replaced all the stones and earth along with the debris and over the years I have often thought of the giant and if he too became a victim of the pot hunters, cast aside or stolen like the knowledge that was contained there in that lonely secluded place, a wonderful, natural treasure lost forever. Adios

The Elusive Miss Heidi

Beautiful Miss Heidi

Miss Heidi's New House

Hiding Out

An Elusive Miss Heidi

The Elusive Heidi

The journey to save Heidi began July 13, 2009 and it has not been easy for either of us and be assured I am not complaining. I began construction on a house for her a few days ago, but before it was completed a storm arrived in Windyville with torrential rain and high winds. A canvas covered wire cage was her only protection. The storm came in the night and I went to her and began covering it more secure against the wind and rain. Lightening was horrific and I was soon soaked to the skin. The lightening was very frightening to her, but she did not try to escape. Water began running across one side of the floor, but I finally got it all under control.
The next morning early I went out and she lay calmly on her bed unscathed by the storm but a little damp. After our walk together I turned her loose in the yard as I always do and away she went to hide in her hideout. The hideout is located in a corner of the yard, a little brushy area and shady.
Heidi still does not like to be touched and if I persist she will cower and tremble, so I bide my time. She will not come to me, but will meet me halfway by entering the cage for a cheese treat. Yet for of her uncertainty and fear that continues to bother her, she whines when I leave the yard without her. She is untrusting of other people and shows extreme fear if more than one person approaches her.
There have been times more often than not when I call for her to come to me she runs around the house several times before she enters the cage. And now that her house is completed, a very nice place if I may say so I am working on trying to ease her mind and enticing her to go inside. Small pieces of cheese, her favorite treat leads her inside and now she visit the building every hour or so. The building is approximately five feet high, four feet wide and six feet long and allows me to take her inside, shut the door and we sat there while she looks for treats.
Rain is due this evening or in the morning and she must stay in the little house where she will be dry and safe.
Heidi is elusive and would set out in the rains and storms if I allowed her to do so, but all of this will pass and hopefully she will put aside the terrible fear of humans that she possesses. For the most part Heidi is unafraid of other dogs; it is only humans that have mistreated her so. Little by little she is beginning to trust me, but it is a fragile thing that must be dealt with kindly. Those beautiful brown eyes of hers are softening. She is a lovely creature. Adios.