You know what? If weren't for the fact that Branson lost to Ozark (Branson ranked #7 in class 4A in MO, Ozark #1) in football tonight (24 Ozark, 21 Branson), it would have been darn close to a perfect day. First of all, it's been a right pretty week in Ozark Mountain Country this week. I mentioned earlier that the trees had changed, virtually overnight, last weekend while we were in Kansas City. Early predictions of fall color claimed there wouldn't be much--but someone forgot to tell the trees. The oaks must have heard, for they're all brown and not pretty at all this year, but the rest of them...well, let's just say the Creator has sent his angels out to play with the watercolor brushes. The sugar maples especially--I can just hear the directions now..."Let's mess with their minds--paint that 3rd branch from the bottom on the left with just a hint of red, the 6th from the top of the right full red inside only...and make the middle itself all light pink." There is no rhyme or reason to the maples' coloring...in a whole row, 2 might be pinkish-red, 1 full green, and the rest varying reds and pinks and greens. I kid you not. My aunt, Ethel Wilson McLemore, and a cousin, Georgina Boswell Cummings, came over this morning to do some genealogy chatting. Georgina, although she doesn't look it, is old enough to remember my gg grandmother, Annis Clinkenbeard Bull, who died in 1945 (and was Georgina's grandmother, through her mother Maggie Bull. My g grandmother Sarah Elizabeth Bull was Maggie's oldest sister). So I got to hear a few stories, but we mostly played catch up on the Bulls and Boswells. Georgina's father was Ralph Boswell. Georgina's husband was a Cummings--I don't remember his first name. But his mother was Edna Bilyeu, his father Phillip Cummings. So Georgina and her husband were distant cousins through the Bilyeus. Edna's grandfather was the son of Jacob and Catherine Elizabeth Williams Bilyeu. Jacob was brother to Elizabeth Louisa Bilyeu Clinkenbeard, and she was Annis Clinkenbeard Bull's grandmother. That's how to get what I call "Clinkenbeard Confused" or "Bilyeu Boggled". <BG> And don't forget, in Taney and surrounding counties, we say "Blue". Bill-you marks you as an outlander, immediately, about like saying "Kissie" for "KUH-zee." The former is as bad is "Bill You". Ideana Lain Hinkle and her mother arrived in Branson early yesterday, and spent time with cousins in the Cupp family. Ideana has been searching for collateral Cupp lines, and visited Cupp/Nash Cemetery with her cousin. The confusion behind the name of the cemetery is this--Sarah Ellen Nash b 1874 Taney Co. MO married William W. Cupp b 1872 IA sometime 1904-1910, but not in Taney county. She was married first to a Warren, and had a son with him in 1904, but by 1910, she's listed in the Taney Census as being William's wife. The cem was land owned by Jeff and Rachel Wilson Nash, Sarah Ellen being their daughter and the first person buried in it. That's how Pama and I are semi-related to Ideana. Anyway, Ideana called me this morning, and we met for lunch. I'm not sure what she thought when she walked into the place--she beat Aunt Ethel, Georgine, and me there--and she probably didn't know what she was getting into, going clean out in the boonies with a van load of women. I'd called Pama to invite her, but she had a family emergency and had to cancel, unfortunately (everything's okay now.) After lunch, we picked up Ingrid Albers, and went up north to Goodnight Holler & Meadows Cemetery. I got kinda tickled, for the roads "Goodnight Hollow Road" and "Round Mountain Drive" meet up near Hwy 176; we'd been chatting by 2-way radio, since Ideana and her mother were following in their car. I'd handed the radio to Ingrid, and after a couple of waves to get it back--she was in the middle seat of the van talking to Ideana--I simply pulled over and got out. Although I knew she was anxious to explore Goodnight Holler, and that was the road to do it on, I wanted to take Round Mountain down Cummings Ridge and into the holler. (The roads meet up again down in the holler, just as you cross Bull Creek on a cement low-water bridge.) I had to get back to town to beat the school bus, but I knew Ideana would be able to explore the other road to her heart's content on the way back. So we took Round Mountain Drive. And a drive it is...I can't tell you how many miles you can see, but that mountain (hill to some of you folks) is one of the highest around, and you can see for many miles from Cummings Ridge. It is soul-comforting at any time, but to see it today, while the trees were at their peak with the famous blue haze hanging over the WRV--well, I'd told Ideana I'd be watching her in my mirror if she wanted to take some pictures. We went less than 500 feet before she stopped and got out...<VBG> and you should have heard her gushing! She lives out in the state of Nevada now, and from what Ingrid tells me and I've read, there ain't a lot in common between the WRV and Nevada. Ideana had told me about crossing Bear Creek yesterday on a couple of concrete slabs--"Just a slab of concrete, no rails or anything!", but I didn't tell her I've seen those slabs under several feet of water before...some folks you have to kinda ease 'em gently into things (I'm teasing). So it was with a bit of trepidation that I approached the cement bridge over Bull Creek. Of course, I had to stop right in the middle--this bridge is more than a slab, but still a low-water bridge with no rails--because the trees downstream were reflecting in the creek waters something beautiful. I took a picture of that, and so did she. She then snapped off a shot of me with upstream in the background, but you know what? I totally forgot, despite telling myself I would do so at the cemetery, to get a picture of her. That's aggravating. I was on the radio, explaining that the dirt road we were on was an old road--"Can you hear the wagons creaking down here?"--as we drove north towards the cemetery. Ideana wanted some pictures of some old cabins and outbuildings, and we passed a good one just down the bench from Meadows Schoolhouse and the Cemetery. When we got to the cem, all 6 of us--me armed with one of the kids' socks left in the van filled with cornstarch "borrowed" from the cafe we ate lunch at (I knew the owners, always helps)--got out and walked around. At this point, Bull Creek Valley is about a 1/2 mile, more or less, wide. The cem sits on a bench of some mountain, about 1/3 of the way up maybe (I'm terrible with distance), on the east side. The floor below is pasture and creek bottoms, and several "hollers" join in the valley just north of Bluff--you can see the "town" from the cem, if you know where to look. There's not much left, but it was right on Bull Creek, I believe, and despite its name, didn't sit on a bluff, but was protected by one outstanding one. The west side of the valley is covered in trees, and the sky is big here. Ideana had mentioned a relatively new grave in Cupp Cemetery yesterday, and asked why someone would want to be buried in such an old, neglected cem. I told her because it was away from "civilization" and traffic, but Hwy 65 is a 4 lane running just feet from it. And Cupp is in much better shape than many cems in the White River Valley. I like Cupp. There is one big active cemetery in Taney County, and there are some 4,000 graves in it. While it is a beautiful place, I don't want to be buried there, and neither does any of my immediate family. Might be a morbid subject, but I like peace and quiet and trees, and the thought that someone might find some of that in a place when they come to see whatever represents me is restful in itself. My family has a bunch of plots down in a corner of Old Branson Cemetery, but I don't even want to be there; that's right on an intersection that is pretty busy, across from a cement plant. Cupp and Meadows both have big old trees which are a rarity in Taney and much of the WRV, due to tie-hacking, pencil factories, and logging in general. Many cems were paced off and had cedars or an evergreen-type of tree planted in the corners to mark them. Most were fenced as well, but fences have a way of coming down over time. That's one way we find old cems around here--the trees. I don't know that I can adequately explain the feeling that we get in these old cems. While at Meadows, we looked for the Cupp and related tombstones, but I noted Ingrid resting in the view of the hills and the simple peace of the place. We were about 10 miles upstream from Walnut Shade, the closest town of any distinction left in the area. It's a feeling similar to what you will get when you come back to visit the White River Valley, or "come home," as I like to say. To know that feeling must be something like what you'll feel when St. Peter opens the gates, or Allah lets you into Paradise, or however you picture heaven to be. To buried in a place that gave you that feeling while you were alive--well, I can only imagine it, but I'd want nothing else. It's almost a longing, that feeling of coming home, and no matter what the afterlife is like, your spirit would have to rest knowing the trees are watching over you. Sure, some say "you won't know, so why should you care?" I don't know, but I do. Ideana's Cupp line never lived in the WRV region--this was a collateral Cupp line. But I'd be willing to bet she was able to answer her own question by the time she left Meadows Cemetery. She took off back up Goodnight Holler Road, and since I didn't get a "Help! I'm lost!" call, I presume she's made it back to her motel for the night. She and her mother, Margie, are leaving tomorrow. I dropped Georgine off at her house--lucky woman, she lives on Cummings Ridge...although I could hear Greg remarking that if he lived there, he'd be chopping down a few trees that had the temerity to grow in place of the view. (And he wasn't even anywhere near us lol) Aunt Ethel, Ingrid and I came on back 19 miles from Meadows Cemetery to my house, and yakked. Aunt Ethel left, and Ingrid and I got to sit and yak some more. After my boys left with their father for the weekend, Greg wasn't home from his job yet, so she and I went up to that big cemetery, which is noted far and wide for its beautiful trees in the fall. After walking for a while, I took her home, and came home again. We took Victoria up to Greg's mom's in Nixa, listening to the football game on the radio; and I even got Chinese for supper. I hope Ideana understands why her Cupps are buried in such a place, now. I hope she gets an understanding of why it's home, even with all the traffic and tourists and noise and construction. Because all that is taking place, mostly, on the west side of the county, around Branson, and much of the rest of the county is remote, with curving roads meandering down ridges and up benches and concrete slabs crossing the creeks that only threaten during high-rain times. Shoot, most of the White River Valley, with the exceptions of areas like Branson, does not require much of an effort to travel in time, seeing what your people saw and how they lived. If it's remote and difficult now, it was much more so then. Ideana was a good example of how different the outside world is; she was also a good example of someone wanting to understand. I learned from my time in Kansas City over the years that it's nothing unusual for folks to drive 30 or more miles--one way--to work, and they drive the freeways and easy roads at high speed. Here, it's nothing unusual for folks to drive the same distance, only down dirt roads and curvy roads, up and down steep hills that wear out a transmission and brakes faster than stop-and-go rush hours. I drove those miles in the city a lot, seeing few trees and hills, looking at buildings and houses and other people and finding no quiet place for the spirit. Some folks thrive on that kind of thing--but some folks don't, and like I did after 8 1/2 years, and like my people did when they left for a while--I came home. Ideana, it was a wonderful day! Vonda Wilson Sheets ListMom for MOTANEY and MO-AR-WRV http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~moarwrv/

I just wanted to comment on how much I've enjoyed reading the commentaries on this list. I am living in Colorado, but am orignally from SW Missouri. I spent most of my life in Carthage (Precious Moments) and spent six years in Cassville (Roaring River) . There haven't been a lot of family tidbits I can use, but have been amused with some of the Ozarkian language. I'm asked all the time what my accent is. It's not really southern and not really midwestern, but folks recognize I talk a little different. I just tell 'em I'm Ozarkian. (better than owning up to being just plain hick) On a trip home last summer for my parents fiftieth anniversay (yes people do stay together that long) I knew I was getting close to home when I heard a local radio station give the traffic report and then the traffic reporter told the dj, to "taker 'er easy" and the dj replied "I'll do 'er" It put a smile on my face for several miles. I love Colorado, but since I live near Denver, I miss the easy pace of back home. I had subscribed to this list because my Wright/Kissee/Jones families were found in Ozark, Douglas counties in Missouri and across the line in Fulton County, Arkansas. Vonda, keep cranking out the great stories and information. It keeps me close to my roots. Sherry Swarens Quade

Sherry, I am much like you, I love Colorado, but reading these stories remind me of a much more laid back lifestyle of Louisiana. I am outside of Denver in Aurora. S.K. Martin-Quiatte johnsherryq wrote: > I just wanted to comment on how much I've enjoyed reading the commentaries > on this list. I am living in Colorado, but am orignally from SW Missouri. > I spent most of my life in Carthage (Precious Moments) and spent six years > in Cassville (Roaring River) . There haven't been a lot of family tidbits I > can use, but have been amused with some of the Ozarkian language. I'm asked > all the time what my accent is. It's not really southern and not really > midwestern, but folks recognize I talk a little different. I just tell 'em > I'm Ozarkian. (better than owning up to being just plain hick) > > On a trip home last summer for my parents fiftieth anniversay (yes people do > stay together that long) I knew I was getting close to home when I heard a > local radio station give the traffic report and then the traffic reporter > told the dj, to "taker 'er easy" and the dj replied "I'll do 'er" It put a > smile on my face for several miles. I love Colorado, but since I live near > Denver, I miss the easy pace of back home. > > I had subscribed to this list because my Wright/Kissee/Jones families were > found in Ozark, Douglas counties in Missouri and across the line in Fulton > County, Arkansas. > > Vonda, keep cranking out the great stories and information. It keeps me > close to my roots. > > Sherry Swarens Quade > > ==== MO-AR-WRV Mailing List ==== > Do you have records or data for the WRV? Transcribe it! > Do you have a webpage with information for the WRV? Link it! > Get involved! > > ============================== > Ancestry.com Genealogical Databases > http://www.ancestry.com/search > Search over 2500 databases with one easy query!