First published in 1977-- Some of you will remember that the first thing you read on the WRV site is from the opening paragraphs of this book. Here's more-- "The Ozarks hills embrace the highest land between the Applachians and the Rockies although they are not as high as is often assumed... Here and there knobs, or "balds", a surprising sight, rise out of the landscape. Balds are nigh rounded treeless hills often covered with tall grasses or low shrubs. Once an imaginative westerner was riding along one of the ridge roads with its lovely vistas. As the road descended into the hollow below to the usual small settlement, the traveler mused aloud, "You know, these Ozarks hills are different from our Rocky Mountains in more than just their lesser height and lush greenness. Out there, you go uphill and come down; but here it is more like you go downhill and come up." It is when going downhill or entering a deep hollow or gap that the illusion of mountain height is encountered. The Ozarks embrace at least 1,400 caves...Most are inhabited by some species of bats...Early settlers excavated guano, (you know what that is), from some of the caves, using it for fertilizer or boiling it down to produce saltpeter. They mixed the saltpeter with pulverized charcoal and sulphur to make gunpowder. Alluvial lead was so common in some areas of the hills that pioneers could pick it up off the ground. Using resinous pine knots which burned very hot for the smelting fire, they melted the metal in hollow stumps and used it to make rifle balls. The once abundant buffalo, antelope and elk were gone by the mid-1830s but bear, deer and wild turkey remained abundant." (vks note--deer were nearly all gone in MO by the start of the 20th century, but conservationists have brought numbers back up to where deer are sometimes considered pests in the city of Springfield. Black bear, which a person never heard about 30 or 40 years ago, are being sighted on a regular basis in some of the less populated areas of Taney county these days. There was a report of a bear on Roark Creek last spring, upstream from Branson. And the Taney County Times columnist Herman Rosser is reporting bear up on H Highway, north of Forsyth). Then there is talk on the different seasons of the year, weather averages, and what pioneers and settlers did in each season in relation to gardening, "yarb gathering" (herbs and wild greens), and other plant and meat preparation. Discussion of the cabins-- "Cabin building techniques used by an Ozarker even in the late 1800s were identical to those used in Virginia, North Carolina and New England during Revolutionary War days! Shingles, or shakes as the Ozarkers called them, were made with the froe, a blade about a foot ong and three and a half inches wide with a round hole at one end where a handle was inserted. This blade was set upright near the edge of an upended bolt (a 24" section of tree trunk) of oak or cedar, and struck with a mallet to split the wood lengthwise into shingles about 1/2 inch thick and 5 or 6 inches wide. Shingles must be split during the dark of the moon lest they curl up at the edges, causing the roof to leak. To prevent splitting, they were put in place when fresh cut, with a single homemade nail. They were laid on the rafters snugly, side by side, and the first rain swelled and tightened them. Early cabins were rectangular untis about 10 to 15 feet wide and 16 to 20 feet long, called pens. Their size was limited by the length of logs available and how heavy a timber could be handled. If more space was needed as the family increased, an additional unit was built nearby. The roof and sometimes the floor were then extended to join the two pens, making a "dog trot" between them... Cabin furniture included a corner bed with trundlebed, and perhaps a freestanding cradle...The bed was little more than a bunk built into a corner of the cabin, the fourth corner being attached to a post... Children, both boys and girls, wore long dresses and were called "shirttail youngens" until they were about 5 years old. To keep a child from underfoot in so small a living space a mother would "bedpost" him. This meant putting the child's dress under the free corner post [of the bed] giving him reaching freedom but not roaming room. There were no limiting game and fish laws in the wilderness but extravagant killing of wildlife was not common. An animal was killed chiefly for meat, grease, or hides. Yet having no stringently enforced state or federal laws did not make this a lawless area [vks note--That's depending on the period of time you are discussing. The Godseys are NOT discussing the first 20-25 years after the Civil War]. "Chimbley corner" or common-consent law, provided a definite code of conduct. Any breech [sic] of the code was severely punished often by the person against whom an offense was committed or by a committee of "regulators". Hillfolk put great emphasis on informal religious worship and avoided involvement in an "organized" church. Fifth Sunday meetings and basket dinners were joyous events. Religious leaders were usually unschooled men who had "seen the light" or were "called" to preach.... Young hillmen and women began dating early and most were married by their eighteenth birthday, many much younger... Granny women served as physicians to the isolated hill people. They had a store of mysterious simple remedies and superstitions handed down from generation to generation of pioneers. A few of these remedies were traceable to the Indian's use of medicinal herbs. Hillfolk buried their own dead and most communities had a woman skilled in laying out a corpse. She closed the eyes of the dead, placing coins on the lids to hold them shut; she tied a cloth under tha chin and over the top of the head to hold the mouth closed. These were left in place until rigor mortis set in. She bathed the face with wahoo bark tea and camphor to prevent discoloration of the flesh. Washing and clothing the bodies of women and children was her task but a man was expected to bathe older males. Many an Ozarker kept boards in his hayloft against the day neighbors would be called in to make a coffin for him or a member of his family. By the late 1800s coffin material such as sateen for lining and cotton lace for trimming were staples in many stores. These items were still available in isolated areas as late as the 1940s. Funerals were held as soon as possible after death. (Facilities for embalming a corpse were not available to most hill folk until well into the 1900s.) In the preface of one of his many books on Ozarks folkways, Vance Randolph said of the Ozarkers that they were 'the most deliberately unprogressive white people in the United States...'" [more to come]