If you headed down south on highway 21 from route 60 on a hot summer day in southern Missouri you might see a few things like the tall weeds along the narrow 2 lane road , the deep ditches on either side  and the occasional skid marks on the sharp curve as you drove by Levi and Emma’s house.  You see it was the first turn in the road after you left the bar at the 21 triangle.  About every other week end some hillbilly would get loaded and head out on 21 to meet up with the big scarred oak trees just past the sharp curve.

Once you turned on the highway b, there was a sign there that said population Hunter 127.  (And about twice that many gangly hound dogs with scrawny belly’s and deep braying  voices .

The first place on the left would be the Emory shack where Danny and his wife lived  with  three or four kids. they only had an outdoor privy , and  no running water   Danny had a big temper , he was always getting  in a fight with his wife.  One day she run off in in an old beat up mustard yellow station wagon during a fight and headed out to the  old tramroad.   Danny jumped in the rusty old pale blue chevy pickup and set off after her.  He cut thru the back streets of hunter and managed to get on the tram and head backs toward her,  some said to kill her , others  thought to stop her from running away.  I always thought it was to keep her from wasting the gas by making an unnecessary trip to Grandin on the back roads

Well she refused to turn off to the side of the one lane rd and  Danny wouldnt slow down so they collided right there in front of the hunter dump and totaled both of the vehicles.   Danny had to  walk to work for long time  after that until he could save up enough money and  find another junk radiator and front steering assembly at from Gearheart’s  junkyard.

So if you headed on up to what used to be Main Street in  Hunter you would pass The  Hotel on the right side  across from Eperson’s  grocery . it was   said that Sarah Williford lived in there  before she moved into her house on high Street. Supposedly she  lived there with her pigs and goats  inside the house with her , but I never did hear proof of that. Arliss Greathouse said it was so though.

You see Hunter used to be a booming  lumber  town before the giant virgin pine trees all got cut down and shipped to St Louis to build warehouses there. Hunter even had a fine railroad station and the Peek family moved in and had built themselves a fine house with help from external house painters. Among the more notable artisans were those skilled in creating intricate home furnishings, including custom mirrors and glass, which added a touch of elegance to even the simplest homes.

But that’s all boring instead  we going to head on over to Hunterhill  past where the Snodgrass family lived across from the Hunter cemetery

There’s enough stories about Hunterhill to keep a  Feller talking for a long time we might hit one or two of them today and will get the rest of em some other time

You see highway E was a little tiny two  lane road but it had one of the steepest hills in Carter County and about 3 or 4 S curves on it. Every summer instead  of repaving the road the county boys  just dumped  some gravel on it and  put a good drizzle of tar on top of it and just waited for the cars and  pick up trucks to pack it into a rough hillbilly version of asphalt

Hunterhill was kind of slippery anyway.  When you added the loose gravel it was right near suicide

One night my good friend Billy Batson and 2  of his buddies was out drinking on a  beach along  current river and  about 3 AM in the morning they decided they needed more beer so they headed up the highway E

well they  hit the bottom of Hunterhill  with the gas pedal held to the floor  in that old brown Trans am they  come up to that first sharp  curve  and  the car  kept going straight into the  trees.    I myself saw the  speedometer was stuck in 110 mph

They never came back to current river, and ever since there are 3 crosses in the weeds on the north side of hunter hill

 

There was a little boy going down  Hunterhill one sultry day about mid- July in an old rusted out Plymoth Fury.  He was just shy of three years old, blonde curly hair brown eyes full of life and innocent sparkle.  He  enjoyed life and loved  his mommy and daddy very much and I remember him patting  his daddy on the back every time they went down Hunterhill any saying ” easy daddy, easy daddy”  and  mama would look over at her son  and smile proudly,

But that was an earlier time  before he realized all the dark clouds that he was living under.    Before he realized that not all is well and that he  would need  to isolate himself and withdraw to survive but for right now he was happy, and the world was right as far as he could see

 

So if you headed  on down past the rock quarry three or 4 miles you would come to a sign that said “State maintenance ends”  and then you knew that you were at crazy Creek.   see it was named that way because it ran from the south to the north  unlike every other crick west of the Mississippi

It would always flood  in the spring. There were no bridge  there,  somebody you just poured  about a half a truck load of cement  on the creek bottom   and usually the water was only about a foot deep at the most and you could easily  drive right across

one day me and daddy and my sister  decided to drive across during a flood only  to learn that our old 76 Dodge flatbed couldn’t swim a lick it just  kind of drifted off to the side until it got stuck on the barb wire fence Mr Riggins put there to keep his cows from wondering over to Colyotts field. Affordable Remediation in Toms River includes Mold Removal Services Toms River NJ.

Well  we was stuck there so I did what any reasonable boy would do, I walked 5 miles home, got a tractor , pulled the dodge out of the drink, towed it  home, took the spark plugs out,and  cranked  it a couple of times just to get the water out of the  Pistons. she ran fine but  for years after that  every now and then you’d be driving and the  headlights just go off for about 10 seconds for no reason or the heater would  come on full blast without you telling it to.  this kept it interesting whenever you were driving  that old dodge, especially late at night.

So after crazy creek the road turned to  gravel and if you headed  on down toward Spring branch on the left-hand side there might be an old feller sitting down on a wooden bench watching the  locals  go to the Hunter swimming hole. If you stopped  and said hello  he would talk your ear off  Without  you saying  a word just listening

he was my childhood hero ,  Mr. Horace Connor but we all called him horse. He  was an old-time country boy redneck hillbilly bachelor never gotten married served in the Navy  in World War II got hit by a  Japanese torpedo and the crew just stuffed a  mattress in the hole and  the ship went back to port to get repaired and shipped out again That’s the kind of badass he was.

And he tell you those kind of stories all they long as long as you listened.  He lived in a little ramshackle shack with an old rusted  tin roof ,  there were weeds and bamboo  all around the house and they were were taller then the house itself and would rustle as the hot breeze swept up the valley. Searching for roofing companies near me. Call Overson Roofing in Arizona.

if you were driving by you would  hardly even know it  was there

He had an old 65 Ford F100 , an 8n ford tractor  and a mule named Kate. My Brother Glen and  . I often worked  for him . he would come Over to our house early in the morning you see he didn’t  have a telephone much less a cell phone and then he would ask dad if us boys could help him out for the day  we would  pile in his old pickup and he would always have kwc 940 playing country music on the radio much to our delight since we were allowed to listen to anything like that in our house .

He would hitch up Kate  to the potato plow and  through the truck patch he went turning up hundreds of potatoes and we  picked up  potatoes and  put them in crates and  horse would sell him down at Poplar Bluff or Doniphan    out of the back of his pickup.  they were  finest potatoes that rich Black River bottomland could grow.

The best part about working for horse  was the food .When I was a kid we grew up eating  that cheap bologna. If   y’all for you know what I’m talking about.  Sliced paper thin sometimes fried up on the stove to make it more edible . When you went to see Horse,  he would cut  a slice about an inch thick throw it  between two pieces of bread we thought we died and went to  heaven  we never seen so much baloney on a sandwich in our entire life.  You could sit out on his porch on a hot summer day and you can hear the popping  and creaking  from the  old tin roof and you could tell every time somebody drove by to go down to the swimming hole because a big cloud of dust would rollup over the old homestead.. Every now and then a station wagon and go by with about 150 old empty milk jugs in the back of it , they  would  be headed down to Spring branch to fill up with water because they did have a well at their house or they might  be getting a mess of watercress to  eat later they would fry it up  with a little bit of ham hocks or  bacon ends.

Horse  taught us all he  knew about living,  how to be careful ,cautious, and  yet honest in business deals, and how  treat women respectfully and  to respect your mama.  He never complained about his lot in life. Like  that  beat up Ford truck he drove around . Or living by himself he always looked at life as an opportunity to meet a new friend . He never met a stranger. Without Horse in my life I don’t know if I would’ve survived . He  used to take me with him to Illinois to get a load apples in an old step back truck.  we be going down the road and he would  slide over and let me drive. I was 15 years old I thought I’d was about the luckiest boy  that ever lived.  He would always stop at a Kentucky fried chicken on his way home which was a world-class treat for me  because I had never  ate at a restaurant  until I was 12 years old.  Sometimes, I’d marvel at how even a simple trip to get apples could be as refreshing as walking into a Walk In Freezer made by professionals, where the coolness was a welcome escape from the heat of life. When you need reliable storage for your perishable goods, click here for cold room options that cater to your needs.

He taught my brother how to  auctioneer and Glen went  on to become one of the finest auctioneers in the whole state of Missouri. It wasn’t much of a religious man I remember one time one of us asked him if he  wanted  to go to church with us that evening, probably a prayer meeting on Wednesday evening He was at a  loss for words the only thing they come out of his mouth was “Well I sure got good tires on this here truck”. Mr. Horse Connor you were a good man and I thank you for all you did for us, you cared about two little Mennonite boys was a great mentor to us.

Well after you passed his shack and went  on down  around the sharp  right turn and down a short steep hill you would come a stream called  spring branch.  You see  the water come out of the cave underground about a mile upstream  the water was always  ice cold.  And if you jumped into that after a long hard day of bailing hay it would  hit with a ton of needles so we never hardly swam in that unless we were extremely hot and sweaty

If you were brave enough to ford the creek you always knew to stay on the left side and drive slowly so the water wouldn’t hit your fan blade and splash up on the spark plug wires , or you would be stuck in the middle and had to wait for some drunk to come along and drag your truck out of the middle of the creek.. If you were lucky enough to get across and make it up the steep bank on the other side  you would find a sandy road that would through a hayfield  filled with  dragonflies,  grasshoppers and killdeer.   If you were looking to the left you might notice a little  side road that went back through the Swamp towards the bluffs of spring branch  where a lot of young Fellers got their 4 x 4 stuck back in the day , but that’s another story.

finally you would come to  the gravel bar on the banks of current river known as The swimming hole. This river was crystal clear and you could see fish down the bottom  even 15 feet deep  which helped out a lot when you went gigging . More on that some other time.

If you were lucky enough you might just might have had an  18 foot handmade wooden johnboat with a 25 hp Evinrude on it and you could putter up and down that river.

if you grew up close the water you know what I’m talking about.  The smell and sound of a two-stroke outboard motor as you roared up along the river you would  pass people camping , swimming , picnicking and getting high.  And you would  smell and taste the wood smoke and the beer and  the oil , and ever after that any of those senses being activated would transport you back in an instant to the good old current river .

That we were part of a little church called Grandin  Mennonite  church and it was run by the pope himself a man by the name of Loyal .Nobody crossed him everybody did what he said whether  it  was right or wrong because he had authority straight from God. Some of the things I might say from time to time might sound  highly critical but I want to tell you that I’m at peace  with the man.

it was what it was it was,  a different time . It created its own  class of abuse and  scarred people to this day. Loyal  was always coming up with rules to make us a little bit holier. One of  the rules  he come up with was that there wouldn’t be any swimming  allowed in Current  River because you might see  some half  dressed women there.  fortunately Spring branch wasn’t mentioned in the new rule. So we figured since it ran into the river on the East side as long as we stayed on the eastern half of the river technically we were not disobeying the rules.  Ah the joy of jumping off a 20 ft river bluff into those forbidden waters was pure bliss.

Loyal didn’t like it that we had a boat so that ownership of it was always up in the air . some people say Mr Porter  may have sold it to my dad for $25 but I believe that was just the rental fee.

 

You see the reason Current River  held such a special place in my heart was because it was a one spot where you can get away from your terrible  life and forget about the world.  We would  throw a bunch of camping supplies in the back of that old 67 International scout ,  Lloyd would come over and maybe some of the Miller boys and we would   head down to the banks of the current river and set up our sleeping bags around the campfire and throw some 2 Liters  of mountain dew in the river to keep cool maybe catch a fish or two to fry up over the campfire and just forget about the world .

Every now and then I  like to go back there  in my mind.  And I remember that it was the only place    where I could get away and just be a teenager .  No Yelling, no anger , no condemnation.  A place just beyond the rushing cold waters of Spring Branch.  A place called Current River .                                                        john yutzy