To this day my most cherished memories are of playing cars and trucks with two of my brothers (we were 13 months apart in age -- poor Mom).
Playing cars and trucks meant we built tiny little villages or towns using sticks, moss, gravel, bark, twigs with leaves (for trees), and we molded miniature furniture, pottery, and other items from clay that we got from a deep crevice where the roots of the trees protruded from the bank.
We used sandstone to create little pans, chairs and other items, patiently sanding one stone against the other to form whatever it was we wanted to create. We called this game cars and trucks because we each had a little toy car or truck that we drove on our little gravel roads and parked in front of each of our created houses. We each created a business of some sort also.
My brother Reed created a quarry and piled tiny gravel in a heap and would haul it to where ever we wanted him to. He got the quarry idea because he got a dump truck for Christmas. The pay for hauling was the thrill of hauling, we never even though about the money aspect of things.
We loved playing cars and trucks so much that when Mom and Dad built a new house for us to live in (and I do mean they built it with their own hands), we moved in before it was completed. My room had only linoleum on it at first but Dad was putting in hardwood floors, room by room.
Anyway, before he got to my room and since he was going to cover it with hardwood, he painted roads on the linoleum and on cold days or rainy days, we played the game there. This took a different creative act since our usual elements (dirt and rocks) were not allowed in the house.
Time passed and we all matured. But the three of us always kept our creative side alive.
One brother is a writer and poet, another one loves carpentry and building things, and I turned out to be a writer and publisher. Which bring me to the reason for telling you all this.
We moved to the Missouri Ozarks about two decades ago (we being my children and I). Moving here was like going back in time to the 1950s and it is still like that but not as much.
This area is rich in unrecorded history but for this blog I'm going to concentrate on the history of Ozarks kitchens, cooking, and recipes. I hope you'll stay turned. And I hope I'll stay focused on making this blog rich in Ozark history through the kitchen scene.
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