RIVER CITY JOURNAL: CONFESSION: I PAID HARD CASH FOR THAT PILE OF ROCKS IN MY YARD

After all those years of picking up rocks from the fields in Kelo Valley, I bought my own. Why, if I had a nickel for every ...

In the hills of the Ozarks west of here, some of my ancestors are twirling in the their graves because of something I did this week.

I bought some rocks and had them dumped in my front yard.

Some of you also come from farms where the No. 1 crop was high-quality fieldstone. Problem was, there was no market for rock when I was growing up on that Kelo Valley farm. And rocks were the curse of every farmer I knew. Or were the farmers just plain cursing? I forget which.

There were many occasions when my stepfather would hook up the wagon to the Ferguson tractor, and we'd head for a field to pick up rocks.

Picking up rocks is about as much fun as plucking chickens in the dark with one hand tied behind your back. You bend over, grab a handful of rocks, throw them in the wagon and then do it again. When the wagon starts to groan, you haul the load over to a creek bed or the edge of the woods and unload the rocks.

And then you start all over again.

I never knew of any shortage of rocks in our fields. At any given time you could find all you wanted. But you didn't want any. So you fought a winless battle: Farmers vs. Rocks. The score right now is about aught to a gazillion.

By the way, I love the word "aught." When I was growing up, a lot of things apparently happened in "aught-three," which translates to 1903. "Yessir, that was the (coldest winter, biggest rain, deepest snow, worst flood -- you pick) we ever had, back in aught-three." There's another great Ozark word: "nary." Remember? "I ain't got nary a pencil on me, Miz Rayfield." I wonder how many times my first-grade teacher heard that.

Back to rocks.

The only thing farmers in my neck of the Ozarks hated worse than rocks was a groundhog. These burrowing beasts could put a hefty piece of farm equipment like a hay rake or mower out of commission in no time flat, thanks to the animals' deep holes and mounds of dirt. Groundhogs were hard to get rid of. It took a high-powered rifle from about 300 yards, which is about as close as a human being ever gets to one of the varmints. I don't know what groundhogs did with the rocks.

The usually dry creek bed that ran the length of our farm was lined with rocks. Some of them were pretty, particularly the quartz formations. My cousins and I used to spend an entire day walking up and down the creek looking for pretty rocks. We would take them home and lay them out on the front porch for the grown-ups to admire.

Nothing would make the color rise in my stepfather's cheeks quicker than seeing a bunch of rocks someone had carried into the yard, considering how many he had taken out of the surrounding fields.

My wife and our two grown sons have always been rock collectors. In our travels we have found that one of the least expensive souvenirs you can find is a rock that is native to the area you are visiting. We have a large pile of those rocks in our yard now. And there is a 200-pound chunk of petrified rock our older son bought in Arizona after a visit to the Petrified Forest. We had to stop in Flagstaff and have heavy-duty springs installed on our car so we could drive home with that monster in the trunk. Honest.

We also have a genuine post rock from Lincoln County in Kansas where the only trees are willows and cottonwoods along the creeks. Farmers who wanted to put up fences in the 1800s had no ready supply of fence posts, so they carved out big chunks of limestone just under the thin soil's surface and used them for posts. There are still miles and miles of fence rows with the aged limestone posts, often with the fence itself long gone.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that parts of tree-disadvantaged Kansas benefited from government subsidies for fieldstone removal when the first settlers arrived. Homesteaders were faced with hard times making ends meet at first. And there weren't enough trees for fence posts. So the government paid the homesteaders a few cents for every rod (16 1/2 feet) of fence constructed from readily available rocks. Curiously, the government had specifications for the fence construction, so all the fences look alike wherever you go. And they're beautiful.

Somehow that government handout never made it to the Ozarks. In the Ozarks there were plenty of trees for fence posts. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of split-rail fences built, which used only the wood at hand. Imagine split-rail fences in an area where farmers burned off the woods and fields every spring. Most of the fences went too.

So why did I buy rocks and have them dumped in my yard? There's no big mystery. These rocks are good-sized, squarish chunks of sandstone. I bought them from a landscaping place. I want to put shady plants under the two big dogwoods in the front yard where grass won't grow. And the dogwoods are on a bank that slopes down to the street. So I want a low retaining wall of stone on the low side of the area where the plants will go.

This sounds like I really know what I'm doing, right?

Fact is, there are a lot of folks from over yonder who would shake their heads if they could see my yard right now. "Look at that," they'd say. "He BOUGHT those rocks. La! What'll he do next? Start feeding the groundhogs?"

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.