RIVER CITY JOURNAL: EVEN AT ITS WORST, OLD FARM ROAD DEPENDABLE ROUTE

* There was nothing complicated about the rocky road into Kelo Valley. Either you could drive on it or you couldn't. And there were no engineering foul-ups along the way.

Once upon a time in Kelo Valley, which is in the Ozark hills west of here a ways, very little time was spent worrying about highway interchanges.

For the most part, the families living on Kelo Valley were happy if the county road grader came by at least once a year. The best time for the grader to make its annual appearance was just after the spring rains when deep gullies would be washed in the rocky road as thunderstorms formed little creeks that carved their own ditches across the ruts.

The road to Kelo Valley wasn't special. That is, it was just like all the other farm roads that tied the blacktop highways along the hilltops to the houses in the valleys below. Many of the roads started as logging roads. As needs arose, some of the roads became everyday roads. Sometimes a truckload of gravel would be dumped in the deepest ruts or the swampiest mud hole. For the most part, these country roads had to get along pretty much on their own.

Some country roads in those hills were high-class enough to have bridges, even if those were only concrete slabs that provided a firm surface when creeks got high. These were low-water bridges, which meant the water flowed over them, and motorists had to decide when and if the water was too high to navigate. This would depend, of course, on whether you were driving a car, a truck or a tractor.

On Kelo Valley, there were no bridges. The only creek of any consequence was the one that went past our barn on the other side of the garden next to the house. It was a dry creek most of the time. Heavy rain would occasionally produce enough runoff to put water in the creek. In those instances, the water would rush in a torrent down the valley, taking any topsoil that got in its way.

Whenever the creek was running on Kelo Valley, it generally meant traffic stopped at our house. The fast-running water always cut steep banks in the roadway, making it impassable. Fortunately, the creek went down fast. Then the process of filling in the washed-out gap would begin so vehicles could come and go on the road.

On valleys with springs, creeks generally flow year-round. Roads on these valleys had bridges, low-water or otherwise. But even these crossings could be perilous in high water. And a true Ozark gully-washer could easily remove whole bridges, which would leave those roads in a condition little better than the creek crossing on Kelo Valley.

Many years before I was a child this means, kind reader, that it was a long, long time ago part of the Kelo Valley road was a major thoroughfare from one Ozark settlement to another. It was actually called a highway, even though it was never more than mud and ruts. At one time, portions of the old "highway" may have been a toll road. The road came up from a crossing on Black River into the upper end of Kelo Valley and went the length of the valley until the dry creek joined up with the river farther downstream. Just below our farm was a field that had once been a racetrack that attracted horse fanciers from many miles around.

Sprouting off the old "highway" were countless logging roads that edged up into the forests where most of the timber had been cut long ago. Few pine trees were left from the heyday of the timber industry.

For a young farm boy, the old "highway" and the logging roads were trails to adventure. You could get to springs, caves, sinkholes, ancient burying grounds and canebrakes by following the right road. Hunters used the old roads too. And occasionally a logger would find a tree big enough to harvest.

The road into Kelo Valley has had a number of improvements made in recent years. Some of the curves have been taken out. There's a low-water concrete slab at the creek. More houses have been built along Black River. The school bus lumbers down the road now. There is evidence of regular gravel deposits and grading.

But in comparison to an interstate highway like I-55, the Kelo Valley road is still in the Dark Ages.

And you know what? That old road in Kelo Valley is still a whole lot better than the I-55 interchange at Scott City. Even in a thunderstorm.

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