RIVER CITY JOURNAL: HILLTOP CEMETERY HAS DEEP ROOTS, MEMORIES

Whenever you want to get in touch with your roots, you go to the cemetery that overlooks Brushy Creek, the valley in the Ozarks where your mother's family is from.

Meadows Cemetery is a well-kept hilltop with a fairly grand wrought-iron gate. The grass is neatly trimmed. The road up the hill is well-tended and passable year around. There is a shelter house with picnic tables for cemetery gatherings.

On the side of the cemetery facing the valley, all the trees have been cleared off, providing a panoramic view of the valley and the hills beyond. If you turn the opposite direction, you can look toward Lower Crane Pond, the valley where your father's family is from. It's only a few miles, as the crow flies, and your mother can remember walking back and forth when she was a child.

There are at least five generations of your family buried on that hill. These are the ones with tombstones whose chiseled information still can be read. There are other graves, much older, that are marked simply with a large rock turned up on one end. A lot of folks still remember who is buried in the cemetery, but exactly where, beneath which rock, is sometimes a mystery, or a good enough reason for an old-fashioned family argument.

This is the busy season at Meadows Cemetery, much like hundreds of other cemeteries in these parts. Last Saturday was one of two major events. When you were a child, it was called Decoration Day. It was one of the special times when friends and relatives of those who are buried there would gather and clean up the place. In those days there was no grand entrance, no view of the valley and a rough road that was sometimes so washed out you had to park down on the main Brushy Creek road and walk up, toting your covered dinner, gardening tools for cleaning the grave sites plus any decorations. Back then there were plenty of copperheads, wasps and poison ivy. Not exactly big inducements to a weekend outing.

Later, when the summer sun is at full throttle, there will be another gathering, another meal under the trees. This was when your mother's family always has its reunion. First you go to the cemetery and straighten things up, then you go to a spot on Big Creek a few miles away and spend the rest of the day eating and visiting and eating and swimming and eating and relaxing and eating.

There are so many traditions that have grown out of those reunions. One is that before any cousins could get married, the intended new family members had to come to a reunion. If they could survive the day, they were acceptable. One of the acid tests was having to watch your mother eat a ripe pear. Use your imagination.

Another story you remember -- and which you have been told is probably not entirely true, given the sloppiness of youthful memories -- concerns an event that happened before your were born. It goes something like this:

Your mother and her four sisters are noted cooks. It probably has to do with sibling competition, but they all try to outdo each other, particularly at reunions. The oldest sibling, however, is a brother, your uncle, whose wife also is a good cook. In the heat of the cooking rivalry during World War II, your uncle's wife saved up ration coupons to purchase bananas, sugar and other ingredients for a banana cream pie to take to the reunion. She would show those Miller girls what good cooking was all about.

In those days, the Millers joined with all the folks from Brushy Creek in a covered-dish meal at the cemetery. Your uncle's wife put out her banana cream pie in the hopes that every one of those Miller girls would get a taste and swoon right there on the spot.

Unfortunately, others with hearty appetites -- they are all Millers in one form or another -- got to the pie first, leaving the Miller girls totally unaware of the cooking prowess of your uncle's wife.

Guess what? The next year the Millers went to the cemetery for the cleanup and visiting, but when it came time to eat, they packed up and headed for Big Creek. At last, the Miller girls would taste a real banana cream pie.

Several years ago the reunion was moved from the special spot on Big Creek to Sam A. Baker State Park. And the time was changed to hot, muggy June instead of hot, muggy August on the theory that you don't mind being hot and muggy at first, but by August you can't stand it any more.

In a couple of weeks you will go to your first reunion in many years, because scheduling and distance make it possible. You will eat and visit and eat and relax and eat. Some of the youngsters -- your cousins are grandparents now -- will probably swim. In Big Creek. And maybe there will be banana cream pie for everyone.

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