RIVER CITY JOURNAL: OZARKS VISIT EVEN BETTER ON FALL DAY

Along the gravel road that wanders down into Keloh Valley in the Ozarks to the west, the persimmon trees still hold some ripe fruit. Underneath the crabapple trees are signs that wild animals have been taste-testing, possibly staggering back to the woods after a few hours with some of the fermented fruit. A check of the persimmon seeds foretells winter. Let's see: a fork, a spoon, a knife -- what do they mean again?

Along a creek bank the fat papaws are turning to mush on the ground. Their size and quantity indicate it has been a good year. Nobody makes much of the papaws. Generation X cooks will discover them one day, and cilantro will be history.

On porches of ramshackle, unpainted houses -- the proper architectural term is "Ozarks traditional" -- the unhulled walnuts are drying next to the unrepaired washing machines and refrigerators. Why these useless appliances aren't hauled to the landfill is one of the many mysteries shrouded in hillbilly secrecy.

Hickory nuts, safe for the most part in their hard shells, are being buried by squirrels which promptly forget where they laid away the winter food supply. Thank goodness God didn't think the furry-tailed rodents needed much long-term memory. Otherwise someone else would have to plant the next century's hickory trees.

Down in the cellar behind the house are sparkling jars of green beans, tomatoes and pickled cucumbers of every description, lined up in neat rows on shelves next to dusty jars whose metal tops are beginning to rust. A child sent to fetch supper's vegetables on a snowy afternoon will be reminded to "use up the old jars before they spoil." Eating canned vegetables and fruit about ready to go bad -- maybe that's where hillbillies get their wisdom, wit and will.

Over the hill into Greenwood Valley, Shady Nook School is silent on these cool weekdays. Its one room once was filled with the voices of children in eight grades, looking out the windows to one side toward the hazelnut bushes or the other side toward the creek with its minnows, crawdads and frogs. No indoor aquariums for these students, whose mothers wouldn't let pond animals in the house anyway.

And along the road between the school and home -- uphill both ways, you remind your sons -- it is starting to look like winter, officially more than a month away. The bare, gray limbs contrast with the now-bright green of cedars and a few remnant pines from the days when pine was king and logging companies ran railroads through the valleys and deep-rutted logging roads along the ridges.

It is nonesuch time in the Ozarks, and it will end with the passing of Indian summer as the first sleet storm or freezing rain makes impassable the road up the big hill out of Keloh Valley, facing north as it does, a reminder that Nature hasn't relaxed its firm grip on the seasons.

As you head east on Highway 34 -- a road engineered by a black snake, some natives say -- you see the woolly worms marching across the asphalt more deterred by falling oak leaves than two-ton behemoths on wheels. Look. Does this mean the winter will be harsh or mild? It is easy to forget how to read the signs when you live in a modern world a generation or two removed from the pace of the hills that guard sleepy valleys where barefoot children once had a new pair of shoes only when the first frost etched the windowpanes.

At least your memories allow happy visits from time to time.

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