MISSISSIPPI RIVER VALLEY SCENIC DRIVE STARTS SATURDAY

Drive down Route C in Perry County through Altenburg, Frohna and Brazeau any weekend and you'll see little towns of white frame houses with big porches and neatly cut lawns separated by rolling hills, farm fields, cattle and stretches of woods.

Drive down Route C Saturday or Sunday and you'll find welcoming parties in all three towns.

And not just in those three towns. In Pocahontas, Old Appleton, Oak Ridge and Daisy in Cape Girardeau County; in Marble Hill and Burfordville in Bollinger County; in Commerce and Benton in Scott County; in Apple Creek in Perry County, and in the larger towns of Jackson, Perryville and Cape Girardeau, townspeople are preparing special events and exhibits for travelers.

It's the seventh annual two-day-long Mississippi River Valley Scenic Drive, the brainchild of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University.

The center decided to do something "to increase the visibility of the history of the region," said Frank Nickell, director of the center. "We came up with the idea of a historical tour."

He said the tour has grown to include other aspects of the region, but the emphasis is still on history.

This isn't a get-on-the-bus-pay-your-fare-and-listen-to-the-tour-guide tour. This is a tour organized so motorists, bicyclists and even hikers can participate as much or as little as they want. Tourists can go to any participating town, pick up a map and go at their own pace.

They might spend the whole day in the tiny town of Brazeau, for example.

Brazeau plans to celebrate its bicentennial this weekend. Its oldest structure still standing is its Presbyterian Church built in 1819.

If you were to visit Brazeau on a weekday, you could stop in at the one-room post office and chat with Postmaster Pat Luehrs if he's there -- hours are 9 a.m. to noon and 3:30 to 5 p.m. If you're lucky, he'll find someone who can open the museum for you.

This weekend the museum will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The museum once was a two-room schoolhouse -- one room for high school and one for elementary. The chalkboard still hangs on one wall, and the rope for ringing the school bell still dangles through a hole in the ceiling.

Townspeople have filled the museum with artifacts of local history including: an old sausage grinder, staves from a covered wagon, washed and starched lace dating from as early as 1805, Mrs. Sarah M. McPherson journal from 1852 to 1856, hand-typed high school yearbooks from the 1930s with photographs mounted on the pages, a wooden bucket with a ladle that a family used for drinking from a cistern and a kerosene-heated egg incubator.

Geraldine Leible, who went to school there and still lives in the area, said most of the items are on loan from her neighbors.

"A lot of the history has been lost," said Louella Barber, a Brazeau native who's son is researching the town's history for a master's thesis at Southeast Missouri State University. "We're trying to fix it so we can get more people interested and help."

Brazeau is pulling out all the stops this weekend. The townspeople plan to set up the old bank building -- it's just big enough for one teller -- as a country store and sell crafts from it. They'll boil ham and beans in a big iron kettle on Saturday and cook stew on Sunday.

"Even if we don't have any people come, we'll have fun because we're cooking together," said Verna Weisbrod, Leible's kid sister.

Some outsiders definitely plan to be there -- members of the Zenon River Brigade. The brigade is a "muzzle-loader re-enactor club," said its president, Phil Nash of Jackson.

About a dozen of its members will camp in the town, recreating the lives of trappers in Southeast Missouri from 1790 to 1810, said Rick Campbell of Millersville, treasurer of the brigade. They'll be dressed in home-made cotton, linen shirts, drop-front pants and moccasins like trappers of that era, cook in tin and copper pots over a fire, live in tents, carry muzzle-loaders and display furs and traps, Campbell said.

That's just in Brazeau.

In Marble Hill, a woman will cane chairs, another will quilt, and others will demonstrate other crafts. Children can ride a gyro-tumble, a pre-electric carnival ride, while others may want to observe the antique tractor show, said Rose Ann Thiele, vice president of the Historical Society of Bollinger County.

In Commerce, Jerry Smith will lead tours of his River Ridge Winery. The town museum, like the one in Brazeau, usually opens only by appointment, but will be open both days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Smith claims the town has the best view of the Mississippi River anywhere. "In Commerce, when a really big boat goes by, you're looking up at it," he said.

In Old Appleton, visitors can see a 173-year-old grist mill and an 1879 iron bridge that is the last of its kind in Missouri. About 20 artisans will be selling their wares, said potter Rene Dellamano.

In Jackson, visitors can catch a ride on the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad.

At the Bollinger Mill State Historic Site, autoharp player Alex Usher will roam the grounds performing from about 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. There also will be demonstrations by white oak basket makers and others.

All this has been arranged on what Nickell called a "shoestring budget," funded by local raffles and other small-town fund raisers. Still, the Mississippi River Valley Scenic Drive manages to attract motorists from St. Louis, Memphis and Carbondale and sometimes farther away, Nickell said.

One shouldn't expect traffic jams, however, just a leisurely tour of the countryside in the peak of its spring colors.