As I write this, we are at the threshold of that glorious religious holiday known as Christmas. Many people will be exhausted as it passes, relieved that it is over. Isn’t that a shame? In the cities, there are two sides, fighting over whether we ought to take God and Jesus out of this sacred holiday… sort of like arguing that we ought to drink milk without acknowledging the cow.
Christmas ought to be something different than what men have made it, but things aren’t likely to change. The snowball has become an avalanche! Man seem to be dedicated to abandoning common sense, abolishing that which is good, knocking the slats out from under his own bed. The same thing that ruins Christmas is the thing that ruins all phases of a man’s life… his concern over money. When it gets in your blood, no amount is enough.
Several things come ahead of money in my life, and so it seems with all the grizzled old veteran outdoorsmen I know. There are boats, guns, good dogs, fishing gear and silly things like ducks over decoys, eagles soaring over mountain peaks, bugling elk, the splash of a trout after a mayfly, or a whistling bobwhite at dusk. There’s the feel of a hefty smallmouth bending a rod, the sound of a baying hound under a yellow moon, the sight of the sun rising over a wooded ridge-top above the river. If I can have some of those on a regular basis, you can have all the money in the world and I’ll feel like I’m the luckier guy. It is peace we are all after, and money can’t buy it. If today’s Christmas season hasn’t shown you that, what will?
At Christmas, I realize more than ever how much my family means to me. My daughters and my grandsons don’t really need me spending hours in the shopping mall trying to find some Christmas present that will be worn out, lost or broken before the shopping malls start playing Christmas music again next September.
I know some of you folks out there know just what I mean. If you aren’t spending this Christmas like it might be the last one you have, you are making a mistake. And the last Christmas you have wouldn’t make you want to spend a whole week shopping, now would it. Forget the money side of it, buy some little things that you can get in a stocking hanging somewhere, and maybe you might make a Christmas present or two next time with your own hands. Do you know that Gloria Jean still has that pair of earrings I made from leg-bands taken off wild mallards I killed twenty years ago? She treasures them so much she won’t risk wearing them out or losing one by wearing them too often.
Do you know what excited my little grandson Alex more than all his presents?…. I told him we were going to go out looking for treasure in the woods next week, pretty rocks and birds nests, and coon teeth and that kind of thing. He won’t be this little very long. Save money while you can!!! You may not be lucky enough to get duck bands as often as I do, but what the heck, you can give your wife an album with all those old pictures of you with big fish and hunting dogs from years way past, and you’ll be a big hit with her. Make her a good pair of rabbit fur ear-muffs! I might urge you to buy your wife one of my books, but we’re getting into some money again there. You won’t know anything about what a quality Christmas is until you slow down, sit around the fireplace with your loved ones and forget about money.
Actually, the farther down the list money works itself in your whole life, the greater your whole life will be.
I suspect that if we get to a point that we are celebrating “the holiday season” instead of Christmas, this whole mess we have created might just collapse around us, and all the money in the world might become worthless.
If this Christmas has exhausted you, find a place deep in the woods where the birds are singing Christmas carols of their own, and you will be amazed how easy it is to find real “Peace on Earth”.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about that great horned owl, or a pair of them, that each year come in close to my home up here on lightnin’ ridge and roost at night in the big white oaks next to my office.
Actually an owl isn’t roosting at night, he is hunting. He finds a secluded well-protected place to sleep during the day, and very often it is within the protection of a big hollow tree. If he is outside, he is usually sleeping up against the trunk of a large tree, well above the ground, and nearly impossible to see.
The reason owls come in close to my house each winter, and to other farmhouses, is simply food. There are more rabbits around farmhouses in the winter because farmhouses are places where other predators won’t venture. Coyotes, foxes and bobcats fear man so much they stay away from his home unless they are almost starving. The owl has no such fear of man because he is seldom seen at night, only heard.
Truthfully, the wise old owl lacks the intelligence of those other predators, and the wariness. He can pick off a field mouse in my back yard without worrying much about me blasting him with a shotgun for his trespassing. The coyote isn’t so lucky. While I might not blast him for trespassing, a great many country folks will.
Farm dogs play into the equation too. They worry the bobcat, fox and coyote, but not the owl. The fox recognizes man as his greatest enemy, but the owl doesn’t.
There are rabbits, and at least eight or ten species of small ground mammals which might be found around my home, especially with the dog food I store in my sheds, and the corn feeder and bird feeders close by. There are enough doves right now to make the great horned owl very happy. If they roost outside a cedar tree, they are an owl’s target.
If birds of prey interest you, I will be teaching some classes about them, along with game birds and migratory waterfowl, somewhere close to you this winter. I’ll also be teaching classes on Ozark rivers and river life, and Ozark mammals. We’ll tie these classes into outdoor field trips which follow later in the winter or early spring. If you’d like to attend any of these, get all the information from the new boss here at Lightnin’ Ridge Publishing, Sondra Gray. She is taking over all the things I can’t do, so I can write more, and concentrate on what I like, like teaching these nature classes and taking field trips and float trips. I am hoping she can get along with my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, better than I can. E-mail Sondra and congratulate her on landing such a great job, at lightninridge2@yahoo.com. Anything you need, or information about concerning my magazine or books, Sondra can handle. Write to her or me at Lightnin’ Ridge Publishing, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.
Monday
Sunday
The Hymns of Christmas Eve.
The river was full and clear, carrying my old wooden johnboat along with each dip of the paddle. It was Christmas Eve of 1970, about two weeks after my grandfather's funeral. I told everyone I'd be home by mid-afternoon. I just wanted to be on the Big Piney again, where Grandpa had spent most of his life; where he had taught me as a small boy how to paddle a boat, set trotlines, and sneak up on a flock of mallards.
I had my blind attached to the bow of the johnboat and my shotgun beside me. But I didn't much care if I shot any ducks. I was there thinking about Grandpa, there to be by myself for awhile to remember.
The morning had started cold with frost all over everything and shrouds of mist rising from the water. But the sun began to filter through the trees and warm the earth as it rose above the bluffs. A lone drake mallard flushed from a slough as I passed and I dropped him with one shot. Grandpa would have been pleased at that.
An hour before noon I rounded a bend and floated through a stretch of shoal,and I saw an old man there on a gravel bar, sitting against a log with a small fire flaming before him. A big root wad beside him broke the wind and his old dog lay curled up beneath it. He had been watching me as I came through the shoal and I recognized old Ben the minute I saw him.
He was an old riverman and fur-trapper, and an old friend of my grandfather. He had been a not-so-frequent visitor in the pool hall my dad owned when I was just a kid. But when there were many people there, Ben wouldn't stay. He just didn’t like crowds.
I pulled my johnboat up on the gravel bar beside his and hauled out the old metal ooler which had lunch in it, plenty for us both. Ben was tickled about that, said he was hungry as a bear. I poured him some coffee and set out some lunchmeat and bread and a whole package of cinnamon rolls.
As he put away a sandwich he looked at the ground and apologized for not being at the funeral. "I'm gonna miss old Fred," he told me. "Never had many friends, but he was one. We came back from the war together on the same train.”
"Don't worry about it, Ben," I said, "Grandpa wasn't there either. He’s floatin’ a better river in heaven.”
"It'd be a mite easier, I reckon, if we just knew where that was," he said. "If we could just look out there in the darkness and see it and know how it is an’ see folks we remember."
We just sat there and ate for awhile, neither of us saying anything. Then I asked him where he would spend Christmas. "Right here on this ol' river, I reckon. Got some wood piled up in that cave up there in the bluff, and a bedroll. Got to run my trapline in the mornin'. "Then I'll float on down and come in...go up an' have Christmas dinner at the rest home with my sister."
"I can't believe you're going to spend Christmas Eve here on the river!" I said.
"Best place there is," he answered. "I'm gonna look for that star in the east! The one that marked the birth of Jesus."
Then he spoke again. "I always been a God-fearin' man, but I never went to church much- can't stand those preachers a rantin' and rarin' and pointin' their finger at me."
"I'm glad mom and dad always made me go to church," I told him. "Course I wasn't so happy with it back then. But I was there, in Sunday School with my cousins, learnin' all the Bible stories. There's folks like me and you and Grandpa who believe, but won't ever make much of a churchgoer." I said, "I go some and I miss some, but when I'm there I spend some of the time looking at my watch and dozin' off a little. A man has to be what God made him, Ben. Don’t worry about tryin’ to be what you ain’t to satisfy someone else. I'm part of this river and these hills, and God knows
that. He talks to me out here. He doesn't expect us to be what we aren't Ben, He knows our heart."
"Sounded like your grandpa a little bit just then," Ben said. "He used to preach me some powerful sermons out here on this river, but he come on it late in life. When he was young he was as confused as me. He was a good man all his life mind you, but not all that sure about it all. I reckon a feller's just got to believe in somethin' bigger than him, an' I do. But I can't make heads nor tails of most of that Bible, cause I ain’t a educated man. I can understand the red part though, what Jesus said. And I never seen a man who could argue with it."
We got around to some other things, and Ben went to his boat and brought me a sassafras paddle my grandpa had made, years back. He said he wanted to give it to me for Christmas. He had others, he said, and thought he wouldn't need it much longer. I told him to keep that box of food for a Christmas Eve dinner, and he thanked me.
And finally it came time for me to float on, knowing my dad would be waiting downriver at the crossing. I told him how good it was to see him and how grateful I was for the paddle. He knew I meant it when I said it was about the greatest Christmas gift a man could get.
"I hope you see that star in the east tonight, Ben, " I said as I pulled the old boat from the gravel bar. "Shinin' bright and strong."
"I reckon I will," he said. And then he asked me. "Who do you reckon that star was shinin' over? That baby in the manger?"
I didn't think long about my answer. "He was Christ the King, Ben...the Son of God. I don't know much beyond that, don't have any answers for anyone else. But I know that much. And it sure helps, knowin’it, ‘cause it’s hope in times like these.”
"I think you’re right," he said with smile on his face and a brightness in his eyes. "And I don't know that I need any more than that neither."
I never saw old Ben again, but I hope he saw that star he was looking for that night on the river. I fully expect that he did. I still think about him and my grandpa on Christmas Eve. And I think about my other three grandparents as well―wonderful church-going people who were the salt of the earth. I expect there are beautiful churches in heaven where they are found celebrating the birth of Christ. But not all the hymns are being sung there. Some will be sung by less-than-angelic voices on a gravel bar beside a river so beautiful the Big Piney will hold no comparisons. Hymns sung by my grandpa and old Ben and men like them who God made different, but loved just as much. The star above the manger, and the baby who was born there, were sent for men like them too. And men like me. And folks like you.
Taken from the book, “Ain’t No Such Animal” by Larry Dablemont
I had my blind attached to the bow of the johnboat and my shotgun beside me. But I didn't much care if I shot any ducks. I was there thinking about Grandpa, there to be by myself for awhile to remember.
The morning had started cold with frost all over everything and shrouds of mist rising from the water. But the sun began to filter through the trees and warm the earth as it rose above the bluffs. A lone drake mallard flushed from a slough as I passed and I dropped him with one shot. Grandpa would have been pleased at that.
An hour before noon I rounded a bend and floated through a stretch of shoal,and I saw an old man there on a gravel bar, sitting against a log with a small fire flaming before him. A big root wad beside him broke the wind and his old dog lay curled up beneath it. He had been watching me as I came through the shoal and I recognized old Ben the minute I saw him.
He was an old riverman and fur-trapper, and an old friend of my grandfather. He had been a not-so-frequent visitor in the pool hall my dad owned when I was just a kid. But when there were many people there, Ben wouldn't stay. He just didn’t like crowds.
I pulled my johnboat up on the gravel bar beside his and hauled out the old metal ooler which had lunch in it, plenty for us both. Ben was tickled about that, said he was hungry as a bear. I poured him some coffee and set out some lunchmeat and bread and a whole package of cinnamon rolls.
As he put away a sandwich he looked at the ground and apologized for not being at the funeral. "I'm gonna miss old Fred," he told me. "Never had many friends, but he was one. We came back from the war together on the same train.”
"Don't worry about it, Ben," I said, "Grandpa wasn't there either. He’s floatin’ a better river in heaven.”
"It'd be a mite easier, I reckon, if we just knew where that was," he said. "If we could just look out there in the darkness and see it and know how it is an’ see folks we remember."
We just sat there and ate for awhile, neither of us saying anything. Then I asked him where he would spend Christmas. "Right here on this ol' river, I reckon. Got some wood piled up in that cave up there in the bluff, and a bedroll. Got to run my trapline in the mornin'. "Then I'll float on down and come in...go up an' have Christmas dinner at the rest home with my sister."
"I can't believe you're going to spend Christmas Eve here on the river!" I said.
"Best place there is," he answered. "I'm gonna look for that star in the east! The one that marked the birth of Jesus."
Then he spoke again. "I always been a God-fearin' man, but I never went to church much- can't stand those preachers a rantin' and rarin' and pointin' their finger at me."
"I'm glad mom and dad always made me go to church," I told him. "Course I wasn't so happy with it back then. But I was there, in Sunday School with my cousins, learnin' all the Bible stories. There's folks like me and you and Grandpa who believe, but won't ever make much of a churchgoer." I said, "I go some and I miss some, but when I'm there I spend some of the time looking at my watch and dozin' off a little. A man has to be what God made him, Ben. Don’t worry about tryin’ to be what you ain’t to satisfy someone else. I'm part of this river and these hills, and God knows
that. He talks to me out here. He doesn't expect us to be what we aren't Ben, He knows our heart."
"Sounded like your grandpa a little bit just then," Ben said. "He used to preach me some powerful sermons out here on this river, but he come on it late in life. When he was young he was as confused as me. He was a good man all his life mind you, but not all that sure about it all. I reckon a feller's just got to believe in somethin' bigger than him, an' I do. But I can't make heads nor tails of most of that Bible, cause I ain’t a educated man. I can understand the red part though, what Jesus said. And I never seen a man who could argue with it."
We got around to some other things, and Ben went to his boat and brought me a sassafras paddle my grandpa had made, years back. He said he wanted to give it to me for Christmas. He had others, he said, and thought he wouldn't need it much longer. I told him to keep that box of food for a Christmas Eve dinner, and he thanked me.
And finally it came time for me to float on, knowing my dad would be waiting downriver at the crossing. I told him how good it was to see him and how grateful I was for the paddle. He knew I meant it when I said it was about the greatest Christmas gift a man could get.
"I hope you see that star in the east tonight, Ben, " I said as I pulled the old boat from the gravel bar. "Shinin' bright and strong."
"I reckon I will," he said. And then he asked me. "Who do you reckon that star was shinin' over? That baby in the manger?"
I didn't think long about my answer. "He was Christ the King, Ben...the Son of God. I don't know much beyond that, don't have any answers for anyone else. But I know that much. And it sure helps, knowin’it, ‘cause it’s hope in times like these.”
"I think you’re right," he said with smile on his face and a brightness in his eyes. "And I don't know that I need any more than that neither."
I never saw old Ben again, but I hope he saw that star he was looking for that night on the river. I fully expect that he did. I still think about him and my grandpa on Christmas Eve. And I think about my other three grandparents as well―wonderful church-going people who were the salt of the earth. I expect there are beautiful churches in heaven where they are found celebrating the birth of Christ. But not all the hymns are being sung there. Some will be sung by less-than-angelic voices on a gravel bar beside a river so beautiful the Big Piney will hold no comparisons. Hymns sung by my grandpa and old Ben and men like them who God made different, but loved just as much. The star above the manger, and the baby who was born there, were sent for men like them too. And men like me. And folks like you.
Taken from the book, “Ain’t No Such Animal” by Larry Dablemont
Tuesday
Common Sense Conservationist Newsletter
The Common Sense Conservationist Newsletter is now in print and being mailed to those belonging to the group. If you do not receive one, or would like to read one, let us know. Be sure to scroll down on this blog to read the latest information & see photos regarding the Missouri Department of Conservation on some land near Cabool, MO.
Monday
"It's Our Land Now" Photos
Deanna Hewett stands near the corner of her land, at the fenceline maintained as a boundary line since 1938, and now ignored.
These stakes are more than 200 feet from the fence-line boundary and block a lane the Hewitt's have always used. The MDC has instructed them to not use the road and beyond it, which they own.
Robert Drake stands to lose 7 or 8 acres of his timber.The big red oak at left is old and a valuable log tree. If the MDC gets it,it will likely end up in a saw mill in coming years.
This wildlife food plot, built and maintained by the Hewitt's for many many years, will belong to the MDC if their new survey stands.
From Deanna Hewett's home, the view to the south is spectacular. Much of the timber here that she and her husband owns is claimed by the Department of Conservation now.
This map of the donated Massengill tract shows why the MDC wants land on both sides. It is fairly narrow and they want to widen it.
Richard Massengill wanted his donated land left as it was. Soon after he died, the MDC bulldozed this road through the property and now has easy logging access.
Roy and Audray Smith stand by the posts driven by MDC crews who wish to take their land. These are 175 feet inside their fenced boundary line.
Big pines and oaks located on just these few feet of land at the very corner of Hewett's land are very valuable to private logging companies who contract with the MDC. 
Some of the trees cut on the Smith's land were fairly large. They had no say in the matter, no knowledge it happened until they found it weeks later.
“It’s Our Land Now!”
A sleek looking buck jumped up from a brush pile where he was resting, and white-flagged it through the timber away from us. He was on land owned by Deanna and Dacey Hewitt, but there are posts across it with Missouri Department of Conservation’s yellow signs designating it to be their property. They intend to take it, and take land of two other private owners, which are neighbors of hers. They came in without notifying any of those landowners, cut swaths across their lands, set up stakes and signs and claimed it.
They intend to take about 10-15 acres of the Hewitt’s land, and about 7 acres of Robert Drake’s land. Their new stake line, a result of a new survey they have made, encroaches about 175 feet onto the land of Roy and Audray Smith, where they cut a number of small trees to plant their posts with no permission, no notification. They intend to tear down fences belonging to all three property owners which have stood, and been maintained as property lines since 1938!! Here’s the story behind it…
Ten years ago, the MDC was given 200 acres of beautiful Ozark Timberland about 15 miles southeast of Mt. Grove by a man named Richard Massengill, who was dying of cancer. Hewitt and the Smiths say that Massengill loved the land and gave it to the Conservation Department after they promised they would leave it as it was. They promised, all right, and then just after he died they bulldozed a road right through it, so they could manipulate a new survey and evaluate timber stands without having to walk. If you know the MDC, you know what is coming. They will, in the next ten or fifteen years, maybe sooner, fix up a contract with one of the big logging companies they work with, and they will sell all the big oaks and pines on Massengill's beloved acreage. They’ll make thousands out of Massengill's gift of his beloved acreage. It will, in time, look like a tornado ripped through it and every big tree worth a few dollars will be gone, stumps and brush piles left in its place. They might sell the land in time, they have sold and attempted to sell, many tracts of land given to them to protect and preserve. This column stopped one such sale, involving one million dollars, with a real estate developer on Lake of the Ozarks.
The MDC survey involved getting on all these folks land in secret, they notified no one. They cut through that land with machinery, set stakes, drove metal posts so deep they cannot be removed. It was followed by a delegation of MDC officials out of both West Plains and Jefferson City, telling the landowners that they could no longer use any of the land on the other side of their stakes for any purpose. They were told the MDC was going to tear down the existing fences, build new ones and CHARGE THEM HALF THE COST OF THE WHOLE PROCESS.
It could work just fine if these small landowners, Ozark people who do not have a great deal of money, just agreed. They didn’t, and they are going to try to go to court to reclaim their land, on the basis they and their ancestors have maintained those fences as true boundaries since 1938, when the original survey was done. Unlike the MDC, they paid for their land.
If this case was heard in court by a jury of Ozark citizens, it wouldn’t last thirty minutes, and the MDC would be sent to pack up their posts, stakes and signs with their tails between their legs. As it is, a judge will likely decide it. I think most judges are men of integrity and fairness, but I also know this…. The Missouri Department of Conservation has so much money and power, there isn’t a judge in the state they cannot meet with behind closed doors. The Smiths, the Hewitts and the Drakes have no such power. They shouldn’t be having to spend what will amount to several thousand dollars to keep land which they have paid for, maintained and owned for many many years. All these folks were born and raised in the area.
The Smiths and Deanna Hewett remember Richard Massengill, and they say he would roll over in his grave if he knew what was happening. He left his wife Jean a home and 75 acres next to the 200 he left the MDC. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Hewett say she was constantly badgered by the MDC to give them the rest of the land, and she eventually became so angry and perplexed with it all she sold the land to someone else and moved to St. Louis, just to get them off her back. I am trying to find her and get her side of the story as well.
Another landowner on another side of the Massengill tract lives out of state and may not know anything at all about the new survey. It is likely that the MDC now has a large chunk of his land staked out as well. I called Asst. Director Tim Ripperger in the main office of the MDC at Jefferson City on Friday morning, and he said he knew nothing about this. He said he would look into it and get back in touch with me and I am waiting to see if they might just change their minds, do what is right and rescind all this, now that people know about. I have heard nothing from him as of this time on Monday morning.
If anyone doubts this account, they can go see it all for themselves. The Massengill tract is now the Massengill Conservation Area, and it well marked off of Highway W, which runs east off of Highway 95, twelve miles south of Mt. Grove.
There will be no other stories about this anywhere, due to the power and influence of the MDC. It is always that way, and it enables them to do pretty much anything they want to do. But when Missourians find out what they are doing, it scares them. Casting a light on their activities can bring about the repeal of the 1/8th cent sales tax they exist on.
There will be several photos of the area and people involved and the survey stakes and the existing fence on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Please look at them.
This week, a newsletter going out to 2000 members of our newly formed organization, Common Sense Conservationists, is being printed, and it will be quickly mailed when the printing is complete. The printing and postage is being paid for by money we collected at meetings around the Ozarks last winter, in Mtn. Grove, Houston, Warsaw, Eldorado Springs, Owensville, Cuba, Nevada and many other small communities. If you are not a member of our group, and you want to see this newsletter, send me a couple of stamps and I will mail one to you.
I want to see county groups which branch off of this organization formed this coming fall and winter. I hope you will help, and become involved. The Hewetts, the Smiths and the Drakes never dreamed they would be in such a situation, almost helpless against this huge agency with so much money and power they run over people. You could be in their shoes someday…with no voice but ours… Common Sense Conservationists. Just send an address and two stamps… to CSC, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net
They intend to take about 10-15 acres of the Hewitt’s land, and about 7 acres of Robert Drake’s land. Their new stake line, a result of a new survey they have made, encroaches about 175 feet onto the land of Roy and Audray Smith, where they cut a number of small trees to plant their posts with no permission, no notification. They intend to tear down fences belonging to all three property owners which have stood, and been maintained as property lines since 1938!! Here’s the story behind it…
Ten years ago, the MDC was given 200 acres of beautiful Ozark Timberland about 15 miles southeast of Mt. Grove by a man named Richard Massengill, who was dying of cancer. Hewitt and the Smiths say that Massengill loved the land and gave it to the Conservation Department after they promised they would leave it as it was. They promised, all right, and then just after he died they bulldozed a road right through it, so they could manipulate a new survey and evaluate timber stands without having to walk. If you know the MDC, you know what is coming. They will, in the next ten or fifteen years, maybe sooner, fix up a contract with one of the big logging companies they work with, and they will sell all the big oaks and pines on Massengill's beloved acreage. They’ll make thousands out of Massengill's gift of his beloved acreage. It will, in time, look like a tornado ripped through it and every big tree worth a few dollars will be gone, stumps and brush piles left in its place. They might sell the land in time, they have sold and attempted to sell, many tracts of land given to them to protect and preserve. This column stopped one such sale, involving one million dollars, with a real estate developer on Lake of the Ozarks.
The MDC survey involved getting on all these folks land in secret, they notified no one. They cut through that land with machinery, set stakes, drove metal posts so deep they cannot be removed. It was followed by a delegation of MDC officials out of both West Plains and Jefferson City, telling the landowners that they could no longer use any of the land on the other side of their stakes for any purpose. They were told the MDC was going to tear down the existing fences, build new ones and CHARGE THEM HALF THE COST OF THE WHOLE PROCESS.
It could work just fine if these small landowners, Ozark people who do not have a great deal of money, just agreed. They didn’t, and they are going to try to go to court to reclaim their land, on the basis they and their ancestors have maintained those fences as true boundaries since 1938, when the original survey was done. Unlike the MDC, they paid for their land.
If this case was heard in court by a jury of Ozark citizens, it wouldn’t last thirty minutes, and the MDC would be sent to pack up their posts, stakes and signs with their tails between their legs. As it is, a judge will likely decide it. I think most judges are men of integrity and fairness, but I also know this…. The Missouri Department of Conservation has so much money and power, there isn’t a judge in the state they cannot meet with behind closed doors. The Smiths, the Hewitts and the Drakes have no such power. They shouldn’t be having to spend what will amount to several thousand dollars to keep land which they have paid for, maintained and owned for many many years. All these folks were born and raised in the area.
The Smiths and Deanna Hewett remember Richard Massengill, and they say he would roll over in his grave if he knew what was happening. He left his wife Jean a home and 75 acres next to the 200 he left the MDC. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Hewett say she was constantly badgered by the MDC to give them the rest of the land, and she eventually became so angry and perplexed with it all she sold the land to someone else and moved to St. Louis, just to get them off her back. I am trying to find her and get her side of the story as well.
Another landowner on another side of the Massengill tract lives out of state and may not know anything at all about the new survey. It is likely that the MDC now has a large chunk of his land staked out as well. I called Asst. Director Tim Ripperger in the main office of the MDC at Jefferson City on Friday morning, and he said he knew nothing about this. He said he would look into it and get back in touch with me and I am waiting to see if they might just change their minds, do what is right and rescind all this, now that people know about. I have heard nothing from him as of this time on Monday morning.
If anyone doubts this account, they can go see it all for themselves. The Massengill tract is now the Massengill Conservation Area, and it well marked off of Highway W, which runs east off of Highway 95, twelve miles south of Mt. Grove.
There will be no other stories about this anywhere, due to the power and influence of the MDC. It is always that way, and it enables them to do pretty much anything they want to do. But when Missourians find out what they are doing, it scares them. Casting a light on their activities can bring about the repeal of the 1/8th cent sales tax they exist on.
There will be several photos of the area and people involved and the survey stakes and the existing fence on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Please look at them.
This week, a newsletter going out to 2000 members of our newly formed organization, Common Sense Conservationists, is being printed, and it will be quickly mailed when the printing is complete. The printing and postage is being paid for by money we collected at meetings around the Ozarks last winter, in Mtn. Grove, Houston, Warsaw, Eldorado Springs, Owensville, Cuba, Nevada and many other small communities. If you are not a member of our group, and you want to see this newsletter, send me a couple of stamps and I will mail one to you.
I want to see county groups which branch off of this organization formed this coming fall and winter. I hope you will help, and become involved. The Hewetts, the Smiths and the Drakes never dreamed they would be in such a situation, almost helpless against this huge agency with so much money and power they run over people. You could be in their shoes someday…with no voice but ours… Common Sense Conservationists. Just send an address and two stamps… to CSC, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net
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