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I
hear there will be a city in Toronto called “Technology City” where the latest
in technological advancement will be built into every home and business. Mankind has come a long way since
Plymouth Rock and Boonesborough, but folks, I mean it when I say that I think
Boonesborough probably had happier people than “Techology City” will have. Given a choice, I wouldn’t even
hesitate to choose Boonesborough and a chance to know Daniel Boone. I know there were Indians who were a
problem, but I think I might have been able to bring about peace with them by
setting up a good local pool hall and teaching them how to play pool and
dominoes and checkers.
Even
with the Indians to cope with, seems like Boonesborough was a safer place than
Los Angeles or Chicago or New York is today. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a place where kids weren’t
consumed with the buttons on a little box all their waking hours?
What
is referred to as social media might ought to be called, ‘social mayhem’! Recently my daughter put an exercise
bike and a treadmill on some kind of computer site and while they show up on my
computer as 100 dollar items, some guy came up here with one of those little boxes
and showed me where both are listed as forty dollars each. They are expensive pieces of equipment
that my wife's parents paid more than four hundred dollars a piece for, and he
insisted that I sell them to him for forty dollars. I chose not to.
So
this might be a good time to mention that they, along with hundreds of other
items, hunting and fishing gear and that kind of thing, will be hauled out
beneath the old oak trees up here on Lightnin’ Ridge and sold in one of the
biggest sales ever, in October. I
say that because I will be selling something like 1500 fishing lures, many of
them antiques. There will be guns,
rods and reels, antiques of all kind, including a Mosley safe made in the
1870’s in Hamilton Ohio, said to be in place in a bank western Missouri that
Jesse and Frank James tried to rob. It is huge.
I
will sell most of my guns at the sale, and that will include the little
Iver-Johnson I bought from someone in the pool hall back home when I was eleven
years old. I killed my first duck with that gun. There will also be boat paddles my grandfather hand carved
in the 1930’s and lots of valuable wildlife art and that is just a small list
of what I will have for sale.
I
have talked with my daughter Leah, about someday splitting the money I have made
to St. Judes Children’s hospital and the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital, and
most of what we make from this sale will go to them I hope, if the government
doesn’t get it first.
But
this sale will be an opportunity to visit my museum, walk the nature trails when
fall colors are the best, and see first-hand what Lightnin’ Ridge is. About 35 years ago, I moved my family
to a beautiful ridge-top at the edge of the Ozark mountains about 6 or 7 miles
west of Harrison, Arkansas. The first night we were there, a big storm came
through and a bolt of lightning hit a back-hoe one of the construction people
had left there. So I began to call
it “Lightnin’ Ridge. Twenty-five
years ago, we moved back to Missouri, eight miles north of Bolivar, to a home I
built on another high ridge, the highest point in Polk County. That first night a storm passed through
and another bolt of lightning hit a chinquapin oak tree right off the screened
porch. It was scarred, but it
survived and still grows today. So
therefore the name moved here with us, and when I started a fledgling
publishing company 16 years ago, what better name could I have come up with?
This
ridge-top is a beautiful forest, with trees more than 250 years old, and home
to dozens of birds and all kinds of wildlife species… one of them, a gray
shrew, residing beneath an old tool shed, is not suppose to even exist in
Missouri.
An old civil war road runs right through the middle of it. You
can still see the wagon ruts where Federal troops hauled cannons from Jefferson
City down to Wilson’s Creek and Pea Ridge battlefields. They crossed the Pomme de Terre River
about a mile from here. I found
half of an old army saber blade beside those ruts here on my ridge.
So
all day on Saturday, October 21 we will be proud to let visitors come see this
ridgetop home, office and museum and take part in the sale. I will see to it that there is cake and
pie and coffee and tea for all visitors, and you will find tables filled with
stuff I have used since I was a boy, and things belonging to my dad and
grandfather and Uncle Norten, a legendary guide and WWII veteran.
We
have some churches bringing kids to our Panther Creek Youth Retreat this
summer, where we make it possible for underprivileged kids, and boys without
fathers, to stay for days free of charge.
They can swim, shoot clay pigeons, fish, learn to canoe and hike our
trails, and now use a brand new sports field for softball, soccer, whatever.
But the old Farmall Cub tractor I use
to mow the trails has stopped running and we need a good mechanic to come and fix it there, since I have no trailer that will haul it anywhere. It will start and run, but only for less than a minute. they tell me it is a pretty simple machine, made about 1950. Last year it ran perfectly.
I tried last week to use a smaller tractor but I turned it over on a slope and was lucky to escape a tragedy. Now it doesn’t run either. It is a much newer machine, a Massey-Ferguson 14-hp edition made in the '60s. If anyone can fix either of them, I will be glad to payt them well and let them stay a couple of days in one of the cabins. You can call me at 417-777-5227, email me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar MO 65613