Country Roads

The country roadways in most areas locally have become bumpy and are now rough for traveling. A driver has to watch out for pot holes filled with nothing but rock dust along the roads. I’ve been told, the rock road conditions were brought on by a really dry year, and recently from harvest trucks hauling grain into the elevators. It is hoped the road conditions will improve.

Regardless of the native rock country roadway conditions, my husband and I decided to take a route homeward from Superior that I hadn’t traveled for some time. It brought back memories of the many times my family and I had traveled this road from my childhood home and years later from my farm home west of Burr Oak. The road is known for it’s hills that make for interesting up and down travels. As a teen on dates, the boys with their fast cars enjoyed hittig the hills at high speeds, causing this gal and I’m sure others to scream.

My husband and I headed past the place where hills of limestone rock exist and are plentiful, where once the Ideal Cement Plant quarried creating more hills and valleys. The native limestone rock was then transported to the plant and used in the manufacturing of Portland cement.

Across a quarried valley was once the home of a couple who had faithfully attended Olive Hill Church. The garage, my father told me, had been Grandad and Granny Boyles’ years ago and their family’s first home in Jewell County when they made the move from their farm in Republic County. This home was later made into a garage. Dad would travel from there to school in Superior. He had jobs in a Superior grocery store and service station. This was the time frame when the Boyles family began attending church at Olive Hill.

Up the road there once stood a large Victorian style house that was known as the Higer place. Then it was past where the Blackstone family used to live. On up the road was where the Howers used to live. On the other side of the road was where the Langer family lived. Some of the those children attended the Oak Creek Country School that I also attended. Onward we came to what was once the Stenzel place and was later my sister’s first home as a bride. Many trips were made there to visit my sister. On the other side of the road was once the large beautiful house that was the Thomas place. Then we traveled past what was the former Davis farm, where loyal Olive Hill Church members once lived. Onward, the road led past where the Ross family lived, and on to the Oak Creek one room schoolhouse I attended. It is one of the few county school houses still standing today in Jewell County. Then we went past the Pettit house that was moved in years ago from the Roe farmstead, and across the road was once the Vader farmstead. Over east was where the Semke family lived.

So many changes have happened through the years along that country road. This same area was where my grandparents lived, and not far from them lived aunts and uncles, and of course my parents. Many of the once busy and beautiful farmhouses and outbuildings are no longer there, or have been abandoned.