Elderberry Ramblings

Spring time means travel to Elderberries, so that is what we have been doing! A few weeks ago, we did the Branson tour, making it to four shows (The Duttons, Jim Stafford and Island Fire we heartily recommend), and enjoying them tremendously, shopping, sightseeing in the beautiful Ozark hills, oops, I mean mountains, dining at restaurants, and enjoying everyone's company on the road trip.

Then this past week we traveled south once more, this time stopping at Osceola. Now all us Missourians know of Osceola as THE BIG CHEESE STORE of the state, but this trip, we got to explore the town of Osceola, and its history. Of course we had to include a stop coming and going at that BIG CHEESE STORE, but the rest of the time we saw the sights of the town, the Historical Museum, which was hosting a Harmony history of American music, courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum, and which also had some wonderful and interesting local artifacts of the area. This is where we learned about the Burning of Osceola, which was a thriving town at the beginning of the Civil War, and which basically was burned to the ground by the Yankees, led by General Lane, in September of 1861. In fact, our tour leader was a local historian, Richard Sunderwirth, who compiled and wrote a history of that occasion and of the area. We Elderberries are famous for finding great food, so once more found a real gem, when we dined at the Baer House, a restaurant which only takes catered reservations for groups--it is an old school house renovated to accommodate crowds of diners. Then back on the bus to the confluence of two rivers, the Sac and Osage, which empty into Truman Lake. And on to an old plantation house, still standing, despite age and neglect, a monument to better days in history. We visited a cemetery, where we viewed the Confederate Memorial to the fallen 9 men, who were killed in the town square during the Burning. There our tour leader, Richard, fired off a small scale Napoleon cannon to honor the dead. Then we stopped at an old church in the town, and which has half of the walnut staircase from the courthouse destroyed in 1861, and which some farmers were able to pull off with their farm wagons and rescue for posterity. There was a rose window in that church that reminded me of an old quilt. This was truly an interesting historical trip--at the end, we each got a copy of Mr. Sunderwirth's book, "The Burning", autographed by him. So now we know way more about Osceola than just THE BIG CHEESE STORE!