The County - Prologue

Prologue:

It was several years ago that I enrolled in a new sort of archaeology class at what is now my almamater.  It was a different kind of archaeological dig in the respect that we were not looking for dinosaur bones or Indian relics or those types of things that Indiana Jones and his ilk seek.  (I did buy a fedora though.)  No, this was what Professor Simpson called Village Archaeology.

The Prof had located a site near central Missouri not far from the campus that he felt was just right for his fledgling class of archaeologist wannabes.  Our mission was to comb a mile square area among the ruins of an old village and find out what we could about the former inhabitants and see if we could determine the “flavor of the times” as he called it.  Most of the class found little glass vials, old hammers, part of a wagon, ice tongs, some horseshoes now and then and even part of a vintage airplane.  I, on the other hand, found nothing.  Nothing that is until one day when visiting my grandfather in the old folks home I mentioned my recent college adventure and what miserable luck I was having finding anything of importance.

“You ain’t looking in the right place”, he told me.  “No kidding”, was my reply.

“Now, where is this place again?”, he asked.  I gave him the general location and he said, “Well, I know all about that place, got wiped out by a tornado years ago and the damage was so complete they never rebuilt the place.  People just went other places.  Later, if you remember your history, they also had a big earthquake in these parts and it just flattened what was left there, which wasn’t much, along with the surrounding area.  In fact a friend of mine use to be what you’d call the chronicler of the place, sort of the town historian, reporter, and poet laureate, also the city jailer”.

“Gee”, I said, “he would have been a great guy to talk to”.

“Well, why don’t you?  He lives just down the hall”.

Mr. Homer I Storebeck was old, a lot older than Grandpa, but how old I was never really able to determine.  He was more than happy to discuss the old days and the history that surrounded the village.  While my classmates were exploring and digging in the July Missouri heat I whiled away my time drinking iced tea and listening to his yarns in air-conditioning.  This was far more palatable to my archaeological taste.

After several days of note taking and recording, he asked me what I was going to do with all the information he was giving me.  I told him I was going to compile the information into a term paper and present it to Professor Simpson and hope I got an A for the course.

He asked if original documents would help me out.  I perked up because I had always heard that original documents or primary sources were much better than second hand accounts or broken pieces of pottery.

He then reached into an old trunk and pulled out a bunch of papers.  “Think these might help."

.....To be continued