Let's You and Me Do the Local Paper's Crossword

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1 TNM

2 lecturer

3 Belfrance

4 phlegm

5 inacting

6 fairy

7 bitch

8 LatviaCity

9 Ace

10 pit

11 dick

12 writer

14 jagger

17 gaming

18 rich

20 austriahungary

23 lipoed

24 shutup

25 tacky

26 dude

29 forsale

30 narc

31 criticized

32 leaves

35 nothing

36 Syria

38 Jew

40 salt

41 bidet

42 holler

43 busy

44 thataway

45 finally

46 wait

47 fox

Memory Lane

One day I walked a little farther and turned onto a one-lane road I hadn't walked before although I've lived in the area 12 years, and was steamrolled by almost prehistoric memories: It looks like Ashland County, WI as it was more than 50 years ago, the place where my love for the country began, on trips to my uncle's dairy farm where I slept in a room that got very cold in the morning. Stony fields no good for crops, only cows and hay; the electrical poles, mere logs set upright into the ground, holding up a single wire to perfection; second-growth timber, and chicory weeds, all very quiet, and every half-mile a fire hydrant at the roadside, cast-iron thickly painted red; here, with lettering: CHATTA TENN 1963.

Simply hadn't seen the turnoff to this road, a memory lane, or maybe it magically appeared, a new road just when I needed it, and I walked thinking how we always visited my uncle in August, and August in northern WI is like mid-September here: breezes tepid and then cold, dealt out edgewise like playing cards; dry grass; woodpiles; understated sunlight. An excellent fitness walk because of its hills, rising 283 feet total from the starting point to its highest. Three miles into it I hadn't reached the end, and turned around, but next time I'll walk farther and see what's at the end of Memory Lane.

Farm Scenery

Some of the best scenery here is in hilly country where the road is two lanes with drop-offs on each side and I can't get out to take a photo. So I haven't shown you very many pictures of the genuine farms that remain here in the valleys and floodplains: dairy cows, corn, soy, sod, hay (pictured), and almost a pig farm. The neighbors organized because the proposed 200-acre pig farm was partly in the LaBarque Creek watershed, and the pig farmer decided to settle elsewhere.

Cops: 0; Me, 1

We got our colorful eastern Missouri autumn, beyond our wildest dreams, and today was its most gorgeous day. So I lunched in a little county park along the Big River, where I have a secret spot for fishing, and was at a picnic table being enriched by the view when up behind me comes a sheriff's deputy, a very handsome one, all in brown (I love a man in uniform) and surprises me when he says, "Maybe you didn't take the time to read the signs at the park entrance when you came in, but glass bottles aren't allowed in the park."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. I had half my sandwich and  two-thirds of a bottle of orange juice left. I picked up the bottle to surrender it.

"It's not glass, it's plastic!" I said.

"Sure looks like glass."

"It's plastic. Here, squeeze it," I said to the deputy. He hesitated but he did it.

He said, "Lotta people don't take the time to read the signs at the park entrance that glass bottles aren't allowed in the park." And he turned his attention to the folks on the sandbar, fishing, saying, "Wonder what they're catchin' today."

He wandered off to sit in his patrol car, and after lunch I took a little walk to see if my secret, small and narrow fishing spot down the bank was still there. It was.

Love Medicine

Meet the Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). It is an autumn flower, uncommon but of course we have it here, growing over a small stream (see photo of its environment below right; the lobelia likes "seepy areas"). The wildflower ID book I rely on reveals its old-time uses:

"The Mesquakies used great blue lobelia in love medicines. The roots were finely chopped and mixed into the food of a quarrelsome couple without their knowledge. This, they believed, would avert divorce and make the couple love each other again. Other tribes used root tea for syphilis..."

The book: Kurz, Don. Ozark Wildflowers: a Field Guide to Common Ozark Wildflowers. Helena, MT: Falcon, 1999. ISBN 1-56044-730-3.

Black Blue Butterfly

Trying to ID this butterfly for you, I googled "black butterfly," "black with blue," "black with iridescent blue," and more. For crying out loud, it's not considered black or blue -- it's a "Red-Spotted Purple" butterfly, Liminitis arthemis astyanax. About 3.5 inches across. Photographed today in Gray Summit, Missouri. Quite common in the Mississippi Valley -- and to the east. But the feeling it gave me was not at all common!