Lange General Store Blog — Steelville

Hi Folks, First the Story…… With our boys back in school for a new year and seeing those yellow buses on the road, it brings to mind how much things have changed over the years.  My Grandma Berniece received her schooling in a one-room country schoolhouse here in the Ozarks during the Great Depression – a pot-bellied stove in the corner, old wooden desks, a blackboard with chalk, one teacher for all 8 grades, and a school bell outside with a pull rope.   After the 8th Grade, Grandma wanted more schooling at the high school in town.. It held classes up...

  Hi Folks,         First, The Story………  Since it’s Summertime, we get an abundance of tourists and travelers in the General Store.  It’s a real pleasure to learn where everyone’s from and many times they share with us what they’ve been doing. A few musings of the summer about connections and what some have shared……. Two long-time friends, one living on the West Coast in California and one from the East Coast, hadn’t seen each other for years. These two women decided to reunite in the middle of the USA and selected the Ozark Mountains of Steelville as their girls weekend getaway destination.  They enjoyed...

Hi Folks, One warm evening this past week before the lightening bugs came out for the night, I looked out the window from our farmhouse while finishing up paperwork at my desk.  My boys were taking baseball batting practice in the yard.  Todd was pitching and our daughter, Fallon who was visiting had joined in too. I shut the computer down for the night and took a cup of our Hazelnut Crème coffee outside with me to sit in the rocking chair, relax and watch my family for a little while.  It wasn’t long before one of the boys said,...

Turtles crossing the highway….a frequent sight at this time of the year here in the Ozarks. Every time I see one it takes me back to memories when I was a kid of the annual VFW picnic in June.  First my brothers and I would search the back roads a couple of days before the picnic, each find what looked to be the fastest turtle alive, take them home to their own special cardboard boxes filled with grass, feed them with lettuce to give them plenty of energy, and hope they didn't escape in the backyard in the middle of the night....