Jun 24-26, 2013
No, we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. We’re in
Missouri right now, making our way toward St. Louis from a little town called
St. Joseph, as we detoured to visit a couple of more state parks that were supposed
to be good birding spots. No go, although we saw some pretty spots. Must be
the wrong time of year—too late for migratory birds and most are already done
with their nesting. We’re only adding onesie/twosie’s to our bird count now—most
of the birds we’re seeing are already on our list.
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One lovely birding spot overlooked the Missouri River where the Lewis and Clark expedition stopped to rest after heat exhaustion due to the hot and muggy weather. |
The reference to “Mugsville” in the title of this blog
refers to the humidity. Somewhere about the middle of Kansas things went from
arid and fairly cool to muggy, hot, and humid—our usual eastern summer weather.
A few thunderstorms are around too.
We decided to stop at another Motel 6 in St. Joseph (new
Scandinavian décor again) for a night, so I could do a little work on the book,
and then for my birthday on Tuesday we planned to have a celebratory lunch at a
nearby Red Lobster and then drive on up the road a piece, to Cairo, MO, to see
if I could locate the grave of my great-great-grandfather,
James Washington Surber.
Well, that was the plan. But then I got hit by a stomach
bug Monday evening, so we ended up staying another night at the Motel 6 so I
could recover. No Red Lobster—I ate crackers and water, and later on some
chicken soup. I felt fine this morning (Wednesday) (plus I did get quite a lot
of work done on the book editing project). We resumed our plan, heading for
Cairo.
Cairo turned out to be a very tiny town, a village
really. A tad bigger than Oriskany, but not much! We found our way there
without much difficulty, but finding the Grand Prairie Cemetery was another
story. We were looking for County Rd. 1635, but it didn’t appear on our maps,
including on the GPS. I stopped at the little Post Office to ask directions.
The door was open and a bloodhound was stretched out on the floor, but no human
was in evidence. Like the dog, the entire town appeared to be in siesta time.
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The Postmaster of Cairo, Missouri lying down on the job? Carol's image in the door makes it look like she's in there talking to the dog. |
I
finally spotted one man walking down the empty sidewalk and hailed him. “Can
you tell me where the Grand Prairie Cemetery is?” He looked stunned and then
replied that, no, he had no idea where any cemetery was around there. Hmm. I
had gotten the GPS coordinates for the cemetery off the internet, but couldn’t
figure out how to enter them into our new GPS device. Finally Jack took a look
and figured it out, and the GPS knew exactly where to find the cemetery once we
put the coordinates in. It was near the town but off on a gravel road all by itself.
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Entrance to Grand Prairie Cemetery in Cairo, Missouri |
Some background on my great-great-grandfather, James
Washington Surber: his father, my great-great-great grandfather Jacob Surber,
was an early pioneer in this part of Missouri, and James (who was called “Wash”
by his friends and family) was born in Missouri, came back to Virginia and
farmed and got married to his wife Catherine, and then at some point moved part
of his family back to Missouri. In Virginia, he lived near where we now live
but not on the farm that my family knows as their homeplace. The facts are a
little bit fuzzy. Some of the older folks in the area remember their older
family members talking about “Uncle Wash Surber” or “Cousin Wash Surber,” waaaay
back there, around Civil War days. His reasons for leaving Virginia and
returning to Missouri have been lost to posterity, but it may have had
something to do with the fact that one of his brothers, who had stayed in
Missouri, had a big farm and was doing well. I found some information about the
brother William and his father Jacob in a book published in the late 1800s
about people who lived here (Randolph and Macon Counties) at that time, listing
Jacob as an original pioneer and his son William as a “well-to-do farmer.”
I found a photo on the internet of James Washington
Surber’s gravestone in the Grand Prairie Cemetery; it’s a tall one that should
be relatively easy to find (it’s not a huge cemetery). Jack starts on one side of
the grassy field and I take the other side, and in a few minutes Jack calls and
waves—he had found two Surber gravestones. One, the tall one, is for James
Washington and his wife Catherine,
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Carol at headstone of J. W. Surber and his wife. Inscription follows. |
and the other is for their son Charles, who
died when he was only 30 years old, three years before James W. and
Catherine died.
We took some photos. I thought that James’s father Jacob was
buried here too, but that’s apparently not the case (probably buried on one of
their farms). The hot sun and humidity had us both sweating profusely, but it
felt good to finally find their graves and pay our respects. It’s a peaceful
spot.
Stepson Jason called me just as we were pulling into the
cemetery, to acknowledge what we call our “interbirthday”—the day between our
birthdays. He’s at the airport on his way to Houston to visit his brother Jeff
and family and his mom, who also lives there. Our granddaughter Jennifer has
the same bday as me, so Jason and Jennifer will be able to celebrate together
when he gets there. (June is a BIG birthday month for our family members: my
brother Jeff, me, sister-in-law Linda, triplet nieces/nephew Eric, Christin,
and Lauren, Jennifer, and Jason. Probably forgot somebody too.)
We plan to stop just this side of St. Louis tonight, and
then tomorrow we’ll drive on to Lexington, KY, to visit Jack’s nephew Franklin
and his wife Joanne, who we always enjoy spending time with. And from there
it’s just a day’s drive to home…
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Los Angeles? No, and you can tell because there's rain drops on our windshield. Not all goes according to plan. Traffic suddenly stopped on I-70 about 65 miles from St. Louis. We decide to take the next off ramp and call it a night. |
Where we are:
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| Unplanned stop in Warrenton, Missouri |
Bird species count: Vermilion flycatcher, turkey vulture,
Bell’s vireo, *golden-fronted woodpecker, Say’s phoebe, northern cardinal,
greater roadrunner, house finch, common raven, *northern rough-winged swallow, *summer
tanager, *prothonotary warbler, *yellow-breasted
chat, *yellow-rumped warbler, northern mockingbird, mourning dove, cliff
swallow, Mexican jay, black-headed grosbeak, black-chinned hummingbird, Wilson’s warbler, *Scott’s
oriole, chipping sparrow, house sparrow, lesser goldfinch, black-crested
titmouse, acorn woodpecker, scrub jay, *western kingbird, white-winged dove,
*canyon towhee, *Grace’s warbler, *zone-tailed hawk, *curve-billed thrasher,
Bullock’s oriole, Gambel’s quail, great horned owl, black-throated sparrow,
*cactus wren, ladder-backed woodpecker, white-crowned sparrow, brownheaded
cowbird, Brewer’s blackbird, *pyrrhuloxia, hooded oriole, verdin, American crow,
Anna’s hummingbird, dark-eyed junco, white-throated swift, Steller’s jay,
mallard, common egret, brown pelican, western bluebird, loggerhead shrike,
Audubon’s warbler, robin, Canada goose, black-billed magpie, red-winged
blackbird, redtailed hawk, American dipper, *yellow warbler, tree swallow,
osprey, mountain bluebird, peregrine falcon, green-tailed towhee, rufous-sided
towhee, common grackle, eastern kingbird, dickcissel, rock pigeon, killdeer, barn
swallow, red-bellied woodpecker
State count: 16 [Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri]
Odometer count:
Surber, VA: 107,435
Warrenton, MO: 116,549
Accommodations avg cost: 81 nts, avg $15.45/night
