There I was, with grapefruit knife and paintbrush in hand exposing the skull of an Osage Indian.

It was the summer of 1963, and I was part of an archaeology field crew working for the Anthropology Department of the University of Missouri under Dr. Carl Chapman. We were excavating the Osage village site northeast of Nevada, known today as the Brown Site. We identified the location of lodge poles used for building their houses by spotting the “post molds” in the ground, that is, small round areas of darker earth where the poles had been.

I was chosen to climb to the top of an extension ladder lashed to the side of a pickup truck to take photos of the site. It was frightening at the top to turn around and experience the sensation that the ladder was about to topple forward!

I was also chosen to be the one to gently tease away the soil from an articulated skeleton. (remember from the surgery episode that I had “soft hands”). I suppose that those bones are located in some display case in Columbia now.

I worked for MU for two more summers. That second year we lived in the old opera house on the square in Stockton, later destroyed by the tornado that ripped through town. We excavated Indian mounds and shelter sites along bluffs that had been identified during the winter months. One of my co-workers was from Edina, Minnesota, and he wrote a great song called, “The Missouri Bone Race”. He taught me to play the guitar, and I bought my first cheap one in Springfield. Amazingly, he went on to become a pediatrician in his home town!

We worked on one mound that was covered with rocks, and almost every one we picked up had a live scorpion under it! (32 in all). That’s the only place I have ever seen one. There must have been a curse on that site!

Most of the time it was rather like working on a chain gang! We dug 10-foot squares along the shelters and took the edges straight down, even if a boulder was in the way! We found lots of arrow heads, knives, scrapers, and “ear spools”, used by the Osage to maintain large holes in their ear lobes!

My two good friends and I all wound up with girlfriends there in Stockton. Mine had a father who was a banker there. She and I spent most evenings kissing at a location overlooking the construction of the new Stockton Dam. One of my friends wound up marrying his girlfriend. Another member of the crew was from Georgia and had to have grits for breakfast!

The third summer we lived in a two story house in Greenfield. One day when several of us guys were out in the front yard, a beautiful gal in a new sky blue Chevy Chevelle came by. They whistled at her, but little while later when she drove by that house again I was with her! I found her downtown, and we went to a movie with a local sheriff’s deputy sitting behind us!

I was fortunate to have landed the job working for MU, and I miss my friends to this day. What adventures we had!

EPISODE 27

There I was, spread-eagled against the side of the police car being frisked before being driven back to the site of the accident.

I had spent the summer after my last year of college selling books for the Southwestern Company out of Nashville, Tennessee in Marietta, Georgia. If you can imagine, I would ring the door bell and when someone answered I would say, “Hi, my name’s Ron, may I come in?” as I picked up my sample case, and almost everyone let me in! I’m not sure that would work these days.

Summer had ended and I had accurately estimated my salary to the penny and for that had won a Polaroid camera. My friend from JBU and I were on the way back to Nashville in my VW Beetle and were driving late at night in the mountains of Tennessee in the rain. Another Beetle had just passed us before we came to a right-hand curve where a semi truck had just rolled over. There was an officer waving a red flashlight and I slowed way down as we drove on past the site.

Several miles later, around midnight I was startled to hear a siren and see blue and red lights behind me. I was pulled over by an officer who had just been called out of bed to stop me! As noted above, he frisked me and loaded us into the squad car for a drive back to the accident site. It turns out that the VW that had passed me in the rain had struck and killed the wrecker driver’s son who had been out there to help. The officer with the red flashlight had intended for me to stop, not just slow down. We were allowed to leave without further incident.

Episode 28

There I was, having a meal in the Houses of Parliament in London, England!

Valo and I loved living in the UK for the three years that we were in the Air Force. We initially planned to live in base housing, but when our opportunity came up after a year, we elected to stay in the village of Eynsham, near Oxford. We had neighbors who were officers from base, as well as British ones whom we came to love.

The President of Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Joseph Merrill, was coming to England and he invited us to have a meal with him in the Houses of Parliament in London. I don’t recall the reason why he was there, but we were honored to join him. Sometime later we had the pleasure of taking the head of the pediatric department, Dr. William Blattner, to see the play “Romeo and Juliet” at the Globe Theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Sam and Scott were 9 months old when we went to England, so we only traveled in- country for most of that first year, but then went to many other countries. There was a bus stop around the corner from our apartment, so we could walk there, get on one of those red double-decker buses, get off at the Oxford train station 8 miles away, ride down through London to Dover, cross the channel to Boulogne, France, and take the train to Paris. To some countries we flew, to some we took the train, and to some we drove. We were blessed, and we had so much fun! (Valo wants that last phrase on her tombstone!)