Mystery gift from afa r It was an unexpected arrival – and as I strolled back from the mailbox I was full of anticipation at the surprise package from my father. Small, the size of a box full of checks, what on earth could this possibly contain – and why? It was between holidays – right after Thanksgiving and enough “before Christmas” not to be a Christmas gift. I smiled with delight. Packages from home and my parents were always fun. And in this case, somewhat mysterious, given the timing. In the house, I carefully cut through the layers of clear packing tape that encased the box. As I lifted the lid off, there was a note labelled in my father’s unmistakable handwriting: Care Package. Like any kid with a new toy, I laid the note aside (the adult kid did this very carefully) and then I just stared at the contents. I took another look. Jumbled together in the bottom of the box were not quite a dozen crumpled red and silver foil balls, some with narrow wire sticking from them and ...

By Janet O’Conor Camarata Farmland, Grundy County, Missouri Fulfilling a Promise Placing the Headstone for William Terry Myers  1861-1937 One sunny summer afternoon in 1986, two men and a young boy stood over an unmarked pauper’s grave in a small country cemetery south of Albany and north of Evona in Gentry County, Missouri. It was a drier year than usual, and the grass was already struggling with the heat, humidity and lack of rain. It was a little greener in the south western corner of the cemetery as the course, deep rooted grass was shaded by one lone elm tree on the knoll, next to the boundary fence.  The cemetery was surrounded by small farms in a chain of treeless rolling hills. In the distance could be seen a line of willows crowding the edges of Sampson Creek as it flows into the East Fork of the Grand River. Cemetery photo provided by Blair B. Carmichael. Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA Claude Fish, Lynn Myers and Lynn’s son, Brian stood qu...