a trip to Saline, Missouri

May 4 2002 Deb Dailey, Katie Dailey, and Mary Johnson set out in the little rusty blue '89 Cavalier for Saline. Aunt Mary told Deb of different stores that had been there, where they went to town to sell cream and buy groceries, Uncle Albert and Aunt Dollie's house right behind Saline, she pointed out neighbors and other relatives houses or sites where they had been and told a story of a good sized neighbor who worked for Grandpa Alfred. We zipped down a gravel road that turned into a path and walked around Aunt Bess Frisbie's house. It had a good roof but no windows, floors still in good shape. Layers and layers of wall paper. It was a four room square house with basement underneath, old tile on the floor. The had electricity there, there was an overhead light in one room and an outlet in another. There was a front and back door, a back enclosed porch, and 2 big windows in every room. One room had a small division in it, like maybe it was once a closet. There was a rounded hill that might've been a cave behind the house, and a barn aways off behind. It was on a hill and the front yard (now iris and grown up trees) went down to the gravel road, we drove on down this "road" a ways, then parked and hiked. There is a bridge over a crick there, Aunt MAry said when they were kids, that road was how they got to Aunt Bess's and Saline but the bridge washed out when they were kids. The current bridge had a big tree down over it. We hiked clear to the highway, met a nice old couple with horses, we saw lots of footprints on the clay road and frogsin the ditch and lots of flowers. it was all quite lovely... pretty steep hills there. To make a long story short, we got stuck, John Axsom called Milners and we got a $35 tow and some sunburn. The last time Aunt Mary had been to the 'old Axsom farmsites', they were still open, but when we went, they were fenced in {this is rural Cainsville/Saline area}. She showed me approximate locations. The farms were both off the highway that Fairview cemetery is on. There were once roads that led from the back of them but they're gone. We went thru Cainsville to look for Zoar cemetery, which is on edge of town by ballpark to look for Willie Axsom's grave, didn't find it. Will have to go back.
She showed me the house she thought Willie Axsom lived in. She said Etta Axsom lived behind the Cainsville School when they moved to town. As we walked thru the cemetery she recognized names and told me stories of neighbors and teacher and school friends. They had a neighbor man they caught in the barnyard sucking hen eggs, the egg was all in his beard. There was a neighborhood woman named Mutt who had a crush on Grandpa Alfred and Ralph Shafer.
At Zoar cemetery, was on the veteran sign for World World I veterans, didn't see his stone.
Aunt Mary said the Kelly Hughes house is still owned by his daughter but she talks of selling it. She thinks this was the house built by Alexander Axsom when he came to Missouri.