Visiting the Ozarks hills where you grew up can be a perplexing experience. There are so many familiar things there that exist in a world that hasn't escaped change.

The house where you grew up is still standing and occupied, but the big elm trees are long gone. The garden has been turned into lawn. The woven-wire fence that used to separate the front yard from the gravel road is gone. All that remains of the orchard are a few trees here and there.

One big change is a welcome one. The privy is gone, which is a pretty good indication there is an indoor bathroom in the old frame farmhouse. Whoever lives there now must appreciate that. Somehow the small building that used to be part of every rural homestead isn't missed as much as some other landmarks, like the big-timbered barn that was moved to Illinois by a tornado in the early 1960s. Every time you drive down the road and round the corner in front of the house you expect to see the barn looming up ahead. But there is nothing but weeds in the empty barn lot.

The creek that goes along the side of the barn and past the garden now has a low-water bridge for motorists who go farther up the valley. The creek rarely has water in it, but during cloudbursts the runoff from the surrounding hills gathers in the creek bed and musters up a raging torrent that used to wash out the road crossing.

Most of the mud holes that used to make driving down the road from the blacktopped highway to the farm such a challenge are gone. This is probably because the school bus now uses the road. When you were in school the bus only came along the blacktop almost a mile from the farmhouse. That's just one of the modern changes.

In the heat of a July day from yesteryear, you remember, it wasn't unusual to stand under the shade of the old elm trees and look up the valley toward the highway and anxiously wish for some mysterious visitor to come rolling down the hill and across the pasture with a vast cloud of dust trailing behind. Because the road kept close to the hills, it took several twists that kept visiting vehicles out of sight until they came up by the front yard. But the heavy air filled with the reddish brown dust was as good a warning system as ever there was.

One day your wish for an exciting visitor came true. The gravel on the hill crunched under the tires of the approaching car. The dust roiled up and drifted into the valley. Your mother, who was inside the house, said it was probably your cousin Jo, the one who always wanted to be a fashion model and moved to New York to become famous and told everyone to call her Linda, which was her first name but sounded more fashionable than plain old Jo, and you understood because you had the same name almost.

Indeed, cousin Jo did pretty well in the fashion world as a model and could be seen in the Sunday rotogravure sections of the big-city newspapers wearing the latest style in hats, gloves and dresses. She was about the only celebrity you knew, and she was for sure the only one you could count as a relative.

There was the usual excitement as Jo's car came to a stop under the shady elms, the kind of hustle and bustle that comes with exchanging greetings and hugs.

Cousin Jo got right to the point. "I've been driving for two hours, and I really need to go to the bathroom," she said to your mother.

That was certainly understandable. Everyone has been in a similar predicament at one time or another.

"Have you brought it inside yet?" Jo's family was one of those lucky farm families with indoor facilities. Uncle Carl had made sure his house had electricity and running water both at the same time, which meant he had a television set before anyone else and actually had a bathroom to go to during commercials.

"Heavens no," said your mother, responding to Jo's hopeful question that the privy might be history. "It stinks too much."

Everyone laughed so hard that even if you hadn't been in a car for the past two hours you needed to go.

Every trip nowadays to the old farm place is full of childhood memories, but none is so strong -- or so full of real-life practicality -- than the sight of cousin Jo's disappointment about having to make a trip through the orchard to the little house out back.

Today cousin Jo lives in California in a house that by Ozarks farm standards is mighty ritzy. You wonder if she ever goes into a bathroom with its gleaming tile and dazzling ceramic and thinks about her visit that July day to the farm on Kelo Valley.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.