John Hotze's Story
08/11/02 - Ninety nine years ago a group of men had a vision of a cabin near a spring not too far from the Gasconade river they loved to float and fish. Their vision became a reality about the same time the Worlds Fair opened in St.Louis. Some 40 years later, as a young boy, my folks brought me to Mossy Springs. A picture is still in my head of how the cabin looked back than. There were holes in the floors and the roof. I remember it rained a lot during that trip and there were pots and pans all over the porch to catch the rain as it dripped from the ceiling. The cabin has a distinctive but pleasant smell that sticks in your head along with visions of the cabin back than. The two beds that fold against the wall were in the for west bedroom. None of the rooms were painted - they all were just natural wood. Call me old fashion and outdated but I wish they were still that way. Ya, I know, the rooms were dark. We didn't have electric lights back than though. Maybe sometime we should think about taking one wall back to natural wood in each of the rooms.
I also remember when the big room had two doors on the East wall and another door where the window is that looks out on the porch. I'm sure some of you remember all the writing on the walls. I guess as kids we spent a lot of time reading and searching out old writings we had done through the years. As a kid, I guess getting to write on the walls seemed pretty neat since we wouldn't dare do that at home. The writings I speak of were mostly on the porch walls and some of the doors on the inside. The reason being back than, the cabin walls on the inside were all just stained wood. There were always a couple of beds on the porch under the bedroom windows. I always liked to sleep on the porch - it was cooler I guess.It seemed that we frequently spent two weeks straight for vacation when we came to Mossy. Wow, wouldn't that be great. I remember one of the big events was our once or twice trip into Waynesville and having an ice cream soda at the drugstore. St. Roberts didn't exist back than. As I recall, when we went to town it was only to Waynesville. I can't remember if and where we went grocery shopping back than. I do remember to keep things cold we used ice in one of the big floor ice boxes and kept some things in the spring.
Right where the spring enters the river, the river use to divide and you could sometimes get down below through this right channel. If you took the left channel, the river went to the right as soon as you got through what we call the first rapids. There was another pretty good rapids as the river took off to the right and met up with the other channel. Just before you reached the clay bank there was kind of a slue that went back up toward the boat landing. With the old wooden long johns it was quite an ordeal to get the boats back up to where the boat landing is. We use to keep the boats back up in this slue at a place we called the lower landing. I'm sure a lot of you remember when the only river channel was against the clay bank along the lower field. Sometime we use to tie the boats up against the clay bank near the end of the lower field. There use to be trees all along the river in the lower field. I'm not sure if the flooding washed them away or Laughlin mistakenly cut them down. At any rate Laughlin worked very hard to reroute the river to the North away from the field. It looks like he succeeded except during floods. Unless some fast growing trees get planted along the clay bank, I think the lower field will eventually disappear.
Some of the visions I describe here most likely came from one of my first visits to Mossy during the mid 40's. It likely was the first trip that I became addicted to Mossy. This is part of my story, I'm sure many of you have your own to tell.