Do parents still read Mother Goose rhymes to their young children? If they do, some of the messages must be even harder to understand nowadays than when we were kids.

I mean, that stuff about Simple Simon meeting a pieman and expecting to buy a whole pie for a penny is sadly out of date. Today, a single piece of pie costs at least a dollar-a buck-fifty, ala mode.

So, in the interest of making nursery rhymes more current, the following versions are offered:

Little Bo-Peep

Has lost her sheep,

And don't know where they've gone to.

But that's just fine,

Come income tax time,

She can deduct them from Internal Revenue.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

Thistles, thorns and corn rootworms

And crabgrass in every row.

Little Miss Muffett

Sat on her tuffet,

Eating her curves away.

Along came a dieter,

And sat down beside her,

And frightened Miss Muffett away.

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold.

Pease porridge in the pot,

Nine days old.

It had a funny taste,

It had a funny smell.

Now the pease porridge maker

Is locked up in jail.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Civil-suit lawyers,

And insurance men,

Went to court to get Humpty

A fat settlement.

This little piggie went to market.

This little piggie stayed home.

This little piggie had roasted beef.

This little piggie had none.

The farmer who raised the little piggies

Wound up flat broke.

There you have it, kiddies. Rhymes that better fit our times.

You can get two kinds of advice in the Ozarks, both worth a listener's time. I remember the first kind upon seeing a pair of neighbors at a country store giving directions to a tourist who had stuck his head out of the car window to ask the nearest way to Huzzah Creek. In the Ozarks, nearest is in the eye of the beholder, and my friends, consulting each other, gave advice in their own fashion.

"Well, ain't much water in Huzzah, are they, Archie? We've had a dry spell. I'd say go north far's old man Ferrel's place on the Park Road and come east to the low water bridge on Huzzah."

"It'd be five mile shorter to turn off on that forestry road that goes to Ferrel's, Ben."

"No, Archie, not that'n, they been hauling logs on that'n. Sary Riley said you could flip a rock sledge in them ruts."

"Well the next 'un then, Ben, that 'letter' road turns off at Cletus Smith's brown barn, I believe they call that 'D' or maybe 'Double-D,' but it's hard-top. You take that a two-three mile north to the F Road and turn right on that toÉ"

"You know, Archie, I believe Cletus painted that barn red."

"Well, red, brown, don't make no never mind, it's as big as a Ho-tel, Ben, and you know them yard dogs of Cletus's will harrie his car all the way past the place so he'll know he turned on the right road. . . so, anyway, when you get up there to 'F,' head east for, oh, quite a spell."

"I'd call it the rise of ten-mile, Ben."

"Well maybe, a mighty scant ten-mile. Don't seem that far to me. You talkin' about to the creek crossin', Archie, where you killed that buck that hadn't got but the one antler, and hit a forked 'un?"

"I was thinkin' as fur's to the hatchery ponds, down from that a piece, that's where most folks goes."

"Well now, if he's a'goin there it ain't but five-mile on the 72 blacktop, from where we're a standin' to Huzzah bridge. Mister, get back on the slab a'goin' east and take your first left this side of the bridge and the road will take ye up half a quarter fer'nent the hatchery pond."

I have no idea whether the driver, whose eyes had seemed to glaze over halfway through the directions, ever found the spot on Huzzah where he wanted to go. I only know that after he took off my two friends were satisfied that they had helped, but Archie had a worrisome thought.

"You know, Ben, that feller never said upper or lower Huzzah."

"Well, Archie, it's dry as a pocket either way he takes to it this time of year."

Now if that seems mixed advice, let me qualify it by telling the second piece I remember.

An Ozark boy, just out of high school and confused by all the choices his teachers talked about, asked his dad what he should do with his life. His dad gave him this answer. "Son, I'd say, find something you really like to do and try to make a little money at it."

See, we might confuse a stranger with local directions, but basically, most Ozark folks are pretty good with facts.