From Washington, Highway 100 stretches toward Hermann like a clothesline, draping over bluffs and peeking down ravines at your road’s companion, the Missouri River. The river was the major highway when John Colter traveled upstream with Lewis and Clark. Later, Colter settled on a farm near what became New Haven. The town sits undisturbed by our plastic fast-food culture. Even mighty Amtrak doesn’t slow down as it splits the town in half, shaking windows with the blast of its fearsome whistlehorn when it barrels past. The railbed creaks and vibrates the ground and everything around.

The John Colter Memorial is the town’s centerpiece. Or maybe the centerpiece is the pair of museums, or the old Central Hotel Bed and Breakfast. But for me the town’s centerpiece is the art-deco ambiance of the Walt Theatre, an eighty-year-old movie house refurbished to its 1940s glory, with the original towering movie marquee dressed in neon. In a life-imitates-art moment, the marquee displayed one word: Sing. It’s an animated movie: “a Koala named Buster Moon has one final chance to restore his theatre to its former glory by producing the world’s greatest singing competition.”

Picking a sure bet for lunch, Erifnus parked in front of Dos Bros Mexican Restaurant, and I put another notch in my bandolier, maybe my 500th Mexican restaurant. Maybe more.

On cue the Amtrak whistle sounded from a mile away. Stashing the leftovers from El Ranchito into the passenger seat, I climbed into Erifnus and fired her engine. As we pulled out of the parking space and headed to the end of the street to cross the tracks, Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner bore down on the intersection. The crossing guard arm started to come down. I thought about trying to beat the train.

Erifnus is old, and it wasn’t fair to turn her into scrap metal after a historic run. Worse, if we failed, the engineer and conductor and passengers would sustain injury from the impact and suffer post-traumatic distress. They would be delayed while emergency personnel cleared the wreck and packed my bloody body parts into a bag.

We waited for the train to pass, and we lost twenty seconds we’ll never get back.

from Souls Along The Road