In the darkness, I followed a silver Suburban for two hours. Visible through its back window was a video screen playing to backseat passengers, so as I drove along Route 60 to Springfield, I watched Finding Nemo on a small-screen … Read More
Winter Water
The air was cold, a few degrees above freezing. A north wind tried to aggravate us, but Cora blocked its best gusts. Cora is the island on our port side. We’d survived the toughest part of the trip: launching a … Read More
Locked Out Again
Connie stays across the river from downtown Kansas City at the old municipal airport. She’s known more formally as a Lockheed Constellation, the airline workhorse of the 1950s. If you saw her, you’d instantly recognize the plane, with her curvy … Read More
Empty Faces, Hollow Eyes
Damn depressing. But they deserve a shout. Thousands of these old family farmhouses sit empty and decaying. Each house was a setting for love, laughter, life. But during the 1980s and thereafter, thousands of families were driven from their homesteads. … Read More
Yard Bargains
“How much for books?” “Fifty cents.” Dan didn’t quibble. He knew what he wanted. Hard back classics. He rummaged through several cardboard boxes and plucked out a half dozen keepers. A collection of Jack London short stories. Aldous Huxley’s Brave … Read More
Prolificrat
My bookshelf welcomes Hannibal’s favorite son; his complete autobiography serves up riveting entertainment that cements his legend. He reveals as much about himself as Walter Williams could dig up about the rest of Northeast Missouri. Twain wallows in more than … Read More
Winter Camping Alone
If you wanted to hide from creditors or a hit man, Lake Wappapello would do nicely. Isolated in rugged hills, wholly surrounded by the thick woods of Mark Twain National Forest, the lake stands apart from the crowd. Driving to … Read More
Wilderness
Downriver, I found a suitable gravel bar where I beached my canoe and set up camp deep in the Irish Wilderness. I sat alone by the campfire and thought about the strange evolution of this area: wilderness, then settled and … Read More
Pits of Hell
On our late-night journey home, the refrigerator moon had set. A heavy curtain of clouds rolled overhead. No rain. No wind. Just darkness on a desolate road. I could see only what Erifnus’s headlights allowed. A dozen miles ahead we’d … Read More
Nobody Believed I Was Santa
I was a beanpole, skinny as a chair leg. Fresh out of school, my first job was selling ads for the Rolla Daily News. The boss told me to find a Santa Claus for Hillcrest Shopping Center. Nobody wanted to … Read More