Master Steeplejack

Man climbs mast to chase rainbows, rearrange clouds.               Good job, man.

To learn the value of a culture, check their barbecue.

The credit card machine kept disconnecting. I didn’t have cash, or my checkbook. “No problem,” said Perry Foster, “mail me a check.” Perry Foster’s Bar-B-Que embodied all that is good about humankind: Trust and harmony and world peace. Oh, and … Read More

Drive in movie

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

Maps

My ride and me, we never used a GPS. No compass. No MapQuest. We abstained from sextants. For the first third of this journey, a state highway map was our only guide. Deeper into our drive, untraveled roads became harder … Read More

Winter Water

Winter Campfire Coffee

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

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

Chapel in the Snow

Just off the highway, inspiration awaits. Fay Jones did the chapel. Mother Nature threw in the snow.

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

What Would Jesse Do?

Along the road we saw a sign, a real jolt to libertarians, especially those who liberated cash from banks and trains.