Missouri Part One
A lot of my Dad’s family lives in Missouri, just south of St. Louis. Unbelievably, I’ve only been there four or five times. I was pretty young the first couple trips and there is barely any memory left, just a sunset outside the church at my cousin Nancy’s wedding. I do, however, have many memories of later visits around the ages of eleven or twelve. I saw Missouri as a dangerous place where we were allowed to explore, try new things, and dance with death.
It would take us about six or seven hours to drive the length of Illinois, skip over the Mississippi River, and pull into my Aunt and Uncle’s home in Jackson. When we changed the radio from WLS to KSHE, we knew we were almost there. For me, the instant we left home to go on any trip, I would feel the first pangs of homesickness. Maybe on a subconscious level I knew that dangers lie ahead and that is why I longed for home. It is more likely that I was just being a little baby, but sleeping in unfamiliar houses was something I hated. Plus - no fan. I need my summer fan. I don’t want to hear every passing car and croakin’ toad all night long. I will need to be frosty and alert in the coming days.
When we first arrived at my Aunt and Uncle’s house, they sent us up to our cousins’ rooms. They were older than us and way into creepy, horror stuff. Any corner of their room was fodder for future night terrors. Most of what I saw, I didn’t understand. Later, they took us out back to find some old patio furniture that we could break apart to make into bottle rocket launchers. Why? For the bottle rocket war that was going to take place that night, of course.
My southern relatives are free spirits and I love them for it. The way they speak down there is a little slower than us with just a slight drawl. This laconic way of speaking makes you feel that everything was going to be fine and that a bottle rocket war was no big deal, just a matter of course. What’s that you say - you want to sit in the back of Uncle Harold’s pickup truck with the empty beer bottles rolling around as he speeds through the gravel roads and over the fields? Sure. You want us to go down to the creek and throw firecrackers at the frogs until lunch? No problem. During these escapades, my parents would try to get in the laid-back spirit and let us do things they would never allow normally. I actually would have been okay with a little parental intervention. “Can’t you see what I’m doing? Come out here and stop me! I like frogs!”
Later that night the bottle rocket thing was going to go down and my brother and I were sort of committed to participating. We did destroy that deck chair, I guess we should make use of it. Night fell and the first shots were fired. It wasn’t long before the neighborhood was filled with streaking fireworks, yelling kids, and honking car horns. We played it safe and just sent rockets straight up from the backyard amid a backdrop of sparks and explosions coming from all sides. We were near the action, not quite participants. I felt like some sort of adolescent war correspondent. We eventually went inside, to the relief of our parents, although not before witnessing a local teen have a bottle rocket explode inside his shirt.
We survived, said goodbye, drove away, crossed the Mississippi, changed from KSHE to WLS, and made it home safely. Even if we were only safe until the next visit down south, we would be more prepared then. It couldn’t possibly be more dangerous, could it? Um yeah, it could.
Next time - Back to Uncle Harold’s farm and into a minefield of danger and quite possibly death.
