to Booneville, MO

Seven days makes a week, and a week in Springfield was enough to do what was needed. It was time to say goodbye. Once again I was leaving Springfield. Practice makes perfect, maybe I'll get it right one of these times. For a week, mail had been accumulating at my PO box. It would be like Christmas, I was hoping for one essential piece of mail, would Santa bring it or would my stocking be filled with the coal of junk mail?

I would get my kicks on Route 66 when I left Niangua. Route 66 (now called highway CC) would get me to Lebanon where I could catch a road that would get me over the Lake of the Ozarks. Oooh, but there was that house. It was one of the first wrecked houses that I shot when I first arrived in Niangua. I might as well make it my last Niangua image, how poetical-like!

The roads of the Missouri Ozarks are predictably unpredictable. They wind over and around the hills and the hollows. If it is overcast and you are not minding your rights and lefts it is easy to lose your orientation to North. You will wend and wind for an hour to discover you have just driven a loop when you thought you were managing pretty well to stay generally pointed in one direction. Sometimes the loop isn't your fault. There are looped roads that take 15 miles to round, but they twist and curl so many times you don't realize your are aiming back at the starting point.

I needed to end my day North, without too many loops. So from Lebanon I planned to take highway 5 which would get me across the Lake of the Ozarks. It worked. I made it across the lake, past all of the towns that cater to boaters, fishermen and vacationers. In Gravois Mill, MO there was a dog grooming place called "JoJo's Dog Grooming" I wonder if it was named in honor of "JoJo the Dog-faced Boy," a side-show performer from the late 1800s.

From the lake region the land breaks into deeply rolling hills. Big farms there. Bigger than what's around my part of the Ozarks. The land isn't as poor and unpredictable so the spreads are larger. Field crops covering a hundred acres. Old homesteads amalgamated into larger spreads. You can see where the old homesteads were. Huge, ancient shade trees growing around a square spot. Sometimes there is an old, rotting house. Sometimes just a foundation. Occasionally the barn will be sturdy and is used to house equipment. A few more years of useful life before rot and termites finish their work. Often it seems the farmers will spare an unusable barn when they will push over a house. Perhaps it is an esthetic choice--old barns can be so lovely. Perhaps an affinity for the work place. Maybe even an environmental decision--place for the barn swallows to nest.

Around and over the road wound, taking me, eventually, to Booneville, Missouri. Booneville Missouri, what a surprise. Bricks. Lots of bricks. Stacked into grand houses and small bungalows and everything in between. Apparently the town was founded by Germans and Jews. There must have been some excellent masons among them for the brickwork in this town is wonderful. The styles of masonry are interesting as well. From simple cubicle stacks to houses that used two or three kinds of fancy brick and had foundations of hewn stone. Hexagonal bay windows with no brick sticking out that odd angled corner. I could have easily spent an extra day or two there just looking around. Food is cheap, I had a beer and a burger for three dollars!

The downtown strip is a nicely maintained set of buildings. The best neon in town is for a place called the Stein Cafe. The sign is from the 40's. Don't just look at the sign, go inside. The restaurant has an attractive bar and a good menu. If you go there, check it out, it's a nice restaurant. The best store frontage award goes to the sporting goods place whose storefront includes a stained glass "dome" over the entrance. Nice stuff from ages ago.

Booneville is an interesting town. It has a casino now. I was told the casino coming in was a good thing because it brought "people to town who had different ideas." Apparently, there are folk in town who aren't progressive about how to advance the town. "They don"t understand the concept of spending money to make money." Investing their money into the town to enrich the town and, more slowly, their own coffers. I was told their failure to invest in their own town is slowing the growth of town. Typical small town stuff. Nevertheless, the town is really fresh. It is just beginning to simmer into something wonderful. If you are interested in finding a nice place in the Midwest to move to, consider Booneville, it is just about to become something splendid. Birthing pains, yes. But there is a good group of people within the town striving to give it direction and bring it into the new millennium.