Camp Blownstar Trip Day 12

St. Louis Missouri

So here I am in my home town. On a Sunday. All the people I was supposed to call tonight are not at home. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Yesterday I was in Jefferson City to see one of my old friends from IBM. We were customer engineers together in the Mattel Office Products Division. He's now a crip as well, but in his case it was a congenital defect. He has bone spurs poking into his spinal cord. He's had two surgeries for it. He can still walk, but he's not far from having to use a walker. I took him and his wife out to dinner.

On the way to Jefferson City, I drove by Lake of the Ozarks. Wow! It has really changed. Development out the butt. Wide roads. Shopping centers. Back in the 70's when I hung out there, there were no fast food chains. I passed three Mickey D's and a Wendy's. They even had a Chili's. Cliff's wife told me that the E Coli levels at the Lake were 12 times the normal amount that should be there. That's all the septic systems seeping into the Lake.

I stopped by the place where my old cabin was. I knew that they had sold all of the land where we were renting our cabin and had put up houses there as I had stopped by there 25 years ago. What used to be a gravel road to the houses is now all paved. Amazing.

The Catholic church where Mom dragged us off to mass when we were camping down there is still there. Stewart's Restaurant, down by the dam, is still there as well. I ate there in the early 60's. Some things haven't changed.

I have some cousins who own a kitchen and bath store there, but I didn't look for it. I have another cousin who retired down there but I didn't stop to see him either.

Got up this morning to drive from Jeff City to St. Louis and took Highway 50 rather than going over to one of the interstates. There are a lot of two lane roads in Missouri that are fun to drive. Highway 50 is one of them.

I stopped in Pacific to see my friend Alixe. She and her husband had moved and had not sent their forwarding address. She sent me a card earlier this year with her new address. I didn't have a phone number, but I figgered they'd be home on a Sunday morning so I plugged their address into Mistress Garmin and she took me right to their house. Spent a few hours there.

My friend Phil, the friend I have in Tucson, had me cart a little rocking chair to St. Louis to give to his son for their granddaughter. His son came to pick it up this afternoon and brought his daughter. She is really cute!

As I've been writing this, I've managed to talk to everyone I needed to and I've got the next two days scheduled. As is always the case, I need to spend more days here, but Michael and Cindy are eating everything from my garden so I've got to get home so I can have some of the veggies for myself.

Posted by denny at July 6, 2008 07:26 PM