Rocky Mountain High

On the Road, Part 2

We wake up in Terra Haute at a time to coincide with the earliest serving of complementary breakfast at the motel.  We fuel up for the relatively short journey to St. Louis.  Almost every summer in our early years of marriage we made the pilgrimage to the Gateway to the West to visit Polley’s family, and almost every summer the line which delineated Eastern Time from Central Time changed.  During our student days we entered Central Time by driving NORTH in Indiana toward Chicago. Funny how that demarcation zig zags.

We adjust our seat belts, put the visors back up, and brace ourselves for the trek across Illinois.  Illinois….Land of Lincoln, Springfield, and that city of broad shoulders, Chicago.  But where I-70 crosses the state, the highway is flanked by low fields sprouting spinach or soybeans or cauliflower.  The flatness of our journey begins in Illinois, and the landmarks are few.  The huge cross in Effingham is one of them, and, like all symbols, this one is subject to interpretation.

Another landmark which always intrigues me is the Cahokia mounds, a Native American site near the border of Illinois and Missouri that provides a stark contrast to the flat lands around them.

’”Although there is some evidence of occupation during the Late Archaic period (approximately 1200 BCE) in and around the site,^[6] Cahokia as it is now defined was settled around 600 CE during the Late Woodland period. Mound building at this location began with the emergent Mississippian cultural period, about the 9th century CE.^[7] The inhabitants left no written records beyond symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood and stone, but the elaborately planned community, woodhenge, mounds and burials reveal a complex and sophisticated society.^[8] The city’s original name is unknown.

The Mounds were later named after the Cahokia tribe, an historic Illiniwek people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 17th century. As this was centuries after Cahokia was abandoned by its original inhabitants, the Cahokia tribe was not necessarily descendants of the original Mississippian-era people. Most likely multiple indigenous ethnic groups settled in the Cahokia area.^[9][10] Though widely debated, some archaeologists connect Dhegihan Siouan-speaking tribes to Cahokia. They include the Osage, Kaw, Omaha, Ponca, and Quapaw. These peoples are generally believed to have migrated from the east of the Ohio Valley. Many Native American tribes migrated over the centuries in response to local conditions and intertribal warfare. Those living in territories at the time of the European encounter were often not the descendants of peoples who had lived there centuries before and built the mounds.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

I am always tempted to stop by Cahokia, explore the area and step back in time, perhaps pay homage to the peoples who dwelled there. Next trip….perhaps on the way home.

A broad smile brightens Polley’s face as the top of the St. Louis Arch first appears on the horizon.   This is her home of the past, a past filled with summer vacations at the Lake of the Ozarks, warm stays with her grandparents in Jefferson City, a quaint capital if there ever was one, and growing up in the shadow of the Gateway to the West.  I smile, too. St. Louis is the home of the FeatherCraft fly fishing store, and there is some shopping to do before I wade the streams of Colorado.

Our stay with Meredith and Ronak is, as always, a joyous one.  They are expecting an addition to the home they have shaped in Tower Grove.  Visiting one’s children is not only a happy occasion, it is an affirmation of life. A few days later we made a short ride to Columbia, Missouri, home of the Mizzou Tigers, to visit Polley’s sister Martha and her children.  Good food, good drink, good conversation.   Ahhh…family.

We were both tempted to drop south and visit the Lake.  The Lake, to Missourians, is like The Shore to Philadelphians.   Polley is nostalgic about swimming off the dock and water skiing on the Lake.  I inwardly smile as I remember slinging hula poppers at waiting bass along the shoreline, fishing with Polley’s grandfather.  Nothing is as good as family.  Next trip….perhaps on the way home.

One of my thrills on this trip was to play with Jasper, Martha’s grandchild.  For me it was not always that way with my in-laws.  Of course, big mouth moi  started off on the wrong foot.  Upon first meeting my future mother-in-law, I said something like, “It is nice to be here in Missouri.”  My pronunciation of the state name pronounced the second “I” as an “ee” as in banshee.  My mother-in-law-to-be corrected her daughter’s fiancé.  “It is Missouri.” The last “I” is pronounced like the “a” in “aw.”  I scratched my head.  Any intelligent person would have let that conversation lapse into the annals of the history of East meets West.  Any intelligent person.  Before I knew it, my New York City dagger of a tongue was out of its sheath, “I am curious.  How do you say the state of Mississippi?  Missassappa?”

We left Martha’s early because, if we were to keep to our timetable, we would have to put some big miles on the odometer this day.  In western Missouri I-70 crosses the Mighty Mo and leaves the distinctive bluffs for less hilly ground.  Billboards suddenly sprout on both sides of the road, most of the advertisements seem to fall into two categories.  Highway signs which promote attendance at church and prayer, warning about the Almighty’s wrath should we stray off the road.  These biblical admonishments are interspersed with billboards promoting attendance at “Gentlemen’s Clubs,” while others advertise the assets to be found at adult stores.  God, apparently, does not mind sharing advertising space with those who promise more carnal virtues.

The hills begin to flatten as we drive past Royals Stadium and Kansas City Missouri into Kansas City Kansas.  Kansas. The Sunflower State…..miles and miles of the Sunflower State.  Kansas deserves its own blog.