My wife Nancy and I don't very often travel Missouri, except for short excursions near home, such as taking the old Jacket Road along the state line, crossing Big Sugar Creek and taking London Road to Gann Ridge Road, Twelve Corners Road, Arkansas Highway 72 and home. Or, for a Sunday afternoon drive we might go out Arkansas Highway 94 and on to Powell, Mo., Missouri Hwy. 90 to Route KK, south to Jacket and Hayden Road to our daughter's house on the farm.
On Aug. 1 we decided to make a bigger Missouri trip. Nancy's sister Peggy has lived in St. Louis, Mo., for much of her adult life, and we have made many trips to St. Louis to visit with her and her family. As we have advanced through our 70s, our going has dropped off considerably, health problems have complicated activities away from home, and so on. But recently Peggy made a move from the large house where she raised her family to a smaller place, and we thought that this summer we ought to visit her and learn about her new place.
I have always rather liked discovering new places, and often I'm taking an unfamiliar road just to see where it leads and what kind of settings one can see while traveling it. Our trip to St. Louis was pretty uneventful, other than having heavy truck traffic to watch out for. I noticed that by driving just under 70 mph, as we were, we were hardly ever passing other vehicles; but we were getting passed almost every minute. I think everybody on I-44 was driving at 75 or 80 mph, at least, including the 18-wheelers. All the truckers seemed to be running with the hammer down, around 75 mph. Peggy had been concerned that we might come into St. Louis during the afternoon rush hour. But we arrived early enough that the traffic into the city was no worse that the normal traffic running across the state. As it turned out, Peggy's new place was not very far from her former house. In fact, her new location is just off the street that we used to take to go from her house to church on a Sunday morning. It took us hardly a minute after we turned off I-44 and onto Big Bend Road to arrive at her new house.
It was when we took off for home that our traveling circumstances changed.
First off, we were informed that the I-44 bridge across the Meramec River was closed for repairs. We would have to detour. It is sometimes said of men that we men don't take directions very well, and don't like to ask directions when we are lost. Ok, yes, I'm a little like that. Some of us men do not see ourselves as lost just because our passengers don't know where we are or where we are heading. I admit that we may not know just where we are going either, but we don't see ourselves as lost. We may regard times of wandering and seeing new country as just interesting explorations, while others see us as lost out there somewhere. Ok, I admit that I have ended up in a farmer's barnyard a few times, and had to set out on a new tack in order to find a familiar road. But I didn't really feel lost, I was just on the verge of discovering a new way to get there.
Anyway, I took some of Peggy's advice to start the trip home. She recommended taking I-270 south for a short ways, then taking Hwy. 30 west, eventually planning to intersect with I-44 at St. Clair, Mo. That detour worked out without a hitch. We definitely saw some new country, towns that we had never heard of, and so on. We even explored several towns looking for a McDonald's restaurant, since noon was passing and we were getting into the afternoon without eating. There seemed to be a dearth of McDonald's eateries. On the trip "to" St. Louis we had stopped at Hardee's restaurants, but as we were taking our Hwy. 30 detour, we encountered none of those either. While we were negotiating St. Clair, I was temporarily lost, couldn't see the railroad that I thought would be a landmark, and for awhile I wasn't sure which side of I-44 we might be on. Maybe we've crossed it already. About the time I was ready to turn back to St. Clair and try again, we came upon a sign indicating that an entrance to I-44 West was just ahead. I knew it had to be there somewhere, you see. It was just a little farther down the road than I had anticipated.
Our next side trek came after we had come through Springfield and were closer to home. We were seeing signs saying that traffic would be restricted ahead on I-44, only one lane open. So I had the brilliant idea of switching over to old Hwy. 60 for the rest of our trip westward. We would jump over to 60, follow it to Monette, then south into Arkansas and home. In the old days, before Interstate highways, Hwy. 60 was the main route from northwest Arkansas to Springfield, Mo., so I'm thinking of 60 as a familiar road. I supposed that Hwy. 60 would be 5 or 6 miles south of I-44, so we took Missouri Route T, and were on our way to our little crossover to the old road. We drove, and drove, and drove, and my wife kept asking, "Where are we?" Well, we're somewhere between I-44 and Hwy. 60 and heading south. "But, where are we?" Along our way earlier, around Springfield, we had been seeing signs inviting us to visit Fantastic Caverns, and giving a web address, uppydowny.org.
We found that on Missouri Route T, you go up and up, and then you go down and down, and then your do it again, and again. We evidently were exploring the Ozark Mountains on a very uppy downy country road somewhere between I-44 and Hwy. 60. But we saw some beautiful farmland, and we learned where the little towns of Chesapeake and McKinley are, and we eventually arrived at Marionville, Mo., on Hwy. 60. I knew that Hwy. 60 was out there south somewhere; it was just 15 miles farther than I had estimated. I may someday get me one of those GPS gadgets. In the meantime, I stick to the old ways, drive south until you come to a road that you have heard of and go west until you come to a town you know.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and an award-winning columnist, is vice president of Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 08/21/2019