Boonville, MO

On a bus trip from Kansas City to St. Louis we (44 ladies, laughing art lovers who'd been touring museums in KC) stopped at the Love's gas station and quickshop in Boonville, where I'd never stopped before, about halfway across the state. I understand there was a Civil War battle in Boonville, and the Budweiser Clydesdales are stabled there, and there is a historic walking tour of Boonville's many attractions, but this, across the road from the Love's, is what caught my eye. The Love's was doing great business selling Wendy's burgers, Starbucks espresso in cans, and showers to those passing through, but across the road there are no more weekly specials for residents, whatever they might have bought here.

Piety

Autumn brings church-sponsored come-one-come-all suppers of chicken, ham, roast pork, pork sausage (at Catawissa Union Protestant Church, $3 a pound to take home), and beef, advertised in the Events section of the local paper. I never like to take photos of food at these plentiful church suppers because it gives me away as an intellectual, but absolutely had to photograph this dessert table to show you, no matter what anyone thought. (The secret of life is: Nobody's thinking about you. Nobody's looking at you. They're all too busy worrying about themselves.)

Yet how to choose? Pumpkin, seasonal, one of the pleasures of late fall? Lemon, 'cause I get it so rarely? Berry pie, because the summer drought meant no berries in the meadow this season? Cherry, because it's always great? Peach, because you never know what you might be missing? Apple, because that's American? Exotic entry, Amish Pineapple pie? Coconut, or chocolate silk, or pecan pie? Custard? How about a slice of each? How about Union Pacific lays some railroad track out to my house and delivers me pie every day by the boxcar full? The only thing they didn't have was Concord grape pie, a New England regional specialty I liked to make from the purple grapes I and my friends liberated from abandoned grape arbors in upstate New York. I make a good one when I want to do the work.

On my deathbed I just know the pies of my life will pass before me.

If this photo does not make you want to go to church suppers than nothing will.

Sport of Kings

We saw a new road, then post holes and then fencing going up on a beautiful green hill, and then building began and we dreaded the subdivision surely to be built there, but that did not happen: the building stopped with one 16-horse stable and one house. It's a polo-pony farm or haven, and via road signs it invites the public to polo matches. I didn't know the first thing about it so ahead of time I drove up to the stable and got advice: bring a lawn chair; a match lasts two hours; general admission is $10, more if I wanted to sit beneath a canopy; park the car in the pasture.

I returned prepared. The polo field is huge, at least twice the size of a football field, and the action very far away. One team far overmatched the other; the latter was given a one-point handicap, but at the end of the first part the score was already 4-1.

I didn't know what to wear--it didn't matter--but had seen photos of big hats at polo matches and brought my biggest sun hat and was glad I did because the "stands" faced the June sun and all exposed skin was visibly broiling. I'd poured a nip of Jameson's into my water bottle and enjoyed the show but mostly the idea that now I've been to a polo match.

Mo' License Plates

Chokin' His Chicken

So I go to buy a pound of barbecue and. . .

No, that's not how this begins. Rather, this town has a scarecrow contest every October and all the local businesses create, dress, and put on the street their own life-sized scarecrows, all very fanciful, and then the townspeople vote for their favorite. The post office's scarecrow is dressed like a postman. The bank's scarecrow is a woman in a garden hat watering a money tree. The gym's scarecrow rides an exerbike. Some are so elaborate that the owners cover them like mummies in plastic when it rains.

As the pumpkin lattes, pumpkin beers, and pumpkin snickerdoodles come out, so do the scarecrows, and the barbecue place took its scarecrow out of storage and this is the first I've seen of him--the swine! So I thought I would overshare. He reminds me of someone I used to know. The expression on the chicken's face is precious, so here's  a close-up.

I'm so grateful I moved to Missouri where there's barbecue and humor.

I Want to Be Cute

Before	After
(Note: I had just removed a hat.)	Ninety minutes later.

Fallen in love at first sight: 48 percent of men have; only 28 percent of women. (Citation.) From the back of the pack I've been watching as men at events -- middle-aged events such as networking, singles, and hikes -- go straight for the blondes, falling in starry-eyed love right there in front of me. Kitchen-sink bleach-bottle blonde with an inch of dark roots doesn't matter, weathered skin and a voice like a foghorn don't matter. I'm fitter, thinner, better educated, very cute, or, in a tight dress, a ringer for an exotic Russian spy. Doesn't matter. In Jefferson County, 7 of  every 10 white women can be classified as blond because they've been quicker to learn that blondes have more fun. I've examined this issue from every angle, and it is what it is. A woman who hasn't clearly and deliberately altered her natural appearance might as well be a man.

My natural hair color resembles 80-percent-cacao chocolate. I've never colored it. Furthermore it's short. I think I'm wonderful. But, maybe it's just wintertime, I consulted my hairdresser, who thought I'd make a terrible blonde and suggested highlights instead. I made an appointment for the very next day.

Now my hair is more like a peanut butter cup. Come hither, gentlemen! Let me sort YOU out by your hairlines.

Warm Clothing, Part 3: UnderArmour and Its One Problem

UnderArmour clothing is tough stuff, all polyester and compression, and its Cold Gear and Heat Gear are worn by athletes, hunters, cops, soldiers, bikers, and all those whose activities turn normal fabrics into dripping or freezing rags. You'll see it on a good percentage of Walmart shoppers because we all think we are athletes, hunters, cops, soldiers, or bikers. Its only fault, discussed at length online in forums frequented by athletes, hunters and cops: This miracle fabric that stretches, breathes, wicks, and warms so wonderfully reacts with underarms and begins to smell within the hour, no matter how clean you are--and it won't wash out. UnderArmour denies that this happens. What to do?

1. Buy a lot of tops and change them daily. Retail prices are hugely inflated ($40 for a tee?) so I bought my collection on eBay, many "worn only once." They were cheap, probably, because of the problem UnderArmour denies.
2. Wash them with GearAid's "Mirazyme Odor Eliminator," or a similar product meant to remove the stink from tents, backpacks, waders, and anything skunked. Set the washer to soak, squeeze in a few drops of enzyme, soak the clothes for 5 minutes, spin 'em, hang them to dry and you'll be eucalyptus-fresh. The more you do this the less the shirts will smell, until they're totally tamed.

Keeping Down Appearances

On warm mornings I wear my pajamas to walk to the mailbox; if it's cooler I'll sling on my bathrobe. If it's night and I'm throwing a mouse's corpse into the meadow, what's the problem if I do it in my briefs and Maidenform? In winter I work outside wearing ludicrously paint-stained sweatshirts, hunter-orange stocking caps, and holey gloves. If my hiking clothes are possibly poison-ivied or full of ticks or chiggers or mud, I'll strip down on the stoop before entering the house. Can't do that in the city.

In the city I had to comb my hair and put on a bra and clean clothes that matched before I left my  apartment building, or children would point and laugh. And I amused  my fellow urban dwellers with my white T-shirts that somehow almost always turned a faint pink, broadcasting the fact that I did my own laundry and was a moron. Heck, I wasn't throwing away good T-shirts because they turned a little bit pink!

I like living here because it allows for appearance improvisation. There's no sense washing my hair if I'm cramming on a ball cap to clean the garage that day. But then if I must go to the hardware store for something, I'll pretend I don't have greasy hat hair, and  -- I don't feel judged, because most everyone looks just like me. Except middle-class moms, who put on yoga clothes in the morning and wear them everywhere, dawn to dusk, because from any one point it'd be a 15-mile trip to go home and change. See, we have our reasons.

Except on Saturday night and on Sunday. Then, if you're gonna see people, you have to clean up. Paradoxically, those are the times that city people get to be slobs.

Levee High

The town of Kimmswick on the Mississippi River has suffered many floods but is still quaint, with 1840s houses, gift shops and craft shops, and my neighbor treated me to a hearty homemade lunch there at The Blue Owl, a historic country tearoom that grew into a gingham restaurant that never forgot it evolved from a bakery -- and to this day produces the Levee-High Apple Pie, which makes the "normal" pies surrounding it seem like rice cakes by comparison. The Christmas-cookie tray (not shown; it's too many calories to even look at) also had a major wow factor. The Blue Owl keeps country hours, closing at 3 (that's p.m.!) on weekdays and at 5 on Saturday and Sunday; closed Mondays. Currently it's got nice Christmas decorations. Order a slice of Levee-High Apple Pie and half a pound of sliced apples collapses onto your plate. Nowadays when they say "as American as apple pie," they mean this one.

Ice-Cream Social in Catawissa

Homemade ice cream: peach, pineapple, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla at the twice-a-summer ice-cream social at Catawissa Union Protestant Church, the church I'd join if I were a church person because of  the food. At the ice-cream social in the church basement, we ate barbecue sandwiches and pies and cake along with the ice cream, for the price of a free will offering. Ace, a former farm boy born in 1938, now retired, is among my favored companions for church lunches and suppers. He knows what Missouri food should taste like and that homemade piecrusts differ vastly from purchased ones (those things hard as turtle shells!), and he can tell them apart. Church people recommended the peach pie made by one congregant and we made a beeline and got our slices, but when Ace went up for seconds it was gone, so he settled for the slice of spice cake with cream cheese frosting that he's finishing here. Another ice-cream social occurs August and we will head there EARLY to secure the PEACH PIE, with everyone else in the county in hot pursuit.