You can get anywhere in America from anywhere else, but some trips are easier than others. Unless you own a private plane, the only sensible way to get from Kansas City to Smalltown is to drive east on I-70 to St. Louis for four hours, turn right, then drive south on I-55 for two hours. I’ve made that trip dozens of times, and it isn’t very interesting, so instead of sticking to the program last Wednesday morning, I pulled off the interstate, fired up my GPS, and took the back roads all the way home.
It’s been more than a quarter-century since I last saw the parts of Missouri through which I drove, and I enjoyed every minute of my impromptu journey to Smalltown via Sedalia, Cole Camp, Laurie, Sunrise Beach, Rolla, Dixon, Steelville, and Potosi. Somewhere along the way I stopped in the parking lot of a Burger King, downloaded my e-mail, and learned that Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong has been sold to a Bulgarian publisher. Isn’t technology wonderful?
I hadn’t been home since Christmas, so I hadn’t seen the effects of the devastating ice storm that swept through southeast Missouri a few weeks after my last visit. My first sight of Smalltown was jolting: it looked as if my home town had caught a terrible disease. Many of the trees in town, including the ones in my mother’s yard, had lost a considerable number of their branches, and more than a few, including some of the biggest and grandest ones, had been chopped down. Once I started getting used to the sight of the sickly trees, though, things in Smalltown seemed pretty much the way they’ve always been. I took my mother to the covered bridge north of town for a picnic one day, and a couple of days later my brother smoked a pork loin on his back porch and treated us to a feast.
In between I wrote a Wall Street Journal drama column and a book review and went to lunch at Lambert’s Café, the home of “throwed rolls” (the waiters toss them to you) and Smalltown’s sole claim to national fame, with Lee McMurray, a good friend from high school who now lives in St. Louis but was in town for a weekend visit. Lee and I hadn’t seen one another for years, but we’d been keeping in sporadic touch via e-mail and Facebook, and we picked up the threads of our friendship effortlessly.
My visit was over before I knew it, and today I rose early to start the long trip from Smalltown to Washington, D.C., where I’ll be seeing a Noël Coward play and dining with Thornton Wilder’s nephew. Then I’ll rush back to New York to appear at BookExpo America, do a couple of Pops-related interviews, and see an off-Broadway press preview. On Sunday I pack my passport and fly north to Toronto for my first visit to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. I already miss Smalltown, where I got to hang up my clothes, sleep late every morning, and eat home cooking. I love my crowded life more than words can say, but sometimes it’s nice to stay in one place for a few days and do next to nothing.
(To be continued)
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
