Into the woods
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
DAVE AND I zigzagged through southeast Kansas, slid across the Missouri line, then swirled around Arkansas.
We were on an early autumn trip to visit my mother who lives in the hills outside of Hot Springs.
Mom’s home is in a wooded setting that reminds her of her early childhood days in the forests of northern Arkansas.
Now - because I happen to love the wide open spaces, I’m grateful that Mom had the good sense to give birth to me in Kansas and let me grow up on the prairie.
And my mom, well, when I was a kid, sometimes she’d be driving and point off to the side of a road and say excitedly, “Oh look, there’s a tree,” so rare they seemed to be to her out on plains of Central Kansas.
Yes, she’s a tree-lover, the more trees the better, so she doesn’t miss Kansas all that much. She escaped the open land in the early ‘80s, lived in Tennessee briefly and then for years had a house tucked in the swampy forests near Savannah, Ga.
About 10 years ago, Mom packed up and drove out of the Peach State, leaving behind the ocean, wonderful seafood restaurants (sigh), and Savannah’s live oak trees, beautifully draped with Spanish moss.
We visit my mom at Hot Springs once or twice a year and Dave and I have regularly traveled through Oklahoma to get there.
It’s a full day of driving and I had calculated that Oklahoma was the shortest and easiest route because of the long stretch of city traffic in northwest Arkansas: Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville.
So Dave and I always jumped on U.S. 75 at Beto Junction and headed south to Tulsa. Oklahoma builds their roads like Kansas does – long and straight, so it all felt pretty familiar.
But last spring, while returning from Arkansas, I decided that I just couldn’t face the Muskogee Turnpike one more time. I skipped Oklahoma and veered north through Fayetteville, where my grandparents once lived.
This alternate route is the one we followed a few weeks ago. And by aiming toward Fort Scott, rather than Independence, Dave and I toured some Kansas towns we haven’t seen for awhile: Gas, Moran and Bronson. On the way back, we passed through towns new to both of us, like Xenia and Lone Elm.
Dave added Gas to his photo collection of unique water towers. “Gas Kan” is written in white letters on the dark red tower.
Also in Gas, we found Bonnie’s Corner Café. Bonnie Steward and her restaurant were pictured on the cover of a 2003 book by Gary Gladstone. Gladstone, from New York, drove around the country photographing small U.S. towns that have peculiar names.
This is where he got the title for his book: “Passing Gas - And Other Towns Along the American Highway.”
In Fort Scott, we stopped to photograph Sugarfoot and Peaches, a BBQ restaurant which had a white pig statue on the roof. Painted on the front of the building was a bit of the menu: ribs, brisket, gumbo, sausage, and Cajun boiled peanuts.
We jumped the border into Missouri and headed southbound on U.S. 71 toward the Arkansas line.
In Bella Vista we stopped at an Arkansas welcome center. Stepping out of the car, I took a deep breath; Arkansas smells like a pine forest.
We had left Emporia shortly after noon and because it’s about a 9-hour drive, the tail end of the trip – the curvy part - was in the dark. Our car’s headlights scanned the wiggly road.
Driving at night in the hills isn’t a bad thing - you don’t get the carsick feeling that comes from the sun shooting a strobe light through the trees.
But in the dark, we couldn’t see the endless forest that my mom loves so much.
So the next day, because this Kansas kid has apparently experienced some sort of tree-deficit disorder, Mom was kind enough to take us into the woods and point out hickories, hawthorns, and white oaks.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.