Once upon a time . . . we went into the woods.
Not actually into the woods, more like a bluff or a field with a creek and scattered trees, definitely the Country.
My family—my husband, two teenage boys and I—have loyalty, a spirit of adventure and a love for musical theater. So when an actor friend was starring as the Baker in Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” we determined to go see him. We have been known to leave in the morning, watch a show that night and drive home immediately afterwards. This time we decided to go for a long weekend rather than a whirlwind event. We drove for 7 hours each way to a town in the middle of Missouri, a town with a population of 79 that just happens to be home to a professional theater company.
Here are the highlights from our trip:
Friday morning 5:23 a.m.
We leave Chicago. We are 23 minutes behind schedule. Thankfully the traffic is not bad yet, so by Aurora, IL my husband is less annoyed. The boys sleep.
Friday noonish
We are all starving. We exit at Kingdom City, which seems to have options. The options turn out to be a Denny’s and a place called The Iron Skillet. The Iron Skillet shares a marquee with the word “Petrol.” This makes us queasy. We choose Denny’s. More queasiness ensues as we are seated and attempt to eat.
Friday 2:00 p.m.
We exit the highway and begin to wind our way toward our destination. As clusters of trees begin to layer and obscure the farmland, we start getting excited. Then my thirteen year old son sees the population sign and wonders how this is possible. He feels this is a bad omen; no civilized place can have just 79 people.
Friday 2:30 p.m.
We check into our bed and breakfast cabin and set out to explore the town.
Friday 2:34 p.m.
We finish our exploration. The town is a handful of mid-nineteenth century store fronts—a general store, an ice cream shop, a few antique shops, a tavern—and a sprinkle of historical houses, some museums, some occupied, all locked from the public but opened on request. We take turns locking each other in a one person jail. My younger son is becoming nervous. He finds two frogs and a salamander and names them Edgar, Allan and Poe. He finds a deer track that confirms his suspicion that the 79 citizens are cloven-footed demons that masquerade with David Lynch hospitality by day and prey on their guests’ flesh by night. He elaborates on this theory incessantly throughout the weekend, referencing episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as evidence.
Friday 3:57 p.m.
I take a conference call on my cell phone, standing in the middle of Main Street to get the best reception. No cars disturb me. Later, we find a cave, visit the local graveyard and sit briefly on the porch swing.
Friday 10:30 p.m.
After a meal of restaurant-prepared frozen pizza, iced grapes and delicious wine, our friends take us to a part of the forest that surrounds a spring. We turn off our car lights and stand in complete darkness. We watch as hundreds of fireflies glint and float from the trees to the water, flickering on, streaming like blue and yellow-green neon comets and then vanishing, only to blink on again. A million Tinkerbelles teasing and dancing. Our faces lit by sparks, we swap our dim scientific explanations; this magic as familiar as city streets, as foreign as black beetles that glow in the dark. We look up but there are no stars, only fireflies.
Friday night late
We find a “Survivor” game in the common room of the bed and breakfast and decide to play with family and friends. After the boys vote off the adults, it comes down to a bizarre Sophie’s Choice in which the parents must choose which boy will win the game. I choose incorrectly.
Saturday breakfast
We are new to the bed and breakfast routine and arrive a few minutes late to an elaborately set dining table, plates filled with blueberry pancakes and four other guests sitting expectantly across from our waiting chairs. We begin our initiation into a culture that I imagine is a variation on Victorian parlor talk. There is no interest in who we are or where we are from, just genial lobbing of anecdotes describing travel and places discovered. Everyone measures their own air time, offering leading questions when someone lags, inviting all to splash about in a shallow but colorful wade pool of verbal postcards. I find a way to mention the water buffalo-lion pride-alligator video clip from greatwhatsit. My children, usually quite articulate, are silent through this peculiarly adult banter.
Saturday 11:15 a.m.
After watching the documentary at the Visitor’s Center, I am intrigued by the idea that the town was preserved only because it failed. Had it remained a viable crossroads, it would have been torn down, changed, and revitalized over the years. It could have been St, Louis or Kansas City. But the river changed course, the Civil War destroyed the plantations, the railroad was built too far south and the movement of pioneers eventually stopped. So the town emptied, leaving its 1850’s husk intact.
Saturday 3:40 p.m.
We spend the day browsing antique shops. The boys are worried at how much we enjoy seeing items we remember from our childhood, “Mom, Dad, you are aging before our eyes!” We go on a 1.5 mile hike to prove our vitality. We sweat and swat bugs, the boys stroll along in flip flops.
Saturday night
We go to the play. We hang around a café garden after the show with the actors. We critique the night’s performance as a group, comparing this show favorably to the Broadway original and the revival. We lean in to hear gossip about the various players while my younger son collects autographs. Holding his program tightly, he perks up: “Tomorrow we are out of this creeptown.”
Sunday, Father’s Day
Another lovely breakfast, we kiss and hug our friends and set off for Hannibal. My husband wants to take us to the Tom Sawyer caves he remembers seeing as a boy with his grandparents. We get there and it is $16 per person. We decide to play Sawyer Creek miniature golf instead (Dad’s play free!) for a total cost of $12. We figure that there are more people in and around the miniature golf course, the arcade and the mini-tug boat ride than in the entire town we just left. My younger son sighs, relaxing. We are almost home.
Loved this, but the minute-by-minute account made me wonder whether the trip was a bit like this for you.
favorite line re: Sophie’s Choice: “I choose incorrectly.”
Friday 8:41 a.m. (WC time)-
My favorite part:
Friday 2:30 p.m.-We check into our bed and breakfast cabin and set out to explore the town.
Friday 2:34 p.m.-We finish our exploration.
Friday 8:43 a.m.
You just may be my favorite GW writer, but we’ll have to wait until next Friday to make sure.
Friday 8:44 a.m.- Signing off, time to get back to work.
I found this to be a wonderful and totally surprising post so I simply have to comment. About two years ago I moved from Columbia, MO, which you certainly must have noticed as you drove past it on I-70 just before you turned off to go slightly north to Arrow Rock. Isn’t small town mid-MO just about the quirkiest-caught-in-a-time-warp place? It’s really too bad your family didn’t continue for eighteen more miles for food. Columbia has excellent dining estabs. Perhaps next time you have a friend performing at what must have been the Lyceum, perhaps you’ll consider it. Anyway, I thought you eloquently and accurately nailed things with the following poetic lines:
“… I am intrigued by the idea that the town was preserved only because it failed. Had it remained a viable crossroads, it would have been torn down, changed, and revitalized over the years. It could have been St, Louis or Kansas City. But the river changed course, the Civil War destroyed the plantations, the railroad was built too far south and the movement of pioneers eventually stopped. So the town emptied, leaving its 1850’s husk intact.”
Thanks for the stroll down memory lane and the delightful read.
We recently stayed at a B&B, too, with mixed results. The whole arrangement is weird. You’re at someone’s house, but you’re paying. It kind of winds up being the worst of both situations: you feel like you’re imposing/intruding *and* like you’re spending too much money. There’s a great bit on B&Bs in “Flirting with Disaster,” starring Ben Stiller. “You’re not good B&B people!”
Had to think of “Waiting for Guffman” here, too, though I’m sure the production was much better than that one.