Lost In the Ozarks: July, 1976

The memory is a funny thing. Some moments remain fresh, almost palpable, regardless of whether they had any real weight of meaning at the time. I remember distinctly driving to the beach on a hot summer day with my friend Ron in my Fiat 850 Spyder when we were about 20 years old. I had purchased some cheap squirt guns at Pic n Save, and we took great pleasure in squirting college-aged girls in other cars as we sped toward the coast, eliciting giggles and winks which were all the encouragement we needed to carry on. And yet, after meeting Gloria outside that restaurant in Kansas, I don't remember what else happened that day. I assume we stopped to look at some hisorical sites, since Pat was especially interested in the 1800s. I do know for a fact, however, that we arrived in historic Boonville, Missouri, and camped out for the evening. I only know that because of a post card that I sent Mom. Despite receiving it at her sister's house, where she was vacationing for a week, she had brought it home to California. She gave it to me when I returned from my trip to glue in my photo album as a picture of St. Louis. Finding a few details of my trip scrawled on the back makes me think we should all send postcards to ourselves to remind us of what we did and thought at the time.



I can extrapolate from the reference to camping that we sat around a campfire that night, and that would mean I pulled out my guitar to play some Grateful Dead, Neil Young and Bob Dylan songs, since that's what I did any time I had the chance in those days. I mixed in a few originals and songs by other groups, but those three folk rock icons always made me feel like I could sing, since it was their interpretive feel rather than slick vocals that made them famous.

We broke camp about 10:00 AM, which for us was rather a late start, probably due to the fact that we needed to catch up on our sleep. Pat and Gloria left a few minutes before me. I remember walking out of a green wooden building, the men's restroom at the camp, and realizing I wasn't sure how to get to our next destination, Meramec Caverns. I asked some old folks in a camper with Missouri plates, and they directed me to the shortest and most scenic route. Referencing a map, I think this must have been the 179 to the 50. Speeding through the bucolic Ozarks in a British Racing Green Triumph, I enjoyed one of the best days of the trip. I became concerned when I still hadn't caught up to Pat and Gloria after an hour, but I had no way of contacting them.

You can probably guess what happened. Pat and Gloria had stayed on I-70, which admittedly was the most logical way for them to have gone, considering they hadn't given me any directions and we had been on that road since Cove Fort, Utah. About the time I had realized they had gone another way, they were wondering where I was. They assumed the car must have broken down, so they back tracked sixty miles to look for me. Pat later told me that, when they didn't find me, Gloria panicked, saying I had stolen her TR, which Pat quickly dismissed as ridiculous, since he had known me since second grade and never seen me do anything close to that. They turned around again and headed east on the 70 to the 47, where they broke south to the 44 west.


Meanwhile, I wasn't sure exactly how I would find them at Meramec Caverns, but I could see no choice but to proceed there and enjoy the ride along the way. According to the post card, I went to Burger Chef, which certainly sounds like my type of gourmet experience. Burger Chef was one of the earliest fast food chains. When I was in grade school, my family had a phase when we went to a Burger Chef on Sundays before shopping at the ABC Store. We called Burger Chef "the 15 cent hamburger joint." After a tasty meal enjoyed in the age before killjoys guilted us with claims of how unhealthy fries and burgers are, I apparently went to another place where I would have been comfortable: a bowling alley. Back home, I often stopped at Westminster Lanes late at night to play Pong, Space Race or pinball, hoping to run into friends. My message to Mom said I sat by the juke box there and waited. Perhaps the bowling alley closed, but in any case I headed over to a coffee shop parking lot, eventually going inside.

I have a clear memory of being in that coffee shop. At their little gift shop, I bought a copy of Rober Ringer's book, "Winning Through Intimidation," and read it sitting in a booth while sipping coffee for the rest of the night. I looked up from my book at one point and saw a table of redneck truckers looking over at me. I felt like Captain America from "Easy Rider," conspicuously out of place with my long hair and scruffy beard, reading a book with a bombastic title and goofy looking turtle on the cover. One guy in a John Deere baseball cap gave me the evil eye. I thought he and his buddies might get up and go "Deliverance" on my ass.



I quickly looked back down at my book, hoping to bury my head in the sand, but I could hear them laughing as one of them said, "Did you see that guy?" I ignored all of their hippie comments, but any thought I had of leaving that restaurant before morning evaporated.