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Missouri
 Photo: James Pauls
Missouri
 Photo: Jenni Morgan

Missouri: Open Road and Bygone Cities
By Johnna Kaplan

On the map of Missouri, US 50 is an almost straight line from St. Louis to Kansas City. It is the “almost” part that appeals to me, the way 50 appears serious about getting from one end of the state to the other, but willing to wander, to get a bit distracted along the way.

Sitting in traffic on I-44 West, I stare out my window at little signs planted in the scrub by the roadside that say “Prairie Rehab.” The exit ramp where US 50 diverges from 44 is inauspicious, surrounded by dry grass and parking lots full of trucks. I fear I will be disappointed. But soon I see farmland, complete with cows congregating around the base of a tree in that cliquey way cows have.

I pass through tiny towns that seem abandoned, with houses boarded up or caving in. But political campaign signs are everywhere: stuck in front lawns, strung across buildings, propped up on antique trucks, parked for maximum exposure at rare traffic lights.

Somewhere past the typically empty town of Gerald, my preset radio stations begin to falter; and I press the “seek” button, which finds Country music and lyrics full of patriotism without irony. “Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/It's the American way….” Or perhaps it is irony, and my city ears are not fine-tuned enough to pick it up.

In between towns I see nothing but road stretching out ahead of me, rising and falling, curving through fields of every shade of green. Also silos, and grain elevators, and barns, and water towers, bulging top-heavy things on spindly legs, like cows. Occasionally a car will pass me going the opposite way.

The perpendicular roads do not have names, just letters: A, B, C, and then AA, BB, CC, through ZZ, and then A again. Sometimes a tractor appears, slowly crosses 50, then vanishes between rows of soybeans.

Outside Jefferson City, 50 becomes a divided highway, but it is still a lonely road. It looks like it was built to accommodate a population that never grew, a westward expansion that never came, a destiny still latent.

Jefferson City is dominated by the graceful Neoclassical Capitol Building, which prevents the city from being embarrassing, though its nothing but a strip of sprawl around a cow-town.  Nevertheless there is something silly about this place being the capital of anything: a few sweet historic streets, a few lovely brick buildings, a State House, which a person can drive right up to or walk clear around, unencumbered by security. And yet…the Missouri River, ancient and perfectly blue, is winding calmly, visible between the leaves of the trees on the bluffs. Rows of coal trains on tracks beside the river are standing still for the weekend, waiting to move on. The sun beating straight down is baking the streets and stifling the air. There is also something timeless about this place that was important once, something that prevents me from belittling it. It has a quiet, complacent dignity, as if it does not care what I think of it one way or the other.

The road between Jefferson City and Sedalia is monotonous, except when little things catch my attention, like a hawk wheeling in the sky, or a Union Pacific freight train, or an enormous 8-ball perched on a pole, rising between an industrial wasteland and a cornfield.

Here in what the DJs on the Country stations call Mid-Missouri, I feel like the outside world could have ended hours ago. How long (days? years?) would this place remain frozen, content in this moment. The pickup trucks still racing along, impatiently passing slower cars; and the radio is still playing, “I like my women just a little on the trashy side...”         

             

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