Weekend in Southeast Missouri

We just returned from spending the weekend with my Dad. As always, it was a great visit with a Dad, and as many other family members we can see in a 24 hour period. It seems that now when I visit something always triggers a memory from my youth. This time was no different; the trigger was a beautiful clear crispy January morning.

As we were cruising the back roads between Benton, MO and Charleston, MO on our way back home, the only thing in the blue sky were jet vapor trails. I instantly recalled sitting in the back of my Dad's pickup after tossing bales of hay to the cattle on another clear crisp January looking at vapor trails and wondering what wonderful places all those people were going and I wanted to be one of them. Of course, at the time all I saw in my immediate future was another school year interrupted by a summer of working on the farm.

As I grew older I knew I wanted more than what I thought the rural area could offer me. I jumped on every opportunity to get away from SE Missouri. After college, I started heading east till I got to Lexington, KY then spent over 20 years in Tamarac, FL before returning to the Midwest. I have been in 14 countries to date. I have been one of those people in the jets leaving vapor trails over other rural areas.

Yet it was not till we moved back did I fully realize that the area I felt could not offer a young Missouri farm boy anything was exactly what I was missing. It is true you can never return home, but you can go back for those special memories. To reflect on your life and the choices you made to get to where you are in your life.

I would not change much in my choices over the years; it was those choices that have placed me where I am today. It all started in a pickup in a field on a cold winter day in Southeast Missouri.

 

Keep dancin' Larry B.