Revisiting Summertime Scenes of My Childhood

After my long drive across Kansas, stopping for the night in the small town of Iola would seem like an unusual destination.  But actually, it was my main reason for routing home through Kansas in the first place!

My new ReadyBrute towbar with built-in surge braking, just didn’t feel like it was kicking in very much when I was descending steep passes in Colorado.  Yes, the little dash light was coming on saying that the surge mechanism was activating, but I wasn’t feeling much of a difference in braking.   My dealer had admitted they’d never installed a ReadyBrute/ReadyBrake system before, so I decided to have my setup inspected by the experts themselves—the folks who make ‘em, Night Shift Auto (NSA RV Products) in Iola, Kansas.

It just so happens that the little town of Iola also had a nice, quiet and CHEAP campground (Passport-America rate of only $11/night for full-hookups, wow!), so it was a very RV-friendly town to spend the night..

I arrived at the NSA “corporate headquarters” just after they opened in the morning:

The supervisor on duty came out to the parking lot to see my setup and turned right around to get a few hand tools.  The surge brake cable had indeed been set too loose by my dealer and was not activating the toad brakes at all.  He also noticed some clamps had been installed on the wrong side of the cables and corrected that.  Within 5 minutes, he had everything adjusted properly and showed me how to do it.  I offered to pay him for his time, but he humbly refused. 

It’s so refreshing to see an honest company making a solid product, selling it at a decent price, and then standing behind it with excellent service!  I’m so glad I purchased this towing system versus some of the bigger corporate brands. If you’re ever considering towing a car behind a motorhome, check out all the positive comments about Ready Brake on RV.net and other forums.  Highly recommended!

After leaving Iola, I took a brief drive through Fort Scott, Kansas.  Very neat historic town, but I unfortunately didn’t have time to stay long:

It was then on to the state I was born in, Missouri.  Continuing along Highway 54, the hills began to get a bit bigger as I got into the Ozarks.
 

My earliest childhood memories were of the family driving along these rolling hills to and from my grandparents’ house at Lake of the Ozarks for summer vacations.  My grandfather spent a number of years building their retirement house at the end of Lookout Point. He built a long deck that wrapped around 2 sides of the house and overlooked the first long stretch of the lake near Bagnell Dam. 

We all used to sit out on the deck in the summer watching the sun set over the lake and listening to the big tour boats go by—The Tom Sawyer, the Larry Don, and the Commander.   For a few summers, my grandfather owned a motorboat and would take us cruising on the lake.  At lake-level, those tour boats seemed massive, and the waves from their wake were the biggest and most-feared on the lake (especially the Commander’s!). 

I was eager to see “the Strip” again, where my grandparents would take me and my brother for countless hours of fun at the arcades, the go-kart track, the bumper cars, the fudge shop, and various other tacky tourist shops.  The old Frosty root beer stand, where we used to get root beer floats in big frosty glass mugs, had closed years ago when the 4-lane bypass highway was opened.  The Ozark Opry, where we’d go to hear a cheesy country musical show kind of like “Hee Haw” was also long gone.  But, there were still some familiar sites along the Strip that were still going strong, now almost 40 years later (ugh!)…. Dogpatch was still the same:


I used to spend hours there playing skee ball to exchange my long strands of tickets for desirable prizes such as plastic rings, yo-yos, or rubber snakes!

The go-kart place was still going strong as well:

My little brother used to always beat me racing at this track.  He still beats me today when racing our Subaru Outbacks too…must have been that training he learned here!

The tacky tourist shops were changed a bit, but the buildings were still the same


And the old bumper car place was still there too!


I was amazed to see the little church my grandfather had preached at for many years, Lake Ozark Christian Church, now expanded to triple it’s original size!

As I got to Bagnell Dam, I was saddened to see that most attractions there were out of business (on the positive side, it did make parking my View with tow car much easier).

All 3 of the big tour boats were still docked at the end of the Strip, but upon closer inspection, they didn’t look as if they’d sailed in a few years (perhaps the Tom Sawyer still is, but it was closed on the day I was there in the prime of August summer season, which did not seem to be a very good sign).
 
The Larry Don and Commander looked in far worse shape:


But curiously, it appeared as if their dock area was being renovated and railing was freshly painted.  Perhaps a rebirth awaits these 2 old boats next summer???  I do hope so!

The Dam itself seemed completely unchanged—still as narrow as ever to drive across, and I was thankful to do it in my “Skinnie Winnie” rather than a big Class A!

My grandmother sold the house at the lake in the mid-1980s to move back to Kansas City after my grandfather died.  We knew the people who purchased it had planned to add on to it and make some big changes.  Seems like many people were starting to do that with the original houses along the lake at that time, and new construction was absolutely insane during the 1990s and early 2000’s.  So, I was a bit apprehensive as to what I might find when I drove down their old street to see our old house.

The top of the street and most non-lakefront houses all looked amazingly the same:

 

 

 

 

 

But my grandparents’ house and the house next to it at the end of the point were completely unrecognizable.  My grandparents used to have a white ranch house with a front yard, little vegetation, and no garage.  In back, my grandfather had cleared the trees on 2 sides of the house to get large lake views from the deck.  The new owners, however, seemed to have gone an entirely different approach—no front yard at all (consumed by vegetation and a large 2 car garage), and prime lake views out back now appeared to be completely overgrown.  Strange, very strange.


In the cove across from my grandparents’, used to be a cute little motel called “The Lighthouse”.  It was low-key, surrounded by lots of trees and nature, and quiet.  Well, the condo boom of the 1990’s seemed to eliminate that kind of thing.  Now the view of the quant, quiet cove had a massive condo building with huge boat docks.  

There seemed to be monster condo buildings and big boat docks at the end of every cove along the lake, and while boat traffic on the lake always seemed to be busy in the summers I was there, it now seemed unimaginably congested with the advent of cheap jet skis.  Certainly no longer a soothing, peaceful place to spend the summer.  They say “you can never go home again” and in this case, the saying seemed painfully true.

I was very glad I’d decided not to spend the night at the lake, and instead head on to Jefferson City.  But before I got there, I took one final detour through the little town of Eldon, Mo—the one and only town my grandmother ever learned to drive to after getting her drivers license at the chipper age of 65!  She was forced to learn to drive after my grandfather had died, and she did learn how to slowly drive her big Olds 88 sedan with a V8 engine up to Eldon every few days to go to the grocery store, the drug store, the bank, and the beauty shop….no other driving destinations than those! 

Back then, most shopping was done along Eldon’s main street, and I was happy to see it looking pretty much unchanged:


In the 1970’s, Eldon was one of the first places I remember ever seeing a Wal-Mart.  They were small stores back then, and Eldon’s Wal-Mart still continues to be on the smaller side as Wal-Marts go:


I arrived at my campsite at Binder Park in Jefferson City around dinner time.  Nice little city-owned park with a nice lake that Millie, of course, had to swim in!


After dinner, we took a quick drive downtown to see the Capital.  In Missouri, you can still drive up pretty close to it:

The next morning, one of my old college radio friends drove down from Columbia to meet me for breakfast at this great little diner, the Towne Grill.  We hadn’t seen each other in nearly 30 years, but due to Facebook, got reconnected a few months ago, and our conversation seemed to pick right up where it’d left off without missing a beat!

Mary is one of only two I know from our class of Communications majors from Stephens College that has managed to stay employed in the industry all these years.  She’s currently a news reporter for the state-wide radio network and is still passionate for the pursuit of knowledge and unbiased journalism.  What an energizing way to start the day!

After breakfast, I returned to pack up camp and hit the road to head home.  It was a fairly long, boring drive along old, familiar roads.  We crossed three big rivers—the Missouri, the Mississippi, and the Illinois

Saw a neat courthouse in the town of Pittsfield, IL:


and finally ended our 6-week roadtrip with a nice sunset!