America is a beautiful thing…
The Revival got me into a conversation at breakfast yesterday. It started with Sandy saying “Beautiful bike.” (She introduced herself and handed me a printed invitation to a motorcycle rally several days hence.) It ended with me saying, “Willie Nelson has Minnesota politics.”
I sat at the next table and eavesdropped on Sandy’s conversation with the two guys she was sitting with, one wearing an Army veteran cap, as they smoked their cigarettes and ate their grits and bacon. They were planning a charity event, discussing entertainers to invite and how to keep the different bands from playing the same songs (I was surprised to learn that that’s a problem). They wanted Willie, but he’s “not Christian enough.” Taylor Swift came up, too, and Waylon Jennings, although I think he might be dead. (Do those people perform in Doniphan, Missouri?)
As I was leaving I stopped at their table, shared army cred with the guy in the hat, (he’d done the SE Asian tour back in the day), said what I said about Willie and shared fist bumps. A fellow vet on a nice bike. That’s all.
I stopped at a cemetery. Decorated with flags and flowers for Independence Day (I suppose) the grass was cut short, they’d even given the headstones a trim. Many of the stones included rank and branch of service. The cemetery was attached to a pretty white clapboard Baptist church.
In southern Missouri the roads are curvy and hilly and well maintained and wind through verdant forest. The waterways are blue (and cold, as I discovered when I took my clothes of and waded in). There are small farms and little businesses and towns that Rand McNally deems unworthy. It really is magical.
I stayed last night at the Twin Lakes Motel in Forsyth, owned by the mother-in-law of the (HIspanic?) woman who checked me in. She waved dismissively at a faded photo of a grey-haired woman on the wall when I asked.
I could use a cigarette