After Denver we drove across eastern Colorado and Kansas, stopping once to visit one of Dad’s friends who ran a motel. I think he had some kind of wild animals in a tiny zoo. I vaguely remember feeling sorry for the animals, but we were only there overnight. We drove through Springfield on our way to Branson. Our objective was to buy a farm where Dad could find a job in construction. Table Rock dam was scheduled to be built soon, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. It felt like there was a sign for a realty or real estate company every ten miles or so on the roads we took. One of them was a big conglomerate that had offices everywhere we looked. We had a catalogue from the company, and we made our way to the office in Branson.
I should mention that in those days Branson was not the entertainment hub of mid-America. It was a good sized town that was the supply center of farming country.
Dad checked in with the realtor and somehow (I think the realtor new someone) we ended up in a trailer park for a few days while Dad and the realtor looked over properties. Eventually they found the perfect place: 104 acres with a house and some outbuildings that would have frontage on Table Rock Lake when it was full. The house lacked a few amenities, like electricity and plumbing, but that was not uncommon in that area at the time. The cost? A mere $4000. I suspect that if the property were still intact, you couldn’t touch it for one hundred times that much now.
The land has changed significantly since we left but I believe I’m in the right area. My best guess is that the farm was along what is now Route UU
We did get electricity installed but we settled for the existing outhouse and a cistern that collected rainwater from the roof as our plumbing. We got a horse for riding and a pig for eating and we were set.
The horse was named Myrtle, if I remember correctly, and we called her Myrt. Richard took to riding her right away, but she sensed my unease and would never go faster than a walk when I rode her. I don’t recall exactly how it happened, but Myrt was involved with us meeting our neighbors, two kids about our age who lived on the adjacent farm. They rode two draft horses, bareback. Strangely, I don’t remember having a whole lot to do with them.
Our school was in the border town of Blue Eye. I was in ninth grade there. The biggest disappointment for me was I expected to take algebra in ninth, but there weren’t enough students in my grade to have more than one math class, so that’s what we had – math. I did get to participate in glee club, and I still like to sing (despite my voice tending to give out). I think the biggest influence on me was our social studies teacher. He was the archetype conservative. He even advocated that the first ten amendments should have never been adopted. While I didn’t always agree with him, he definitely indoctrinated me into the concept that the government should keep its hands off anything that could be done by private citizens (I added “without harming other private citizens”). He also got me interested in history, where I had always considered it to be boring.
We always seemed to have pets in the house. While we were in Missouri, we got a kitten. I don’t recall having a dog. I remember the cat for an odd reason. Sometime in the middle of winter I caught a particularly nasty bug. I was in school when I came down with chills and fever. I was so out of it that I snuggled up to one of the radiators in the school library to keep warm and ended up in bed for a few days. While I was recuperating, the cat slept with me on the bed. As I began to feel better and was getting bored, I did a pencil sketch of that cat. Mom thought it was so good that she kept it from then on. I remember seeing it at her house in Glenmora, but I don’t know what happened to it when she died.
I did have occasional flashes of brilliance with art. Going back to Guam, I baby sat for friends of ours one night. This being before the days of widespread television, I read magazines to keep busy. I stumbled on a photo of Marilyn Monroe, and did a sketch of her. It was the same quality as my cat sketch.
While we were in Missouri, Dad kept waiting for the dam project to get underway, but it was delayed. Since we were living on our savings and had a $2000 payment due in July, Dad started looking for other jobs, first close to home and then farther away. When he finally found one, it was in Wilmington, Delaware. We reluctantly packed up and left.
Next arriving in Wilmington.