Been thinking about…Music, river, Missouri sky

Somewhere in the middle of Missouri is a place where the sky and the river meet and, to me, it feels like that place is the center of the world. From one small roadside park with old picnic tables, you can see the distant grain elevators, towers of old 1950s’ cement and a hymn to American farms, fading into the blue. An old grain truck rumbles by. This river bottom’s fields stretch away to the hazy river valley forest, all blues and gray above the corn. My memory belies time itself, strange passage of time, as I remember summery May afternoons when too much spring rain pooled above the soybeans, turning the green plants brown; and then also the cut cornstalks, gray autumn winds rustling wayward husks beneath a great forever sky that whispers forever in the back of my mind, reminding me of days long gone, and of my grandpa and grandma, who lived in farming country not unlike this near a place called Chariton. The music, here, in the center of this world, is quiet and melancholy and strange indeed, and I feel my mom should be handing me fried chicken and buttered bread, again, from this picnic table, as my dad reaches for more Bing cherries.

Somewhere on a spring mountain ridge, I stand barefoot on fine, sharp gravel, watching an orange sun’s glow set beyond the dogwood blossoms, characteristic spring chill at my back. I had looked out the small mountain cabin’s windows and saw the sunset, grabbing my then-new digital camera and running out to photograph the luminous space. Some moments are too precious to waste, too important to take the time to put on shoes. Missouri’s sunsets hit differently, all cathedral oranges and billowing clouds as though framed with the melody of “Shenandoah” as the old American folk song is played lamentingly on fiddle strings.

The Missouri River churns slowly by in my own past, reminders of custardy waffle cones and stamped metal ceiling tiles, of bright brassy lights and the energies of countless turn-of-the-century river towns in all their American boosterism exuberance, of brightness and nostalgia and hope and the tragedy that every person hoping in that moment was 126 years ago and had little idea that two world wars and something great called a depression lay just a few short generations ahead. I pause, watching my ice cream melt, pooling into my napkin. Walt Disney’s animation team came here to mid-Missouri for inspiration; the 1955 animated film “Lady and the Tramp” was set here although the state is not directly named in the movie. That same year, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California, and millions of guests have walked down a Main Street USA modeled after Missouri, circa turn-of-the-century. I leave the ice cream parlor and walk into the cool, humid breeze of the river, the lights and the ghosts of St. Charles, Missouri, at my back, calling, always.

Rich, red curtains part and the mountain music rises in a warm, original space smelling of caramelized pecans dusted with cinnamon. This grand theater should feel imposing but instead feels time-out-of-place in the best, kindest way possible, framed as it is with classic Branson memories and oak leaf motifs cast in tile and stained a warm cocoa. This space was my life for two short seasons while I was once finding my way through grief and strange, painful displacement. The music on stage is all Americana, the kind we take for granted too much, much like Buc-ees and ranch dressing or cowboy hats and freedom. There is a bluesy freewheeling, exuberant possibility here, yet, even as we drown ourselves in resentment or close-mindedness. But the music of the mountains and the river, of old theaters and even older riverboats, sing a long, lilting song of a young nation and a now surprisingly old constitutional republic with the mind of a Roman Empire but the soul of country music in a midnight barn at home in a midnight cornfield. I come back to this place to say hello again, and goodbye as well, finally.

Tonight, another Missouri sky billows with grand, cumulous clouds reminiscent of the clouds the artists painted on the walls of the State Capitol, new in 1926, walls heralded with names like Brangwyn, Wyeth, Fraser and Calder. The afternoon’s stifling heat has turned to mist, even as we continue to argue, to brag, to expound and exploit, all without realizing in all our grandiosity the river continues to churn past so quickly, so slowly, the skies’ great height and stars continue to reach without end, and culture continues to rolls on, a melody all its own, even as we sleep.