Rabbit Holes

I seem to be spending too much time looking for things that aren’t all that important in the big scheme of things. I’m getting older, and my mind can be forgetful, even a little unforgiving, but this isn’t new.

It all started about a decade ago. Each year, the Missouri Chapters of Women On Wheels® participate in an Annual Touring/Photo Contest that revolves around a theme—an annual scavenger hunt. This began the entry into rabbit holes I cannot seem to exit.

One year, I searched for designated cities starting with the letters A to Z. For the record, Yancy Mills no longer exists, but I spent hours riding in circles, determined to find it. In other years, I rode on gravel roads—something I normally avoid–to photograph state parks and historic site signs. Veterans memorials were a theme I really enjoyed. Barn quilts are beautiful, but too often, on rural roads and that means missing the perfect photograph because there is no safe place to park.

This year, while researching, riding to, and photographing roadside attractions, I can’t help but notice the barn quilts I missed or the state parks and historical sites I still need to visit. Roadside attractions, in and of themselves, can be interesting. I’ve learned about history, science, geography, and art. Yes, art. My newest rabbit hole.

Missouri has seven “Mural Cities”: Cape Girardeau, Chillicothe, Cuba, Joplin, Kansas City, Louisiana, and St. Louis.

Newton County, in the southwest corner, plans to install 18 murals in the towns of Diamond, Grandby, Neosho, Seneca, Newton, and Stella.

Cities like Hannibal, Lebanon, Liberty, Nevada, Springfield, Puxico, Boonville, West Plains, Puxico, Bernie, Slater, Bloomfield, Hermann, Sikeston, Sedalia, Clinton, Dexter, Dixon, Florissant, Clayton, Ironton, Saint James, and Willow Springs get mentioned as places with street art but are not recognized as a “Mural City”. Cities like Crane, Lexington, Cabool, Nixa, and Wentzville are not always mentioned but are worthy of a visit.

Missouri has nine cities with murals that also count as roadside attractions, according to roadsideamerica.com, the official list for this year’s contest:

Cape Girardeau – Taft Mural: Visit Us Again

Cuba: Route 66 Mural City – Two collages from my visit on July 2. I hadn’t planned to spend so much time looking for/at these beautiful murals, but my entrance into the mural “rabbit hole” began that day.

Desoto: Rat Fink and Sinclair Dino Mural

• Joplin: Route 66 Mural Park
• Kansas City: Mini-Baseball Diamond and Superman of Kansas City
• Lamar: Studebaker-Truman Mural
• Lebanon: Route 66 Murals

Louisiana: Fake Mural Painter in the Town of Murals – Alice and I searched for this roadside attraction, but upon my return home, it was clear that my GPS took us to the wrong location. I thought the mural we were looking for had been painted over (it happens). To document our visit to Louisiana, we stopped at this one—from the 20+ possible–highlighting religious denominations.

St. Louis: Cartoonville Mural – “Walls Off Washington” currently displays street art on several storefronts, including this mural of brightly-colored cartoon-like robot faces.

Hannibal has almost 30 murals, many of them with Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain. Others highlight more famous people from the city—real or fictional—like the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Becky Thatcher.

Dictionary.com defines a mural as “a large picture painted or affixed directly on a wall or ceiling”. While roadsideamerica.com does not specifically list the images on a portion of the Berlin Wall at the National Churchill Museum in Fulton this way, in my opinion, it qualifies as the most rabbit-hole-worthy mural in Missouri.

Can you guess what theme I may propose for next year’s Touring/PhotoContest?

By Cris