3/232/12 ROUTE 66 AND FORT LOST IN THE WOODS

FORSYTHIA ARE BLOOMING...

...CROCUS ALSO

EVERYTHING HAS  CHANGED

TOGETHERNESS

POST GAS STATION

POST HEADQUARTERS

Friday, 8:00 AM.  44 degrees F, wind NNE, calm.  The sky is completely overcast and there is thick fog rising up the bluff from the lake, and fog horns are sounding.  The barometer predicts rain.
        Crocuses bloomed spontaneously yesterday, and a few Forsythia blossoms are opening today.  Perhaps a bit early for each, but after all Tuesday was the first day of spring, so we can’t be too far off the mark.  I will continue with another vignette of our trip.
        As we traveled southeast on I44 through Missouri we paralleled old Route 66, the iconic American highway.  One can see it often and easily get off the I road and travel it for a bit but frankly it doesn’t interest me that much, as I remember when one had no choice but to drive it, and it is twisty and hilly and full of tourist traps and greasy spoon eateries, all of which is now considered picturesque. 
        Also along old Route 66 lies the army post, Fort Leonard Wood, where I did basic training in the winter of 1957-‘58.  It is a few miles off the I road outside a little town called Waynesville, infamous back then for its dives. 
        I decided we would see what "Fort Lost In The Woods," as we called it, looks like  55 years later, and although the hilly, wooded environment looks the same, what was a motley collection of wooden shacks back then now looks like a college campus.  We stopped at the gate and were waved on through by a very courteous young soldier who asked me if I had served in ‘Nam’ and I had to disappoint him by saying that I had not. 
        We stopped and filled up at the very busy, modern post gas station which had the cheapest gasoline of the trip at $344.9.  We drove around for a bit but it was all so foreign to me that there was no point in spending much time there.  I thought we would encounter some marching columns of basic trainees but it was rush hour on  the post and none were to be seen. 
        It was fun to think back and renew some old memories of scrubbing the wooden barracks floors on hands and knees and never, never stepping on the strip of buffed red linoleum (the Bloody  Mary) that ran down the middle of the barracks, and waking up in the morning with soot from the soft coal burning furnaces covering everything and everybody.  I do remember the food as being plentiful and pretty good, contrary to expectations.