Come and Laugh at the Finke!

Do you hear that loud whoooshing sound? That’s the holiday season, nearly over! Whatever are we going to do once we get to the “other side”? No more salty cheese logs, no more fruitcakes, no more strange beers that taste like pine needles!

Fortunately, we don’t have to pack away our “ho-ho-ho’s,” because we here in Central Missouri can go to California’s “Last Comic Standing”! It’s a fundraiser for the historic Finke Theatre—so the cost of the tickets (a measly ten bucks) is a donation to a good cause.

What—you say you don’t know what the Finke Theatre is? Ohhhh people, you need to get out more! The Finke was California, Missouri’s local opera house 125 years ago—most towns of any size boasted at least one opera house—and people went there to see stage shows, musicals, plays, and school events. And yes, there would also be trained professional singers who would tour America, bringing high culture everywhere.

Click here to learn about the history of the Finke Theatre.

And it became a Vaudeville theater and motion-picture house. It was transformed into an art-deco-style movie theater that finally closed its doors in 1978. THEN, an organization called California Progress, Inc. (CPI) started raising funds and renovating the theater—and what a beautiful job they’ve done! Indeed, the work is still ongoing, but the historic landmark was reopened in 2009. It’s used for live performances and as a community center.

Click here to see the lineup for the 2012-2013 season. They have a nice mix of performances (“something for everyone”): magic, music, ragtime piano, storytelling, the annual community play, and more. All in that beautiful, welcoming space. You really should go to one of these shows! (Do you like folk music? Our beloved Cathy Barton and Dave Para, I see, are performing on February 16 . . .)

So what’s this fundraiser about--? Well, CPI is the group that’s been paying for the Finke and its renovations. Click here to learn more about CPI and its plans for the Finke. You see, it’s not just about the Finke as a building—it’s about the revitalization of downtown California, and strengthening that city’s sense of community.

The fundraiser is a “last comic standing” competition: Four standup comics will entertain the audience in 15-20 minute sets, and then the audience gets to vote for first, second, and third place. As an added bonus, there will be three more comics who’ll perform while the voting is going on.

Here’s a Youtube that amounts to a commercial for the event!



Ten bucks! You’ll check out the Finke Theatre, have a fun road trip to California, laugh your buns off, make new friends, and maybe even stop off and get ya some California-made Burger’s ham or sausage! (And do check out the Finke’s other events. You’ll probably want to return!)

When: January 12 (Saturday), 7-9 pm (doors at 6:30)
Where: Finke Theatre (315 N. High St., California, Mo.)
Cost: $10
For tickets: call 913-669-2979

Salem UCC Annual Ice Cream Social

“An annual ice-cream social brings friends and former members from many communities for an evening of fellowship and fun.”

—Moniteau County Missouri History, vol. 1 (1980)

Well, my friends, that statement in a county history book hardly begins to describe the scene on August 27, 2011, at a plain white church on Route K southeast of California, Missouri.




We went there with my folks and met up with cousins and my aunt and uncle, so we all arrived early in order to sit together. This meant we got to watch as carloads of people gradually arrived and each picnic table was filled. Here at this country church, we witnessed the true meaning of “gathering.” There is no “town” here, but there is definitely community.

A little about the history of the Salem United Church of Christ: the congregation was started in 1848 by a group of German immigrant families who gathered to worship even before their own homes were completely built.




They called their church the “North Moreau Evangelical Church.” As with many other German Evangelical churches in Missouri, they are now merged with the Reformed churches, the Congregational churches, and others to form the United Church of Christ (UCC).

Until 1889, the Salem Church shared its pastor with the congregation in California. By 1922, with the latter town’s growth, the shared pastor was based in California and supplied Salem, an arrangement that still exists today.

I think it’s pretty safe to conceptualize the early German Evangelical churches as being stripped-down Protestant churches for German-speaking immigrants. In other words, being Protestant, they shrugged off the trappings and hierarchies of Catholicism, but they also declined the regulations and expectations of the Lutheran Church, as well. What was left for Protestant Germans? In the American Midwest, one answer was “simple churches like this one.”




After seeing the gloriously decorated interiors of this region’s Catholic churches, the simplicity of the Salem Church is astonishing. The sanctuary is functional: There are pews, hymnals, and Bibles. There’s an altar, a pulpit, and a place for the minister to sit. The altar bears a cross, a few candles, and trays for offerings and/or communion. There’s a piano and a few other tables, decorated nicely, but not lavishly.




My dad (who knows much, much more about this stuff than I do) pointed out that the framed pictures of Jesus were probably not present in the early years of the church—again, out of a desire for simplicity.

And yet there is a great deal of meaning in these objects; this is a congregation that treasures its long history, and the church’s material possessions hold significance for those who know that history. For instance, the antique chandeliers in the sanctuary are the old kerosene chandeliers that have been renovated and converted to electricity. And the pews! In 1947, each family cut and donated logs that were made into the pews—a wonderful project for the congregation’s centennial in 1948.




So these aren’t “just” lights; these aren’t “just” pews. They represent history and continuity.




And as with many, many little white-painted country churches, the cemetery is right by the church, clearly visible out the windows as you sit in the pews. There are big old trees; there are tombstones with dates from the 1700s.




It’s always a fascinating and sobering thing to wander around in cemeteries like this and piece together family relationships and family tragedies.




There’s so much history here. I could go on, for instance, about how the original log church still stands right next door, was used as a German school, and now is a storage and multipurpose space for the church—but I’ll let you learn about that for yourself sometime. We need to move on to the ice cream!




Actually, it was much more than ice cream. There was enough food there to make a light dinner. They served brats and hot dogs (with all the trimmings); chicken salad sandwiches; and ham sandwiches made with locally made Burger’s ham. There were chips and sodas and ice tea, paper plates and plastic cutlery.




The trays intrigued me—they were from all over the place. They were old and mismatched, clearly donated. Some are no doubt collector’s items that would bring twenty bucks apiece on eBay. And it was really fun to eat off a tray that had originally come from Marineland of the Pacific (of all places). Sue’s tray celebrated the glorious state of North Dakota—someone decades ago must have donated a complete series of all 48 U.S. states!




You might be wondering why I’m not showing you pictures of ice cream, but it should be obvious: You just don’t sit around and photograph homemade ice cream; you eat it!

Indeed, as we went through the line, my cousin David looked askance at me as I added a few multicolored sprinkles to my ice cream: “How can you even think of putting toppings on homemade ice cream??”

He had a point. But I kind of wondered why there should be a “rule” about it. Do we need catechizing over ice cream toppings? . . . But then I was raised in a UCC church and he’s a Lutheran, and maybe that’s the difference right there! We laughed about it; variety is the spice of life!




And that’s the point of all this gathering and celebrating, isn’t it? We get together to share fellowship and fun, enjoying the fact that some of us like sprinkles or chocolate syrup on our ice cream, and some of us just came for the bratwurst with kraut.

And even if some of us are part of an extended family-and-friends network while others are new-friends-we-just-hadn’t-met-before, who have never even driven down Route K . . . we’re all welcome to share in the fun of the cakewalk.





Hey: In reading about this church, I learned that “Christmas programs have been omitted only twice—once during the Civil War, the other during the 1918 flu epidemic” (ibid.). Something tells me this church’s Christmas program would be well worth attending! Meanwhile, I think you can depend on the ice cream social taking place each year on the fourth Saturday of August! Plug it into your calendar now, so you won’t miss it next year.

A big thank-you to Uncle Richard and Aunt Carole, who knew about this event and invited us all to attend. They also gave me some pages photocopied from Moniteau County history books—to help with this post, which they correctly anticipated I might want to write!

Another thank-you to Sue, for sharing her photos with me. The good ones in this post are hers; the so-so ones are mine!

Thanks, especially, to our family members who joined us at Salem Church. You know what Grandma S. would say: “The more we get together, the happier we’ll be!”

The 5 and 50 Drive-In, Tipton, Missouri

All roads lead to the 5 and 50—most notably, Highways 5 and 50. And if you look at these two roads, you might indeed realize that the 5 and 50 could very easily be on your itinerary, if you don’t watch it.




Tipton's 5 and 50 Drive-In, named for its position at the intersection of the two highways, is one of those wonderful, unique little businesses you can find in small towns all over the place, but rarely on the interstates, dominated by boring chain restaurants and their mind-numbing sameness.

I said it’s unique, because it is, but it’s also like plenty of other little drive-ins that offer soft-serve ice cream creations, chili dogs, fried snacks, and sodas, sold from behind a sliding window in a little hut with a big sign on top. There are picnic tables, in case you don’t want to eat in your car.




And each of these places is different, and each is beloved by the surrounding community, as well as by tourist regulars, truckers, bikers, who have learned to stop there as they travel from point A to B.

Similar places: Zesto, the Pied Piper, Vargo’s (Norwalk, Ohio), and the sadly defunct Polar Freeze (Mesquite, Nevada).

The last time we were at the 5 and 50, the guy behind the window said that the business had been there for at least fifty years. (I suspect that some of my readers can tell me precisely how far back the 5 and 50 really goes.)

Here is one of the menu boards.




This is the real thing, folks. If you drive up to this restaurant in anything younger than a 1959 Ford Galaxie 500, you will feel like a visitor from the future, a spaceman.




Now I’m going to support my sweeping generalization at the top of this post: All roads lead to the 5 and 50!

Missouri Route 5 traverses the entire state, north to south. It’s the only Missouri state highway to extend all the way across the state, as a matter of fact. Highway 5 extends into three states. Across the border in Iowa, it turns into Iowa Highway 5 and leads clear to Des Moines!

In Missouri, it connects such important places as Marceline (boyhood home of Walt Disney), historic Boonville, the Lake of the Ozarks (Missouri’s own vacationland), Camdenton (home of Bridal Cave), Lebanon (the Aluminum Fishing Boat Capital of the World), and Mansfield (where Laura Ingalls Wilder lived for about sixty years; she wrote “some books” there).




South of Missouri, the highway enters Arkansas, where it becomes Arkansas Highway 5 and leads to the charming Ozark city of Mountain Home (Bluegrass Central—you really have to go there), then down to Calico Rock (perched prettily on the White River), through part of the Ozark National Forest, through Mountain View (which is different from Mountain Home) and Heber Springs, Rosebud, and Romance, clear to the north fringes of the Little Rock metro area.

Des Moines to Little Rock: So it should go without saying that Iowa/Missouri/Arkansas 5 connects with scads of U.S. Highways, as well as some major Interstates (40, 44, 70, and 35).

Okay, then the other line of the “plus sign” centered in Tipton, U.S. 50, stretches more than three thousand miles from Ocean City, Maryland, to Sacramento, California; before they replaced its westernmost stretch with new concrete spaghetti, it used to stretch clear to San Francisco. It goes through twelve states—clear across the continent.




And when you consider that Missouri is, ohhh, roughly centered in the lower 48, you can see that, given the extent of the two highways aiming right at Tipton, it wouldn’t take too many turns to get to a road that will intersect Route 5 or Highway 50, and from there, you got it: It’s a straight shot to the 5 and 50.




The 5 and 50 is closer than you think.

Dutch Bakery and Bulk Foods, Tipton, Missouri

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this scene, here in the Midwest, where large, centralized (and often overpriced) health-food bulk grocery stores are hard to find, we rely on Mennonite- or Amish-run stores out in the country for bulk ingredients.

Apart from highway signs, these stores don’t do a lot of advertising; most customers just “know” they’re there, by word of mouth.

The Dutch Bakery is on Highway 50 on the west side of Tipton, Missouri. It’s run by a family of Old Order Mennonites, and the store’s been there twenty-three years. (The owner told me that they started selling baked goods and produce at the Sedalia and Jeff City farmers’ markets five years before the store opened, so they’ve actually been in business since about 1982.)




Here’s a picture taken in late 2009, with the leaves gone. Notice anything unusual? How about that! Yes, it’s true—the World’s Largest 8-Ball looms like an alien eyeball over this sincere little grocery store!

See, there’s history: This water tower was painted to look like a huge 8-ball because Fischer Manufacturing, a billiard company, used to be right there by the water tower. When Spalding bought them out in 1968, Fischer was the country’s largest builder of pool tables. Tipton’s quite proud of its landmark!




Anyway, it’s quirky juxtapositions like this—the Mennonite grocery sitting there, keeping a straight face, beneath this giant goofy 8-Ball—that make small towns such a gas.

And if you’re driving along Highway 50, you have no excuse for “missing” the Dutch Bakery—just look for the Giant 8-Ball!

By the way, if you’re reading this and are not sure you’ll feel comfortable venturing into the “different culture” of a Mennonite-run grocery store, get over yourself! Yes, Mennonites are rather soft-spoken; the women wear those little caps; and you’ll probably overhear some musical and unintelligible Pennsylvania- or Swiss-German dialect—but make no mistake: You are welcome here, and they, like all store owners, are glad to sell you their stuff!

At Dutch Market, in addition to a huge variety of bulk foods, pasta, snacks, dried fruits, and baking supplies, they also sell hanging baskets, vegetable starts, and bedding plants in season; wooden lawn furniture; homemade bakery goods; home-canning supplies; meats and cheeses; and fresh local produce.

Part grocery, part produce-stand, and part bakery, this is where I got the cantaloupe the other day that became Ginger Melon Sorbet. I also got some pumpkin-walnut bread and a Swedish tea ring (day-old, discounted—give me a break) and some nice ripe yellow and red tomatoes. (Yes, the good kind!) There were also new potatoes, squash, cucumbers, and plenty more.




And bulk spices! —I had run out of bay leaves. At Dutch Bakery, I bought their smallest plastic sack of bulk bay leaves (I think it’s fresher when they bag it from bulk)—0.13 lb. (which is at least ten times as much as you get in a bottle of Durkee) for 85 cents. The only problem with this? Now I’ve got lots more bay than I know what to do with. What a hardship, huh?

Unlike a lavish, orthorexic-approved Whole Foods supermarket (or “Whole Paycheck,” as some of my friends call it), Dutch Bakery sells some bulk items that can’t be called “health foods.” Many of the dried fruits are stabilized with sulpher dioxide, and they can be tinted with, say, FD&C Yellow #6. (They are plainly marked, so it’s not like they’re hiding it from you.)

And you can buy, in bulk, all kinds of powdered and dehydrated soup and dip mixes—which, compared to homemade soups and sauces from scratch, are at a minimum just sad, and at worst, an abomination. (Unless you're camping or something.) I saw you can also get bags of that fluorescent-neon-orange powder that you add to cooked macaroni to make a bulk-foods equivalent to “Kraft Mac & Cheese.” Again, it’s not exactly “health food.” But then—if you’re wanting to feed your army on the cheap, this is the place for you.

I love it that I can get my healthy bulk grains there. Oat bran muffins, here we come!




The summary: It’s a family-run, small, local business. They’ve got great prices on a bunch of stuff that you want to buy. The produce is top-notch. The drive there is pleasant. And you’ll smile.

Plus, while you’re there, you can take pictures of the World’s Largest 8-Ball!




More Information That You Didn’t Ask for but Ought to Know

There’s a lot more to enjoy in Tipton, Missouri, such as the Vanilla Grill (believed by some to have the best chocolate ice cream ever), and Ghetto Superstar. Tipton is also the hometown of Gene Clark (a founding member of the Byrds), and he’s buried there. So if you’re a fan, you have to make a pilgrimage to the St. Andrew Catholic Cemetery, now, too!





ADDENDUM, October 8, 2010
In light of the enthusiastic endorsements below, I went and got some of the Dutch Bakery's "Dutch letters." Here's my post on them.

Thanksgiving Report

Hi, everyone! Sorry I haven’t been very good at posting this month—I’ve been pretty busy with “real life” and haven’t had much time for reporting or reflection. And honestly, I haven’t been extraordinarily inspired by much—the pretty autumn leaves are all dry, brown, and on the ground, and the skies have been gloomy overall. Today’s an exception—bright and sunny—and there’s a pleasant buzz as cars of well-fed shoppers cruise up and down Broadway beneath our windows.

Now, on to the subject of this post: The appetizers I made for yesterday’s Thanksgiving get-together. Sue and I joined my parents at my cousin’s house north of Centertown (that’s west of Jeff City, in northern Moniteau County). David, my cousin, and his wife Wendy hosted Thanksgiving again this year, and Wendy, as usual, did a lovely, lovely job with the turkey (22 pounds!) and all the fixin’s. You know . . . mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, the traditional green bean casserole, that delicious ground cranberry relish with the oranges, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and so on.

My mom brought the sweet potato casserole—some recipe she has that’s out of this world, with brown sugar, marshmallows, and crunchy whole pecan nutmeats on top. I usually don’t go for sweet potatoes that have been doctored up with “more sweets,” but this dish is an exception. I had to indulge in seconds, even if I do “know better.”

Another thing I have to mention is, indeed, the dressing, which to me is a big deal. David makes it using our grandmother’s recipe. He enjoyed it at his family’s Thanksgivings growing up in Cheyenne, just as I enjoyed it with my folks (and with Grandma) here in Missouri. The recipe—and especially the flavors—are a very tangible connection to our grandma and to our decades of family Thanksgiving memories.

The dressing is made with cubed bread, apples, celery, and raisins. The raisins get all pudgy and soft in the process, and the entire dish takes on a character that is far more than the sum of its parts. Oh, purrrrrr.

As we dined, Wendy mentioned that she’d suggested that this year, maybe David should use craisins instead of raisins. Maybe that would be a delicious twist on an old favorite! . . . As soon as she related this, I barked, “No! No way! Can’t mess with perfection!” We all laughed as she explained that David had responded the same way!

My contribution to the shindig was to bring the appetizers—that’s what Wendy told me to bring. And wow, that didn’t seem like very much to contribute, considering that she and David were basically doing everything else. So I decided to “fly with it,” to give it some extra effort and creativity than the usual veggies an’ crackers plus a sauce to dip them in.

. . . And that will be the subject of my next post.

Prairie Home Conservation Area

Here’s another Central Missouri area that’s great for a hike. Sue and I went there on Saturday, April 4, and it was our first time to hike there. Because the area is so large, and we hiked only a part of the trails, what I’m going to describe to you is based on a first, limited impression. So bear with me, and keep your eye out for further posts. This will have to be a “developing story.”

First, the blah-blah background. Prairie Home CA is in eastern Cooper County and on the western, slanted edge of Moniteau County. If you find the town of Prairie Home on a map, the CA is about four miles south of it. There’s a gravel road—Cedron Road—going east-west through the area between Highways W and D. (By the way, it’s pronounced SEE-drun, for the small community that used to be in the area. The historic Cedron Church, founded in 1841, is still there.)

The 1,461 acres of public lands are shaped like a C, or an O that’s almost closed, and an eight-mile-long hiking trail loops around it. This trail, called the Buckhorn Hiking Trail, is remarkable because it is a favorite of Boy Scouts. In fact, it was built by scouts, and at least one portion of it is maintained by California, Missouri’s celebrated Troop 120, which has been hiking the area, planting trees, maintaining the trails, picking up litter, practicing outdoorsmanship, and in other ways generally demonstrating good stewardship of the area for decades.

The Missouri Conservation Department has a good brochure for the area, but if you can get a copy of the modified trail map put out by Troop 120, it is good to have, too, for it indicates several points of interest along the trail, including the “Halfway Fork,” “Missouri Rock” (shaped like the state’s outline), and a stately bur oak tree that was growing when the United States was born. There’s even an informative note about the powerlines that cut through the landscape: “These carry electrical power from Lake of the Ozarks to Columbia.”

The Buckhorn Trail connects several primitive camping spots, parking areas, fishing lakes, and miscellaneous points of interest. It’s easy to see why this would make a wonderful all-day hike. . . . Or a shuttle hike, which is what we did, leaving one car at Point B, driving in a second car to Point A, then hiking from Point A to B.

You could start and end the trail at any number of places. We opted to begin hiking at Parking Lot 6, on the east side of the park, following the Buckhorn Trail north, then west in a wide arc along the park’s northern perimeter, finally veering south, to end at Parking Lot 2, near the west entrance of the area.

There are several ponds and lakes in the Conservation Area, and as we drove through the park to set up our shuttle, we noticed a number of anglers hiking into the woods with their rods and tackle boxes. I understand that the parking areas were purposefully set a small hike away from the fishing areas, in order to gently discourage people from indulging in trashy beer busts at the water’s edge. (Great idea, methinks.)

By now you can tell I have some insider information, and yes, I do: My uncle is one of the leaders of Troop 120, and he has a long association with the area. In fact, he had his own good reason for encouraging us to go out there and try it out this weekend: Troop 120 and several other BSA troops recently enjoyed a camporee there, and my uncle wanted us to hike one section of the trail in particular in order to remove several tags he and my cousin had placed on trees to test the scouts’ forestry identification skills. So we were hiking with a mission!

Of course, as you can see, we got sidetracked by the pretty wildflowers. We both brought cameras, and, well, this just happens to be the beginning of the best time to look for wildflowers in the state, in my humble opinion.

Though I have to say: the ticks are already out. I plucked at least six from my jeans over the course of the afternoon. Young but not tiny ones; fast-moving. Dang them, anyhow. It’s already time to start grabbing the DEET.

Wildflowers in bloom. Whites: Dogtooth violet, toothwort, spring beauty, Dutchman’s breeches, bloodroot, rue anemone. Mayapples just coming up and unfurling the foliage. Pinks and purples: Dead nettle, redbud, violet wood sorrel, Johnny-jump-up, blue and purple violets. Yellows: Pale corydalis. Browns: well, the trillium is coming up, but it’s not blooming quite yet. (At least, not at Prairie Home. That we saw.) (I’ll spare you the Neo-Latin.)

Amazing how just a few weeks can pass, and suddenly all these pretty flowers are pushing out of the soil, threading their way through the fallen leaves, lifting their shining faces to the sun.

The trail was very enjoyable. Well-planned, varied, good relief. The creek crossings were at pretty locations and were doable by picking your way across on wobbly rocks. If you have a hiking stick, or a Leki trekking pole, it will come in handy, unless you don’t mind your feet possibly getting a little wet. Here is one of the dry crossings, however:

As for the trail condition, we noticed a few problems: Horseback riders. We studied the maps and had a hard time figuring out which trails were designated for horses and hikers (“Multi-Use”) and which were only for hikers. At times, I think the trails coincide for short distances, then diverge. And if I couldn’t quite tell where one kind of trail begins and another ends, I’ll bet horseback riders have the same problem and end up on the hiking trails by accident. So parts of the trail had been chopped and clopped up by hooves, especially when it was kind of muddy earlier this week. In a few places, we had to walk alongside the trail to keep out of the mud.

But that’s a relatively minor complaint, and I trust that the folks at the MDC are “on top of the situation.” Right?

Here’s the kicker: Even though the area offers all kinds of “outdoor uses”—for riders, hikers, hunters, fishers, and disabled and able-bodied alike—and even though we knew others were in the park because we saw their cars and horse trailers . . . we didn’t bump into anyone during our entire hike. Pretty nice, huh?

Especially on a lovely Saturday in early April in Missouri.