Free State (pt. 3 of 10)
*Dear Reader,
My last post was in February 2025 and as of this writing it is now almost July. I know that’s too long, but perhaps you’ll cut me some slack, as I do have a pretty good reason: I was getting sober, which I am presently writing about and will publish on that subject very soon. In the meantime, for your summer reading enjoyment, I’m publishing a series of travel writings I made during a two-week RV trip with my wife and friends to the American southwest in August of 2023 that I originally posted on my social media accounts but have been asked to repost here. There’s a few references to my drinking, which obviously do not represent my present-day lifestyle, but that I left in for historical accuracy and for comedic and literary effect. I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed living them, and then writing them.
Free State
Aug. 12, 2023 (day four): Awakening to a morning rain relieved us of the previous day’s oppressive heat, long enough to pile into the RV and get the hell out of Dodge, which is something one can literally do in Kansas, but still only figuratively in Missouri . A detour to “The Devil’s Icebox”, a Missouri park with a cave-like tunnel under a huge rock was quaint and mildly creepy when we realized the ceiling housed numerous bat colonies. Later, when referencing this place in conversation, I momentarily forgot the name of it and casually called it “The Devil’s B-hole” which of course sent ten-year-old Booker into a grand-mal chuckle seizure.
Another hot, humid six-hour drive between campgrounds ensued, so to reduce stoppage time we each attempted to make lunch for ourselves in the RV’s “kitchen” while in motion at 65 mph, which, to give you a visual idea, makes one look like if the Swedish Chef from The Muppets had a drinking problem. I opted for just eating one ingredient at a time, straight from the package, while seated, until it became a sandwich in my stomach. Eventually we got to the Lawrence, Kansas KOA in time to get in a merciful cool-down swim in their modest pool before getting Ubered to the downtown college-town main drag, where we ate at Free State Brewery, which had a yummy oatmeal stout and memorial to the abolitionist John Brown (who if you don’t know about, you should).
Combing the streets of Lawrence, we surmised from the storefront window displays that Kansans are very fond of both Patrick Mahomes (makes sense) and Guy Fieri (makes less sense). Our Uber driver back to the campground was a sweet and gentle young Russian woman named Lana who expressed envy at our multi-state endeavor, saying she had only lived in Missouri and Kansas since coming to the states. She listed the Missouri towns she had lived in, one of which was called Warsaw (can you imagine emigrating from Russia to the U.S. and winding up in a town called Warsaw?) We offered her our sincere hopes that she gets to see much more of her adopted homeland and then we hit the figurative hay in a place where you can also literally do that.