Four-thirty, Friday afternoon, I dash home, check on my roomie, who is critter-sitting, bring in the Norfolk Pine because temperatures are supposed to drop to 35F during the night, sop up the water from my floor board (apparently truck leaks somewhere now), and head northward toward a library meeting and my oldest son & his family.  I congratulate myself that this is a familiar journey; although it has been more than a year since I last made it.  I am famous for getting lost; after three days off from work because of illness, I am in no mood to go wandering about the countryside trying to figure out where I am.

The weather has cleared.  Although the sky is overcast as I leave home, the rain has stopped.  Gutters, ditches and creeks are full to over-flowing.  Soon, the sun begins to paint the underside of the clouds a blush pink.  Unfortunately, the traffic is too heavy to pull out my trusty camera and try for a picture.

The trees, that so stubbornly refused to change color in time for my Associated Content article (although I did find enough color to satisfy the assignment), have now begun to flaunt their gaudy Autumn-wear.  The oaks are still green, but the maples, hickories and sycamore are bright reds and yellows.  On the left, I spot a green field dotted with white cattle grazing contentedly in the dimming light.  A little farther up, on the right, harvested fields are golden squares of stubble.

As the sun continues to set, the landscape darkens.  The highway is a glittering ribbon of light as day workers hurry home from their jobs.  Or is it perhaps nightworkers hurrying to their jobs?  College students hurrying home for the weekend, or off to collect furniture for dorm rooms?  Trucks move amidst the smaller cars; the collective traffic a nation in movement.

I ponder.  I know–have known for years–that fossil fuels are finite, and that the exhaust from motor vehicles fouls the air.  But how would it be not to have an automobile?  Not to be able to travel three hundred miles or so in a single evening?  Its not a commute I would want to make often; but lack of mobility would truly change the face of our society.

In the thickening gloom, I pass several construction sites.  What would happen to the workers who make their livelihood from constructing roads if the demand were to diminish or to cease?  Mobility–goods, business, social interaction–it would all change so much without it.

I listen to a favorite radio station that plays classic rock-n-roll.  Most of the songs being aired tonight belong to my early college days.  In fact, there’s scarcely a one to which I do not know the lyrics or that does not evoke some sort of memory.  That occupies my mind for a while as the miles slide by.

It is full dark now, as I pull through a small town.  Signs of road construction are everywhere.  I pull down a familiar street which should have lead me back to a highway that would take me on toward my destination, and discover that the road construction has changed the familiar terrain completely!  I flip a mental coin, and turn left.  It is full dark now, with the cities lights causing starry irises on my windshield and trifocals.  Left was the wrong way, of course.  Fortunately, this is very familiar territory, and a couple of right turns on (thank goodness!) unchanged streets puts me back on the correct track.

Now my lights bore a hole into the darkness.  This is a much more rural area, and the vehicles are few between.  I drive through the silent countryside with some care for the roads still have damp spot and the terrain is both hilly and curvy.

When I again see civilization, it is in the area of Lake of the Ozarks.  When I was a girl, the area boasted a few fishing and swimming spots and a strip of “tourist traps”.  Now, the area near the bridges and over the dam is lined with hotels, motels, houses, businesses and boat docks.  Lights stretch back into the hills and are reflected from the lake’s surface.  Again, I wish for time to take pictures.  But there isn’t any place to pull off, and the terrain is a little to tricky for taking one handed pictures while driving.  The last thing I need on this trip is to wind up driving into the lake!

As I clear the lake area, my station goes to static as its signal is eaten up by smaller stations nearby.  I find that my listening selection is two ballgames, two gospel stations, one country station or rap.  I grit my teeth, and select the rap station (fairly mild) as the least obnoxious.  After about twenty miles, my tolerance for a driving beat is used up, and I switch to country.  A few miles later, I began to pick up signal from Jefferson City and Columbia.  That gave me a rock-a-billy station for a few miles, which got swallowed up by Alice Cooper in the Evening from Somewhere.  Not being particularly up on station call numbers, I wasn’t sure from whence it was being broadcast.

Passing through our state capitol, I had a lovely view of the capitol building itself, both as I entered the city; then again after I had crossed the river and was driving down the highway.