The Second Leg

Today is January First Two Thousand Nine.

The new picture on the post is of Cameron and Kyle chasing around Kyle's new remote controlled car. This is what the boys were doing when we arrived in MN on Christmas Eve....giggling away to beat the band. It was wonderful. That is supposed to be a video, but it does not play, at least here in Amarillo. That is where we are right now.

We left our Minnesota family on New Year's Eve day. From weather reports that as the better day to leave. Snow was promised for today.

We drove to Cameron, Missouri, a little town about fifty miles north of Kansas City. The receptionist at the Comfort Inn sent us to the Honey Creek Steakhouse. Some local color, believe me. When we walked in the door we had to wait a few minutes while they seated about thirty very large people in the main dining room. They were all elbow-to-elbow and looked happy to be squashed in. I guess they were all together. They seated us in the smoking area, just to one side of the bar.

We were seated next to a nice young couple who had a three-year-old named Elizabeth. The father was smoking. Then, the family who came in immediately after us sat at the bar. The mother chain smoked and the eleven year-old son played the video game permanently stationed on the bar.

No one got a fast meal. The place was packed. Our waitress's name was Robyn, and she was a whirling dervish, making drinks and waiting on many tables. We ordered a mushroom appetizer, expecting four or five mushrooms, and she brought a bowl of around twenty deep-fried mushrooms with sauce. We ate the insides. Then we split a sirloin. The food was OK, but the people were a riot.

Next to the bar came a much older (around eighty) couple all dressed up and hitting on each other. Finally, in came a statuesque (?) policewoman (? She was wearing a badge) with steel gray hair. She was drinking beer out of a bottle and accompanied by a pony tailed, handle-bar mustached man wearing a stetson. She was waving and conversing loudly with many patrons. Finally she asked Robyn for the house phone so she could call her "Mama." No kidding this woman as at least fifty years old herself. I think she was explaining her evening plans or something...apparently there was a parking problem in the trailer park community.

Everyone got their meals finally. Little Elizabeth was very patient. The young couple left about the same time we did. We wished them happy new year. The father said they were leaving because "In a minute, everyone in here is going to be hammered." What a New Year's Eve.