ML
KING OF THE
Road
1941 World Series, when Mickey was a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers). His error gets the blame for letting the crosstown Yankees win the series. Leaving Bronx cheers behind, Mickey came back home to Missouri, and for four decades he taught baseball to thousands of kids, including a young phenom named Michael Jordan, who went on to be pretty good at another sport. Mickey was so revered in these parts of Missouri, he was elected Greene County sheriff for 16 years. He died a few years ago, but his legacy lives on in the hearts of his students. I reached Turnback Creek, but kept going, past Paris Springs, which some folks used to call Chalybeate because of the iron-rich (chalybeate) springs that fed the town’s brisk health resort business. I drove south and intersected I-44, where I stumbled onto one of the biggest auto junkyards I’ve ever seen. Acres of rusted automobiles can only be accessed through one entrance gate made of two junked cars. This field of broken dreams, so close to the Mother Road, is an exclamatory reminder that nothing lasts forever. The car gate is framed by trees still pointing down after a thick ice storm a few years back changed the trees’ trajectories and sent residents running for cover. Zipping down Highway 60 into Republic, I resisted driving 360 miles an hour, as suggested by a car dealership TV ad that claims the trip from Springfield to Republic would take just one minute at that speed. Call Carl Edwards. Or Jamie McMurray. Anyway, too many stoplights along Route 60 impede such speed. Good thing: Prudent
JEFF FARABEE
Abandoned barns dot the countryside along stretches of Route 60. At right, Aurora’s first bank converted into a restaurant. Now, when you hand money over, you get food back. The Princess Theatre, despite being closed, is still eye-catching while it awaits a new fate.
[44] MissouriLife
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