Missouri, the “Show Me State”, has one of the most easily remembered state tags. But, I really don’t know what it means.  I won’t bother my AI kibitzer, Gemini, for the details.  Probably some odd historical moment that a journalist picked up on and it sounded cool.  It is catchy, if somewhat vague. Or mysterious, even better. If I instantly found out all the details, think of all the fun I’d miss speculating and trying to make something up.

   So what did Missouri show me as I wandered about? Trees, rocks, barns, windmills, rivers, and cows. Many of the same things that every other state has shown me, which to be perfectly honest is getting a little wearying. Where’s that deep insight?

   I watched a perfectly behaved horse maneuver its way around a gas station convenience store on an Amish beer run and was quite impressed. With no visible signals it backed up when it needed to and just the right amount before swinging left and clip clopping down the road.  No gears to shift, this horse was on automatic.

  So I was a little surprised a little later while I watched an Amish horse wrangler get dragged around his barnyard like he was on water skis. When he finally got the animal hitched to a buggy the horse did not like it one bit.   Rearing and thrashing until he finally took a few steps in the right direction. I guess there’s a few steps between a wild horse and one that just about drives itself.

  The Amish horse wrangler walked out to the end of his lane and basically told me to beat it. I told him I was just making a drawing and showed him, to which he responded, “in Missouri we ask permission before we take someone’s information."

Somehow he decided I was stealing data by drawing a picture of his farm.  Stealing vital information about Amish horse whisperers.  His reaction surprised me, but I folded up my sketchbook and clip-clopped on down the road.

 The typical response I’ve had is at first curiosity and then people are generally pleased that I find something of theirs attractive enough to treat as worthy of art. Maybe the Amish aren’t art lovers?  I’d hate to think that.  The many Amish that I found in northern Missouri and southern Iowa seemed just about like the rest of the rural American population. Just not as worried about the price of diesel.

While driving these bumpy roads, I did have a moment where the generator light in my van started flickering on and off.  It occurred to me that even if a buggy stopped to give me a hand I could hardly hook my jumper cables up to his horse. Just one of those, “what if” nagging thoughts when things don’t go quite as expected. Don’t worry, I didn’t break down. At least mechanically.

  I did catch a cold and it’s lingering. My head is a little fuzzy and I’ve got a cough — well, you know what a cold is like. So maybe I shouldn’t blame Missouri, or the Amish, or horse trainers. Blame some anonymous bug. But it’s nice to put a name and face on our scapegoats, just for focus.  Someone deserves the blame. Right?  I come into contact with so few people that this is the first time I've been sick at all. I might as well credit those germs to the Amish. I can’t blame it on Biden.

  Then there were the ticks. Dolly and I took a nice long walk along a blue ribbon trout stream where a fisherman was catching wild rainbow trout.  When we got back to the Bluebird we were covered with them, ticks — not trout. I’ve given Dolly a serious haircut. Three days have gone by and I just picked another one off my arm an hour ago. You probably know what three nights of tick creepy crawler half  sleep is like. But blaming ticks is a little lame.

  Dolly doesn’t seem to mind the ticks, but she hates a thunder storm and we’ve had a couple of doozies. Having to share my narrow bunk with a nervous slightly smelly dog and ticks ruined one night’s sleep, but it’s hard to blame your only faithful ride along partner even if she is a bit of a wuss when it comes to lightning and thunder.

So again.  What has Missouri shown me? Maybe blame is a hollow response to life. If you walk by a Missouri trout stream in April you might end up with 30 or 40 ticks on you or you might find a fresh flush of morels. Sooner or later you get a cold and in a week or so it’ll be gone. Some days your eyes might just glaze over and your brain might just say, “not again” when looking at a beautiful field.  Just keep after it. Make that next drawing. Persistence. There’s a lot of states left to draw. So maybe Missouri was just trying to show me to keep at it and hope it’s been worth the time and gas money when I'm all done.