Rocks & Red's & Route 66
August 2026
Downtown, the original Route 66 McKinley Bridge still carries traffic to and from the heart of St. Louis. And although John Steinbeck’s Mother Road changed names and pathways through the city toward Joplin and beyond, the old historic routes are marked.
And celebrated.
Driving through Rolla, gone are aromas from Route 66 icons: Toky’s BBQ, Chub & Jo’s fried chicken, Zeno’s steaks. But you can see a replica of Stonehenge, a tribute to one of the ancient world’s most dazzling feats of architecture. Situated on the campus of one of America’s top engineering schools, the University of Missouri Science and Technology, equidistant from Pine Street (the original Route 66 thru downtown) and I-44, Rolla’s laser-built Stonehenge marks the change of seasons with precision, except when a later-built high-rise dorm blocks the sun. Dang.
The impetus for choosing the name came from Springfield, Missouri.
Rolling into Springfield for the night, I yearned for a burger from Red’s Giant Hamburg. Alas, Red’s is only a memory, gone for a dozen years now, but not forgotten. Red Chaney, the Charlie O. Finley of fast food, opened America’s very first drive-thru hamburger joint on old Route 66. It was also America’s first green restaurant, with a blue ceiling and a green floor, to imitate an outdoor picnic. Red looked a lot like Buddy Holly if Buddy had lived to be 70. And like Buddy, Red was an innovator. Long before fast food supersizers, the Redburger came in junior, giant, senior, jumbo and sooper.
He erected a wooden sign that was giant for its time, but not giant by today’s glorified interstate skypoking standards. It was in the shape of a two-word crossword puzzle. The two words: Giant (across) and Hamburg (down). The words intersected at the letter a. Because Red miscalculated the size of his sign, he had to leave the Hamburger’s last two letters off. Hence, the name Red’s Giant Hamburg.
The city razed the place after Red died in 1997, but the joint lives on in a local rockabilly song called “Reds” by the Morells “where the only thing French on the menu is fried.” Reds fell where it stood and left only a little grease spot behind.
Not to worry: Along old Route 66 I found a Steak ‘n’ Shake, but not just any old Steak ‘n’ Shake. This one is from 1962, said to be one of two surviving Steak ‘n’ Shakes with the ‘50s/’60s era design, so unique it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
Missouri's Sloping Forehead
May 2026
That question is a reliable stumper in a trivia battle about Missouri. Sure, most folks can name the Mississippi and the Missouri. But identifying the other two river borders nearly always requires a lunge for the atlas.
One of those rivers is the St. Francis. On a map, it helps outline Missouri’s most distinguishable characteristic, the instep of Missouri’s fashionable Bootheel.
The fourth river? It flows across Missouri’s sloping forehead, along a county named for the commander of the Corps of Discovery. For about 25 miles, the Des Moines River borders the very northeast part of Clark County in the very northeast part of the state. Most folks just assume that when our ancestors carved out Missouri, they drew the state with a flat top, a straight line from the Mississippi across the Show-Me State’s noggin. Look closer. A chunk of Iowa extends 16 miles south of Missouri’s northern border. That southernmost Iowa appendage looks nothing like a fashionable “bootheel” so the corresponding dent in Missouri’s northeast corner goes mostly unnoticed.
By the time my car delivered me to the Battle of Athens State Historic Site, I felt as tired as Mark Twain retreating (look it up). Indeed, in this northeasternmost part of Missouri, we’re closer to the state capitals of Iowa and Illinois than Missouri.
I can understand why people would want to settle here, and I promptly nestled into a secluded campsite myself and explored the Des Moines River Ravines Natural Area. The park enjoys a mile and a half of river frontage and enough hills and woods to get lost. The rolling hills and beautiful scenery stand as irrefutable proof that north Missouri is much more than flat farmland. Clark county boasts five separate conservation areas for hunting and fishing, plus the Great River National Wildlife Refuge along the Mississippi.
Driving south from Athens along the Des Moines River, I came upon the Illiniwek Village State Historic Site, the only known summer village once inhabited by the Indians of the Illiniwek Confederacy. The Illiniwek, or Illinois Indians, were prevalent when Europeans first came to Missouri. The village looks different today than it did back in 1673 when Marquette and Joliet visited the 8,000 villagers. The 300 lodges along a network of streets are reduced to an archaeological dig. Still, this village is the biggest and best-preserved of the Illiniwek culture.
My car doesn’t care that I’m the great-grandson of an Irish Catholic priest. Yet she obliged as I took a circuitous route from Illiniwek to the village of St. Patrick, not far from the Wyaconda River. I got a kick out of hanging out in the only place in the world where you can send a letter postmarked with the name of this legendary evangelist.
There’s a lot to discover, all tucked under this border river along Missouri’s sloping forehead.
Prine Time Road Dog
February 2026
Forrest McCurren is a road dog. You hear it in his songs. The grit. The gears. The unexpected turns that produce a favorite mantra: You got to get lost to get found. His delivery is a pearl-snap shirt on a Saturday night, a Prinelike glimpse into sticky life, sycamore-sweet in the Texas heat, sparkling in his native Ozarks sun where the sacred Osage flows into the Missouri River.
He raises a beer to trailer park lovers with matching tats and waitresses wise beyond their barstools. His ballads salute good people who got bad grades in school, drunk on dreams, still trying to figure out if life is sour or sweet. Then he drives off in a van that looks like it might be your plumber.
Equally at home quoting Shakespeare and the Bible, McCurren’s pluck and dirt songwriting prompted Blake Shelton and Taylor Sheridan to stick him in the lineup to compete in the series, “The Road,” which airs on CBS.
That’s a feather in his cap. But his big break came a few years back when he met his muse.
I got lucky,” he says rhetorically, “in a life-changing course that shifted my focus from sports to music.”
He played soccer at Helias, a Catholic High School in Jefferson City, and ended up turning down a soccer scholarship at Saint Louis University, opting instead for William Jewell in Liberty where he might play more minutes.
The move was fortuitous for two reasons. At Jewell he met Margaret, and he picked up the guitar. Margaret, a bright eyed multi-talented musician who learned to read music before she learned to read words, grew up on her family’s suburban farms in St. Louis, then Boston.
Margaret encouraged his development. Her fiddle paired with Forrest’s voice and lyrics like a whiskey chaser. It wasn’t long before she had him playing more minutes in music than soccer, in venues that shouted Missouri character, like the Frank James Saloon in the postcard town of Parkville on the Missouri River.
Every road is a road home for somebody. McCurren’s latest album, “Small Prayers, Big Blessings” captures both road and home. “There’s a rowdiness that comes from the road and then there’s a thoughtfulness when we’re off the road, getting back home and putting in context how much you love your family.”
As you read this, Forrest may or may not have survived the competition on “The Road.” Regardless, he does his beloved Missouri proud.
I told him he has yet to make me cry. But the balladeer is young. The road is long. I am patient.
Visit ForrestMcCurren.com for more about the artist.