Skippy's ...

Cruising toward the town of Cuba, Missouri -- named after the island of Cuba, and once visited by the likes of Harry Truman, Bette Davis and Amelia Earhart -- I saw the sign for Skippy's, a small wooden building near Interstate 44, and  I knew I had to stop and go inside.

The sign read, "Good Food For Good People," so I was expecting a little café type of place, but when I walked through the front door, it was more like a roadhouse bar. A  young lady wiping off tables smiled and asked, "What can we do for you?" and so I told her I was traveling Route 66 and looking for interesting people to interview along the way.

She said, "Well, you can interview Skippy."

Turns out there really is a guy named Skippy, and he owns the place. Skippy was talking to a couple of tourists from England, and then he walked over to where I was standing, stretched out his hand and said, "You're not from the FBI, are you?"

"Not today," I said, and he laughed and we walked over to a table and sat down for a chat. Skippy said he gets a lot of traffic from Route 66  travelers, including people from all over the world. He is a people person and enjoys meeting everyone who comes through the door. His one regret is missing out on a chance to greet Sir Paul McCartney, who was spotted in various places along Route 66 in summer 2008. It seems Paul bypassed Skippy's place on his way  through the Show-Me State.

A lot of today's travel was interstate driving, and it rained a lot, plus I spent half a day waiting to  be interviewed at noon   by a radio talk show host from California about my new book, so I made it a short day and stopped in Rolla, where I found a drive-through Chinese restaurant, so I whipped in there. In front of me,  in an old Buick, was an elderly couple, she driving and he riding shotgun.

It became apparent pretty quickly that it took both of them to drive the car.

At the pickup window, I guess she had put it in park, and Pops was helping her get it back in gear. I decided to give them some room  and back up a ways, just in case she slammed it into reverse.  Sure enough, she backed up a couple of feet, then hit the brakes.  Pops reached over to help, but apparently found neutral, as Moms vroom-vroomed a couple of times, then the old man finally got it into drive for her and they slowly pulled away.

Nothing like teamwork, I reckon.

I forgot yesterday to post a photo from Springfield, Illinois, of Lincoln's Tomb, a state historic site in Oak Ridge Cemetery. I thought that was pretty cool, and I'd like to come back to Springfield sometime, where there's a whole lot of Abe Lincoln historical  sites.

See y'all on down the road ...

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