Dad would get on vacation kicks that we would take year after year to the same destination. Whether in an effort to perfect the experience or whether he, like an old LP record, got his directional needle stuck in a skip, I couldn't say. During three consecutive summers, we spent one of Dad’s vacation weeks in the Ozark Mountains on the southernmost border of Missouri—a stone’s throw from Arkansas.
Our destination near Branson was only a ten-hour drive from our home, but we always made an overnight stop either in Springfield, Illinois, or St. Louis, Missouri. Business friends of Dad’s lived in these places and playing golf with these men was a favorite pastime. My sister and I especially liked our stops in St. Louis where there were plenty of other kids among the families of Dad’s friends and plenty of kid-friendly things to do. Mom’s friendships with the wives was in evidence and always put her in the best of moods.
After a bit of city fun, it was on to the mountains. The last hour of the drive was one my sister dreaded. The winding hilly roads made her car sick. Soon, however, we reached our cabin on Table Rock Lake.
When Dad first told me we were going to a cabin, I was nine years old and envisioned a structure akin to where Abraham Lincoln was born. But, as we pulled into the gravel driveway, we were greeted by a lodge-size house that could sleep 24.
Walking inside for the first time, I saw that the misnamed cabin was filled with man-things like guns locked in cabinets and fishing equipment with barbed hooks. An eight-foot long blue marlin with its long sword nose hung over the fireplace. A stuffed bobcat showing fiercely bared canines sat perched to the right of the mantle. On the floor was a black bear skin rug. The head rested on its chin with an open mouth showing a full set of ferocious yellow teeth.
During our first summer on Table Rock Lake, Mr. King, my dad’s boss, drove the few short miles from his own lakeside getaway to welcome us. He came to drink Snappy Tom Bloody Marys with my parents. He was always a prankster and talked my three-year-old sister into putting her hand in the bear’s mouth. “See,” he soothed, “He won’t hurt you at all.” Just as she was about to believe him, “Rawrh!” he growled. You never saw a little kid’s hand jerk back so fast as her’s did. All the grown-ups thought it was funny but from that point on, Susan gave that bear rug a wide berth, and I dare say she carries the trauma of that moment with her to this day.
Tammy and Wilbur were our down home neighbors on man-made Table Rock Lake. They earned their living as caretakers for the dozens of vacation homes lining the shore of just one tiny little finger of the 43,000 acre lake. Wilbur’s 300-pound body jingled with the keys he carried—keys that opened the modest as well as the monumental and included sheds and boat houses. There were always kittens to play with in Tammy and Wilbur’s yard and bluegills to catch with bamboo poles off their dock. Tammy could make what Wilbur described as a mean biscuit and they both looked as if they’d eaten more than their fair share of the buttery morsels.
In the two following years, various friends of our family joined us. The week of our second summer, the Ulbrichs stopped by for two nights on their way to Yellowstone. In our third year, the Moores and the Fischers spent five days with us. During these fun-filled family unions, which included boating, swimming, and celebrating the Fourth of July with ill begotten fireworks, we kids slept in a large room where pull-down twin beds—six of them altogether—disappeared into the wall during the day giving us space for an indoor game of wiffle ball. We marveled at the ten-point rack of a stag’s head hanging on the wall in our bedroom area. “It’s so cool,” one kid said. I stared up at the buck’s glassy black eyes considering whether I agreed or not.
One day of our vacation each year was spent at Silver Dollar City amusement park where we panned for gold, rode roller coasters, and watched a reenactment of a fight between the Hatfields and McCoys. On the one Sunday of our stay, we got in the little fishing boat and motored over to a nearby cove to attend church. While recently watching the popular Netflix series Ozark, I wrinkled my brow at a scene that depicts attendees of a similar church gathering receiving their weekly purchase of heroin. Fiction is often based on reality, afterall, so it gave me pause.
The possibility of the area’s seedier side notwithstanding, our summers on Table Rock Lake were idyllic times. The romance our dad had with the place went as far as the purchase of a lot in a development where he and Mom envisioned a place for their retirement. But that idea, too, was short-lived. By the time I was 12 years old, a new vacation kick took hold—two weeks in Florida every December where Dad could play golf every day if he chose.
Table Rock Lake became a distant memory after Dad took a job in Florida and moved us there in 1974. The Missouri lot was sold to pay for my college education, and Mom and Dad embraced a life bathed in yearlong sunshine and warm weather—a permanent vacation, Dad often said. But, I will always have a fondness for the memories I made on Table Rock Lake, except for maybe those taxidermied animals. They were pretty creepy.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2021
