Journey to the Seventh Planet

By Bobby Neal Winters

Interstate 44 claws its way through the state of Missouri. You really have to experience it to understand.  It’s not that it's not pretty.  The scenery is quite pretty.  One would have to have a heart made of stone to not be affected by the scenic beauty...at first.

As you drive along after first entering Missouri, you say, “What a pretty little hollow nestled among the scenic hills.”

But something happens to you after you do that twenty times over the course of an hour.  Hearts made of flesh do turn to stone; hearts already of stone turn to diamond.

And depending upon how far you go and how fast you drive, you might be doing that for six hours.

The way they put it in Latin is: “Iter facimus.” The word “iter” means journey and “facimus” means we make. So a journey is like breakfast or a house.  It is something that you put together.

Driving across Missouri, there is the piece from Joplin to Springfield; then Springfield to Rolla; then Rolla to Saint Louis.

The Romans were onto something.  Chopping a trip into pieces gives you hope. Hope will keep you alive.  The folks in Missouri have caught onto that.  The way they have done it, makes me proud to be an American.

As you penetrate more deeply into Missouri and the density of the pretty hills that separate the gorgeous hollows numbs the beauty-perceiving portions of your brain, your eyes begin to wander to the billboards.  The billboards highlight roadside attractions: There are scenic wonders and shopping opportunities ahead.  These billboards are more densely packed than even the hills and hollows.

The scenic wonders are understandable. Given the beauty of the hills and hollows that you can see for free from the interstate itself, you might wonder about the beauty of whatever they are trying to lure you off the beaten path to pay money to see.

However, there is something beyond that.  It is something that highlights the economic genius of the people of Missouri: The Uranus Fudge Factory.

If you’ve not gotten the joke, maybe it’s because it’s been a long time since you were 12. Maybe you’ve always been emotionally mature. Maybe you don’t pronounce “Uranus” with the stress on the second syllable. You really need that long “a” sound there.

The first time you see a billboard for the Uranus Fudge Factory, you think: Seriously, that’s pretty tacky.  You think: I would never stop there. What’s wrong with people who stop at a place like that?  

Then you think, people who are traveling with children who are old enough to read but still immature enough to think this is funny probably do.

Then the miles pass.  The hills and hollows add up.  They blunt your aesthetic senses. Your mind becomes as numb as your back, as backside, as...Uranus. 

You become curious.

I do want credit for waiting until our return journey before yielding to my curiosity and taking the exit to Uranus, Missouri in order to visit “The Uranus Fudge Factory.”

I will admit one thing.  I only thought that what I read on the billboards was tacky.  For true tackiness, one must enter the Fudge Factory.  The tackiness is palpable.  The tackiness has been monetized.

It’s for this last bit that I am going to tip my hat to those entrepreneurs in Uranus, Missouri.  Nature didn’t give them anything much to distinguish them from any other exit on Interstate 44. (Though I would say they probably go back to the heyday of Route 66.) 

The only distinguishing asset they had was someone naming their community with a moniker that can be pronounced in such a way as to make a middle-schooler snicker.  If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. If it gives you a goofy-sounding name, you go around the corner to where fudge is made.

We stopped.  We bought fudge.  It’s a done thing that we now won’t have to do again.  But that’s what we’d said before.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )