When I was in school the guys thought for some reason the girls in the adjoining towns were better than our hometown Oak Grove girls. Since I was having a hard time getting an Oak Grove girl to go out with me I somehow managed to get a date with one of the most beautiful girls in Blue Springs High School.

She lived north of town on 7 Hiway, probably about where the theatre is now. I-70 wasn’t there so I had to go 40 Hiway to 7, and then north about three or four miles. My date was for 7:00 p.m. Saturday night and I was excited.

I had planned a great evening for this fantastically beautiful date. I milked the cows a little early, and was ready to go, got in my Ford car, and I could not get it started. Not only that, the engine had locked up. My folks had bought a new Chevrolet sedan in 1949. There was just one problem. I had run it off in a ditch one night, and did about $600 worth of damage. It had been repaired, but my mom said no way was I taking her car, she didn’t care who I had a date with.

The only thing left was my dad’s old Chevrolet pickup and I was running out of time. It was now a quarter til 7:00. This old truck was only washed when it rained. It had so much dirt on the floorboard, whatever my dad had harvested last would start growing inside the cab. Outside was even worse. It had stock racks on and there was cow manure hanging down the sides of the racks. When my date and I walked out of her farmhouse and she saw my mode of transportation she took one look and said, “I’m not getting into that.” And she didn’t.

Forty years later I walked in the Post Office when it was where Read It Again Bookstore is now, and there was my Blue Springs date as beautiful as ever and she had moved to Oak Grove with her husband and two daughters. After telling me about her family, she said something that after forty years made me feel a little better. She said, “Jack, I’ve always wished I’d went ahead and got in that old truck to see what you had planned for the night. It would have had to be better than going back in the house with nothing to do.”