Missouri: Driving on King's Highway

King’s Highway, also known as Highway 61, runs through Sikeston, Missouri, and connects it to other little farm towns here in the Boot Heel.  It’s the original two lane north-south highway for these parts, and it was heavily traveled long before Interstate 55’s four lanes were constructed.

On your right as you head north through Sikeston, you’ll pass the old National Guard Armory.  It’s a big brick building and back in the day, kids played basketball in the gymnasium.  There are no games there anymore.  Its sole purpose today is to gather men and women from these parts headed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just outside of Sikeston, where the road is flanked with corn and cotton plants, Bill Clinton’s daddy was in a fatal car crash.  He’s not the only one.  Larry’s Uncle Donald was killed in his taxi cab on Hwy. 61 in the late 50s.  It was treacherous in its day.  It still is in places.  It only takes one drunk or distracted driver to cause a head-on collision.

Speaking of distractions, people around here often voice their opinions in signs.  As you drive, you can read about everything from politics to religion to social issues. Take the owner of the big house on the west side of Hwy. 61.  He made his money in nursing homes, but he’s not happy about his new neighbor: Dollar General.  Rumor has it, he had the opportunity to buy the property adjacent to his french chateau and turned it down.  Now he’s madder than hell about the  business next door.  You can’t pick your neighbors, even in the country.  

Those Dollar General stores are springing up everywhere.  Most of the little towns along Hwy. 61 have one.  My friend Becky and I made a trip up Hwy. 61 to the town of Oran (population 1,256).  There was a garage sale there put on by the Mad Hatter factory. They were selling remnants of fabric and embroidery thread, plus surplus personalized hats for all different things including “Pilgrim’s Pride,” “FEMA,” and the “U.S. Air Force.”  On the way home, we stopped at the Dollar General store to buy some odds and ends.  Becky said Miss Missouri was from Oran but she couldn’t remember her name.  She asked the young woman working the register if she knew who Miss Missouri was.  

“I’m not from here,” the woman replied.  

“Where you from?” Becky asked.

“Morely,” the woman replied.

Even I knew that Morely (population 805) was just seven miles down Hwy. 61.

There’s talk of a new FedEx distribution center on Hwy. 61.  That’s good.  Jobs are hard to come by around here.  The old shoe factory where Larry’s granddaddy was a night watchman is shut down.  So is the Gates Rubber Company.  One of Sikeston’s more illustrious businesses is gone but not forgotten.  Where the sign stands pointing the way to the Old Bethel Church, a brothel (euphemistically called “a massage parlor”) used to stand.  Word is it did a brisk business until it mysteriously burned down late one night.  Speculation is the church ladies of Sikeston took matters in their own hands. 

Probably the only king to drive this old road was Elvis.  He had kin in this area.  I don’t think the land around here has changed much in the years since then.  The soil is fertile and the weather, for the most part, is cooperative for farmers.  In this age of Starbucks and McDonalds at every exit on the interstate highway system, it’s good to get off the main road and see America as it was, is, and ever shall be.