Book Worm Awaits while I'm stuck on Route 57!!

The plan was to leave Wolf Creek Antiques in Goreville at 3 and be at Book Worm in Carbondale at 4 p.m. when Carl and Kelly Rexroad suggested I come Saturday. Sounded like a good plan, and Anna was kind to scurry me out of her place and onto the road. I was zipping up Route 57 when the traffic came to a standstill. Almost to the exit for Carbondale, I thought I was through the road contruction area, and I was in the right lane to take the exit. Lodged between two huge trucks, I could not see ahead, but I figured we'd be moving again soon. After l0 minutes, I phoned Book Worm that I might be running close on the time. At 4 p.m. I phoned them again.

Teenagers kept walking by and so did one family with two little children. Oddly none of them ever returned. It seemed as if they were going to a precipice and falling off. I wondered if they had a driver to leave behind in case the traffic started up. Two men beside me in a four-wheel drive studied their map for an alternate route and decided to risk going through the very very steep ditch in the median to go back south and try to go up Route 37. They waved goodbye and warned me not to try it in the car, but I was in the wrong lane to do that stunt anyhow. They had phoned someone who evidently told them we'd have a two-hour wait as a semi was lying across both lanes ahead. I worried the driver might have been killed, but right before we started moving a man came from up there and said only the driver's shoulder was hurt. The next day someone told me that the wind had flipped over the huge truck.

Next I enjoyed visiting with the young couple whose car moved up to the spot the pickup had occupied in that left lane. They had just come from Branson and were eager to reach their home in DuQuoin. She gave me a flyer on a great show they had seen, and I gave her one of my cards telling about my book after I had described my dilemma of trying to get to Book Worm.

After another long wait, suddenly traffic was moving--but only the left lane was cleared, and I was in the right lane. But the young couple stayed their lane and let me in and I got to Book Worm shortly after 5 p.m. over an hour late. Judy Travelstead had left a book on the table there for me to sign for her, and Joyce and Ken Cochran from the Jackson County Historical Society were visiting in the area and came back a second time to get the book. We had a good visit about Emma Glasco Schwartz, who at age 40 had married Joyce's grandfather and gradually became not just "Emma" but "Granny." As a young orphan, Emma was raised by her grandfather Dr. Jesse Glasco and went with him in his buggy to help deliver babies and care for the rural sick around Alto Pass. Only after her obituary appeared, did I find out that she had come back to live in this area. How I wish I could have heard her stories.

The Rexroads were most kind and understanding, and the plan is that I'm invited back later when their store remodeling is finished and they have a grand opening there. Of course, now I have discovered about the best-made plans!