“Good books, good friends and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

NAJ screen shot

Tales From the MoJo Road –
By Glynn Wilson –

ST. LOUIS, Mo. – As a writer and traveler it’s near impossible to cross over the Mississippi River without thinking of Mark Twain, and back to a time when a young boy found refuge and the hint of adventure in books housed in humble libraries.

Something changed deep down inside of me when I first encountered the phat tome Life on the Mississippi on that shelf in a Jefferson County school library on the outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. And when you change, there’s no going back.

But when I rushed over the famous Eads Bridge and came into this renowned town – the Gateway to the West – just in time for a political meeting on Wednesday, I only had time for a picture to popup in my head of a white-haired old man taking a steamer south down the river just for fun, sipping a whiskey and having a smoke, as everyone else headed for the railroad station to make the trip out west to California.

The time of the horse and buggy and the steamboat were coming to an end when Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote about it, as the march of the Industrial Age was just taking flight. In these times, most people just clamor for the airports on holidays to avoid this “flyover country,” to get on to the coasts where they think the real action happens.

Daring to be different, I follow a different road, as another American writer pointed out.

Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken

The story from here: Missouri Voters Fight Attacks on Citizen Initiative Rights and Democracy by Republican Legislature

Now I sit in the suburbs west of the city taking a break for a few days with good friends and a soft bed, deep in thought and conversations about the chances of saving American democracy from the rise of fascism and how to build an organic online platform to feed and fertilize citizen democracy and stamp out authoritarian shock and awe capitalism once and for all. We must find the soil mix to feed human altruism, and stop feeding the selfish gene with broadcast steroids.

While I was on the road someone shot and killed far-right Christian conservative MAGA media personality Charlie Kirk in Utah right in the middle of a stupid and fake rant about transgender assassins threatening American freedoms. What a crock.

While John Lewis style non-violence would be a better mode of action, as Martin Luther King championed until it got him shot and killed just down the river in Memphis, if the American people are just going to sit there like the German people in the 1930s engaged in a Spiral of Silence and refuse to march over the bridge to confront the bullies, it should come as no surprise that some might see a need to revert to violence as a means to an end.

Remember that’s more in line with what Malcolm X advocated in his day, along with the Weathermen who grew impatient with non-violent protests for civil rights and the environment and demands to bring an end to the war in Vietnam.

While I worry about the blowback and the backlash, do not count me among those who will cry for Charlie Kirk. As the good book says, “You reap what you sow.” If you endeaver to get rich and famous by working a crowd into a frenzy about a non-existent existential crisis, be prepared to suffer the consequences if someone takes offense and shuts you down at the point of a gun.

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” as the old proverb goes.

Now Back to the Road

Twain marked his travels down the river from St. Louis to New Orleans in miles traveled and river depths, describing the towns along the way like Hannibal and Cairo. We now mark our travels across this great country in miles traveled on a Google map.

Google Route: NAJ screen shot

I left Greenbelt, Maryland on Sunday and made my way to a campsite north of Frederick near Thurmont, Maryland, camping in a familiar spot I’ve come to know and love over the past decade in the Catoctin Mountains. From there I hit I-70, crossing the rest of Maryland into Pennsylvania, where I stopped for lunch at a country market with a fresh local tomato and a local cheese called Apple Pie Cheddar.

Back on the road again, as Willie Nelson sang, Siri guided me on to a shortcut down a turnpike through the mountains to avoid tolls, until I couldn’t take it anymore and found my way back to the interstate. Passing briefly through a sliver of West Virginia, the road then continued through Ohio, until the sun was about to set near Columbus, where I stopped for the night at Love’s Travel Stop, the Cadillac of truck stops.

After refueling with petrol and Cappuccino on Wednesday morning early, the Forest Green Ford van I call Gwyneth Ford came up to speed on the highway again, slowing down at nearly every bridge and overpass through Indiana and Illinois, where workers paid for by former President Joe Biden’s Intrastructure bill were hard at work fixing our great roads, while President Donald Trump tried to claim credit for something he opposed. Just another example of Orwell’s “double speak,” spouting the opposite of the truth.

In short on a trip that is expected to come close to 3,000 miles over the course of a few days, about 900 of those miles are now behind us.

From here on Sunday the road will lead west to the Mark Twain National Forest, and then up through Jefferson City, the state capital of Missouri, to check out the protests on Monday the 15th. We will write about it when we next get to Kansas City, Missouri, where there appear to be a number of inexpensive Corps of Engineers campgrounds on Recreation dot gov with power hookups.

While pulling into St. Louis, a new development came through over the iPhone, which led me to update my formula for leading a happy and successful life.

“Timing is the innate force necessary for preparation and opportunity to align in sublime success,” I wrote on Facebook on Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. My rock and roll based formula has been: “Preparation+Opportunity=Success.” Now add timing. “Preparation+Opportunity+Timing=Success.”

I found out I will be a delegate with press credentials at a Veterans Mental Health conference in Denver on Sept. 18-20, with a free room and meals at a Four Star hotel. This was a development I was not expecting, but it is happy news. A comfortable bed inside with no camping fees. So I will cover another 900 miles or so over several days while exploring other campgrounds along the way.

From there the plan is to dip down toward Aspen and visit the Woody Creek Tavern, and then back north to Rocky Mountain National Park to pass a few days before going on through Utah and Nevada to California.

See you down the dusty trail. Feel free to help out with expenses. We really, really need more gas money to ensure success.

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