In 1999, I made up with my mother. She’s always been a fighter, and that was sometimes a problem. She wouldn’t ever retreat, never would even if she was wrong, and I wouldn’t ever retreat if I was right. So we had a standoff. After six years, however, we made nice.
In the thrill of the newly found peace, Mom suggested that we go on a trip together. I had just published a book, called Be a Street Magician: A How-To Guide, and I was about to embark on a promotional lecture tour at magic clubs throughout the Midwest. Mom leapt at the chance.
“We can use my motor home,” she offered. “I’ll share the driving.”
The itinerary was 11 cities in three weeks:
COLORADO: Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins
KANSAS: Wichita
MISSOURI: Kansas City, Columbia, Springfield
OKLAHOMA: Tulsa, Oklahoma City
TEXAS: Dallas
NEW MEXICO: Albuquerque
NEVADA: Las Vegas
Mom and I loaded a couple boxes of books into the motor home and took off. Only 100 miles into the journey, however, we ran into a problem. While withdrawing cash from an ATM, I accidentally left my wallet there. An hour later, I went back. It was gone, long gone.
“I need the driver’s license to drive,” I said. “What should we do?”
“We’re not going to get stopped,” Mom said. “Don’t worry about it.”
The lectures went well, but Mom ended up doing no driving at all, thank you very much, and lot of napping. And by the time we had done five cities, we arrived in the college town of Columbia, Missouri. The arrangement was that the magic club would book us into a local hotel, but when we arrived, it was nothing more than a motel, and in fact, turned out to be the worst dive where we could, if we had so desired, have bought as much methamphetamine as we had dollar bills for. By 9 pm, we had both showered in the worst motel shower in Missouri and were reclining on the cheapest sheets in the Midwest. Suddenly, a woman surprised us by pounding on the door next to ours and yelling.
“Let me in, mother******!”
I looked at Mom and made a face.
“We should leave,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Mom said.
“Well, we have a motor home. We can drive to the next lecture, which is about two hours’ drive away in Springfield, and then stop when we get tired. We’ll find a place to park the car to sleep.”
Lake of the Ozarks https://funlake.com/
So we packed up, hopped into the motor home, and by 10 pm, we were on the road. It was late and we were tired. Over an hour later, we pulled into a big Shell gas station in Lake of the Ozarks. I gave Mom a $50 bill and she went in to pay for a fill-up. In front of her in line stood a young man who was buying beer. Mom stared at him disapprovingly, and then he left. Mom stepped slowly up to the counter and turned to the clerk.
“Did you just sell two six-packs of beer to that teenager?” Mom asked indignantly.
“Well, you know,” the clerk said sheepishly, “it’s prom night, so it’s a special night.”
“That’s no excuse,” Mom said loudly . “I teach teenagers, and what if one of those drunk teenagers gets behind the wheel and kills some people, maybe even himself? There are gonna be parents crying at their kids’ graves, you know that? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
Mom handed over the $50 in disgust and returned to the motor home. I filled up the tank and we pulled out of that gas station to look for a place to park for the night. It was after midnight, and we didn’t know the lake, so we were driving in the dark in more ways than one. There’s a highway next to the lake that’s a 3-lane highway with a lane in the middle that’s reserved only for turning left. As I drove, I gazed out at the lake, but it was just a black velvet expanse.
Suddenly, I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw that a police car had suddenly appeared behind me. In fact, he was tailgating me. I figured that he had an emergency to go to and wanted to pass. On the right, there was no shoulder, just a dropoff to the lake, so in a split-second decision, I pulled into the middle lane. Immediately, the policeman turned on his lights to pull me over for driving in the middle lane, or maybe doing it without using my turn signal, I don’t know. I drove over to a place that had a shoulder, parked, and stopped the engine.
“Mom,” I said sheepishly, “you remember, don’t you, that I don’t have a driver’s license.”
All of a sudden, a realization flashed over Mom’s face of what was about to come down. All in a half-moment, Mom came up with a brilliant, structured, well-thought-out plan.
“Quick! Switch!” Mom said.
Our motor home front seat was not a front seat all, but just two separate swivel seats, so it wasn’t difficult to Quick Switch. I stood up, let Mom step over to the driver’s seat, and sat down in the passenger seat. I glanced at the back window, and saw that the back curtains were slightly open. The cop may have seen us or he may not, I wasn’t sure.
When the cop walked up, it turned out that it was a small young woman wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. She was a Missouri State Park Ranger.
“Hello, ma’am,” she said.
“License and registration” always comes next. But before she could get it out, Mom was on the attack.
“I don’t know why you’re pulling over someone like me when, you know this, don’t you? There’s a guy over at the Shell gas station who’s selling beer to minors!”
The park ranger smiled sheepishly.
“Well, you know, it’s prom night.”
That set Mom off. To Mom, there is never such a thing as taking something lying down.
“Well, I teach teenagers,” Mom said, and then she was off on her rant about the dangers of drunk driving. And it was all heartfelt, because to her, if there was anything worse than breaking the law, it was the evils of drink.
In the end, the ranger let us off with a warning, thankfully. The ranger, as if happened, was mainly looking for hippies living out of their van, and we explained that I was a big-time glamorous magician on the lecture circuit. The ranger’s fears were palliated.
But before we the ranger go, Mom asked for some advice.
“Do you know where we could park and spend the night?”
The ranger pointed us to a small road on the right and a tree that we could park under. We slept four hours there, and the next morning, I drove 90 minutes to Springfield and lectured to the magic club in a beauty shop, with my audience sitting in folding chairs and under non-operating hair dryers. It was quite glamorous.
Last Tuesday, my mother died. It’s been 25 years since our night in Lake of the Ozarks, but that story lives on. Nobody else would have done it the way that my mother did it. And I’m talking about her entire life.
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