Oh Grow Up!

A selection of pieces that don’t fall into the Garden or Travel categories.

• Garden Writing
• Travel Writing
• Other Writing

Two of my essays were printed in Green Prints. I wrote this monthly essay, Gardening Forever, from 2001 – 2007 for 50 and Better in Kansas City and still occasionally get requests for gardening information from those friends and readers.

I’ve written articles for Magazine One and Magazine Two. I currently write a column for the Ozarks Travel Examiner

Track down an adventure and a memorable meal on regional dinner trains.

The scenic views are as tantalizing as the aromas coming from authentic dining cars on these regional passenger trains. Departing from historic depots, passengers tour the countryside in old-fashioned luxury and dine in vintage dining cars.

The days of onboard chefs and kitchens are gone, as the prepared meals are brought on board. And while this does not allow for menu changes, a dinner train trip can recapture the images of luxury and romance from a bygone era.

Here is a sample of regional dinner trains in Arkansas and southern Missouri. Prices include round-trip train fare. Remember to call ahead for reservations.

Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway

The meal is brought on board, though there is the option to purchase wine and champagne. The spectacular showpiece dessert–a flaming train-shaped baked Alaska–is the meal’s highlight. Waiters parade up and down the dining car aisle with the pyrotechnic treat before returning to the prep area where slices of the dessert are served.

The trips departing from the depot at 299 N. Main St. run about 11/2 hours and travel a leisurely 41/2 miles and then return to the station. Trains run April through October. It is a relaxing way to view the countryside and travel the historic rails that brought the first visitors to Eureka Springs in 1883.

Dinner is $36.50, lunch is $22. Lunch tickets for children younger than 8 cost $11. Choices for dinner include chicken, prime rib or rainbow trout, plus soup, salad, rice pilaf, vegetables and flaming baked Alaska. Lunch choices are chicken salad, a beef entrée or a hot deli croissant plus bread, beverage and dessert. Excursion-only fares are $12 for adults, $6 for children age 4–10.

Arkansas-Missouri Railroad

Arkansas and Missouri Railroad passengers travel in refurbished antique passenger or parlor coaches. The 134-mile round-trip from Springdale, Ark., includes a three-hour layover in historic Van Buren, Ark., where passengers enjoy shopping and lunch. Scenic travel through the Boston Mountains continues with the 70-mile round-trip from Van Buren to Winslow.

First-class and upgrade trips include a snack, beverage and souvenir photo for $65 for the Springdale leg, $52 for the Van Buren portion. Conductors provide a nostalgic touch and commentary along the way. Trains run April through October, with departures from the train station at 306 E. Emma in Springdale. AAA members receive a discount.

Branson Scenic Railway

A four-course candlelight dinner of beef, chicken or fish is served on Saturday excursions in a restored 1956 “Silver Chef” diner from Denver. The dinner trip, recommended for passengers 13 years and older, costs $50.50 plus tax. Appetizer, dessert, salad, vegetable and beverage are included.

The route takes passengers about 20 miles from Branson before reversing direction and returning on the same tracks. A diesel-electric locomotive on the northbound end and another on the southbound end allow the train to make the return trip without having to switch tracks or turn around. Passengers can hear a narrated history of Branson and the Ozarks as they cross bridges and trestles on this scenic route.

A snack car is available for refreshments on the excursions that do not offer dinner. AAA members receive a 10-percent discount on adult fares ($22.50) for these excursions. Smoking and alcoholic beverages are prohibited. The bright red vintage train leaves from the 1905 depot in downtown Branson alongside the new Branson Landing shopping and restaurant district.

St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railway

This trip is to die for. Passengers participate in and help solve a murder mystery production while enjoying a dinner that includes two entrée choices and dessert. The four-hour trip departs from Jackson at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets for this train ride that is popular with couples and groups are $45.

Parents with little engineers usually opt for the two-hour sightseeing train ride that leaves Jackson at 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $16 for adults, $9 for children.

The St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway is proud of its powerful diesel engine that was part of Amtrak’s system until 1985. The Jackson railway acquired the restored engine from a railroad museum in Pennsylvania, where it was given its original colors of maroon and gold and No. 5898.

The Jackson station is about 9 1/2 miles northwest of Cape Girardeau. Take exit 99 off Interstate 55.

These scenic dinner trains are a nostalgic way to pass a pleasant evening and enjoy the area’s scenic beauty.

Before You Go

For more information, contact:

• Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway, (479) 253-9623, www.esnarailway.com;
• Arkansas-Missouri Railroad, (800) 687-8600, ext. 116, www.arkansasmissouri-rr.com;
• Branson Scenic Railway, (800) 287-2462, www.bransontrain.com;
• St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway, (800) 455-RAIL (7245), www.rosecity.net/trains.

First printed in AAA Midwest Traveler April 2007

Time spent with good friends and good gardening tools is time invested in seasons to come.

You have certain friends for certain things. We need good friends that will save us from Cherry Garcia ice cream. And true friends who won’t. I have a friend that gives me a start of a plant or some seeds every time I see him. My husband digs holes. He will dig a hole for a new tree or dig up and rescue abandoned farmhouse peonies. You can’t get a better friend than that.

We have certain garden tools for certain reasons, too. Tools to loosen the soil and tools to cultivate it. Serious hard working tools for the long row and cute little tools that will work in crowded garden spaces.

One of my best garden friends is an old wooden handled heavy steel trowel that will plant or transplant anything I ask it to. We are never far from each other in the spring and summer. It’s the same with the hole digger.

Still, every fall, there comes a time when the last hole is dug, the last bulb planted. The garden season has ended. It’s time for a rest.

One morning you wake up before everybody else and you hear to the honking sounds of geese flying over. It is a day old garden friends just recognize. It’s time. Time to go see an old friend. Better do it now. It may be the last time you see each other for a while.

Only the most stubborn leaves are hanging onto the trees this morning. That’s when I make a mug of honey mint tea. I pull on my favorite worn and comfortable sweater and bring the mug with me to the tool shed for our last visit. I bring something for the tools, too.

Old rags and oil, maybe a file to sharpen the hand tools. There are more sophisticated ways and faster ways to clean tools. Sitting cross legged on the wooden bench in the garden shed, using the hand tools to help clean each other is my idea group therapy. And, I think the tools might like it that way too. The spade is happy to help scape away any mud on the shovel. We help each other. It’s therapy. A reunion of sorts. The pruner and I just smile as we remember what a time we had with our first attempt at herbal bonsai.

This is the season’s last garden party. It gives me time to visit and evaluate the tools. I like being in the company of these old friends. We take care of each other. Make life a little easier. Less work for one another. It’s about respect.

Next I begin a nice steady sharpening action with the heavy file kept with the gardening equipment. It is a slow, rhythmic process, and finally comes the caress of oil on the wooden handles. Clean. Polished. Ready to rest. It is a quiet, peaceful process. Almost prayerful. Until.

Jules wakes and suspects something is going on out in that shed. When he flings open the tool shed door, glaring sunlight exposes our tryst. I feel guilty. I’ve been unexpectedly caught with my secret friends. My husband looks down at me and realizes what’s going on. He flashes me a sweet, but sad little sympathetic smile.

Now Jules wants to join in. He wants to help. He just can’t resist the chance to plug in the big equipment. The power tools. Power! Buzz, zap, whiz, they snap into action with the flip of a switch.

“Here let me do that for you,” says Jules. My friend the hoe flies from my loving hands. “What you need is the bench grinder. Something with a little muscle”, says the helpful husband. The loud roar of mega amps, mighty volts, whirr, zip, zing. He sharpens the hoe to surgical precision. “Done!” He proudly thrusts the hoe back at me.

Oh great, I think. Should I come across an ailing chipmunk in the garden, I can perform an emergency appendectomy without hesitation. I can slice airborne mosquitoes in half and just keep working.

Some folks will never understand about friends and tools. Tool Cleaning Day is a last reunion, not a rally.

The end of the season is about slowing down. Getting ready for a rest. Garden tools and husbands don’t always know when to slow down. They are always at the ready whenever you call on them. (And even when you don’t.)

Power tools may be why some men just don’t have the intimate and spiritual friendships that women do. Men with power tools just don’t get it. Can a man with a power tool obsession ever understand about peace and meditation in a tool shed?

I just don’t think you can hear Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in your head with a 120-grit sanding wheel plugged into a cordless 14 volt De Walt power drill rolling across the back of a favorite shovel. My good friend, the professional quality pruning shears, has been tempted to stop the power tool roar with a quick snip, snip.

Tempting. But only for a moment. I form a plan for next year. I will bring out two mugs of relaxing honey mint tea before I begin this annual ritual. And invite Jules to come with me.

I am cultivating a philosophy here. All good gardeners know that can sometimes take years.

I’ve made an investment in good gardening tools and a good husband. I intend to keep them around for a while. It’s true newer, shinier, sharper models come around. But the ones I have are comfortable and familiar, and they dig holes just fine.

I intend to keep what I’ve got.

Originally published in Green Prints, Autumn, 2000

Also By Patsy Bell Hobson in Green Prints: “Grandmothers Seeds” Spring 1996.

Subscribe to Green Prints. Tell Editor Pat Stone that Patsy Bell is still bragging about his most excellent publication, Green Prints.

It looked like a television commercial was being shot at Hy-Vee. The little goldilocks look alike was jumping up and down in the dairy isle. “Please Daddy can I have it? I want my own pink milk. Please Daddy, a little one just for me.” The child was begging for a pint bottle of Shatto strawberry flavored milk. When Daddy finally caved in, the little girl went dancing of down the isle with her very own I-don’t-have-to-share glass bottle of Shatto Milk.
Missouri farmers are used to drought and flood and crop failures. But after a dozen years of record low milk prices, dairy farmer Leroy Shatto was asking himself, “why am I doing this?” So when Shatto Milk Company doubled it’s herd in the first year of operation and exceeded all marketing projections beyond his dreams, his success was hard even for him to believe.

It takes 13 employees to handle the Holstein herd of 120 dairy cows, manage the processing and bottling plant and distribute the milk to 47 stores within the Kansas City-St. Joseph area. And owner Leroy Shatto does it all. He is as likely to be processing milk or on the bottling line as he is to be driving the delivery truck to Kansas City.

The Clinton County dairyman works seven days a week to make sure he can deliver milk fresh from the cow to the store within 48 hours. All the milk comes from cows born and raised on the Shatto family farm. Customers who love the cold, fresh taste of the glass bottled milk, honk and give him the thumbs up when he’s in the company truck; they call him and write testimonials and send hundreds of letters and emails.

At the dairy in Osborn, visitors can watch from a loft as the milk is processed and packaged in the processing plant. Shatto milk is processed by separating the cream to create whole, 1 percent, 2 percent and skim milk. Then it is pasteurized and homogenized and pumped into clear half-gallon, quart, and pint glass bottles that keep the milk colder than plastic. The dairy sells chocolate and strawberry flavored milk, pints of half and half, cream, orange drink and fruit punch.

The nostalgic glass milk bottles are recycled as often as they are returned. Though there is a $1.50 deposit on the heavy, clear, glass milk bottles, they are so attractive that the bottles don’t always make it back for recycling. The little pint bottles of cream and half-and-half are especially popular with people who remember when fresh milk was delivered in glass bottles.

The retail store is open Monday – Friday 8 am to 6 pm, Saturday 8 am to 4pm and Sunday 9 am to 4 pm. The hundred year old family farm hosts school field trips, senior citizens bus tours, Scouts and 4-H groups. Each tour usually takes about an hour and a half and costs four dollars per person. Group tours of the dairy, processing and bottling facility, and country store are available Tuesday through Saturday by appointment. Call (816) 930-3862 or email at rlshatto@cs.com.

If you see Leroy Shatto delivering milk in your grocery store, stop and tell him how much you like his milk because sometimes, he can hardly believe it himself.

To learn more:

http://www.shattomilkcompany.com/

Patsy Bell Hobson is a certified Master Gardener emeritus putting her BA degree in Mass Media to work as a freelance writer.

A lifetime gardener, who inherited her love of gardening from her mother and grandmother, Patsy Bell Hobson is determined to continue gardening despite multiple sclerosis and arthritis. As a Master Gardener, she has given numerous presentations on herbs, container gardening, forcing bulbs for indoors, and butterfly gardens.

Her professional memberships include the Missouri Writers Guild, National Garden Writers Association, Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc., and the Kansas City Press Club.

Her freelance writing credits include: AAA Midwest Traveler, Grit, Herb Companion, Kansas City Homes and Gardens, Kansas City Star, Green Prints, Southern Living, Missouri Life and Kansas City Gardener, AAA Southern Traveler.

Her gardens have inspired her many recipes published in Southern Living Magazine, Woman’s Day and Herb Companion, Southern Living Annual Recipes Cookbook, and The Best Of Country Cooking Cookbook.
She launched the Junior Master Gardener program in the Kansas City area, hosted many garden programs and tours, and is a recipient of numerous gardening awards