Columbia, Missouri is vintage shops and cheese-laden appetizers and the state’s flagship university columns at dusk. It’s downtown streets no wider than a driveway. It’s ice cream shops with so many yarn dolls as decor that the ones that aren’t on display are “sleeping” in an extra fridge. It’s hair stylists from Utica.
I called Columbia home for only a blink of time, so few semesters that I really only remember the final one, and the summer that followed it which my tribe refers to as “the lost summer.” It was wedged in between a time of school responsibility and work responsibility. For that summer, there was neither. I never have spent a summer like that since.
You do get to go home again, and ideally it’s under the circumstances I went back this weekend, as a sage advice-giver type. The new dean, David Kurpius, asked me to be the commencement speaker for the Missouri School of Journalism’s May graduating Class of 2019.
My remarks focused on things I’ve learned in the 15 years since leaving Columbia. The main thrust of anything I talk about regarding my adult life is how accidentally lucky I’ve been; how timing and circumstance have collided to go right, without much planning at all.
Being back after so much time away meant a nostalgia tour of the things that I loved eating and doing, so, to review:
Booches ✔️
Toasted ravioli (many times) ✔️
Shakespeare’s ✔️
Lakota coffee ✔️
Tiger Stripe ice cream ✔️
Chokes ‘n cheese at Flatbranch ✔️
ΠΒΦ house ✔️
Drunkenly leaving wallet at Harpo’s ✔️
(Country Kitchen is closed, so, sadly, that couldn’t happen. Never did get drunk enough for Gumby’s Pokey Sticks, but thought about it.)
Friend Liz, who has a history of gamely going on random weekend trips, is also a Mizzou alum and a former Pi Phi, so she joined me in the trek to the middle of Missouri (and the arduous journey back home, which required extra nights in sad hotels and a lot of time sitting idly on tarmacs).
I can’t express how meaningful it was to be back in Missouri, and have Liz there to enjoy the old haunts together, to marvel at the newness of the student center and rec center (which is basically a five-star resort now), and to share the memories of yesteryear.
I wouldn’t go back in time if you offered, because I did as I said in the speech and inhabited those moments fully when I lived them. But it’s nice to drop in on the past when you can, especially if it involves toasted ravioli.
So cool Elise! I enjoyed reading about your trip back to Mizzou. Also I didn’t know about the flash or fireball tip — the DOD does NOT teach us that!
Maybe the DOD should!? I mean, I feel like it’s a really practical, potentially life-saving one.
(1) There isn’t any luck, we all make our own (I went from rural IL with a graduating class of 27 to being a niche niche niche profession although it’s not as glamorous as Journalism:-)). Although I do get to give a keynote in Shanghai (in August – maybe no one sane agreed to give it ).
(2) Country Kitchen! A friend of mine put his wife through a PhD program at U of Iowa before returning (and mastering) to his love of running.
(3) Toasted ravioli sounds amazing
(4) Keep up the posts, they always educate and entertain 🙂