The Katy Trail follows the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas railway line, alongside the Missouri River. In local parlance, it became known as the K-T variant of the Missouri Pacific, and in time K-T became Katy. The most memorable story I could find about the Katy centered on a railway agent named William Crush and his crazy idea. Smithsonian Mag’s article, which features a nice spin on clickbait titles (“A Train Company Crashed Two Trains. You Will Believe What Happened Next”), tells the sad story of a bored bunch of Texans. To liven things up, Crush decided to organize a train crash, with two locomotives smashing together in a head-on collision. Ultimately, it was a smash hit, with 40,000 people traveling to Crush, Texas (a town purposely set up for this occasion), making it the second-largest city in Texas for a couple of days!
Of course, when two beefy trains collide, it’s hard to control the wreckage, and indeed rail shrapnel flew in all directions, killing two people and injuring many others. Crush was fired, but then picked back up; a couple lost lives aside, it was a hell of a business success.
The Katy made some other interesting business decisions. Of greatest relevance to me is their choice to build along the Missouri River, laying down hundreds of miles of track in a flood zone. On Monday morning, I passed by “Standing Rock,” a sandstone bluff that has been a fixture here throughout the Katy’s history. It is reputed to have many of the last century’s major floods marked along its height–1903, 1923, 1935, 1943, 1944, 1947, and 1993. It was a 1986 flood, though, that ultimately brought an end to the railroad, as the MKT shut down.
2019 has been a historic year for flooding as well. January-to-May was the wettest period in US history. More than seven million people were living under flood warnings in Missouri, while the levee systems along the Missouri were compromised. And since the Katy Trail sits right alongside the river, it is highly vulnerable–making the many businesses that have popped up along the trail doubly so. The businesses were worried in May and it only got worse. While the short-term impact was bad, it left Missouri in a perilous state for the rest of 2019, as any subsequent rainstorm had the potential to push the river back into a flood situation.
On Saturday night, my phone started shrieking. I’ve never experienced such a thing and it caught me off-guard. Tornado warning–seek shelter! While no tornado ever materialized, a powerful downpour sure did, dumping some three inches of rain. Another inch dropped during a quick thunderstorm on Sunday night. And sure enough, roads were closed due to flooding, along with short stretches of the Katy. Significant other portions of the trail were chewed up by erosion, a lesser concern for me, but an unpleasant interruption for the more common bicyclists. Sometimes, when the trail is closed, there’s a well marked detour; on other occasions, a sign simply declares the trail closed with no official detour. Surprisingly, it lacks the shrugging-dude emoji, but it’s usually easy enough to figure out a work-around, even if it means hopping over cement barriers and walking along a closed road. What might be impassable to cars is more easily managed on foot.
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“Look at that sign back there. See the base of it? That’s where the water rose to in May. The whole field was underwater; I couldn’t get out of here for days.”
Doug is the owner of the “Bluffton Barn,” a no-frills accommodation for Katy travelers. He tells me about a tough year. “We’ve basically had no customers for the whole summer.” While it’s difficult for him, at least he owns his property. “Lots of people, when they start new businesses, they have to take out loans.” And with months of business lost, it’s tough to stay financially afloat.
Doug bought this old farmhouse a few decades ago, before the Katy Trail was officially launched. A prolific biker, he wanted to be here from the start, and he has gradually built up his place. Things were thrown wildly off course, though, when a truck plowed into the front of his house, careening off of two of his cars. His insurance coverage was limited, leaving Doug to manage most of the repairs on his own.
When Doug learns that I’m from Portland, he immediately makes a joke about liberals; he later declares himself a libertarian and has a wall full of Ross Perot pins inside to back up his claim.
Doug has two dogs, Spot and Freckles, and they’re constantly ready to bolt into a neighbor’s yard to play with friends or pursue some obscure flick of movement in a bush. While Spot’s a big boy with a giant head, “Freckles is the killer,” Doug says. She single-handedly kills racoons and loves to kill armadillos. I’ve only seen squashed armadillos to this point–something that surprised me, as I just associated them with Texas–so I ask about their presence here. Doug attributes it to two new bridges over the Missouri, both featuring generous shoulders and bike lanes, making it easier for armadillos to commute. “I just shoot them in the side. One time I shot one in the head” and it made a real mess, so the side shot is cleaner. What’s the problem with armadillos? Among other things, Doug says, “they burrow into the levees,” further weakening the flooding defenses. Nice.
Of course, from that point on we’re talking about guns, Doug mirthfully hoping to goad me into a fun discussion. Perhaps I throw him off guard, immediately declaring all of the issues that I don’t have with guns. “I don’t want to stop your hunting; I can’t even imagine what the deer populations would be like (and the accompanying rise in car accidents) without that.” By quickly delineating what we’re not talking about, I think it’s easier to strip some of the emotion and stakes from the conversation, though Doug was happy for any sort of good-natured duel of wits.
We end up settling on a discussion of “assault-style” guns. “First off,” Doug says, “I don’t use them for assault, I use them for defense,” hence by definition they’re defensive weapons. Unmoved by this semantic distinction, I wait for more. “People say that you don’t need more than five consecutive shots,” Doug says, “but if I have people breaking into my house, I don’t want to have to ask them to wait to reload.” For Doug, it’s about protection, not to mention our foundational constitutional rights.
What about access, I ask. Could we further restrict who has access to guns? Doug pauses and then responds: “for me, it’s all about education.” Doug proceeds to talk about how people in his generation were raised, getting taught by parents and siblings how to handle weapons responsibly. “It’s not old people who are shooting up schools,” Doug notes, asserting that it’s a new generation that lacks formal training–and careful inculcation in responsible gun usage–that needs to be addressed. He maps out a potential approach, in which there’s a scaled progression, with people gaining access to more advanced weaponry as they become more experienced and better trained.
I’m skeptical, but I appreciate how quickly we were able to move from stereotypical stumbling blocks to dialogue over possible solutions, with an acknowledgement that we do have some problems to solve. We cap off the discussion with root beer floats, with Doug’s twist–replacing root beer with grape soda. Grape Crush. And it works pretty well!
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I had arrived at Doug’s place in pretty rough shape. The previous night did not involve quality sleep, with the party in Marthasville’s park keeping things loud for a good long while. Due to some poor planning, some cockiness, and some bad luck, I didn’t have any food for the first 25 miles of walking that day, so it was more of a battle than it needed to be. And the monotony of the Katy Trail wore on me at times. Each individual mile is pleasant enough, but 10 hours of the same scenery is tough on the mind. All of this left me feeling less-than-enthused about Monday.
I was reminded, though, of how reinvigorating it can be to have a positive, human-to-human experience. I slept well, awoke with juice, and surged back onto the Katy. I detoured around flooded roads, trolled through old, sleepy villages, ate three bagels and cheese (wasn’t going to make that food mistake again), and passed turtle after turtle (slow little buggers). Even encountering a Western Ratsnake, some 4-5 feet long, didn’t slow me down (indeed, that shot of adrenaline was well timed!).
The day ended with a two-mile detour off the Katy to Missouri’s capital, Jefferson City. I can’t say with confidence that it was worth it; in hindsight, I might have instead opted for a detour to the old German town of Hermann, as Jeff is large, spread out, and not especially pedestrian friendly–plus the capital building is covered in bubble-wrap, stealing some of the charm. But, what’s done is done, and I was badly in need of wifi.
The comfort of a hotel is welcome, but the last two nights reinforce the deeper value of authentic hospitality, of having a host who is invested in his guests.
