This is a collection of essays Robinson's written about his travels through the state of Missouri. He has apparently driven every mile of highway in the state in his car, which he named Erifnus Caitnop. It took me several hours past the point I finished the book to realize it was "Sunfire Pontiac", the type of car he was driving, spelled backwards.
Most of the writing is focused around rivers, specifically around Robinson floating those rivers, and what you find along the way. Stories about traveling on a few of the remaining paddleboat steamers that travel the Mississippi River, or about a man who built his own barge to sail from the headwaters of the Mississippi all the way to the gulf. He can't sail it alone, so he needs volunteers, and Robinson signed on from St. Louis to the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. There are also stories about encountering angry drunks on gravel bars in the Ozarks, or pushy ducks that know damn well you have food, so fork it over, buddy.
But you have to drive to most of the places you'd put a canoe in the water, so Robinson also talks about the roads he and Erifnus have traveled, and the towns - if you can call some of them that - he went through along the way. Places to eat - he doesn't have a wall-calendar scale like William Least Heat-Moon, but he certainly places a lot of stock in out of the way eateries - places he and a band he's part of played. Swinging bridges and a brief biography of the man who built them, or visits to one of the handful of covered bridges still standing in the state. Efforts to revitalize communities in different ways. I had never thought about how installing fountains is a way for a town to make some cash off all the people making wishes.
Also on the list of things I learned, apparently many spots in the Missouri River are named after steamboats that hit snags and sank there, a common occurrence.
Robinson alternates smoothly between humorous and informative. A little folksy at times, other times he lets anger or frustration show through when writing about people just throwing trash wherever they want. The parts where he discusses trying to cut from one blacktop road to another via gravel roads felt extremely familiar. Although where I'm usually tense with concerns about potential disaster or, gasp! being late, it's more of an adventure to him. Clearly its not untrammeled ground, but at least to him, it's a journey into the unknown. The road might dead end at a field or bluff or a river that's overtopped its banks. Or it might lead him exactly where he wants to go. He won't know until he drives it.
'Deeper into the woods we drove. Erifnus' motor groaned, and her tires ached, as signs of civilization dwindled to a single power line fastened to poles older than Methuselah, more crooked then Bernie Madoff. Using the sun for direction, I angled eastward, looking for pavement. But ahead, gravel, gravel everywhere, surrounded by heavy forest.'
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