The online MarooNation Book Club, which began over two years ago, has selected the memoir Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America, by Bill Geist for its summer read. As usual, Craig Amason from the MSU Libraries will facilitate the online discussion, in collaboration with the MSU Alumni Association. 

Geist’s memoir of the eight summers in the Sixties he spent working at Arrowhead Lodge, now gone, near Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri is an unapologetic look back at the quirky characters and summer romances of lake life. 

The words “surreal” and “vanishing” in the book’s subtitle strike a bit of an ominous tone. The book is not all sun-drenched days and summer love. Although he doesn’t dwell on it much, Geist is dealing with his own mortality in his own way. He’s had Parkinson’s for 28 years. What he fondly remembers about those eight summers is that those people and that mildewed milieu brought forth his true self and a basic attitude toward life and work and love that has stood him in good stead throughout his life.

Bill feels that Aunt Janet and Uncle Ed, who own and operate the lodge, are alive and urbane. They were not hillbillies who rarely ventured forth from the county of their birth. Uncle Ed, a hard-drinking ex-colonel with a soft heart, had been slow to return from Europe after World War II because he was having such a good time with the wine, the women, and the song. Aunt Janet somehow managed to almost be killed in a traffic accident involving a taxi in Istanbul, and she proudly proclaimed to never having cooked a meal. 

These were real people with real names in a real place at a real time. Lee Mace, who gets a mention in this memoir, was a real person. Oddly enough, Buford Foster, an eccentric from that time and place, doesn’t get mentioned. Foster was the owner of the Night Hawk Cafe in Camdenton, as well as properties right on the lakefront, and the organizer of several square-dancing troupes that appeared on the Ozark Jubilee ABC television program that was broadcast live from the Jewell Theater in Springfield, Missouri.

There is no charge to join the MarooNation Book Club, and all are welcome to join in the discussion of a fun book.