Missouri: Lessons from America

It was never meant to be Missouri. When, as a 16-year-old, I filled in the application form for the English-Speaking Union's schools exchange programme, it seemed that my home city of Bradford was going to be twinned with Westchester County in New York state. I'd never been to America, but research produced agreeable thoughts about proximity to the glittering lights of Manhattan, and a trip that melded the buzz of the city with suburban comforts.

So when the letter arrived saying that we were going to Missouri, I reached again for the atlas and then sat for quite a while in gloom. Missouri. The only modern link I could make with the state was that a couple of years previously its senator, Tom Eagleton, had been picked and then dumped as George McGovern's running mate in his woeful bid for the presidency. I had a recollection it was mentioned in one or two cowboy films. The map revealed that it included St Louis, and I knew that had inspired a movie, too – even though it was misleading to us Brits about the correct pronunciation. The title song may request "Meet me in St Lou-ee, Lou-ee", but Missourians always say St Lewis.

When our group flew in to that city's Lambert airport in the early summer of 1974, Missouri greeted us like a smack in the face with a hot, wet flannel. It felt like 110 per cent humidity. Our destinations were in St Francois County, an hour south of St Louis: the appealingly named Flat River and my allocated home in Farmington, where a family headed by a man named Homer awaited me. That was quite funny, even then. We also enjoyed our local paper's special logo "Flat River-Bradford" for coverage of the educational exchange – which might have been prompted by civic pride in intercontinental partnership or more likely by the fact that the editor's daughter was one of the participants.

For me, Farmington will forever define small-town America. It had a Main Street with modest shops that smelt of air-freshener, a drive-incinema on the edge of town, leafy avenues laid out in a grid and white-painted wooden houses. It had churches – lots of churches for a town with a population of just over 10,000 – and they were almost all full. But it was, certainly in those days, inclined to pragmatism rather than evangelism; and it's a characteristic of Missouri that its Southern tinge is outweighed by its Midwestern heritage. It's a border state, but it avoids the spookier elements of the American South while still representing the heartland. It has a record of choosing the winning candidate in presidential elections every year since 1904, with only one exception. (It didn't like Ike in 1956.)

At the time, I hadn't seen the movie American Graffiti. When I did, it uncannily captured the spirit of young Farmington in the Seventies, despite being set a decade earlier. There wasn't much to do there for teenagers but they did have the benefit of a great car culture and they were allowed to drive from the age of 16. As night fell, they took to the streets in their automobiles, tooted the horn at Stop signs and passengers jumped out of one vehicle and into another. They would then meet at the Dairy Queen for a malt and some fries before resuming the four-wheeled socialising with a soundtrack provided by the region's Top 40 radio station, KXOK.

I utterly loathed this as a way to spend an evening, since the novelty of riding in a car with complete strangers who thought my accent was "neat" soon wore thin. But I could put up with it because the days at Farmington High School were a revelation to someone used to the mirthless formality of Bradford Grammar School. The academic standards were lower, but classes were more engaging and the place seemed to want to turn out human beings rather than exam certificates.

The graffiti near the car park – "Getting by, staying high, we're the class of '75" – may have pointed to one way they stayed cheerful; but the school could generate emotion, too. There was the quintessential optimism of America in the graduation ceremony, with students collecting their certificates in front of proud moms and dads to the accompaniment of "Pomp and Circumstance" played by the school band.

When school was out, they took us all over the state. I cannot pretend that Missouri has scenic highs, and you can drive an awful long way with not much to see except rolling countryside and a fair few trees. But that summer, it was a whole new world to explore. In a state that is about as landlocked as it's possible to be, Lake of the Ozarks provides the surprise that an expanse of water so enormous – 55,000 acres – is man-made. We picnicked along the shoreline and for the only time in my life I was persuaded to water-ski. This would now defy health and safety guidance in that the full extent of our training involved being given a rope to hang on to before a power-boat hurtled across the lake. I followed for a (very) brief while before losing any ability to stay upright, and sank inelegantly into the warm waters.

As the local big city, St Louis was a major draw. We rode to the top of the Gateway Arch, circled the wagons in the Museum of Westward Expansion and then took a paddle-steamer ride on the Mississippi. It was enhanced by the discovery that on a blisteringly hot afternoon many of our fellow passengers retreated to the air-conditioned floating ballroom where roly-poly matrons performed the hokey cokey.

The cultural differences between the UK and the US were further revealed at the Six Flags Over Mid-America theme park. Off-duty soldiers rode the big dippers in their fatigues while yelling those aggressive chants that accompany their 20-mile training runs, which made it a different experience to the Blackpool Pleasure Beach. It was just part of an avalanche of novelties. At Six Flags I ate pizza for the first time, just as at the start of the trip I'd had my first encounter with McDonald's. St Louis had shopping malls that were eye-openers for kids whose horizons had previously been an Arndale Centre in Yorkshire. We made our debuts on television on the cable station in Flat River and we were woken in the middle of the night and hurried into the basement by a real-life tornado alert – in happy ignorance of the consequences if a twister had hit.

Rather less exciting were dutiful visits to St Charles, site of the First State Capitol, and further south down the Mississippi we trooped around Sainte Genevieve – its name a reminder that the Anglophones didn't always have it their own way here, and reputedly Missouri's oldest settlement dating back to the first half of the 18th century. They were interesting and pleasant enough, but historic sites and architecture are not the state's greatest selling points.

The seat of government is Jefferson City which, again, is a perfectly nice place on the banks of the Missouri River with one of those Identikit Capitol buildings that echoes Washington DC. You're struck by the scale of the construction compared with the size of the town – Jefferson City has fewer than 40,000 inhabitants – but it doesn't quite make the "must-see" list.

And that, I suspect, is because Missouri is more about the total experience than stand-out moments. For a bunch of teenagers thousands of miles from their native Yorkshire, it rapidly felt like home – partly because of the instant connection with Missourians, partly because it's just a comfortable kind of place. Looking back, this was a time of dislocation in American national life: it was the summer in which Richard Nixon would resign as President, and the Vietnam War dragged on. But life in St Francois County clung to its traditional patterns, and there was still that belief in the idea of America and what the country could be. It was inspiring, and it's not just a loss for the US if that vision is less powerful in 2008.

There was a night when I went with some of the many friends I'd made in Missouri to the outdoor Muny Theatre in St Louis Forest Park. The stage show was, inevitably, Meet Me In St Louis. It was still hot as darkness spread, and the music was accompanied by the chirping of crickets. It wasn't the greatest performance and the show was pretty cheesy. But as the closing firework show crackled into the sky, there was no place I'd rather have been – no state I loved more than Missouri.

Roger Mosey is the BBC's Director of Sport

State lines: Missouri

Population 5.6 million
Area nine times the size of Wales
Capital Jefferson City
Date in Union 10 August, 1821
Flower Hawthorn
Motto "The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law"
Nickname Show Me State

Traveller's Guide

Getting there

St Louis, Missouri's main gateway, is not served direct from the UK. American Airlines and United fly via Chicago; other connecting points are available. To reduce environmental impact, you can buy an "offset" through Abta's Reduce my Footprint initiative (020-7637 2444; reducemyfootprint.travel).

Visiting there

Museum of Westward Expansion and Gateway Arch, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St Louis (001 314 655 1700; www.nps.gov/jeff).

Six Flags, Eureka (001 636 938 4800; sixflags.com). Muny Theatre, Forest Park, St Louis (001 314 361 1900; www.muny.org).

More information

www.visitmo.com; 001 573 751 4133

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