The Big City of Joplin Held Many Wonders
by Bryce Martin

Visiting the big city of Joplin, Mo., always was an adventure and a real door opener for the wonders of the world.

We visited Lewis Green in Joplin. Lewis, a cousin, was a car salesman for Hi-Dollar Joe Burtram. He had a daughter about my age I had not met before and she immediately disoriented me. She was nice and all that, but she began talking to me as if we were old friends, question after question loaded on top of comment upon comment.

I quickly excused myself, backed away and went out the front door. I decided to walk around the neighborhood a bit. Not too far, though. I did not want to get lost. I walked down a sidewalk and a boy asked, “Who’s at the Y? See anybody?” I didn’t know what or who the Y was, but I figured I must be walking from its direction. “What’s that?” I asked. The kid was sitting shirtless on his front porch. He didn’t bother to get up, but he turned his head and shoulders around and shouted at the screen door shielding the open front door. “Hey, hey,” he desperately tried to get someone’s attention inside. “This guy wants to know what the Y is.”

He obviously thought I lived around there. I walked back to the Greens’ house. A commercial had just played on the television. It was the one where some cartoon gangsters had names like Sticky Valves and Greasy Sludge and they were doing damage to a car engine until Bardahl came along. It had music similar to Dragnet.

Is Sticky Valves a-ridin’ with you tonight?
Is Greasy Sludge a-ridin' with you tonight?
Are you sure your car is running exactly right?
'Cause with Bardahl
Sticky Valves won’t be stickin’
Greasy Sludge won't be grippin'
And your engine won’t be clickin’
...
…Bardahl did it again… Bardahl did it again…

That's how it went. Or thereabouts.

The cartoon villains wore shirts with horizontal stripes, beret-like thug caps and eye masks. The kicker was the Bardahl song imitating the popular theme song of the Dragnet TV show.

“Isn’t that just the neatest thing,” the daughter said.

I told her it was. I mentioned to Lewis about the kid wanting to know about the Y.

“Oh, that’s the YMCA,” he said. “It’s just down the street.”

Wow, I thought, a YMCA. This neighborhood has a real YMCA, a magical place I had only barely heard about. I'll have to remember that next time I'm in the neighborhood. And I'll be sure to refer to it simply as "the Y" if I get the chance. How neat is that?

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