Lake of the Ozarks My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America

Bill Geist, Allan Robertson

eAudio - 2019

Beloved TV host Bill Geist pens a reflective memoir of his incredible summers spent in the heart of America in this New York Times bestseller.Before there was "tourism" and souvenir ashtrays became "kitsch," the Lake of the Ozarks was a Shangri-La for middle-class Midwestern families on vacation, complete with man-made beaches, Hillbilly Mini Golf, and feathered rubber tomahawks. It was there that author Bill Geist spent summers in the Sixties during his school and college years working at Arrowhead Lodge — a small resort owned by his bombastic uncle — in all areas of the operation, from cesspool attendant to bellhop.What may have seemed just a summer job became, upon reflection, a transformative era where a cast of ...eccentric, small-town characters and experiences shaped (some might suggest "slightly twisted") Bill into the man he is today. He realized it was this time in his life that had a direct influence on his sensibilities, his humor, his... more