Lolly's Killer Curves Now

“You can’t brake late here,” she says, leaning against her track-prepped Mazda MX-5 at the roadside pull-off. “You can’t drift like you’re in a video game. Lolly’s rewards smooth hands and a cool head. Panic once, and you’ll be picking leaves out of your radiator.”

The road begins innocently enough at the valley floor: a two-lane ribbon with gentle sweepers and forgiving shoulders. That’s the trap. By the time you hit the first serious bend—a blind, off-camber left known as “The Widow’s Wink”—you’re already committed. The asphalt tightens. The guardrails, dented and scarred, shrink to knee height. The drop-off on the right side vanishes into a ravine choked with oak and kudzu. lolly's killer curves

There’s a stretch of asphalt in the eastern Ozarks that mechanics don’t talk about, but their customers do. It’s not on any official tourism map, and the state highway department refuses to acknowledge the nickname. But if you ride a motorcycle, drive a stick-shift coupe, or pilot a lumbering 18-wheeler, you know exactly where it is. “You can’t brake late here,” she says, leaning

“They thought they knew how to drive,” Cruz says with a smile. “Lolly proves otherwise.” Not everyone survives the lesson. The local volunteer fire department has a nickname for the ravine: “The Taker.” Wrecks happen about once a month, though only a handful make the news. Most are single-vehicle accidents—a Mustang that entered a 25-mph turn at 60, a pickup truck that misjudged the decreasing radius of “The Corkscrew,” a tourist in an RV who tried to take the hairpin wide. Panic once, and you’ll be picking leaves out

Cruz teaches a weekend course called “Curve Therapy,” aimed at drivers who’ve been humbled by the pass. Students range from teenage thrill-seekers to retirees who bought Porsches for their midlife crises. All of them arrive with the same expression: bruised ego, slight tremor in the hands.

For the uninitiated, Lolly’s is a 10.7-mile section of Old Route 29, carved into the ridge between Parson’s Hollow and Blue Summit. It’s named after Lolly Taggart, a bootlegger’s wife who, in 1953, supposedly drove a modified Hudson Hornet through this pass at 90 miles an hour with a trunk full of moonshine—and a federal agent hanging off her rear bumper. She lost him in the third hairpin. Legend says she never spilled a drop.

But for every tragedy, there are a hundred triumphs. On any given Saturday morning, you’ll hear the sound of engines warming up at the Lolly’s Gas & Grub—a one-pump station that sells better brisket than anywhere in three counties. Drivers gather there before dawn. They sip bad coffee, trade tire-pressure tips, and watch the fog lift off the mountain.