The Hicks Boys River Mix was actually born just before the opening of MaMa Jean’s.

My cousin Kent has access to his family’s farm down on the Gasconade River.  The small house on the farm where his grandparents lived for many years is now called the “Huntin Shack.  It’s nothing special, but it’s better than camping, and that’s where the Hicks Boys River Mix was born.

It all happened back in the spring of 2002. I was feeling special because I was the first girl to be invited to “Hicks Boys Turkey Float.”  In attendance that year was my cousin, Kent, my brother, Randy and my nephews, Mitch and Tyler. Of course we divided up the food that we were bringing and each one of us was responsible for a meal.  They told me that since we weren’t going to arrive until late on Friday, that everyone was on their own for that night’s meal.

Well, as the weekend neared, I was getting more and more excited and I guess I was working so fast, that I got all my work done and I called my brother to let him know that I was going to get off work around noon that Friday...I guess everyone else did the same because we all showed up pretty early that Friday evening. Randy and I had discussed me bringing some hot dogs (I wanted to supply those as I’m very picky about hot dogs). 

I guess what we had was a failure to communicate...I thought I was only bringing hot dogs for my brother and I, since he had previously told me that on Friday night everyone was on their own.  As dinner time neared, my nephew said, “Hey, Auntie D, what about those hot dogs?” I immediately questioned him… “hey, what about yours?” And that’s when things fell apart...I was already trying to figure out how to feed four men and myself with a package of 6 hot dogs (because the good hot dogs only have 6 in the package).

I had thrown in some snack foods that I had picked up at Jean’s Healthway in Ava the weekend before, so while they were grieving me about not bringing enough food, I brought out the smoked almonds, the dried cranberries, the garlic sesame sticks and the wasabi peas (or kemosabi peas as they called them). We were all quite new to the health food scene and they were making all kinds of fun of the food that I had put before them...when a miraculous discovery was made...when you take one of each of the things that I brought and put them in your mouth at the same time, it was fabulous...thus becoming the Hicks Boys River Mix.

To this day, when we are working out who is going to bring what for the Hicks Boys Turkey Float, they always ask me to bring the Hicks Boys River Mix.

- Diana Hicks