2022 KC/MI Wander: Day 9

 

This is Part 7 of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

I should probably allot more time to car museums in my trip planning, or just not worry about it. Having missed out on seeing the Terrill Museum in DeLeon, Texas; the Heart of 66 museum in Sapulpa, Oklahoma; the Tulsa Museum of Art Deco; Howard's Toys for Big Boys Museum in Chanute, Kansas; the Museum of American Speed in Lincoln; the Schildberg Automobile Museum in Greenfield, Iowa (which may be out of business now); and the Kline Automobile Museum in Prescott, Iowa because of timing, I wasn't about to add the Antique Car Museum of Iowa to that list; so I went to Coralville, which required about 30 miles of backtracking, and checked into a hotel for the night (the same one, incidentally, that I stayed in when I was in Coralville with Rick years ago), and this morning I hung around the town waiting for the museum to open at 10AM. There is very little to do in Coralville, Iowa between 6AM and 10AM. I had breakfast and lots and lots of coffee, and played cards on my computer and read Makers and Takers, a book about the negative effects of the financial industry on American business. I was there when the museum opened; no surprise.

an exception: a 1903 Cadillac Runabout

There's plenty of two-hour on-street free parking in the area of the museum. After two hours I had to go out to move my car. I was in the museum, all together, for three hours. It's fairly large, and has 86 cars on display, arranged more or less chronologically. About half of the space is given over to cars from before the Great Depression, many of which I've never heard of: Holsman; Sears (yes, you ordered it from their catalog); Economy Motor Buggy; Haynes-Apperson; Brush; Demot; Maytag (the washing-machine company tried making cars for a while); Haynes; Whippet; Gardner; Velie; Elmore; National; and Milburn Electric. (The museum provides a list of all the cars on the floor.) And of the cars I have heard of, there were many models I had never seen before. (I hardly took any pictures of the older cars; most of them look alike to me. My interest is mainly in styling, which only began to matter in the mid-to-late 1920s.) Having the cars arranged chronologically made it easy for me to trace developments in early design -- for example, fender fairings, wheel design or standardizations that we take for granted now, like left-hand drive.

Cautionary tale

The museum itself only owns about eight of the cars; the rest belong to people in the area who lend their vehicles for display. While many of the cars are beautifully restored, a number of them are in less than pristine condition, including one Model T that had a tree land on it during a recent storm. It's there, tree limb and all, as a cautionary tale. A number of them seem to be mid-restoration; for example, one vehicle had a front seat that had clearly been restored, while the back seat was just springs. I found the contrast interesting. 

All of the cars were American-made, except for a 1939 Hanomag (German) and a 1964 Volkswagen Beetle (also German). (They were there to make a particular point, but I forget now what that point was.) Because the cars were arranged chronologically (with a few exceptions), and because I could walk all the way around almost every one of them, and because each car had a very informative sign associated with it, I thought this museum is one of the best I've seen at presenting automotive history. Many of the signs go into the history of the manufacturer, which is particularly useful in promoting understanding of the early days of the industry, when it was kind of a Wild West business (like the phone business in the 1980s, or cellphones or internet service in the 2000s). Carmakers merged, or got bought out, or just folded with such regularity and rapidity that it's often hard to know who the players were. 

When I finally tore myself away from the museum, I headed off to Jones and Clinton Counties, and so I have now visited all the counties in Iowa. That makes 36 states that I've finished with; and if I stick to my trip plan, that number will be 39 before I get back home.

The terrain in eastern Iowa is pretty. Many of the roads are boringly straight, but there are enough that curve up and down hills and through river bottoms and woodlands to make me want to hug myself with the joy of driving. The same is true of Illinois -- and, frankly, of almost every state east of the Dry Line. (The only exception I'm aware of is northern Indiana, which is in its own category of boring.)

Mississippi River at Sabula, Iowa

For the drive from Coralville to the Mississippi River, I'd taken the precaution of emailing the route to myself last night. I'm not sure if that made a difference; I think it still needs an internet connection, but as far as I can tell I had 4G service the whole time today. And I avoided technology issues with my audiobook software by not turning it on. I drove in silence all day, and found it relaxing in a kind of 20th-Century way. I may never turn the radio on again; at least, not while I'm using GPS.

The Black Hawk Statue overlooking the Rock River

I stopped in Oregon, Illinois to book a hotel down the road and to visit the so-called Black Hawk statue in one of the state parks in the area. The statue isn't actually intended as a representation of Black Hawk -- a chief of the Sauk and Fox tribe who refused to leave after other chiefs gave up tribal lands in the early 1800s. The 1832 war to evict him and his followers -- the Black Hawk War -- saw a young captain of volunteers named Abraham Lincoln posted to Dixon, a town 20 miles or so south on the Rock River. In the early 1900s, a monumental statue of a generic Indian was built at Oregon, while some time after that a lifesized bronze statue of a young Abe Lincoln was erected at Dixon.

Lincoln

Both sides' heroes are represented, one realistically, one romantically.

I had intended to stop at another state park near Oregon, a place called Castle Rock. I drove right past it. I had forgotten to check my plan on RoadTrippers, and was distracted by the beauty of the Rock River on the left-hand side and by a tailgater in my rearview mirror (until I flashed my rear fog lights; he backed off then). I thought about going back to it -- it's only about 15 miles. But I only had it as a stopping place because it's supposed to give a grand view of the river, and I feel like I got that just from the road. So, no; not going back. Instead I will go on to Starved Rock, which is ahead of me. I'm also going to skip the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, the John Deere Historical Site, and the John Deere Home, because, frankly, I'm not sufficiently interested in those places to actually go to them. 

I checked into my motel (on Bloody Gulch Road, of all places) and found a place for dinner called The Corner Spot Bar & Grill. Ever since I started travelling in the upper midwest, I've found that places called "Bar & Grill" have a certain old-world atmosphere about them. Before I started going to them, I thought they were, you know, just bars. But up here in the North, they're more like quaint, unpretentious taverns where you can get a beer or a whiskey with your meal. So I purposefully looked on line for "Bar & Grill". The only one listed locally is an expensive restaurant at a country club. So I just looked for "Bars" and found several listings, all of which had food. I picked one that seemed a likely candidate for the kind of ambience I was looking for -- the kind of place that would be at home on McKay Avenue in Spring Valley, Wisconsin, or along the highway in Trempeleau. 

The Corner Spot was not that kind of place. It was a generic sports bar. But it had friendly staff and reasonable prices (and all orders come with unlimited salad bar -- my first vegetables in a while, I think), and they put a soccer game on for me. Sadly, it was perhaps the dullest MLS match of the past 25 years, between Philadelphia Union and Atlanta. Every time I looked up at the screen, play was stopped for a foul or an injury; and every time I looked away, somebody scored. And the pace of play seemed slow. It did not make me think, Gee, I should watch more MLS. 

I ate too much for the first time on this trip.

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2022 KC/MI Wander: Day 8

This is Part 6 of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

I wonder why there aren't more motel rooms in places like Percival, Iowa. There are, it appears, only two motels in this town, which seems to consist of those two motels and two truck stops and a few fast-food restaurants. Both of the motels in Percival are fully booked, even though the room rates are pretty high. (The rates in Nebraska City, a few miles away, are positively exorbitant, even though there are lots of motels over there. That's why I'm in Percival and not Nebraska City ... well, that, and because there's a water tower in Percival that looks like a teapot, and I found yesterday evening that it's real pretty at night, all lit up with red neon.) (My sunrise pictures of the water tower from this morning are much better than the pictures from last night; although you still can't really tell that it looks like a big teapot. The red rings on top light up in succession, and it says "Sapp Bros" on the sides in huge letters. My pics are all taken from the handle side.)

Today was mostly supposed to be all about county-counting, but a good bit of it was about the failure of technology. I've already ranted about it over the phone to Sherry, so here I will just say that technology that depends on an internet connection is of very limited use in places like southern Iowa. And that includes Google Maps and Libby, the app I'm using to listen to audiobooks (or trying to, anyway). I got 8 of the 10 remaining Iowa counties today; I would have missed one because of the failure of Google Maps, but I thought to check where, exactly, the county was in relation to the highway. I really would have been pissed if I'd gotten to my hotel for the night and then discovered the omission.*

There were four counties in southwestern Iowa that I hadn't been to. The only point of interest in any of them was Johnny Carson's birthplace, in Corning (Adams County). It was $10 to go in, which is way too much for such a trivial place. Besides, he grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska, and that's the place he considered his home; this is just where his parents lived when he made his first entrance.

While I was stopped for a break at a convenience store I got into a conversation with a local woman who used to be the city clerk for Gravity, Iowa, in Taylor County, the last of those four. She told me about the town sign; said she saw it every day for years and never got the joke until one day it suddenly dawned on her, and ever since then she can't think of it without laughing. So I made it a point to go that way and see the sign myself.

It is kind of cute.

After that, it was a looooong slog across the state on Highway 2, from west to east, until I got to the remaining batch of counties, more or less along the Mississippi River. The only point of interest I found there was the Louisa County Swinging Bridge. It crosses a gorge in a park in the town of Columbus Junction. You can access one end of it just above the parking area, or you can access the other end by taking a trail that goes down into the gorge and then up the other side to the bridge. I chose to take the trail.

Two things about the trail: first, it's very narrow, about 18" wide on average, and fairly steep. Steps have been put in at a number of spots to help, and the drop-off is generally not great, but I would not want to be on that path after a rain. I'm sure it's very slick. The second thing is this: the path is lined with signboards containing pages from a children's book about an alligator. The book didn't make any sense to me; it seemed to tell the story of how the friendly alligator went from owning a restaurant for his friends the birds, to eating the birds. A really unpleasant story, not something I'd've wanted to read to my son when he was a child. But in the end I realized that the story is arranged to be read starting from the other end of the path: the lazy alligator opens a restaurant to trick the birds into eating in his mouth, but then he becomes friends with the birds. That's a much better children's book.

Louisa County Swinging Bridge

The bridge itself was pretty terrifying, but I made it across. It swings back and forth and it tips sideways like Galloping Gertie in the 1940 film of that bridge's collapse.

That's pretty much the whole day. Fortunately the scenery in Iowa, even in the ordinary places, is verdant and attractive, and the temperature today topped out at 86 degrees; and I don't think I saw a single cloud all day.

I'm in Coralville, Iowa tonight; there's a car museum here that opens at 10AM that I plan to stick around for; then I'll drive through the last two Iowa counties on the way to Illinois and Indiana, and on Thursday I should get to Michigan. I don't know how long it'll take me to do all the wandering I plan to do there. As you might imagine, I'm somewhat averse to that level of prediction.  

* I also have complaints about my phone's bluetooth, my phone charger, and my car's new stereo. Don't ask.

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2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 7: the wandering resumes

 This is the fifth installment of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

The morning dawned, as I'd hoped, with a blue sky and only a few light clouds. So nice when you order something from Amazon and they get it right! So: top went down. Idiot light comes on: "Convertible not latched." Sure enough, the latching mechanism was stuck in the "up" position. I had thought that the noise the mechanism makes had sounded somehow different: it was that the motor had kept whirring and the clickety-clack of the latch retracting had been missing. 

Okay, I thought as I put the top back up, that's it; I'm going home. Forget Michigan. Who needs it?

Then I thought, what the hell, so I put the top down again. It worked perfectly. I guess it's like restarting your phone when Google Maps freezes (like it's done twice now on this trip). 

Plugged in my first stop: the Wilbur Memorial in White Cloud, Kansas. I had changed the trip settings and allowed freeways, so it took me straight up Interstate 29 to St Joseph, Missouri. Told me to exit at US Highway 36, which I did. That is the only bridge across the Missouri river for many miles in either direction. Unfortunately, there was some kind of oversized load broken down on the bridge access and a line of vehicles (mostly trucks) that stretched away for as far as I could see. I figured there must be some other way, so I went the opposite direction, got down into the town, and checked the map on my phone. Sure enough, there was an access to the bridge from the southbound side that would put me beyond the broken down vehicle. So I went about a mile and a half up the road until I came to a street that would take me to the southbound side of I-29; cut over and got on the freeway again, and immediately exited for US 36 westbound. 

The ramp that goes from I-29 southbound to US 36 westbound is under construction, and there's a detour.... Guess where it takes you.

Fortunately, the oversized vehicle had moved and the traffic was clearing. So I like to think that I spent the delay seeing something of St Joseph, Missouri. A charming town, I'm sure, with its Pony Express Museum and the home of somebody famous.

When I got to White Cloud, my GPS took me to a vacant field where some guys looked to be setting up for a yard sale. They weren't from here, and while they were surprised and interested in my story about a pig monument, they had never heard of such a thing (to use their words). So I asked at the post office. The clerk wasn't from here either, and she suggested the "water people" across the street. Those women were locals and knew immediately what I was talking about, and told me it was across the street at the next corner, in front of the church. And so it was.

Pig Monument

Local boy Wilbur Chapman owned a pig, named Pete. He "adopted" a leper, and sold his pig to raise money to help. The newspapers got the story and it went viral (in the 1910 equivalent). The result was that banks across the country started handing out Pig Banks to children to help them save their money, and that's how piggy banks got started. (I did not know that.) The writer E.B. White heard about Wilbur as he was writing his classic children's novel, Charlotte's Web, and named the pig in that story after the boy.

As one source put it, Pete the Pig got nothing out of all this. He was, presumably, slaughtered and eaten.

My next planned stop was the boyhood home of Harold Lloyd, famous silent film comedian, in Burchard, Nebraska. He was one of my favourite movie actors when I was in college. I remembered (for the first time ever) to download directions in case of poor cell signals. Unfortunately, that didn't help. The directions wanted to take me down a gravel road, and I couldn't get it to alter that plan. Having no paper maps to fall back on, I had to go by vague memory and dead reckoning. When I came to a town where there was a signal, I looked it up again and verified I was going the right way. Got to the town and had no signal so just had to guess where it was. I had seen it on the map about a month ago, & remembered correctly: 4th & Plum Streets. Well, it's a tiny town, population 82, so how far astray could I have gone? 

A sign on the door said to call So-and-So for a tour, and gave a number. Unfortunately, I had no cell service, so all I got was a picture of the outside.

And with no signal, I couldn't pull up directions to my next destination on my phone. So again I had to go by those month-old memories of what the map looked like as I was planning the trip. Again, I remembered right, and when I got a signal, about 10 miles down the road, I was able to verify that I was going right. Followed the GPS from that point until I came to a sign that said "Road Closed." Having no real alternative -- the place I was going was on that road -- I went around the sign. Continued for a mile. By now I had no signal again. Came to a stop sign, and another "Road Closed" sign. Continued up over the next hill, and this time the road actually was closed. So I turned around, and found a sign directing me down a side road to my destination. (There had been no such sign coming the other way.) My GPS kicked in again as I got to the entrance of Rock Creek Station State Historical Park, and guided me through beautiful woodlands down to the creek bottom ... where there's a picnic table and a bathroom. Well, opportunity knocks and I answer.

Then I head up the hill, ignoring the GPS's exhortation to make U-turns every few yards, and I located a visitors' center farther along in the park.

Rock Creek Toll Bridge

Rock Creek Station was a way-station (called a "Road Farm") on the Overland Trail, a stagecoach line, and briefly a Pony Express station. A guy named McCanles owned the property. He farmed the western part, and rented out the eastern part to the stage company. He also built a bridge across the creek, and passing settlers would gladly pay the toll (ten to fifty cents, depending) to avoid having to ford the creek. 

The Overland Stage company's manager didn't make the rent payments timely, so one day McCanles and his son Monroe, aged 12, along with two other men, employees Woods and Gordon, went over to collect. The manager refused to come to the door, sending first his wife and then his hired hand, a hothead named Hickok. Long story short: Bill Hickok ended up hiding behind a quilt wall and shooting McCanles from his hiding place. Woods and Gordon, who had been doing other business over at the toll house, came running at the sound of the rifle, but Hickok shot Woods while the stage company manager, a guy named Wellman, bludgeoned him to death with a hoe. He tried to kill Monroe too, but the boy got away. Gordon got as far as the creek before he was done in by a shotgun. Wellman and Hickok were both arrested and tried; Monroe, being only 12 years old, was not allowed to testify. That was the law at the time. Without his testimony, there was no evidence, so both men were acquitted. Hickok went on to live life large and become famous, until justice caught up with him in Deadwood, South Dakota. I don't know what became of Wellman. 

East Farm

Rock Creek Station was restored back in the 1980s, and except for the sign boards and the cleanliness of the buildings and grounds, looks pretty authentic. East Farm, where all this took place, is a pleasant fifteen-minute walk from the visitors' center. I spent most of my time over there talking to a young man who was weedeating; he was very glad for a break, and I believe pretty knowledgeable about the plants around there. I'd seen and photographed a bush with red berries or flowers on it, and he said it was poison sumac. Then we got into a long discussion of the flora in the area, and wandered around as he pointed out this and that and generally talked for half an hour about bluestem and cottonwood trees (pointing out a couple of trees that were in a photograph taken of the Station in the late 1860s and were still standing). 

I remember seeing how creeks cut right through the soil in the Great Plains around Scotts Bluff, in western Nebraska. Rock Creek is the same way. The ground may be more or less flat -- no mountains, anyway -- but damned if there ain't a 20-foot-deep gorge with vertical banks at every little creek in this area. If I'd been trying to cross the country in a covered wagon back then, I would have just gone back to New York.

(A propos of nothing: I just happened to glance out the window of my hotel room in Percival, Iowa, to see the reddest sunset I have ever seen.)

On leaving Rock Creek Station, I calculated that the car museum in Lincoln would be closed by the time I got there; all the other locations I'd planned to visit there are open 24/7, but none of them are important to me, so they can wait until Lincoln becomes a destination instead of a waypoint. I instead plugged in a planned site at Nebraska City, on the Iowa border: the monument to Where the Wagon Broke Down.

Where the Wagon Broke Down

This required a couple of miles on dirt roads to get to, but dirt's okay as long as it's in good repair. These roads were. I found the spot with no trouble.

In 1862 -- wasn't there a war on then? How did anybody have time for this? -- a self-propelled steam wagon (of Gargantuan proportions) was invented in Minnesota by Joseph R. Brown. It was built in New York City and transported by steam ship down the Ohio River and up the Missouri River to Nebraska City. It was to be driven from there to Denver. It was the "first self-propelled road vehicle ever used west of the Mississippi". It made it only about four and a half miles before it broke down, and was abandoned (I reckon because of its size). And for some reason people thought that would be the appropriate subject of a brass-and-stone monument. So there is a brass plaque mounted on a stone to memorialize the event. They are just desperate for history in Nebraska.

My next stop (and in fact my last stop in Nebraska, having gotten the two counties I was after) was at a Runza fast-food restaurant. My sister- and brother-in-law gave me a book recently called USA State By State, one of the resources I used in planning this trip. And the best thing about that book is that, for every state, it makes suggestions for local foods that are unique to the area. Well, some of those things I already know about. I've already had enchiladas in Texas, and po-boys in Louisiana. I tried scrapple in Delaware and Ranier cherries in Washington. But I would not have known about runza in Nebraska without that book.

I had a couple of runza shops marked on my route, but the last one (in case I hadn't already tried it in Rulo or Beatrice or Lincoln, was in Nebraska City; and it was suppertime when I drove away from Where the Wagon Broke Down, and I needed to find and reserve a room for the night, so I went to the Runza restaurant in Nebraska City. 

Runza

Runza is seasoned ground beef and cabbage baked inside a soft bread shell, kind of like a kolache from my favourite Czech restaurant in West, Texas. It proved to be so popular in these parts that the inventor named the restaurant after the food and started a successful chain. It now can be had with cheese, and I forget the other variation. They also sell burgers, but I don't know why; the runza roll or sandwich or whatever you want to call it is pretty damn good.

The only other thing I'd planned to see in Nebraska City was a Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, which closed at 4pm, so I was too late for that. But it was one of those things that make it onto the trip plan just in case I feel like going there: one of those awareness locations that are easy to skip. I was not in the mood for Lewis & Clark anyway, and had no regrets about passing on it. Even with all the stuff I'm skipping -- all of Tulsa, all of Lincoln, lots of other places along the way -- I'm still roughly on "schedule" with this trip. Or, I guess, because of all the stuff I'm skipping. Being "on schedule" only matters because I have to be back in San Antonio by a certain date, and let's face it: there's nothing on this trip, absolutely nothing, that I have to see or do.... I could abandon this trip at any point, now that I've made my delivery; and I've been this close to doing just that at least twice now. Well, except for stocking up on moonshine in Ohio on the way back. I do have to do that. That is absolutely necessary....

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2022 KC/MI Wander: Kansas City

Days 4, 5 and 6

 This is the fourth installment of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

Day Four of my trip, Friday, began with a walk up the street to a breakfast place we'd passed the previous evening on the way to dinner on Main Street. I was seated next to a very young couple who were engaged in a group phone conversation with some guy in what sounded like a techno-chic night club. Or maybe he just liked to blast dance music in the background. Whichever: the young couple could only overcome the noise from his location by shouting into the phone about their gym routines. I had to move to another table, where I was made privy to the thoughts of a 73-year-old woman who likes dirty martinis and has some unpleasant thoughts about sexual practices in West Africa. Fortunately, live voices are easier to tune out.

The food was good, the coffee not so much. Service excellent, values not so much. Overall I'd give the place an average rating, two and a half jalapeños out of five. 

National Toy & Miniatures Museum

After going back to the house and writing up my blog post from Day 3, I walked over to the National Toy and Miniature Museum, about three blocks away. The museum was started when two wealthy old KC women decided to pool their collections. One collected miniatures, the other collected toys. The museum has toys on the second floor, miniatures on the first, though naturally there's some overlap, especially when it comes to doll houses.

The attraction of the upper floor was, of course, the nostalgia of seeing things I used to play with locked up in plexiglass cabinets where they couldn't be played with: the Lockheed Constellation model airplane, the Marx Garage, &c. I pretty much skipped over the doll exhibits, and I was disappointed to find an entire cabinet of Hot Wheels cars, but not a single Matchbox. (We die-cast model snobs disparage Hot Wheels as morally and physically inferior to the Matchbox models.) But there was an old video of the Matchbox manufacturing process produced by Lesney, the company that made the toys (starting in 1952, I learned, with a model of Queen Elizabeth's coronation coach). 

But it was the miniatures on the first floor that are really the heart of this museum. They were astounding. 

nesting tables 1" x 1.5"

The miniatures museuem I visited in Victoria, British Columbia a few years ago had dioramas of great scenes created with phenomenal detail: battles, a dogfight, a car show, circus parades. I was expecting, even hoping for something similar. But instead I found thousands upon thousands of items rendered in perfect tiny proportion. And while they were often arranged in complete sets -- Art Deco Jewelry Store; Country Cottage; Anteroom in the Doge's Palace -- the main thrust of the museum was educational, showing how these incredible items are created. The exhibits highlight the special tools used, the techniques applied, the various stages of production. In one room, I got to try putting the hands on a miniature grandfather clock with a pair of tweezers. The first hand went on easily; the second took me a dozen tries, and I wasted a lot of time looking for it after it squirted out of the tweezers' grasp.

table & chair, full-sized & miniature

captain's chair on a pin

Probably the most fascinating item was a copy, in miniature, of a writing desk from the palace at Versailles. The model is only about six inches across, but it perfectly duplicates the full-sized furniture, right down to the gold leaf decoration, the inlaid roll-top (including the entire brass mechanism), the dovetail drawers, the complex lock, and the mechanism that enables the writing desk to double as a reading stand. There was a documentary film, engaging despite its leisurely pacing, showing how the piece was made.

There were miniature copies -- apparently perfect copies -- of oil paintings; there were porcelain figurines and dishes and vases; there were candles and chandeliers and kitchen tools, even tiny flowers and food and animals, all of them perfect in every detail. The result of these collections is absolutely breathtaking.

When I left the museum it was mid-afternoon and much hotter than I cared for. I briefly considered going to the Nelson-Atkins Museum, or driving around the city checking out other locations I'd marked to visit on RoadTrippers; but after walking back to the house, I decided instead to settle on the back porch with a glass of ice water, my computer (to start putting down these thoughts) and my cellphone.

I found that relaxing.

Saturday (Day 5 of the trip) was set aside for a visit with my friend Marty, who lives out in Olathe, a suburb of the city in Kansas. His house isn't far from the Kansas City Automotive Museum, and he expressed an interest in going there with me. Perfect. 

Since he works nights and doesn't usually get up until around ten in the morning, we planned for me to come by his house and fetch him a little after that; then we'd have brunch and go to the museum together. Easier said than done: every decent breakfast place in the area had long wait times. At the third restaurant we checked, with a 25-minute wait, I said let's just wait. If we'd waited at the first one we'd gone to, we'd have already eaten by then. But by the third restaurant we were both a lot more desperate and a lot less proud. I had gone out to an ATM that morning and stopped for really good coffee at a convenience store I'd passed on the way, and had thought about getting something to tide me over (this was around 7:30AM) but decided not to. Since I expected to eat around 10:30, I figured there was no need. In the event, it was about 11:15 before we finally sat down at a restaurant table. We had a good breakfast -- I had eggs benedict and coffee, lots of coffee -- and sat talking well into the afternoon. 

So we didn't get to the museum until around 2pm. It's not a large museum, but it's an interesting one. It has special shows, a different one every month, and most unfortunately, their Jaguar Month is September. If only I"d known. When we pulled up and went inside, they immediately started trying to convince me to leave my car in their museum for the month. "We haven't got any newer Jag models lined up yet for the show." Too bad, I said, because this car will be in Michigan by the first of September.

1954 Lincoln

Among the unusual cars they had on display were a 1925 Jordan, similar (I've been told) to the one my grandfather drove; a 1954 Lincoln, a rarity in car museums; a 1935 Bentley 3.5-litre saloon; an Essex Super Six; and a 1957 Chrysler Imperial Crown convertible. All the cars were fully restored and beautifully presented, although the lighting in the museum is fairly harsh and my photos are, as a result, mostly overexposed and filled with glare spots. There was also a 1957 Messerschmidt two-seat tandem car, which prompted a long conversation about postwar industrial recovery in Europe and Japan, and the persistence of rationing in Britain. 

1939 Racine Ford

But the most interesting car was something that, normally, I wouldn't have bothered with: it was, according to the sign, a 1939 Racine Ford -- not something I'd ever heard of, and I suspect that it's actually a fairly recent artifact. It was built using parts from a number of cars, ranging from a 1934 Ford, a Jaguar, an MG, and several others. All these odd parts were cobbled together by various local mechanics (a complete list of the parts and the builders was given on the accompanying sign) into one of the most attractive 1930s-Style vehicles I've seen outside of the top car museums.

Marty and I spent about an hour at the museum, and another hour or so sitting outside talking. Just before we left I went back in to toss some trash, and an older man who hadn't been privy to our conversation on arrival immediately set to work trying to get my Jag into their Jaguar Month show. I spent about 20 minutes talking with him and the other three museum employees about which cars are the most beautiful (and which aren't): Jaguars in general, yes; Jaguar XK-150s, no; Delahayes in general, yes; Bugatti Atlantics ... we agreed to disagree. 

In any case, I'm now up to seven "nice car" comments, including Marty, who gushed. He'd expected me to be driving my Subaru (because I was bringing the stained glass panels up). But while bringing up the glass is the Official Reason for this trip, the convertible is the Real Reason.

Speaking of stained glass: while I was out in Olathe, the panels got hung up at David's house. (The installation had been delayed because the hooks originally bought for the hanging were only rated at 4 pounds each, and the center panel weighs almost 10 pounds, so bigger hooks were needed.) Since this installation is the Official Reason for the trip, I guess I should mention that it's been accomplished, and show the result. So:

Ginko Triptych, Installed

We had dinner down at an Italian restaurant in The Plaza, a shopping district built in the 1920s and famous for two things: (1) being the first shopping center designed for cars (there are parking garages hidden all over the 6-block area) and (2) a plethora of public art. I have photos from a previous trip of a magnificent fountain at the eastern end of the Plaza with several monumental bronze statues in it; this time we were at the western end, where the statues are more modest, and whimsical. After dinner, we strolled around the area for a while, as David pointed out where everything used to be. Seems the tenancy of the Plaza has been extremely fluid in the past few years; not really a surprise, but it always promotes a certain feeling of regret-tinged nostalgia when important parts of your home town go through big changes. I feel the same way whenever a longtime River Walk business folds or moves away, and when some national chain takes over a space that, morally, should have a tenant with a local connection.

Sunday (Day 6) started off with pouring rain. I started my laundry and then sat on the back porch, pondering coffee sources until there was a lull in the downpour. I rushed out to a convenience store a mile and a half north, filled their biggest cup, and brought it back to the house. By the time I moved my laundry from the washer to the dryer, it was plain that the lull in the rain would be lasting for some time. So I found a place for breakfast called the Neighborhood Cafe, three miles south, and went there. Four and a half jalapeños. Had a good-enough breakfast burrito, and more coffee; but the best things about the place were (a) the prices; (b) the lagniappe (hot-from-the-oven cinnamon rolls); (3) the service; and (d) they had the Forest:Spurs match on the TV over the counter. I was tempted to remain until full time, but I had laundry in the dryer.

I spent the entire afternoon at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The best part of that museum is that it's free, so I don't feel like I have to see everything in order to get my money's worth. That's really a good thing: I don't know how many times I've gone, and I have never seen even half of it. I had gotten there around noon, figuring I'd spend, oh, a couple of hours and then go for a late lunch. Instead I was there until closing, in which time I saw about 2/3 of one floor. (I don't even know how many floors they have; at least two, probably more.) I spent a pretty good chunk of that time considering a single painting, John the Baptist in the Wilderness, painted in the 1500s by Caravaggio. I'd seen it for the first time years ago at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, but the Nelson-Atkins is its home. It is, to me, one of the most enigmatic and important paintings in the entire history of art. 

I managed to get all the way to the medieval cloister at the western end of that floor -- the Plaza Level -- and around the corner to the Assyrian and Egyptian art section before closing time. I find so much of interest there that I had never before gotten that far along that floor. On this occasion I spent a good bit of time with French porcelain and Italian Baroque -- did not see a single English painting on this visit -- and who'd'a ever have thunk it? They have a section on stained glass! Wonders never cease. 

It didn't even occur to me to have lunch. Now, that's engagement.

Well, now: my wandering resumes tomorrow morning, destination Nebraska. I might even get as far as the Iowa border. The chance of rain predicted for tomorrow is the same as it was this morning, but I"m hoping it moves off to the east. Fingers, once again, crossed.

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2022 KC/MI Trip: Day 3

 This is the third post in a series. You really should read them in order, so here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip, should your anal-retentiveness or OCD require it.

One thing I can never hear too often on these long cross-country wanders is the phrase "Nice car." I've heard it four times so far, a little more than once a day. Just enough to satisfy. First time was on day one, while I waited for the engine to cool enough for me to pour some water into the coolant reservoir. A woman filling her gas tank thirty feet away shouted it. I shouted "thanks" back to her, and only later noted that she, too, drove a Jaguar. But hers was a later-model XK -- the version that supplanted mine in the Jaguar line. I thought briefly about complimenting her car, if belatedly, but couldn't bring myself to do it: the XK is a bulbous, overinflated version of the svelte XK-8, and I just don't much like its aggressive looks. 

Yesterday -- Thursday, day 3 of this trip -- I had set my alarm for 6AM on my phone, then woke up at about 5:58AM, wondering what time it was. I'd had a hard time getting to sleep and had ended up on the computer, practicing my timewasting techniques, until probably 1:30 in the morning. So I was sure I'd slept through the alarm, or else that it was only 3AM. But as I went across the room to check the time, the alarm started beeping, making me feel like a real-life version of Jack Reacher, the Lee Child character who can set his internal alarm clock with just that sort of precision. 

I was in the car -- top down under pristine sky -- by 6:30, and then in the parking lot of a local breakfast place called Jimmy's Egg five minutes later. I had what they call the Garbage Breakfast: eggs with a little of this and a little of that, all kind of dry but satisfying enough. The coffee was good and the service was better than good, so I was happy. 

I drove up the road to start my planned route with the Flint Hills Scenic Drive, along State Highway 177 from Cassoday to Council Grove, a distance of just over 50 miles. Along the way I'd planned to stop at a belvedere south of Cottonwood Falls; at a small waterfall near a reservoir; and at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve north of Strong City. It didn't work out that way.

For starters, Highway 177 is under construction, being re-paved with a new asphalt surface. The work has just begun, and only a stretch of about a tenth of a mile has any actual work being done on it; but the vehicles involved in ferrying materials back and forth are being marshalled at the belvedere 15 miles up the road, and so that entire stretch of highway is marked down to a single lane, requiring a pilot truck to escort travellers through the construction zone. I pulled up to the flagman at the south end of the zone not long after the pilot had left on a northward run, so I had time to get out and spend half an hour or so chatting with the flagger, a Texas boy from Jacksonville who'd come to Kansas for his father's wedding, and met the love of his life. Long story short, he's still here.

The driver of the pilot truck came back ("Nice car! What is it? That's a Jaguar? Looks really nice.") and was replaced by my flagger friend, who led me at breakneck speed past the belvedere where I'd planned to stop -- it was full of dump trucks and graders so I couldn't have stopped anyway, but I could tell from the view beyond it that it wouldn't really have been worthwhile anyway -- to the end of the construction zone in Cottonwood Falls, where I turned off to go to Chase Lake to see the waterfall. Chase Lake is a small reservoir, and just below the earthen dam the creek drops, oh, maybe six feet. I couldn't get to it. The dam is fenced off and the creek exits the reservoir at the farther end, so I just watched the play of sun on water for a few minutes before heading (slowly) back down the gravel road to the highway. 

Masai Mara, 2008: feel that feeling

The Flint Hills are unimpressive bulges in the landscape, mostly covered in grass and livestock, pretty enough to be comforting as background scenery but not so photogenic as to warrant stopping for pictures. I can read the comments of people who have made the stops I'd included in my itinerary, comments about how small the landscape makes one feel, and remember feeling that feeling at various places in the Great Plains (and elsewhere) over the years. I didn't feel inclined to experience it yet again. So I put the next destination into my GPS and headed off. 

 

The Buster Keaton Museum

That next destination was the Buster Keaton Museum in Piqua (pronounced "Pick-way"), Kansas. It turns out to be a tiny room in the office of Rural Water District #1, just off the highway. I drove around the tiny town two or three times before I saw the little "Buster Keaton, Silent Film Star 1895-1966" sign mounted on the side of the building. The Water District employee inside told me that in 1895, a big storm forced a passing train to stop in town unexpectedly; Mrs Keaton, a passenger on that train, chose that time to go into labour, and so Buster acquired Piqua as a point of origin. He stayed two days in the town before heading off to great fame and fortune in Hollywood, though he did come back later in life to acknowledge the little community's celebrations of him as its own claim to reflected fame. The museum contains a couple of cases of memorabilia and hundreds of 8x10 photos, movie posters, letters and newspaper clippings. I mainly found it interesting for what it says about Us, the general public, and our desire to cultivate imagined relationships with people who accomplish anything noteworthy in life. 

On the way to my next stop I finished listening to the Ron & Clint Howard book and started up a series of Great Subjects lectures on the American Revolution, bite-sized talks that covers the Big Event from the French and Indian War to, presumably, the Treaty of Paris. (I've heard 4 or 5 of the lectures so far, and am just up to the encirclement of General Gage in Boston following the Shot Heard 'Round the World.)

The next stop was in Osawatomie, Kansas, in a park at the confluence of the Osage and Pottawatomie rivers -- creeks, really, that immediately flow into the Marais des Cygnes River less than a mile away. That park was the scene of the largest single battle in the Bleeding Kansas phase of American history, when pro- and anti-slavery people flooded into the Kansas Territory ahead of a vote on whether the South's Peculiar Institution would be a part of the future state's legacy. (It was not.) John Brown, later to gain fame for an unsuccessful raid on the US Armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia before moulderin' in his grave in North Elba, New York, came as part of that influx of voters, and after the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces, he got up a bunch of anti-slavery settlers and retaliated with the Pottawatomie Massacre. Things got ugly, and confused, and so I'll leave you, reader, to your own researches on the subject. The park in Osawatomie contains the cabin of the Adair family, relatives of Brown's. He "hid out" in plain sight there for a couple of years before going on to greater acclaim or notoriety at Harpers Ferry.

John Brown

 In this (hopefully) post-Trump era of Proud Boys and anti-Constitutional insurrection, it's hard to know whether Brown should be condemned or praised for his role in provoking the Civil War. He was convicted of treason following the Harpers Ferry raid, and executed. But a part of his legacy is that slavery is gone, and the Union lives on. Those are good things. But slavery in this country was not talked to death; it only drowned in the blood of hundreds of thousands of people. And its end is not a solution to our problems as a society, only a big step along the road to the general Welfare of a more perfect Union.

Okay, end of sermon. After a short nap in the shade of a tree near the Adair Cabin (which is enclosed for preservation in a slightly larger rock building) I drove on to Kansas City, where the temperature surpassed my limit of 94 degrees and forced me to put the top up for the last fifteen or twenty minutes. I probably won't put up nightly posts while I'm in KC, but will try to do a single all-encompassing description of my time here before I leave on Monday.

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2022 KC/MI Trip, Day 2

This is Part Two of the blog post for the trip to Kansas City and Michigan. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here, for what it's worth, is a link to all the pictures from this trip.

 I know you're seething with curiosity, so I'll tell you that, Yes, I did find some good eats in Bowie: at a Tex-Mex restaurant that turned out (despite Google Map's prediction of how long it'd take to get there) to be right across the street from my hotel. Brisket enchiladas with rice and charro beans, and a salsa crema to which I added a mild salsa picante. And a really big frozen margarita that made me really glad that I only had to drive, oh, a hundred yards to get back to my room.

I'll also mention one thing I forgot from yesterday: another bust. In the town of Aurora, Texas, there was supposed to be the grave of a space alien. I found it on Roadside America. I went there. When I got there, I found a fairly large cemetery, so I looked up the listing to see if it showed where in the cemetery this space alien's grave was supposed to be. Really wish I'd read through all the comments before driving out there, because several comments mention the fact that the grave marker had been removed. Nothing to see. Well, that kind of puts the cherry on yesterday's wandering, doesn't it.

So: today. First thing, I put the top down. There were lots of clouds, but they were the light, puffy kind that held no threat of rain. I had breakfast in a restaurant next door to my hotel -- Longhorn Cafe, I want to say: excellent service, good food, good prices, very popular with the locals, who gather in large groups to discuss local concerns. Not a "Trump 2024" sign in sight. (In fact, I've yet to see that sort of sign anywhere along this trip so far. Considering how often I see it to the west of San Antonio -- like in Arizona -- that's surprising.) These people seem to have returned to norbal.

I get to my first stop, the Horton Car Museum in Nocona, just as they open at 9AM. I didn't expect to spend more than an hour there, because I knew from online information that it was "mostly Corvettes," and while Corvettes are pretty -- at least up to about 1990 -- they're not that uncommon. Okay, the earliest Vettes, from the '50s, are a rare sight, but I've seen so many, in so many museums, that I don't figure they will hold much charm for me yet again.

Turns out they're more interesting when massed like this. There are about 45 'Vettes in a single room, arranged pretty much chronologically from 1953 on. I notice that the '53 Vette is pretty sloppily put together: lines don't align, gaps are uneven, and there's one small chrome part that seems to have a piece of painted metal ripped away from some other surface adhering to it. I'm informed by the curator that it's because the 1953 models were all hand built; the 1954 models, which are identical, were built on an assembly line and the fit and finish is much better. There's a 1954 model right next to the '53, and that's obviously true.

The smallest room in the museum is given over to about 10 vehicles, almost all Chevrolets. The '58 and the '61 interest me but, again, these are cars that I see all over the country, in and out of museums. And besides, the lighting in that room and the arrangement of the cars are such that I can't get a good picture of any of them. The rest of those cars are generally uninteresting to me.

Then there's the back room: large, with dozens of cars of all sorts arranged in groups of 2 or 4, so that it's possible to see all sides of each car. And the lighting is better, too. I spent much longer in that room than in the others. Many of the cars are in that same category of almost commonplace: Mustangs and GTOs and Road Runners and Barracudas -- muscle cars -- are neat to look at, and fond memories abound (especially when I get to the 1970 Chevelle SS'es along the far wall) but they're not worth photographing yet again. I've already got those pictures.

But there are also a number of cars in that back room that I haven't seen frequently in other museums; some I've never seen before. The 1940 Lincoln Zephyr, a really funny-looking car that looks like it got stuck in an extruder. The 1951 Lincoln Cosmopolitan, a peculiarly ugly and chubby-looking luxury car. A 1931 Packard dual-cowl phaeton -- a type of car that has always fascinated me, ever since my days of playing with Matchbox cars. 

Coming out of the Horton museum after two hours, the clouds to the north and east had turned ominous, so I left the top up for a couple of hours. Looking at my itinerary, I decided to skip my next planned stop, at Turner Falls in Davis, Oklahoma, because a couple of recent reviews of the place pointed out that the $15 entry fee was pretty steep for what you got. So I plugged in the next planned stop and headed off.

After lunch -- of Arbuckle Fried Pies (one Tex-Mex, one spinach & mushroom) and a chat with an elderly couple from Kent, England, who were touring the country in a rental car -- and a couple of hours' driving (during which I gor exactly three drops of rain on my windshield, so the top came down again), I stopped for a break and, while I stretched my legs, I decided to look ahead to the other planned stops. Doing some quick mental calculations, I realized that (1) my next stop at a museum in Sapulpa, Oklahoma would be at its closing time, and (2) the the remaining stops in Oklahoma would require me to sit around waiting until 11AM tomorrow at the earliest for access. So I said to myself, Self (I said), let's just go on to Kansas. I said, You can look at your paper maps and decide where-all you want to go; get a big-picture view. That's when I realized that I'd left all my paper maps, with their carefully highlighted routes marked out from Texas to Michigan and back, sitting on top of my Windows computer back in San Antonio. AND I'd left behind my old beat-up Rand McNally Road Atlas of the USA because I didn't need it; I had those paper maps.

So I have no big-picture resource at the moment. That caused me a little difficulty this evening when I tried booking a cheap motel in El Dorado, Kansas, and found that, because I was using that tiny little cellphone screen, I'd plugged in a motel in Wichita instead. Not that far distant, but still out of my way. So I stopped at a Wendy's in whatever town I was in at the time, and called for a reservation by phone instead. 

I see a visit to the AAA office in Kansas City in my not-too-distant future, for a new set of paper maps. They won't have the routes highlighted, but at least I'll be able to change plans with greater comfort. 

I blame my wife, of course, for my having left the maps behind. I'm not saying it's her fault, just that I blame her. 

So how to explain the way I feel about today's drive? I feel something akin to joy. Yes, my plan was a near-total bust. I'll not see the car museum in Sapulpa, or the Deco architecture of Tulsa, or the Healing Stone, and I'll have to get my Superman ice cream in Michigan or somewhere like that; and I didn't see the Indians On The Hill or Bluestem Falls or Greenville Avenue. But today's drive was a joy, top-down on mostly small country roads listening to Ron and Clint Howard talk about their childhood. (Clint's voice is a little deeper than Ron's, and on my radio it's kind of hard to hear him speak. At one point I thought he said, talking of someone he worked with on a TV show, "he was accurately known as Fat Dick." I wondered how anyone would know that. Then I heard him say it again, and realized it was "Fat Jack," so presumably he was talking about the man's weight problem, not his endowment.) (I really should take some time to review the equalizer settings on my radio; maybe I'll do that in KC, now that I expect to have an extra day there.)

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2022 KC/MI Wander: Not the Best Start

 My first wander of the year! Finally! I've so been looking forward to this. The itch to hit the road and move around the country, see places and things I've never seen before, has been growing every day. I've spent enjoyable hours on line, looking for increasingly trivial things along the way, and now it's finally here! I'm all a-twitter.

I knew yesterday that the weather today would alternate between heavy clouds and rain, and so it did. The top stayed up all day, but I didn't especially mind. The rain, when there was rain, was mostly brief, and light. The only time it was at all substantial, I was indoors. So one thing went at least well enough.

I left the house about 7:30 this morning. Could have gotten away earlier, at my intended 7AM, but as the time approached, it didn't seem to matter much. I have, after all, four days allotted to get to Kansas City, so no big deal. I headed up San Pedro, opting for city streets instead of freeway until the Avenue merged with Highway 281 outside the loop. Within about twenty minutes I was past the Death Loop (1604), noticing the progress made in extending the freeway northward. They've opened about 3 or 4 more miles of it since I was last out that way. Then a few miles of construction, then back to the old one-sometimes-two-lane highway. After stopping for a convenience-store taco and a final cup of coffee, I put an audiobook on, and turned on the Navigation function of Roadtrippers, my preferred travel-planning app. The cultured British voice said, "In half a mile, take the slip road on the left." (A slip road, apparently, is an English term for a freeway entrance ramp, though why it's started calling them that in the past few months, instead of "entrance ramp," which it used to call them, I don't know. But it does make me feel just a tiny bit more sophisticated to hear it called a slip road, and know what that means.) 

That was, alas, the last I heard from her until, ten hours later, as I approached my hotel, she blurted out, "In half a mile, continue straight"; and then "In 100 yards, your destination is on the left." Really could have used that kind of direction earlier in the day (though I didn't miss any turns this time; but there was one that was kind of last-second. Luckily, the guy behind me was making the same turn and was giving me room to slow down suddenly). 

My first planned stop was just shy of Marble Falls, at a place called Dead Man's Hole.This was, apparently, a popular place to throw the dead bodies of political opponents in the 19th Century. According to the marker, the hole is more than 150 feet deep and 50 feet long, and the remains of 17 people, mostly Union sympathizers, were found in it when it was finally explored in 1951.  It is now filled in because of "dangerous gases." So not really anything to see here.

At this point I decided another taco was called for. I stopped at another convenience store (really a bathroom break, but tacos -- even convenience-store tacos -- always take top billing). As I pulled out of the parking lot to resume my trip, the red warning light came on to tell me the engine coolant was low. This had happened once before, back in March when I'd gotten my roof mechanism fixed. This car takes some special kind of coolant (naturally) that's not readily available, and has to be mixed 50/50 with distilled water. I'd looked on line and found that small amounts of regular water can be used safely. I had, of course, no coolant available, and no distilled water, so I pulled back into the convenience store and bought a bottle of purified drinking water. Then I had to wait for the reservoir cap to cool off enough to open it without it spewing all over and scalding me. Thiat took maybe ten minutes.

When I opened it, it was full. Just like last time: the fluid level was all the way up to the top. So just like last time I poured a tiny bit of water in until it slopped over the reservoir, and replaced the cap. Magically, again, the sensor is satisfied. I am not. When I get home, that's going to get looked at.

My second planned stop was even more of a bust: the World's Largest Spur, in Lampasas. I saw it from the road and decided it didn't warrant so much as a left turn and a one-minute stop for a photo. If you have some unaccountable hankering to see what the world's largest spur looks like, visit RoadsideAmerica.com. 

Continuing on down the road, I got to my next planned stop, a car museum in De Leon. According to Automotive Museum Guide, it's open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10AM to 4PM; I checked with the museum a couple of weeks ago to verify that, and learned that in fact they close for lunch from noon to 1pm. I'd gotten to town just before noon, so I took the opportunity to indulge in a little solid food myself, with a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich and sweet potato fries at the Blue Moon Cafe on Main Street. The sandwich wasn't bad; the fries were excellent. I felt like I'd made my first good choice of the day. After a relaxing meal, I moved five blocks north on Main Street to the museum ... which has changed its hours again, and now doesn't re-open from siesta until 2pm.

I only really rue the change because it was the fact that this museum isn't open on Mondays that made me start my trip today, Tuesday. Now I feel like the Terrill Automotive Museum kind of owes me.

Well. So. I decided not to wait another hour. This tiny car museum is the closest one to San Antonio, so if I ever really really really want to see it, I can come back someday.

Soon after that pointless stop, I realize that it's time for another bathroom break. I pulled into the first likely opportunity, a convenience store in whatever wide spot in the road came next. Once business was taken care of, I stood by the car thinking about how I felt. My mood had been getting darker and darker all day: the threat of rain, the idiot light, the lousy convenience-store tacos .... I had been thinking of abandoning the trip already, then decided that I had to at least go to KC to unload the stained glass in my trunk and stock up on cigarettes (Missouri's tobacco tax is only 19⍧ a pack; every other state charges at least a dollar-a-pack tax, so I prefer to buy in Missouri or on Indian reservations out west). Maybe at that point I'll bin the rest of the trip. We'll see.

And then I realize: it's the audiobook. I'd chosen Robert Reich's book from a couple of years ago, The Common Good, to listen to. He was Clinton's Secretary of Labor, and I've occasionally read some of his editorials on line. The man thinks deeply and writes well; and I've seen him on TV interview shows, and know he speaks well, too. I had hoped he could also read well. (Some authors should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to read their own works out loud.) He can, except where he tries to do imitations and accents (of Ayn Rand, and the Donald, and Alexis de Tocqueville). I had expected this book to be a long essay on the common good and why it's important to consider it; and to some extent, it is. But it is also a long litany of every major scandal, political, economic, or legal, that's taken place since Watergate. It just was too much to listen to. So I cut it off, returned it to the library, and listened to music for the next hour or so. My mood improved dramatically. Then, after my next stop, I started listening to Ron & Clint Howard's memoir of growing up as child actors. (Ron Howard, of course, was Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days; his little brother Clint was the lead actor on Gentle Ben, a show I never watched.) This is a much more upbeat accompaniment.

1936 Dodge

I made it to Weatherford in time to go through the Vintage Car Museum, a free (donations requested) car museum just off the courthouse square. It has only about twenty cars on display, about a third of which are Ford Model T's, which interest me not at all. Notable vehicles on display (they do have others, but space is limited) are a custom-built Cadillac "bus," one of a fleet built for the Broadmoor Hotel; LBJ's 1964 white Lincoln Continental convertible; and a 1939 Alvis, the lone non-American vehicle in the place. Unfortunately, all three rooms have glass walls on one side, which means almost all the cars are so harshly backlit that it's very difficult to get decent pictures. The attendant on duty was personable, and tried to be helpful, but couldn't answer any of my questions. (What was that little crank on the back of the front seat in the Dodge? What is a "pop-out ignition"? What was that gizmo on the spare-tire holder that looks like an over-engineered clamp? What's that little flipper-like knob inside the back doors, but not the front doors, of the Studebaker?) I threw a few bucks in the collection box and stepped out into the tail end of a solid rain, played with my phone for a few minutes until it stopped, then headed on.

The Bowie Knife

My last planned stop was at the World's Largest Bowie Knife in -- wait for it -- Bowie, Texas, a town which didn't exist in Jim Bowie's lifetime or for fifty years afterwards. The knife -- duly certified as the largest by the Guinness Book -- is twenty feet long and stands at the entrance to the town, by the soccer fields. It's surrounded by signboards giving bits of history about the area, mostly to do with the Chisholm Trail, but includes a description of the original Bowie knife, which, if the description is accurate, did not look like the giant example for which the town's generous citizens paid some $180,000 five or six years ago. Well, let's not quibble. It's a big knife, and it's in Bowie, so it's a Bowie Knife.

My first stop in the morning is another car museum, in Nocona, just south of the Red River. It doesn't open until 9AM tomorrow, so I checked into a cheap motel for the night and spent about an hour and a half checking over my pictures from today and writing this post. Now it's tme to go find something decent for dinner. Wish me luck.

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KCMI Trip: The Excitement Builds

 Planning a trip is almost always more fun than actually taking it. Planning costs nothing, fills time admirably, and is an infinitely flexible undertaking with no calories. There is no chance of car trouble, or flight cancellations, or weather delays, or lost reservations, or pickpockets, or unexpected charges or medical contamination. There are no impulse buys to tempt me in the planning stage.

 I always think about the trip to Portugal for the 2002 Euros: spent months thinking about it, planning it, researching air fares and hotels and figuring out what to see and do (besides the matches, of course). It was going to be a great trip. Then the dollar's exchange rate tanked and my $12,000 trip for two became more like $18,000; so we decided to stay home, drink some Madeira (which we didn't), listen to some fado music, and watch the games on TV. It was still great. 

 So: at the moment I'm planning my next Big Trip. I have three stained glass panels to deliver and install in a house in Kansas City, so I know I'll actually make this trip, at least that far. These panels took me about a year to build, so I'm not about to change my mind. And as long as I'm going as far as Kansas City, I figure I might as well wander around the country some: visit some of those counties I've never been to, and see some more of this part of the world that I think of as Home. 

 There's not really that much of it that I haven't already been to; 135 counties (in 14 states; plus Alaska, which has no counties) out of about 3,000. Consulting my maps of what remains, I decided that Michigan, with twenty counties to target, was the place to go. It suited the time available to me (limited as always by my level of tolerance for being away from home, and, in this case, the need to get ready for the next trip, an annual excursion to the Mojave desert), and it was vaguely in the same direction as Kansas City. And along the way, with only a slight bit of backtracking, I could also pass through some other, less beckoning counties, in Nebraska and Iowa. And on the way back -- if I stick to the plan -- I could visit the few remaining counties in Kentucky and Tennessee. 

 I don't usually stick to the plan. Every intersection is an opportunity to change course, so despite the detailed plans I make I seldom feel at all reluctant to discard them because some sign on the side of the road alerts me to something that I hadn't planned on, be it a giant ball of string or paint, or an oddly-designed pedestrian bridge. This is OK.

 But because there are now so few counties left to colour in on my map of Where I've Been, I find I need another meaningless concept to draw me out from Paradise South. And I've found it, in the form of automotive museums. Who knew there were so many of them around, and so nicely scattered as to justify a trip in any direction? Well, I can tell you right now that, much as I enjoy car museums, I've overloaded this trip with them: 17, at last count. So I'm pretty sure that at least some of them will be left out: put off for a later visit, or skipped altogether. (There are five of them in one commercial subdivision in western Michigan alone; I plan to visit all of them, but don't be surprised if I decide not to.)

 In addition to the dozen or so things I've identified as worth seeing or doing in Kansas City itself while I'm there -- mostly things I won't have time for; I'm only going to be there two days and three nights -- I have an itinerary of 180 waypoints spread over more than 5,200 miles. Just the leg from San Antonio to Kansas City, normally a day-and-a-half drive, I expect will take four days. A few waypoints are just points on a highway that I had to include to make the route go through a particular county; but there are also a couple of dozen additional points of interest that are "on the side" -- places I might decide to go to but am not planning on. Places that are plan-adjacent, put on my map for awareness purposes. Maybe, when I get to Tulsa, for example, I'll actually feel like spending a couple of hours in the interesting-sounding art museum, even though I'm pretty sure I'm going to spend at least that long in the art museum in Kansas City. That's just how I roll. (I'm more likely to skip the ice-cream parlour in Tulsa, because I now know that I'll be able to get Superman ice cream in Michigan.)

 In the Olde Days, I'd just pick a place on a map, call it a destination, and see what there was to see between Here and There and Back. Now, of course, there's the Internet, which makes it all so much more complicated. I have Roadtrippers to build the itinerary on, and Roadside America to alert me to the view-worthy weirdness that lies along the backroads. And Atlas Obscura. And OnlyInYourState.com. And a nearly useless site called Make My Drive Fun. (I say nearly useless because, no matter what I plug in as starting and ending points, it tends to show me routes that begin in Lisbon, Portugal, and end thousands of miles away in Russia or southeast Asia. And even when I get the route I'm looking for, the preview of the interesting points identified along the way tend to be described as a convent in Barcelona or a medieval building in Romania.) And there's AutomotiveMuseumGuide.com, and any state I go through has web sites of its own to "aid" my research. And books! I recently was given a book called USA State By State; but that turns out to be an actually useful first resource.

the best part of Condo Week

 I usually take several of these wandering trips a year. During the pandemic, I still managed a trip to Ohio, and another around East Texas, and another to Park City, Utah, and another to Los Angeles. And I may be forgetting some. That's why I take pictures. But this year I've been homebound. Early in the year I couldn't go anywhere because the top mechanism on the convertible wasn't working; once I got that fixed, I had to stay home because my wife had a trip already planned, and somebody has to stay home and look after the dog. Then I needed to get the stained glass panels finished, a task that was interrupted by our annual Condo Week, this time close by in Corpus Christi (and, of course, by my Olympian procrastination skills). Once the panels were ready to go, I had to stay home and look after the dog again because my wife had a tournament out of town. Then the weather was too hot to go anywhere. It'll still be too hot when I leave -- as I write this for later publication, I'm a little more than a week out from T-Day. But because of the timing of the annual Mojave Desert Classic, which can't be shifted, I have to be back from this trip by a certain day in September. So: August it is, and pray that the Midwest doesn't get another heat wave like the one they had earlier this summer.

 Since I'm travelling alone this time, I expect to have plenty of free time in the evenings to sort through my pictures and write blog posts. This is your warning to expect them.