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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