Joan's 6th newsletter covering about 2-1/2 eventful weeks in September
Going to Chicago
The trip to Chicago with Meagan Finnegan finally came to fruition over Labor Day weekend. When I learned earlier this year that Cheryl & Greg's daughter had never visited Chicago even though she loves and appreciates art and architecture, I brought up the idea of this trip and it just grew. Between the two of us, Meagan and I planned a spectacular experience. Our first stop was a special exhibit on the Arts and Crafts Movement at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which emphasized the roots of the movement in England and various European countries, on up to the Roycrofters and early Frank Lloyd Wright in the U.S. We also had time for hurriedly viewing some of the permanent exhibits. I liked the "chair park," reproductions of classic antique and modern chairs that could be sat on. Examples: a circa 1650 three-legged chair, and a 1922 Frank Lloyd Wright three-legged chair (the peacock chair designed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo), the Berlin chair whose right angles and flat surfaces were inspired by Piet Mondrian's painting style, and of course an Eero Saarinen tulip chair. The new addition to the museum was in itself a gigantic work of art. The brochure says it's the first Santiago Calatrava-designed building completed in the U.S. and features a sunscreen (looks like giant bird's wings or ship sails) that can be raised or lowered to create a unique moving sculpture. Combine that with the backdrop for the museum - Lake Michigan - and it's an awesome sight. (see http://www.mam.org/)
The following day we toured the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio in Oak Park. It was thrilling to walk where he had lived and worked, and imagining what it must have been like to be one of his kids growing up with such imaginative bedrooms and a huge playroom and early educational toys. One of his sons created Lincoln Logs. Oak Park has dozens of Wright and Prairie School houses, three of them designed while Wright was working for Louis Sullivan (1888-1893) and led to either his firing or quitting depending on who tells the story. Meagan and I saw most of those houses, and Unity Temple, a Unitarian church that Wright designed and occasionally attended and through which we could wander and photograph all we wanted after an introductory lecture by an extremely knowledgeable volunteer. Oh my aching feet - but at least Oak Park is a safe, shady suburb with suitable places to stop for food (pizza of course) and ice cream.
So many things went right during this big city adventure. Downtown Chicago is an easy drive due east of Oak Park. I found a safe place to park the van indoors ($18 a night butd well worth it). The downtown hostel was the cheapest place to stay even though it cost $34 a person. We were within walking distance of most everything on our list, and there was a free jazz festival in Grant Park a few blocks away. We only went to one museum, but it was the Art Institute of Chicago - no others were necessary as the whole Loop area is an outdoor museum to lovers of architecture and public art (such as giant sculptures by Alexander Calder and Frank Stella). If you're not familiar with the term The Loop, it comes from the El (elevated railway) making a huge loop in the downtown Chicago area.
Meagan toured the Art Institute on her own while I rested my feet and checked e-mail at the Harold Washington Library built in 1991 in "behemoth eclectic" style - gigantic gargoyles on the corners of the building. When we met for lunch, she had stars in her eyes from being so close to so many works of art she had only seen in books. I knew the feeling. It always takes me a while in front of the wall-sized "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," the pointillism piece by Georges Seurat.
Other highlights of the Chicago tour were:
- a production at the Neo-Futarium Theatre by an ensemble troup who did 30 two-minute plays in random order - the audience shouted out the numbers. The price of admission was $7 plus the number on one die - we "shook" and I paid $12; Meagan got in for $10. (See www.neofuturists.org)
- walking around the Loop looking at a lot of famous tall buildings
- going into Marshall Fields to see what a good old-fashioned high class department store looked like and buying some of their famously over-priced Frango chocolates
- seeing the Buckingham Fountain operate at night all lit up
- Going to the top of the Sears Tower on our last day there, when we both could identify landmarks and where we'd been
Just two disappointments - the audience at the jazz festival talked incessently instead of listening, and the special exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry was sold out when we got there. But those were small potatoes compared with all we did and enjoyed. If anyone wants to hire Meagan and I to be your Chicago tour guides, let me know! We have to go back anyway. We forgot to shop - I mean eat - at the Hard Rock Cafe.
Catherine's Chicago Trip Story
Catherine the Grape, my red wine-colored Honda Odyssey van, had a good time too. Before the trip, she got cleaned out so my camping gear etc. wasn't tempting to big city thieves. Then at a gas station outside Racine, Wisconsin, gas spilled on her due to a faulty shut-off valve in the pump caused by too many people topping off in a panic after Katrina caused greed and escalating gas prices. Because I complained about the spill, she got a free wash. I really came out ahead there - she hadn't consumed much gas (at $3.19 per gallon) and I had planned to wash her anyway. In Chicago, she stayed in an indoor carpark on the 6th floor - very secure. I was glad Meagan's grandmother told me she was a good driver. What a great recommendation! So I had help with the freeway driving, which was about 12 hours total. And even when we got off on the wrong exit in Milwaukee and got held up in slow traffic due to construction, merging lanes, an accident up ahead and emergency vehicles needing to squeeze through, Catherine (and I) performed admirably. It was the most intense, scary driving situation I've been in so far, but I stood the test and can do anything now. In fact, I was very calm for the next test, getting lost in downtown Chicago because the GPS lost satellite reception between the tall buildings. (They even call the downtown streets "canyons.") Meagan used the map, I used my memory and we both used intuition and got outta there - okay, we drove through a parking garage to do it, but we made it!
Iowa - A Tourist Destination
To get to my next scheduled event, a bluegrass festival in southern Missouri in 10 days, I had to drive through Iowa. I found even more appealing attractions on this, my second trip through Iowa. At the big red barn which is the Iowa visitor center just south of the Minnesota/Iowa state line, I got a state parks guide and ended up at Pilot Knob State Park that night. It cost $8 with full service bathrooms and showers. The rain showers came with a vengence the next morning and I said a hurried goodbye to Dean from Michigan, whom I'd met at the sign-in post. He asked where I'd been traveling and invited me over to his campsite, then did most of the talking. At least I got to see the inside of one of those little flat-top trailers that gets cranked up at night, and learned about the superiority of marine batteries.
On that rainy morning, I headed to the Forest City for the 9 a.m. indoor tour of the Winnebago - as in RVs and motorhomes - manufacturing facility. It was my karma to make it - remember that I missed a similar tour in Indiana a while back (newsletter #5) and opted for the Amish-Mennonite museum instead. Well, this was a lot different than making horse-drawn buggies. We walked around several huge buildings on catwalks, looking down at various things happening to those homes on wheels by both men and women factory workers. The Winnebago plant lifted the residents of Forest City and surrounding areas out of a real economic slump beginning in 1958. Five people pooled their resources to open a small plant to build travel trailers. They bounced back from disaster by fire, kept expanding, emphasized craftsmanship and quality control, and are a booming enterprise today, employing about 4,000 people. I can vouch for the popularity of motorhomes first hand - at all the midwest music festivals I've been to, RVs and motorhomes are the dominant vehicle. I've been one of a handful of tenters.
Since I had unfinished business in Mason City - two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings I hadn't seen (a bank and a hotel), I headed there after the Winnebago tour and by the time I pulled into the Mason City library parking lot, the sun greeted me from a clearing sky. At the library, the temporary password I was given to log onto a computer was oinker. Well, this was Iowa. After checking e-mail, I decided to give myself a walking tour using a tourist map I had. I began right across from the library parking lot where I saw a large, grey square building that had these words etched below the eaves: "110 cornets close behind." It turned out to be the back of Music Man Square and right next to Meredith Willson's boyhood home. Sorry, all you Music Man fans, but I was less interested in the Square (reproductions of the street scene in the play) and more interested in Prairie style architecture. I found plenty of the latter, homes built in 1908 or thereabouts, even two for sale for less than $250,000 - yes, really, you unbelieving California people! Mason City may soon be livable for Californians - in the community education schedule, I saw classes for yoga, Feng Shui, and California cuisine (learn how to make shrimp and leak stir fry!). They also offer classes to help assimulate to the community: Conversational Czech, Make a Patriotic Windsock, and Canoe the Iowa River. I also stopped at the art museum, and was surprised by two rooms full of delightful old Bil Baird puppets of nursery rhyme and childrens storybook characters, including the Wizard of Oz based on the L. Frank Baum book illustrations and not the movie. Baird (1904-1987) grew up in Mason City.
After that delightful day, I camped at at McIntosh Woods State Park because it was close ($8, sparkling clean restrooms and showers), then drove back to Pilot Knob - so called because a peak, or "knob" there, was a landmark for pioneers migrating westward. The rain the day before had prevented a walk around Dead Man's Lake, and I wanted to see what a real bog looked like. This one was a four acre floating sphagnum bog and it was difficult to differentiate between the bog itself and solid ground around it, so I prudently stayed on the mossy path and peered at the water, lily pads and ducks from between the trees and shrubs growing right up to the visible water's edge.
As I was driving along Hwy. 18 heading west toward Okoboji, I saw a farm supply place with a sign that read "Stop and see an amaizing new heating system." So I made a U-turn and stopped in. The new fuel is corn. At $1.50 a bushel in Iowa, it's a very economical alternative to propane. I have brochures for fireplace inserts, free standing stoves, furnaces and boilers that burn corn, wood pellets or switch grass pellets (huh?). Maybe I should forward this information to the White House. (See http://www.countryflame.com/ and http://www.woodmaster.com/)
John and Judy Haviland were my hosts again at West Okoboji. I did them a favor by finishing up, or taking with me, the leftover veggieburgers and fake bacon left in the freezer after my son Michael's visit a few weeks earlier, and they did me a favor by providing a bed & bath, washer & dryer, and computer access - plus good company. Judy took me to two local museums. The maritime museum had lots of motorboat, fishing and Arnold amusement park artifacts and history. The second museum was a rock and roll museum. Yes, in Iowa. Remember, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed and died in Iowa in February 1959 after performing at Clear Lake. The many ballrooms and dance halls in Iowa provided venues for big bands and early rock and roll. The museum was small and had a lot of regional mementos, a display of "art guitars," and a hall of fame of Iowa performers. The art work on one of the guitars was done in corn kernels. Have you ever heard of Dee Jay and the Runaways' hit "Peter Rabbit," or the Chevelles, of the Traidmarx? Well, neither had I. See http://www.iowarocknroll.com/
A California Connection in Nebraska
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that someone I had known in California moved to the Omaha, Nebraska area a few years ago. So I e-mailed a mutual acquaintance for contact information, and it turned out that Sam had been forwarding my newsletters to Steve. When I e-mailed Steve about a visit, he didn't hesitate to invite me for dinner with his family in Bellevue, NE on Sunday, his only day off. Amy fixed fresh sweet corn on the cob (my last this year), baked potatoes and salad enough to fill me up - not even room for dessert. I met the family rabbit, saw the trampoline-performing dog (well, Steve's daughter performed and the dog went along for the ride), and heard how Steve, a Santa Cruz area native, and Amy, a Nebraskan, got a great big house and an acre of land in a quiet, bucolic suburb of Omaha for about half what they sold their California home for. They made the move to be close to Amy's family, and I'd say they landed on their feet. So far it seems the only down side is that Steve is one of only six guys who belong to the local Democratic club. But as Roger Welch, a Nebraska folklorist, told Charles Kuralt in the early 1980s, Democrats had only recently been sighted in Nebraska. Hang in there, Steve! Which reminds me, in Conway, MO, I saw this painted on a building: Send Bush back to Texas riding in a Blunt-Bond push-powered manure spreader.
Folks, it's interludes such as the visit with Steve and his family, like spirits in a strange land, that keep me from feeling lonely on the road. Thanks to such modern inventions as e-mail and cell phones - when I am in a Sprint area at least - I can keep in touch with family and friends. I just have to remember waht time zone I'm in. So I can honestly say I haven't felt pangs of homesickness yet - even when I'm in states such as Missouri or Kentucky where I'm the one with the accent.
Two Macabre Museums in St. Joseph, MO
Even though I hadn't liked St. Joseph, MO in early July (newsletter #4), I decided to give it another try because I really wanted to see something about Jesse James. I had heard the song so often, about "the dirty little coward who shot Mister Howard has laid poor Jesse in his grave." So I set the GPS on the house museum address and finally saw the place where the dirty deed was done. If you don't know (shame on you), Jesse, his wife and two children were living in St. Joe in 1882 under the name of Thomas Howard. A $10,000 reward was posted - apparently dead or alive, because one of Jesse's own gang members shot him as he stood on a chair straightening a picture on the parlor wall. The bullet hole is really there (enlarged because souvenir hunters kept chipping away at it until curators covered it with plexiglas). In 1995, Jesse's remains were exhumed to run DNA tests to verify authenticity - apparently people kept seeing him around after the shooting. The results showed a 99.7% certainty that it was really Jesse. The museum includes a cast of his skull, showing the sawcut where the original autopsy had been performed, and a bright red foam plug where the bullet had entered his head below his right ear.
Well, after that grizzly but quite interesting display, I figured I could handle another rather unique museum in St. Joe - the Glore Psychiatric Museum. The advertising said "You might pay particular attention to the Fears, Phobias, and Anxieties Disorders Exhibit, the Stomach Contents Display, and the 17th to 19th Century Treatment Replicas Exhibit." Besides, the Psychiatric Museum was in the same building as the St. Joe history museum and the black history museum in case the treatment replicas got to be too much for me. Also, the only other attraction in St. Joe that interested me (until I found the Starbuck's and got a strong iced coffee fix) was the Sally Rand Museum. However, I had missed the one day a month that it was open. Apparently the viewing of Sally Rand's memorabilia was as brief as the viewing of her supposedly nude body behind the ostrich feather fans.
The psychiatric museum was a little bizzare - well, okay, some of the exhibits were very bizarre, especially the stomach contents display. A patient had swallowed 1,446 nails, pins, buttons, salt shaker tops, etc., and they were displayed like an arrowhead collection. She died not from swallowing all that stuff, but from the surgery done to remove (and count) them all.
I still had time to kill before a bluegrass festival that began on Thursday, so I went to the library at Lebanon to check my e-mail and found a Route 66 gift shop and a whole room full of National Geographics on display. Who doesn't have stacks of these venerable old magazines somewhere? Apparently not too many Lebanonese, but now they can do research in them in a special room that is probably climate-controlled as this is very humid country.
I had to pay $2 to use a computer here, but I got two hours of use - time enough to e-mail son Michael and get a reply. The next day I returned to visit the free Route 66 Museum, do research there on the National Road (see newsletter #5), and eat at the authentic reproduction Route 66 Cafe, all part of this library. Old Route 66 goes through Lebanon, and one of the original motels, the Munger-Moss, is on the outskirts of town. I have been on portions of old Route 66 in 6 of the 8 states this year, and I expect to add Arizona on my trip back home in November. I'm only missing Kansas, where it goes briefly through the southeast corner. Well, I've got to leave something to strive for next year.
Trying to Volunteer for Katrina
Volunteering somehow to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina kept percolating in the back of my mind, so I used John Haviland's computer in Okoboji, IA to research what I could do. What I found out boiled down to: Don't go there on your own. Link up with an agency. Send money. Well, I had more time than money, so I chose the Red Cross and Convoy of Hope and checked at the offices for both when I got to Springfield, MO on Sept. 14. Convoy of Hope only wanted teams of people, and the Red Cross required an orientation - to be held on Friday, Sept. 16 (when I had a commitment at a music festival) or on Nov. 17. Well, it wasn't very practical for me to hang around just for that so I gave up. Maybe something will come up in the future.
Starvy Creek
My commitment at the Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival (Sept. 15-17) was to meet up with Lynn Morris and Marshall Wilborn of the Lynn Morris Band to help at their CD booth. I had known Lynn slightly in Denver through the Folklore Center, and she shopped occasionally at our antique/collectibles store. Two years ago she had a stroke after knee surgery and lost her ability to speak, and I hadn't heard how she was doing since. So when I saw her on the program for Starvy Creek, I Googled her and made contact offering to help, and they took me up on my offer. I am so glad I thought to do that as Lynn has a lot of trouble talking to people. Her singing voice is as strong and clear as ever, but she has to read the words to the songs, and also is relearning how to play guitar and banjo. We're talking about a Winfield, KS banjo contest winner and an IBMA female vocalist of the year no longer able to sing from memory songs she wrote. Marshall says she's come a long way, and Don Day, the festival promoter, wants to book them again in two years. This was her second gig since the stroke. Their CDs and instructional videos (learn how to play banjo and bass) can be ordered through http://www.lynnmorrisband.com/
I also met up with Jack and Verla Dean Garner at Starvy, and they invited me to dinner in their RV twice. They're the folks I visited in Independence, KS in late July; what we have in common is that their daughter Wanda was my boss at Cabrillo College the past 3-1/2 years, and that we all like bluegrass music (well, not Wanda). Bluegrass people are definitely the friendliest folks I've met.
The Plaza Motel
After the festival, I looked for a motel in nearby Marshfield, MO. Marshfield has two motels - a Holiday Inn Express and the Plaza Motel. The Holiday Inn cost $71 with tax, but it offered continental breakfast. The Plaza cost $33 with tax and without breakfast, not even coffee, "but the restaurant next door opens at 6 a.m." Needless to say, I was not their first customer, but I did eat there later and could have had biscuits & gravy & grits if I had the hankering for them.
The Plaza is worth writing about because of the decor. The sheets and pillowcases were striped - when have you ever seen anything but white sheets in a motel? The towels and washclothes were mix and match colors and that degree of softness made possible after many washings. The Plaza may not have provided coffee, but it had a 50 cent soda machine, a decent shower, a phone so I could catch up on phone calls, electricity to recharge my toothbrush, and a fly swatter on a nail by the door - just in case.
What's Next
I am finishing this on October 10 in Knoxville, TN on my way to the Great Smoky Mountains. Since I left the Plaza Motel, I've visited Mitch and Diana Jayne in Eminence, MO, spent nearly two weeks in Kentucky, went to a bluegrass music festival at Bill Monroe's old home place, and spent one day at another festival at the Museum of Appalachia in Tennessee. You'll get details in the next newsletter estimated to come out in early November from the home of friends in Tucson. I also hope to get the "music only" newsletter done there, after seeing one last festival in Rio Grande, Ohio October 14-16.
The trip to Chicago with Meagan Finnegan finally came to fruition over Labor Day weekend. When I learned earlier this year that Cheryl & Greg's daughter had never visited Chicago even though she loves and appreciates art and architecture, I brought up the idea of this trip and it just grew. Between the two of us, Meagan and I planned a spectacular experience. Our first stop was a special exhibit on the Arts and Crafts Movement at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which emphasized the roots of the movement in England and various European countries, on up to the Roycrofters and early Frank Lloyd Wright in the U.S. We also had time for hurriedly viewing some of the permanent exhibits. I liked the "chair park," reproductions of classic antique and modern chairs that could be sat on. Examples: a circa 1650 three-legged chair, and a 1922 Frank Lloyd Wright three-legged chair (the peacock chair designed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo), the Berlin chair whose right angles and flat surfaces were inspired by Piet Mondrian's painting style, and of course an Eero Saarinen tulip chair. The new addition to the museum was in itself a gigantic work of art. The brochure says it's the first Santiago Calatrava-designed building completed in the U.S. and features a sunscreen (looks like giant bird's wings or ship sails) that can be raised or lowered to create a unique moving sculpture. Combine that with the backdrop for the museum - Lake Michigan - and it's an awesome sight. (see http://www.mam.org/)
The following day we toured the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio in Oak Park. It was thrilling to walk where he had lived and worked, and imagining what it must have been like to be one of his kids growing up with such imaginative bedrooms and a huge playroom and early educational toys. One of his sons created Lincoln Logs. Oak Park has dozens of Wright and Prairie School houses, three of them designed while Wright was working for Louis Sullivan (1888-1893) and led to either his firing or quitting depending on who tells the story. Meagan and I saw most of those houses, and Unity Temple, a Unitarian church that Wright designed and occasionally attended and through which we could wander and photograph all we wanted after an introductory lecture by an extremely knowledgeable volunteer. Oh my aching feet - but at least Oak Park is a safe, shady suburb with suitable places to stop for food (pizza of course) and ice cream.
So many things went right during this big city adventure. Downtown Chicago is an easy drive due east of Oak Park. I found a safe place to park the van indoors ($18 a night butd well worth it). The downtown hostel was the cheapest place to stay even though it cost $34 a person. We were within walking distance of most everything on our list, and there was a free jazz festival in Grant Park a few blocks away. We only went to one museum, but it was the Art Institute of Chicago - no others were necessary as the whole Loop area is an outdoor museum to lovers of architecture and public art (such as giant sculptures by Alexander Calder and Frank Stella). If you're not familiar with the term The Loop, it comes from the El (elevated railway) making a huge loop in the downtown Chicago area.
Meagan toured the Art Institute on her own while I rested my feet and checked e-mail at the Harold Washington Library built in 1991 in "behemoth eclectic" style - gigantic gargoyles on the corners of the building. When we met for lunch, she had stars in her eyes from being so close to so many works of art she had only seen in books. I knew the feeling. It always takes me a while in front of the wall-sized "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," the pointillism piece by Georges Seurat.
Other highlights of the Chicago tour were:
- a production at the Neo-Futarium Theatre by an ensemble troup who did 30 two-minute plays in random order - the audience shouted out the numbers. The price of admission was $7 plus the number on one die - we "shook" and I paid $12; Meagan got in for $10. (See www.neofuturists.org)
- walking around the Loop looking at a lot of famous tall buildings
- going into Marshall Fields to see what a good old-fashioned high class department store looked like and buying some of their famously over-priced Frango chocolates
- seeing the Buckingham Fountain operate at night all lit up
- Going to the top of the Sears Tower on our last day there, when we both could identify landmarks and where we'd been
Just two disappointments - the audience at the jazz festival talked incessently instead of listening, and the special exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry was sold out when we got there. But those were small potatoes compared with all we did and enjoyed. If anyone wants to hire Meagan and I to be your Chicago tour guides, let me know! We have to go back anyway. We forgot to shop - I mean eat - at the Hard Rock Cafe.
Catherine's Chicago Trip Story
Catherine the Grape, my red wine-colored Honda Odyssey van, had a good time too. Before the trip, she got cleaned out so my camping gear etc. wasn't tempting to big city thieves. Then at a gas station outside Racine, Wisconsin, gas spilled on her due to a faulty shut-off valve in the pump caused by too many people topping off in a panic after Katrina caused greed and escalating gas prices. Because I complained about the spill, she got a free wash. I really came out ahead there - she hadn't consumed much gas (at $3.19 per gallon) and I had planned to wash her anyway. In Chicago, she stayed in an indoor carpark on the 6th floor - very secure. I was glad Meagan's grandmother told me she was a good driver. What a great recommendation! So I had help with the freeway driving, which was about 12 hours total. And even when we got off on the wrong exit in Milwaukee and got held up in slow traffic due to construction, merging lanes, an accident up ahead and emergency vehicles needing to squeeze through, Catherine (and I) performed admirably. It was the most intense, scary driving situation I've been in so far, but I stood the test and can do anything now. In fact, I was very calm for the next test, getting lost in downtown Chicago because the GPS lost satellite reception between the tall buildings. (They even call the downtown streets "canyons.") Meagan used the map, I used my memory and we both used intuition and got outta there - okay, we drove through a parking garage to do it, but we made it!
Iowa - A Tourist Destination
To get to my next scheduled event, a bluegrass festival in southern Missouri in 10 days, I had to drive through Iowa. I found even more appealing attractions on this, my second trip through Iowa. At the big red barn which is the Iowa visitor center just south of the Minnesota/Iowa state line, I got a state parks guide and ended up at Pilot Knob State Park that night. It cost $8 with full service bathrooms and showers. The rain showers came with a vengence the next morning and I said a hurried goodbye to Dean from Michigan, whom I'd met at the sign-in post. He asked where I'd been traveling and invited me over to his campsite, then did most of the talking. At least I got to see the inside of one of those little flat-top trailers that gets cranked up at night, and learned about the superiority of marine batteries.
On that rainy morning, I headed to the Forest City for the 9 a.m. indoor tour of the Winnebago - as in RVs and motorhomes - manufacturing facility. It was my karma to make it - remember that I missed a similar tour in Indiana a while back (newsletter #5) and opted for the Amish-Mennonite museum instead. Well, this was a lot different than making horse-drawn buggies. We walked around several huge buildings on catwalks, looking down at various things happening to those homes on wheels by both men and women factory workers. The Winnebago plant lifted the residents of Forest City and surrounding areas out of a real economic slump beginning in 1958. Five people pooled their resources to open a small plant to build travel trailers. They bounced back from disaster by fire, kept expanding, emphasized craftsmanship and quality control, and are a booming enterprise today, employing about 4,000 people. I can vouch for the popularity of motorhomes first hand - at all the midwest music festivals I've been to, RVs and motorhomes are the dominant vehicle. I've been one of a handful of tenters.
Since I had unfinished business in Mason City - two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings I hadn't seen (a bank and a hotel), I headed there after the Winnebago tour and by the time I pulled into the Mason City library parking lot, the sun greeted me from a clearing sky. At the library, the temporary password I was given to log onto a computer was oinker. Well, this was Iowa. After checking e-mail, I decided to give myself a walking tour using a tourist map I had. I began right across from the library parking lot where I saw a large, grey square building that had these words etched below the eaves: "110 cornets close behind." It turned out to be the back of Music Man Square and right next to Meredith Willson's boyhood home. Sorry, all you Music Man fans, but I was less interested in the Square (reproductions of the street scene in the play) and more interested in Prairie style architecture. I found plenty of the latter, homes built in 1908 or thereabouts, even two for sale for less than $250,000 - yes, really, you unbelieving California people! Mason City may soon be livable for Californians - in the community education schedule, I saw classes for yoga, Feng Shui, and California cuisine (learn how to make shrimp and leak stir fry!). They also offer classes to help assimulate to the community: Conversational Czech, Make a Patriotic Windsock, and Canoe the Iowa River. I also stopped at the art museum, and was surprised by two rooms full of delightful old Bil Baird puppets of nursery rhyme and childrens storybook characters, including the Wizard of Oz based on the L. Frank Baum book illustrations and not the movie. Baird (1904-1987) grew up in Mason City.
After that delightful day, I camped at at McIntosh Woods State Park because it was close ($8, sparkling clean restrooms and showers), then drove back to Pilot Knob - so called because a peak, or "knob" there, was a landmark for pioneers migrating westward. The rain the day before had prevented a walk around Dead Man's Lake, and I wanted to see what a real bog looked like. This one was a four acre floating sphagnum bog and it was difficult to differentiate between the bog itself and solid ground around it, so I prudently stayed on the mossy path and peered at the water, lily pads and ducks from between the trees and shrubs growing right up to the visible water's edge.
As I was driving along Hwy. 18 heading west toward Okoboji, I saw a farm supply place with a sign that read "Stop and see an amaizing new heating system." So I made a U-turn and stopped in. The new fuel is corn. At $1.50 a bushel in Iowa, it's a very economical alternative to propane. I have brochures for fireplace inserts, free standing stoves, furnaces and boilers that burn corn, wood pellets or switch grass pellets (huh?). Maybe I should forward this information to the White House. (See http://www.countryflame.com/ and http://www.woodmaster.com/)
John and Judy Haviland were my hosts again at West Okoboji. I did them a favor by finishing up, or taking with me, the leftover veggieburgers and fake bacon left in the freezer after my son Michael's visit a few weeks earlier, and they did me a favor by providing a bed & bath, washer & dryer, and computer access - plus good company. Judy took me to two local museums. The maritime museum had lots of motorboat, fishing and Arnold amusement park artifacts and history. The second museum was a rock and roll museum. Yes, in Iowa. Remember, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper crashed and died in Iowa in February 1959 after performing at Clear Lake. The many ballrooms and dance halls in Iowa provided venues for big bands and early rock and roll. The museum was small and had a lot of regional mementos, a display of "art guitars," and a hall of fame of Iowa performers. The art work on one of the guitars was done in corn kernels. Have you ever heard of Dee Jay and the Runaways' hit "Peter Rabbit," or the Chevelles, of the Traidmarx? Well, neither had I. See http://www.iowarocknroll.com/
A California Connection in Nebraska
Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that someone I had known in California moved to the Omaha, Nebraska area a few years ago. So I e-mailed a mutual acquaintance for contact information, and it turned out that Sam had been forwarding my newsletters to Steve. When I e-mailed Steve about a visit, he didn't hesitate to invite me for dinner with his family in Bellevue, NE on Sunday, his only day off. Amy fixed fresh sweet corn on the cob (my last this year), baked potatoes and salad enough to fill me up - not even room for dessert. I met the family rabbit, saw the trampoline-performing dog (well, Steve's daughter performed and the dog went along for the ride), and heard how Steve, a Santa Cruz area native, and Amy, a Nebraskan, got a great big house and an acre of land in a quiet, bucolic suburb of Omaha for about half what they sold their California home for. They made the move to be close to Amy's family, and I'd say they landed on their feet. So far it seems the only down side is that Steve is one of only six guys who belong to the local Democratic club. But as Roger Welch, a Nebraska folklorist, told Charles Kuralt in the early 1980s, Democrats had only recently been sighted in Nebraska. Hang in there, Steve! Which reminds me, in Conway, MO, I saw this painted on a building: Send Bush back to Texas riding in a Blunt-Bond push-powered manure spreader.
Folks, it's interludes such as the visit with Steve and his family, like spirits in a strange land, that keep me from feeling lonely on the road. Thanks to such modern inventions as e-mail and cell phones - when I am in a Sprint area at least - I can keep in touch with family and friends. I just have to remember waht time zone I'm in. So I can honestly say I haven't felt pangs of homesickness yet - even when I'm in states such as Missouri or Kentucky where I'm the one with the accent.
Two Macabre Museums in St. Joseph, MO
Even though I hadn't liked St. Joseph, MO in early July (newsletter #4), I decided to give it another try because I really wanted to see something about Jesse James. I had heard the song so often, about "the dirty little coward who shot Mister Howard has laid poor Jesse in his grave." So I set the GPS on the house museum address and finally saw the place where the dirty deed was done. If you don't know (shame on you), Jesse, his wife and two children were living in St. Joe in 1882 under the name of Thomas Howard. A $10,000 reward was posted - apparently dead or alive, because one of Jesse's own gang members shot him as he stood on a chair straightening a picture on the parlor wall. The bullet hole is really there (enlarged because souvenir hunters kept chipping away at it until curators covered it with plexiglas). In 1995, Jesse's remains were exhumed to run DNA tests to verify authenticity - apparently people kept seeing him around after the shooting. The results showed a 99.7% certainty that it was really Jesse. The museum includes a cast of his skull, showing the sawcut where the original autopsy had been performed, and a bright red foam plug where the bullet had entered his head below his right ear.
Well, after that grizzly but quite interesting display, I figured I could handle another rather unique museum in St. Joe - the Glore Psychiatric Museum. The advertising said "You might pay particular attention to the Fears, Phobias, and Anxieties Disorders Exhibit, the Stomach Contents Display, and the 17th to 19th Century Treatment Replicas Exhibit." Besides, the Psychiatric Museum was in the same building as the St. Joe history museum and the black history museum in case the treatment replicas got to be too much for me. Also, the only other attraction in St. Joe that interested me (until I found the Starbuck's and got a strong iced coffee fix) was the Sally Rand Museum. However, I had missed the one day a month that it was open. Apparently the viewing of Sally Rand's memorabilia was as brief as the viewing of her supposedly nude body behind the ostrich feather fans.
The psychiatric museum was a little bizzare - well, okay, some of the exhibits were very bizarre, especially the stomach contents display. A patient had swallowed 1,446 nails, pins, buttons, salt shaker tops, etc., and they were displayed like an arrowhead collection. She died not from swallowing all that stuff, but from the surgery done to remove (and count) them all.
I still had time to kill before a bluegrass festival that began on Thursday, so I went to the library at Lebanon to check my e-mail and found a Route 66 gift shop and a whole room full of National Geographics on display. Who doesn't have stacks of these venerable old magazines somewhere? Apparently not too many Lebanonese, but now they can do research in them in a special room that is probably climate-controlled as this is very humid country.
I had to pay $2 to use a computer here, but I got two hours of use - time enough to e-mail son Michael and get a reply. The next day I returned to visit the free Route 66 Museum, do research there on the National Road (see newsletter #5), and eat at the authentic reproduction Route 66 Cafe, all part of this library. Old Route 66 goes through Lebanon, and one of the original motels, the Munger-Moss, is on the outskirts of town. I have been on portions of old Route 66 in 6 of the 8 states this year, and I expect to add Arizona on my trip back home in November. I'm only missing Kansas, where it goes briefly through the southeast corner. Well, I've got to leave something to strive for next year.
Trying to Volunteer for Katrina
Volunteering somehow to help those affected by Hurricane Katrina kept percolating in the back of my mind, so I used John Haviland's computer in Okoboji, IA to research what I could do. What I found out boiled down to: Don't go there on your own. Link up with an agency. Send money. Well, I had more time than money, so I chose the Red Cross and Convoy of Hope and checked at the offices for both when I got to Springfield, MO on Sept. 14. Convoy of Hope only wanted teams of people, and the Red Cross required an orientation - to be held on Friday, Sept. 16 (when I had a commitment at a music festival) or on Nov. 17. Well, it wasn't very practical for me to hang around just for that so I gave up. Maybe something will come up in the future.
Starvy Creek
My commitment at the Starvy Creek Bluegrass Festival (Sept. 15-17) was to meet up with Lynn Morris and Marshall Wilborn of the Lynn Morris Band to help at their CD booth. I had known Lynn slightly in Denver through the Folklore Center, and she shopped occasionally at our antique/collectibles store. Two years ago she had a stroke after knee surgery and lost her ability to speak, and I hadn't heard how she was doing since. So when I saw her on the program for Starvy Creek, I Googled her and made contact offering to help, and they took me up on my offer. I am so glad I thought to do that as Lynn has a lot of trouble talking to people. Her singing voice is as strong and clear as ever, but she has to read the words to the songs, and also is relearning how to play guitar and banjo. We're talking about a Winfield, KS banjo contest winner and an IBMA female vocalist of the year no longer able to sing from memory songs she wrote. Marshall says she's come a long way, and Don Day, the festival promoter, wants to book them again in two years. This was her second gig since the stroke. Their CDs and instructional videos (learn how to play banjo and bass) can be ordered through http://www.lynnmorrisband.com/
I also met up with Jack and Verla Dean Garner at Starvy, and they invited me to dinner in their RV twice. They're the folks I visited in Independence, KS in late July; what we have in common is that their daughter Wanda was my boss at Cabrillo College the past 3-1/2 years, and that we all like bluegrass music (well, not Wanda). Bluegrass people are definitely the friendliest folks I've met.
The Plaza Motel
After the festival, I looked for a motel in nearby Marshfield, MO. Marshfield has two motels - a Holiday Inn Express and the Plaza Motel. The Holiday Inn cost $71 with tax, but it offered continental breakfast. The Plaza cost $33 with tax and without breakfast, not even coffee, "but the restaurant next door opens at 6 a.m." Needless to say, I was not their first customer, but I did eat there later and could have had biscuits & gravy & grits if I had the hankering for them.
The Plaza is worth writing about because of the decor. The sheets and pillowcases were striped - when have you ever seen anything but white sheets in a motel? The towels and washclothes were mix and match colors and that degree of softness made possible after many washings. The Plaza may not have provided coffee, but it had a 50 cent soda machine, a decent shower, a phone so I could catch up on phone calls, electricity to recharge my toothbrush, and a fly swatter on a nail by the door - just in case.
What's Next
I am finishing this on October 10 in Knoxville, TN on my way to the Great Smoky Mountains. Since I left the Plaza Motel, I've visited Mitch and Diana Jayne in Eminence, MO, spent nearly two weeks in Kentucky, went to a bluegrass music festival at Bill Monroe's old home place, and spent one day at another festival at the Museum of Appalachia in Tennessee. You'll get details in the next newsletter estimated to come out in early November from the home of friends in Tucson. I also hope to get the "music only" newsletter done there, after seeing one last festival in Rio Grande, Ohio October 14-16.
posted by Joan McCarthy at 10:49 PM
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