Note that “Southernmost Point of the Continental USA” is marked “temporarily closed.” That wasn’t going to deter me from a look if possible, so we headed down Whitehead St. from the Hemingway House. About a block from the site – a painted concrete buoy-shaped structure; I’d seen pictures – the area was closed and torn up for construction, and sure enough, the Southernmost Point was inaccessible.
A little construction wasn’t going to prevent Key West from allowing the Southernmost Point to serve its only purpose, however. That is, attract tourists. So with a little lateral thinking, and in this case literally so, the city installed a duplicate buoy a block away on the coast, at the Gulf of Mexico end of Duval.
It draws a crowd.
Give the people what they want: an inaccurate but fun geographical marker. In fact, there was a line to take one’s picture with the buoy, as the many visitors to Key West have been doing since 1983.
This iteration of the buoy finds itself in a high-toned neighborhood.
I understand that a later paint job added “90 miles to Cuba” on the buoy. As the crow flies or the Mariel boatlift lifts. A nod to the island with long-standing ties to Key West, especially in the days of Cuban cigars, cigar factories in the town, and Cuban organizations, such as San Carlos, which happens to stand even now on Duval, a few blocks — short island blocks — from the Southernmost Point.
Former school for the Cuban population, along with a stint as a Cuban consulate, and longstanding meeting place for those keen on kicking Spain out of Cuba during the heady 1890s. These days, the island-handsome building is a museum, free to wander around, with (in our case) a spontaneous five-minute introduction on the spot by the volunteer, a woman roughly my vintage, who sat behind a temporary table near the entrance.
Jose Marti is remembered in various spots in the museum.
As well he should be. He spent some time in Key West, gave speeches, and brought the cigar workers around to the cause. San Carlos was the place to do so in town, which happened to be a hotbed of anti-Spanish feeling – San Carlos and the town itself. Nice museum, but almost no one from busy Duval was there. Maybe the nonprofit that owns the building can set up a bar and serve overpriced Cuba libres to cruise ship visitors.
Regards for the New Year. Back to posting four days into 2026, maybe with tales of Florida alligator tourism. The change of the year always brings me the same reaction: how did that number get so high? This time around, I wonder how is it that 1976, a good (mostly) year I remember fairly well for a number of reasons, was 50 years ago?
Orlando, Yuriko was surprised to learn, is an actual city. The day after Universal Epic Universe, we drove from our hotel near that park, past Orlando’s sizable downtown, and to the inner suburb of Winter Park. She marveled that the city had a presence besides the sprawl of the theme parks, which are at some distance from the Orlando CBD. Bet she isn’t the only person, upon leaving the theme park zone, with that reaction.
One could devise a pretty good multi-day visit to Orlando, to see its green spaces and historic sites and museums, and take in a few shops and restaurants and some live music, and never pay the Mouse or Comcast a dime. Maybe one day I will do such a visit, but the pull of the theme parks is pervasive. Even my businesses trips of yore (early 2000s) to central Florida tended to gravitate toward the parks. Why would you skip the theme parks? would be the reaction, even — and most importantly — among members of my family. For now, part of a day away from the Theme Park Industrial Complex will have to do.
I’d gotten wind of a tour boat ride on Winter Park’s small lakes that (1) wasn’t expensive and only about a hour long; (2) didn’t require reservations or a damned app or the like to access; and (3) most importantly, was something we could do sitting down, after a day of walking and more walking.
We made it for the noon tour. December 10 was as warm and clear a day in Winter Park as you could ask for, a reminder of why a couple of Victorian businessmen were able to found a town in central Florida and attract wealthy property buyers who aspired to escape the frozen North for a few months.
Our skipper for the tour.
Skipper Bob, let’s call him. He took us from the tour-boat dock on Lake Osceola through a couple of canals to Lake Mizell and Lake Virginia and then back, pointing out some of the posher estates and landmarks along the way, such as the posh boat houses that tend to come with such properties.
Bob also offered up some detail about the history of the area, most of it unfamiliar. I didn’t know, for example, that Fred Rogers was an alumnus of Rollins College, which occupies a sizable chunk of the Lake Virginia shore. I also learned that the college, even in our age of grossly inflated higher-ed tuition, outclasses most others in its high cost.
Out on the lakes, Bob revved up the engine from time to time, spurring the boat forward at a good clip. Wind famously blows long hair into a pleasantly billowing mass at such times, but under the warm sun and blue sky that day, even my shortish hair was picked up by the wind. Felt good.
I liked the passages through the canals. I don’t think I was alone in this.
In most of the rest of the country, winter had arrived. In Winter Park, named for the season it is most unlike, you can pass through the tightly packed greenery luxuriating in warm air.
You’re up close to the yards of more modest, but still high-value real estate. Everyone’s got a dock.
The vantage means views of the canopy above.
After the boat tour, we walked a few pleasant blocks along Morse Blvd., away from the lake. This handsome church, First United Methodist, didn’t look open. Too bad.
The city is fond of its peafowl, I understand.
The downtown shopping street in Winter Park is Park Ave. On one side of the street are the likes of Bosphorous Turkish Cuisine, Williams-Sonoma, Ocean Blue Galleries, D’Anne Mica, Fannie Hillman + Associates real estate, Current by John Craig men’s clothing, The Imperial on Park wine bar and Be On Park Fine Jewelry. Life Is Good (registered trademark) products are available on the street.
Across the street from the shops is Central Park. The developers were out, I think, to remind New Yorkers of home, but without the likelihood of snow or ice or blizzards like in ’88.
The Winter Park station on the SunRail commuter line is at the park, and a SunRail came while I was idling in the park. Amtrak stops there too.
The park was decorated for the holidays, of course. Including a phone booth.
A local tradition. You can call from the booth and leave a message for Santa Claus.
I have to admit it, we bought gas at Buc-ee’s more than once on our trip to Florida. Turns out that the chain’s gas prices are comparable with Costco. That is, 20 to 30 cents cheaper per gallon than most standard gas stations. Costco tends to be on main thoroughfares in densely populated places, which is sometimes convenient, sometimes not. Buc-ee’s is the flip of that, tending to be on major highways at some distance from densely populated places. Sometimes convenient, sometimes not.
We gassed up at the Smiths Grove, Kentucky Buc-ee’s just off I-65 on December 5, early in our trip. We had to make a decision on how to proceed from there. One choice: continue on I-65 to Nashville, take I-40 east from there roughly to Cookeville, Tennessee, and take smaller roads into Jackson County, to reach our friends’ home in the holler. Or: take smaller roads across southern Kentucky and into Tennessee, bypassing metro Nashville and going through towns and hamlets and farmland and woods we’d never seen before, ultimately connecting to the appropriate small roads in Jackson County. It isn’t too hard to guess what we did.
Kentucky 101
It so happened that exiting from Buc-ee’s in Smiths Grove takes you to Kentucky 101, a two-lane highway that can either take you back to I-65 or south through Warren and Allen counties. Coming from the crowds of Buc-ee’s, people and cars, the contrast of heading south on Kentucky 101 is clear.
As of now, at least, Bro. Tim Meador is the Allen County Jailer, so I assume he won the most recent election.
I know that’s a county job that probably involves a fair amount of paperwork. Still, I picture the Jailer as an official who, like in a movie, puts offenders in the jug himself, turning a skeleton key (one of a few jangling on a big ring) to lock the cell.
Scottsville, Kentucky
The main traffic hub of Scottsville (pop. 4,300), the seat of Allen County, is the junction of Kentucky 101 and 98, known as Main and Court streets locally. Instead of a county courthouse, the hub is in the form of a square with businesses around it and a lot of traffic passing through. More than I would have guessed.
It was lunchtime. I can report that Thai Orchid is as good as you might find in a larger town. In our time, Thai has pretty much joined the tapestry of American cuisine as thoroughly as Chinese or Mexican food did in previous generations.
The main public library is near the square, sporting a local Wall of Fame.
The names include Lattie Moore, who sang, “I’m Not Broke but I’m Badly Bent,” a song with pretty much the same theme as Al Dexter’s “Wine, Women and Song.”
I won’t look all the names up, but the Scottsville Wall of Fame also includes Johnny Green, pioneer aviator, who did the first commercial flights between Florida and Cuba, apparently.
Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee
We drove on Kentucky 98 east to the near-border town of Gamaliel, pop. 391, still on the Kentucky side of the line. A lesser-known Biblical name, but I also can’t help thinking of the G. in Warren G. Harding.
South from there, Kentucky 63 turns into Tennessee 56 after a few miles. There’s no sign marking the border, just one announcing the Tennessee highway number. Pretty casual for a line that might have been an international border, had the secessionists had their way (unless, of course, Kentucky left the old US).
Besides a cool name, Red Boiling Springs (pop. 1,205), Tennessee, has a history. As the name suggests, people took the waters there.
“As recently as 1920, Red Boiling Springs had about a dozen places in which visitors could stay,” The Tennessee Magazinereported a few years ago. “The largest was the Palace Hotel, which had 180 rooms. Over the next several generations, business declined… and… a 1969 flood destroyed large parts of the town. However, three of the Red Boiling Springs resort hotels are still open. They were in (nearly) continuous operation throughout the 20th century and still reflect more of the lifestyle of the late 19th century than they do the 21st.”
Make that two hotels. One of those mentioned in the article, the Donoho, burned down in November.
The gray, chilly day somehow fit the scene of a wrecked historic hotel.
Damned shame. I can’t leave it at that. Soon after passing through Red Boiling Springs, we arrived at our destination in eastern Middle Tennessee. The next day, we enjoyed a Tennessee hootenanny.
Our hosts, Dave and Margaret, on guitar and drums.
At least a foot of snow covers the ground outside, so it’s good to be inside. Winter has fully returned, but at least the early part, when the holidays are yet to come, and not the post-New Year grind of January or the interminable days of February, the alleged shortest month.
Thanksgiving was low key. I expect that’s actually true for most people, however many anecdotes there are about fractious Thanksgivings. Low key doesn’t get into sitcoms or in real or made-up tales on a Thanksgivingishell subreddit.
Back to posting after Christmas, maybe the first Sunday after. Got a lot to do before then.
One more note about Kansas City in September. Besides the World War I Museum and Memorial, there was one more place I wanted to be during my visit: Arthur Byrant’s, for the barbecue I remembered so fondly from the late 1990s. Good ‘cue has sustained AB long after the pitmaster of that name died in 1982.
I’d go again.
After I left KC, I headed not too far northeast to the Jesse James Birthplace Museum.
The birthplace museum, like the house, isn’t a large place, but it does convey some of the life and times of the famed outlaw, with some good artifacts and reading. Posters, too. I hadn’t realized that Jesse James was a character in the very last Three Stooges theatrical release, The Outlaws is Coming (1965), but there was the poster, along with ones advertising better-known biopics or Jesse James-adjacent movies. Somehow I missed that Stooges picture on TV as an impressionable kid, though I saw the likes of The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.
Jesse used to be buried at the homestead.
But at some point he was moved to Mount Olivet Cemetery in nearby Kearney, Missouri. Jesse receives rocks and flowers and coins from visitors 140+ years after his assassination by the Coward Robert Ford (“coward” capitalized, because the word is welded to his name in popular memory). As for Jesse, not a bad posthumous haul for a train robber.
Just as an example, do the Newton Boys get that kind of attention? No, they do not.
“The Newton boys were a criminal gang composed of brothers Willis, Joe, Jess and Wylie (Doc), who operated mostly in Texas during the 1920s,” says Texas State Historical Association. “Willis ‘Skinny’ Newton robbed over eighty banks and six trains from Texas to Canada with his brothers and other outlaws, including the single biggest train robbery in United States history. By the time they were captured, they may have stolen more money than all other outlaws at that time combined.”
I liked Mount Olivet. Got some stones of yore.
Aunt Duck had to have been a character.
Further east, along U.S. 36 in Hamilton, Missouri, is the two-roomed JC Penney Library and Museum. The town library is in one room, the museum in the other. Most of the Penney artifacts are under glass. A wax JC Penney stands in front of a portrait of the department store mogul.
In Laclede, Missouri, is the Gen. John J. Pershing Boyhood Home State Historic Site. A fine museum about the General of the Armies, including an exhibit on something unknown to me, the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Bicycle Corps — the Iron Riders. The Army tested long-distance bicycling in 1897 as a strategy for troop movement, with the corps riding from Missoula, Montana to St. Louis. Pershing wasn’t involved in that effort, but it did happen during his time in the military. Quite a story. Deserves to be better known.
One the last day of my driving, I didn’t want to stop for much, but I did spend a while in Nauvoo, Illinois.
There’s a LDS temple there now. It wasn’t the last time I came this way, in 1997. I couldn’t go in, of course. For that you’d have to join the club.
As a kid, that is as a kid in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I took an unusual interest in WWI. My grandfather, my mother’s father, had been with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in France, but it was more than that, since he was gone by the time I could remember, and I only heard bits and pieces about his service from family members who knew him. Some of his gear was still around, such as a bent-up canteen and some binoculars, and a panoramic photo of his regiment, but that was about it.
My interest was more likely sparked by The American Heritage History of World War I, a book we had around the house, along with the Civil War and WWII titles by the same publisher. The WWI volume, a weighty tome lavishly illustrated, had such chapter headings as When the Lights Went Out, Appointment at the Marne, Deadlock, Ordeal of Nations, Crisis in the Allied Camp, Enter the Yanks and Eleventh Hour. I spent quality time with that book.
Just as important, there was a companion record to go with the book: World War I, Historic Music and Voices. I listened to it many times, fascinated by the music and voices from an age that seemed to have nothing to do with the time and place I found myself. That was an illusion of youth. Growing up in the 20th century meant you were in the shadow of that war, know it or not. I’d argue that’s still true. Anyway, I ended up knowing such songs as “Over There,” “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” and even “K-K-K-Katy.” all of which were mostly unknown to my contemporaries.
I’m glad to report that the record is available on line. The narrator, Charles Collingwood, had just the right earnest, commanding voice for the record. It was years before I knew anything else about him – his time covering WWII for radio, especially, but also as a TV journalist for CBS.
Like many boyhood interests, WWI carried over into adulthood, faded but never quite gone. I knew, for instance, of the shameful neglect when it came to memorializing the war in the U.S., especially in Washington, DC. The first time I ever visited the National Mall, in 1982, I noticed a (relatively) small memorial, the District of Columbia War Memorial, off to the side at some distance, forlorn and badly aged, though I understand it was finally renovated in the 2010s. The memorial honors the “residents and citizens” of DC who performed military service in the Great War.
There was nothing else in the nation’s capital to honor anyone else in that war, not until National World War I Memorial was completed last year, and even it isn’t on the National Mall.
I haven’t seen the new DC memorial, though I’m sure it’s a worthwhile effort. Still, for a memorial really worthy of the event, go to Kansas City, Missouri.
The National World War I Museum and Memorial started as a local memorial soon after the war ended. Long enough ago that Vice President Coolidge was at the groundbreaking, as was Gen. Pershing and a number of other Allied military luminaries. Local, perhaps, but with the heft of a national memorial, designed by Harold Van Buren Magonigle, who was known for his memorial work.
Magonigle’s limestone tower soars.
Sphinxes crouch near the shaft, supposedly covering their eyes from the horrors of war.
Naturally the memorial went through a period of neglect, and the museum came later, as the site evolved from a local to a national memorial, finally acknowledged as such by Congress in 2004. I’m glad to report that now the memorial stands renewed, and the museum, built under the memorial, is first rate. Beginning at the entrance: One enters the museum over a glass bridge that crosses a field of 9,000 red poppies, each representing 1,000 combatant deaths during the war.
As usual with any good museum, there is more than you can absorb in one go, organized in two wings: the war before U.S. entry, and after. All together, it holds more than 350,000 items, a collection comparable with the likes of the Imperial War Museum or the Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux.
The museum’s scope is wide ranging as well, including not just the U.S. part, but perspectives and memories from people from all of the major participating nations, and some smaller ones. There was even a small display, including a map that explained things well, about the Japanese participation in the war. Japan joined the Allied side early in the game, taking the opportunity to kick the Germans out of China and seize Germany’s scattered possessions in the Pacific. A low cost, high-gain exercise for Japan, unlike the next war in the Pacific.
Artifacts were large and small.
There are only a few life-sized dioramas – there are more to be found at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans – but the WWI museum did a good job of it.
I was particularly taken with the posters. I’d never seen most of them.
The 10 Whiz Bangs, even though there are only nine names listed. Then I realized that, at least symbolically and maybe literally, the 10th man hadn’t made it home, like so many.
After visiting the museum, the thing to do is take the elevator to the top of the memorial, for a modest extra fee. Elevator, then iron circular stairs, actually, for an excellent view of downtown Kansas City.
In Abilene, Kansas, not long ago, I found myself wondering, whatever happened to Manus Hand? That’s because I stood at that moment near the graves of President and Mrs. Eisenhower, Ike and Mamie.
The 34th President of the United States and the First Lady repose in a chapel-like structure on the grounds of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home in Abilene, pop. 6,400 or so, the town where the president came of age.
I’ve been told I visited before, with my family during a trip to Kansas when I was a wee lad, but I don’t remember that at all. So I count this as a new visit to a presidential sight, including a grave site, which makes 21 presidential graves all together. But for the federal shutdown in October, there would be four more at least: Adams père et fils, FDR and TR.
I thought of Manus Hand because, back in the Neolithic age of the Internet, he had a web site featuring photos of him at presidential grave sites. In my own dead presidents days, I found Hand’s site at some point. He had visited almost all of them by then, 36 by his count. His site is still in existence, without much change, except an update to note that George H.W. Bush had died (2018), but not Jimmy Carter.
The Eisenhower Boyhood Home, moved to the site. No tours available when I came by.
The Eisenhower Museum.
Midcentury, and what could be more fitting for Eisenhower? It’s chronologically organized: early Ike in Abilene; his Army career before WWII, including his cross-country epic; during that war and right after the war; his presidency and post-presidency, and a gallery about Mamie. Well organized, interesting artifacts, but (for me) none more interesting than a titanium sphere.
The sphere is a replica of the pennant sphere that traveled to the Moon in 1959 aboard the Soviet spacecraft Luna 2, which was the first manmade object to reach the lunar surface, or any celestial body. The sphere was a detail that I remembered from long-ago reading about space exploration. I didn’t realize one existed any more, even in replica form. Khrushchev presented it to Eisenhower during his famed visit to the U.S. that year (Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild!).
Luna 2 carried two spheres filled with liquid and an explosive charge, designed to burst apart on impact and scatter pentagonal pennants, the Moon Registry says. The pennants were imprinted with: 1) Sentiabr 1959 (September 1959); CCCP… ; and the state seal of the USSR, a wreath of grain around the hammer and sickle. It is theorized that the medallions vaporized on impact.
Russia is still shooting Luna missions to the Moon. The most recent, Luna 25, crashed near the lunar south pole in 2023 but, unlike Luna 2, not on purpose. Oops. More about the many pennants the Soviets sent into space is here. On display next to the sphere is a lunar rock, which must have been a posthumous gift, since Ike didn’t live quite long enough to benefit from astronauts rock-gathering on the surface, though he was still alive during Apollo 7, 8 and 9.
A close second excellent artifact was a dagger Marshal Zhukov presented to General Eisenhower on the occasion of the defeat of Germany, a good-looking blade with an ivory hilt and gold decorations. I picture an exuberant Zhukov, as in The Death of Stalin, handing the knife to Ike and saying something earthy. Apparently the two, Ike and Zuke, got along well in the early months of the joint occupation of Germany. Differences aside, they had job experience in common. I don’t remember seeing anything about that in the museum, but there was a lot of material, so that could have been easily missed. That and any reference to Kay Summersby.
It was hot that day, September 24, but after visiting the museum, I took a look around Abilene anyway. The town hasn’t forgotten its most famous native son. Also, Donut Palace was closed.
A lot of the detail would be different, but I’ll bet Ike would still feel at home with the scale of Abilene. Small town, small buildings, but some solid touches.
Including at least one building Ike would have known.
Chicago had cows, Abilene has cowboy boots.
The Hotel Sunflower. Former hotel, that is, now apartments.
The Sunflower State. The flower looks a little ominous, peering down at the settlers.
Structures that aren’t grand, but stately even so. Petite stately, you might call them.
Out near the highway: truth in naming. But note also, the bowling alley is closed. I could go either way on the reopening of an alley in that location, but I really want the sign to stay.
One more thing Abilene is known for, at least since 2022.
The World’s Largest Belt Buckle. Says so right there on it. How large would that belt have to be?
“Designed by local artist Jason Lahr, Fluter’s Creek Metal Works, the buckle features Dwight D. Eisenhower, Wild Bill Hickok, Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad, Historic Seelye Mansion, C.W. Parker carousel horse, C.L. Brown telephone, a racing Greyhound and Chisholm Trail longhorn inlaid with blue quartz,” says the city of Abilene, Kansas.
“The buckle is a project of the Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau which hopes the new roadside attraction will entice travelers to stop and visit the Best Historic Small Town.”
This might be unfair to the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but its collection disappointed me in one key way: No Brasher Doubloon.
It is unfair. The place is great: wall-to-wall coins rare and common, beautiful and crude, familiar and strange, a vast domestic collection (USA!) and a sizable array of coinages from other nations past and present. Much familiar to me, but not all, and much new and strange to Yuriko.
I’d known about the museum, which is owned and operated by the American Numismatic Association, since years ago, when I collected the sort of cheap coins I could afford on my allowance. I followed, in a lackadaisical adolescent way, numismatic news. Big coin deals in those days involved tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coins like the 1909S VDB cent and the 1916D Mercury dime commanded sizable premiums, but the major money was in even rarer strikes or errors.
The Money Museum and the ANA offices are in a boxy structure, brutalist lite, dating from 1967. It isn’t a large museum, with a few living room-sized galleries on its first floor, another in the basement, with each floor attended by bored-looking security guards. U.S. coins beckoned from their own gallery, with vertical coin displays behind glass on all the walls, along with paper money displays and a generous amount of exposition.
The displays had themes: early U.S. gold coins, coins struck in California and Colorado during their gold rushes – including $50 California Territorial Gold piece (!) — uncut paper money, Federal and Confederate tokens and paper, Gilded Age paper money (a riot of design), the various representations of George Washington on medals struck down the years, and many more. There was a 1933 eagle (gold $10) and a flawless set of 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition commemoratives, which are a wow in just about every way imaginable.
Next to Americana Gallery, another gallery housed an incredibly detailed exhibit featuring coins used on the Silk Road across the centuries, something I can’t say I’d given much thought to, despite the enormity of the subject. Such as coins from the time of Alexander, whose empire was home, briefly, to around 25 mints. They say the treasury at Persepolis alone guarded 3,000 tons of gold and silver, but not from the conqueror, since it was just the thing to feed those mints once Alexander had made the Persian empire his own.
Or Parthian drachms, which feature a ruler observe and a seated archer reverse. Or the hemidrachms, obols and hemiobols of the Sassanids. Or Chinese coinage: “Made by the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy, coins were tools to facilitate minor trade and local business. Because precious metals and high-value denominations posed the threat of wealth accumulation, low-value bronze pieces sufficed.”
Those are only a few examples. The exhibit also had early Chinese non-coin money, Islamic coinage and the coinage of the Kushans, whose central Asian empire faded from memory until its coins were unearthed.
It was all too much. Coin overload had kicked in. We spent a little while in the basement – given over to the broad sweep of the history of money – and then to the crown jewels of the place, to cap off the visit.
A coin that goes to show that the entire game isn’t just gold and silver, but base metal coins can have their shot at being priceless collectibles. Famed in story, and maybe an eccentric will write a song about the 1913 Liberty Head, predecessor to the Buffalo nickel. The last year for minting the Liberty Head was to have been 1912, and there are scads of those, except for those made at the San Francisco mint. Only five 1913 specimens are known to exist, all with a mysterious origin at the U.S. Mint and history of trading at ever-increasing prices, with one most recently fetching $5 million. They are such a part of numismatic lore that each specimen has its own name.
We were getting ready to go, when I noticed a museum employee talking to the volunteers behind the front desk. I asked him whether the museum had a Brasher Doubloon. I’d looked, but I could easily have missed it, among the many coins on display.
He knew what that was. Of course he did. Unfortunately, no, he told me. Someday someone might donate one, but otherwise it would be beyond the museum’s budget. Someday, maybe, he said, a little wistfully. Good man, a true coin nerd.
Not far outside Omaha, along I-80, it’s possible to stop and see, under two very large roofs, such marvels of aeronautical engineering as a B-17, B-29, B-36 and B-52, a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a Convair F-102, and a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, among many others. Along side the airplanes are exhibits about the Tuskegee Airmen, Doolittle’s Raid, the Berlin Airlift and Francis Gary Powers.
There are also space artifacts at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, as the name says, but not that many. Still, my favorite artifact at that museum, the coolest bit of space hardware I’d seen since the Kansas Cosmosphere, was a Vela satellite.
Looks like something you’d see on the set of Space: 1999, but the Vela is more than just a curious glassy polyhedron. In September 1979, a Vela satellite noticed the characteristic flash – actually a double flash – of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, near the remote Price Edward Islands in the ocean south of Africa, roughly half way to Antarctica. It wasn’t long before the press got wind of the event, and I remember a widely held suspicion that Israel had tested a nuclear warhead, with the cooperation of South Africa, whose island it was. It seems likely that this was the case.
Besides that, “in 1967, the satellites were the first to detect extra-terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, thought to be the brightest and most energetic electromagnetic events in the universe,” the Space Force notes.
I arrived at the museum on September 5 heading westward, bypassing Omaha in favor of it.
Most of the artifacts are aircraft used in one way or another by SAC, on display under sprawling ceilings. Leo A. Daly, a longstanding Omaha architect, did the museum’s design, completed in 1998.
A named aircraft, the Lucky Lady, a B-29 Superfortress.
“The bomber was manufactured by Bell Aircraft, in Marietta, Georgia and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force on August 4, 1945,” Airplanes Online says. “Its initial assignment was to Walker AAF (Second Air Force), Victoria, Kansas.” Lucky all right, as in manufactured too late in the war to get shot at, unless there’s something about 1940s Kansas I don’t know.
Smaller items, though not actually that small.
Besides the Vela satellite, other space items include spaceman gear and leftovers from the early days of manned space flight, such as a boilerplate Apollo, which wasn’t actually a capsule, but had the size, shape and mass of a command module, for testing.
Picked up cheap after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?
Probably something non-astronauts wonder about a great deal.
Cold winds rolled through northern Illinois today. Seven inches of snow are forecast for Saturday. What? Right, it’s winter. The winter solstice is just the shortest day of the year.
Back to posting on Sunday. Regards for Thanksgiving.
Something to upset PETA sympathizers.
Stroll down Greene St. in the mountain town of Silverton, Colorado, at least in mid-September this year, and you’d have had the opportunity to buy a hide for $300. We did, but declined. Still, it wasn’t just a Colorado detail, but a Western one. The West, where men are men and cow hides hang in the sun. As far as I could tell, you couldn’t buy a hide with Bitcoin, but I suppose you’d have to ask the seller to be sure.
Not five minutes after we’d parked off the main thoroughfare of Greene Street in Silverton, on a large side street, a steam locomotive hauling a valuable cargo — tourists — pulled into town, a block from where we parked. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR train from Durango had arrived. Instantly the streets around the train were thick with those same tourists who had paid roughly $100 a head for the scenic ride, though I suppose many, the majority maybe, had gotten a slight discount as seniors.
I assume the economy of 21st-century Silverton depends pretty heavily on these arrivals, at least in the warm months, as day after day the line disgorges its many passengers for their layover. No doubt the likes of High Noon Hamburgers or the Shady Lady or a lot of the other businesses in town wouldn’t be viable otherwise.
Blair St., paralleling Greene St. a block away. No need for pavement.
Greene St.
Lots to see on Greene.
Including the fine Colorado flag, flying at Railroad Art by Scotty, a seriously cool gallery.
“Railroad Art by Scotty presents the custom matted and framed collector Railroad Art Prints by renowned railroad artist H.L. Scott, III,” its web site says. “These are not photographs and they are not created on the computer. These are pen & ink drawings created by Scott using the technique known as STIPPELING or pointillism.”
One of the few buildings I’ve seen that clearly states its elevation.
The Grand Imperial Hotel. A lofty name to live up to, but probably posh enough to do so.
Restored to its 1880s appearance in the 2010s, no doubt at considerable expense.
As it looked in 1940, a photo from the Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photograph Collection.
More Greene St.
Greene is short, because Silverton isn’t very large, and so the street, now a road, soon heads for the hills.
The Hillside Cemetery of Silverton.
An apt name.
With a good view of the town.
Some sizable memorials.
More modest ones.
Echoes of lost men from another time. Beyond the outstanding beauty of a hillside cemetery in the flush of autumn, reason enough to visit the cemetery.
“Good morning,” Walter said in response to me, but in a hushed tone that somehow made his Austrian accent more distinct. “Do you want to see some bears?”
Yes. I followed him out to the large deck off the large common room of the Country Sunshine B&B. Outside we met with cool air, bright morning sun, and the strong smell of pine. The deck was a floor above the grassy ground, which sloped downward away from the bed and breakfast, shaded by a small copse of enormous pines.
We’d just spent the night at Country Sunshine B&B, the first of three for our visit to Durango, Colorado, a place I’d wanted to visit since the moment, years ago, when I heard Garrison Keillor describe the place in the engaging way that he had. I’d come out of our room – one of the three or four bedrooms off the common room – ahead of Yuriko, to examine the breakfast spread at the main table when Walter asked me about bears.
Under one of the tall pines, and among the many pine cones dotting the ground, was something dark and much larger: a bear.
“He isn’t the only one,” Walter said, pointed upward. Another sizable bear was perched part way up the largest pine. I didn’t say anything, or maybe I did. Something along the lines of, How about that. When I spend time on my deck, squirrels are about as large as the animals get, except occasional rabbits and raccoons.
“Look way up,” Walter said.
Two more bears – smaller bears, though I wouldn’t want to be face-to-face even with them – clung to the branches toward the top of the tree. They were hard to see, and my photos barely show them, but they were there, not moving a bit.
Soon Yuriko, and some other guests, had come to the deck to see the bears and take pictures. Every few minutes while we watched, the largest of the bears, the one on the ground, would start shimmying up the tree. The bear in the tree snarled at his approach, and, after pausing for a few moments, the first bear returned to the ground.
We were about 10 miles north of Durango, where the human settlement is fairly thin, and bears known to prowl the mountains on either side of the single road, US 550.
In the two decades of so that Walter and his wife Jodi have owned the B&B, he said bears had been sighted. Of course they had. Get careless with closing an outdoor garbage receptacle and bears will make an appearance in the neighborhood. During dry spells, they come for the creek waters near the property, and Walter pointed out that this summer had been fairly dry in the region.
But this was a first, Walter said: probably a male bear out to do harm to some cubs, a female bear standing in his way — a bear drama playing out in the tree near the B&B.
Late that afternoon, we returned to the B&B. Papa Bear, as everyone was calling him now, still lingered under the tree. Mama Bear still watched him from the lower branches, and the cubs still clung to the upper branches. Papa Bear had mostly quit trying to climb the tree, Walter said, but he was still waiting around.
The bears stayed in place through that evening, but when I went to the breakfast table the next morning to examine the bagels and spreads and fruit and hot drinks, the bears – I checked from the deck – they were not to be seen. After their one-day show (from a human point of view), they’d taken their drama somewhere else,
We spent that first day (September 16) wandering around town and nearby. In downtown Durango, small buildings that have endured for more than a century line Main Street.
Or not so small. Such as the magnificent Strater Hotel, built in 1887.
The sort of place where presidents stay, or used to. Did any? The hotel web site doesn’t say. I’d ask ChatGPT, but it would probably tell me that FDR stayed there during his Grand Western States Whistle Stop Tour in 1939, a wholly fictional event. Wiki says Gerald Ford stayed there. Louis L’Amour did too, and now has a room named after him.
A competitor. Named for this fellow, Union (brevet) brigadier general and railroad man, who co-founded the Denver and Rio Grande RR.
Downtown Durango is well supplied with retail.
Lunch options, besides burgers and empanadas or a liquid lunch, included the likes of the Diamond Belle Saloon, Seasons of Durango, Chimayo Stone Fired Kitchen, Steamworks Brewing Company, and Eolus Bar & Dining. All very nice, I’m sure, but we chanced on something more to our tastes at that moment: the Durango Diner. In business for 60 years.
Durango started not so much as a mining town, but a railroad node that served the mines further up the line. Silverton, for instance. One reason Durango is where it is: the Animas River. These days, the river is accessible to pedestrians in a number of places in town. One was near the Durango Library, also the location of a shady sculpture garden.
At this place, the tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR run along the river.
That was also true at the 29th Street Park, though the tracks were on the other side of the river.
