Things You See in Mount Carroll

Posted on June 30, 2014 by admin

Somewhere or other at some time, I read that Mount Carroll, Illinois, had enough things to see to recommend a short visit (how’s that for source amnesia?). Wherever I got it, I can pass along that recommendation. It’s a small place, with only about 1,800 people, but it has a sizable concentration of historic structures. We took a look at a few of them on the afternoon of June 20.

That includes a fine courthouse, the Greek Revival part of which dates back to before the Civil War. Elsewhere on the courthouse grounds are a few monuments – but not quite as many as some courthouses I’ve seen – including a tall one dedicated to Union veterans. Turns out that Lorado Taft sculpted the cavalryman at the top of the monument, which is formally called the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument.

Writing in the short-lived blog Larado Taft: The Prairie State Sculptor, Carl Volkmann says, “Lorado Taft was a member of a team of artists who was commissioned to create the Carroll County Civil War Soldiers And Sailors Monument. George H. Mitchell designed the monument, and Josiah Schamel constructed the foundation. John C. Hall designed the annex that was added later when county officials determined that there were many names missing from the original honor roll list.

“The monument consists of a fifty-foot vertical shaft with a Lorado Taft-sculpted soldier holding a flag at the top. Lewis H. Sprecher of Lanark posed for the statue and made several trips to Taft’s Chicago studio to model for it. Two additional statues are attached to the base of the monument, one an infantryman and the other a cavalryman.”

Not far from the town square is a genuine, honest-to-God Carnegie Library that is, in fact, still a library. We went in for a look around. It seemed like a nice facility for a town the size of Mount Carroll. We were the only ones in the library except the librarian – it was about 30 minutes ahead of closing time on a Friday afternoon – and I spoke briefly to her, telling her that I wanted to show my daughters what a Carnegie Library was. I also wanted to come in because they aren’t exactly common sites.

Later, I checked, and my feeling wasn’t quite right. At least according to this Wiki list, some 60-odd Carnegies are still functioning libraries in Illinois alone, out of more than 100 originally built. Seems like most of them are in small towns away from metro Chicago, so unless you frequent that kind of small town, you won’t see them much.

Just before we left town, we came across something that’s presumably not always near the courthouse in Mount Carroll: this unusual car.

Unusual for American roads, that is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Morris Minor in this country. It’s so unusual that besides it being a Morris, I didn’t know anything else about it.

Naturally, I had to look it up. Through the marvel of Google images, I was able to pin it down to a Morris Minor 1000 Traveller. In its pages on Morris Minor history, Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre Ltd. in Brislington, Bristol, says “there is only one other car on British roads today which is as familiar as the Morris Minor, and that’s the Mini. That both were designed by the same man is no coincidence, and indeed Sir Alec Issigonis is one of the very few car designers whose name is recognised by the man or woman in the street and not just by enthusiasts or fellow engineers. [This might be true in the UK, but I have no way to judge that.]

“The products of Sir Alec’s genius have had a profound and highly beneficial influence on the British motor industry, so it is hardly surprising that it is his first car, the Morris Minor of 1948, which has become the subject of this proposal for a long-life car.”

More about Sir Alec here. I’m not sure I’d want to own a Morris Minor myself, but it’s a distinctive design. Good to see one loose on the roads of North America. I’m glad there are enthusiasts in this country. Any fool with money can buy a snazzy new sports car or a Lexis or the like, but it takes some imagination to invest in a Morris Minor.

Mercy Otis Warren

Posted on June 4, 2014 by admin

Heavy rains last night. Didn’t hear a drop of it. Guess I was too busy with weird dreams. This morning I noticed the soaking. The yard’s really lush so far this summer.

It’s summer, never mind the solstice. Rising summer. The mosquitoes are out, but not quite in force. No fireflies yet, but I’ve seen a dragonfly or two.

Ann and her class did their class presentation this morning, which I attended, called “I Am the Nation.” Each student dressed up as, and recited a short report they’d written about a figure from the American Revolution. I’m only mentioning this because I actually learned something from Ann’s choice: namely who Mercy Otis Warren was.

If I’d heard of her, I’d forgotten about her. Or maybe I missed her entirely; Revolutionary history, while interesting, hasn’t ever been a special period of fascination for me. She did a number of things, but mainly seems to be remembered as a polemicist of the Revolution, and afterward, an historian of it. Needless to say, though it’s pointed out a lot, those were unusual occupations for a woman of the time.

More about her is here. If ever I’m in Barnstable, Mass., I’ll go see her statue, and her brother’s too. James Otis was also a patriot and polemicist, and had the distinction of being killed by lightning one day in 1783.

Other than Warren, I’d heard of the rest of the notables the children eulogized, even Deborah Sampson and Phyllis Wheatley, whom I first encountered years ago in San Antonio, when one of the school districts there wanted to re-name a high school in her honor, and not everyone was on board with that idea.

Though I’ve cited three women examples, most of the characters were in fact men. The usual suspects, too: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, et al.

All well and good, but I hankered a bit for some more unusual names. Such as Francis Marion (the Swamp Fox), Baron von Steuben, Nathanael Greene or, besides military men, Roger Sherman (he of the Connecticut Compromise), or Robert Morris and Haym Soloman (financiers of the Revolution). And throw in a couple of loyalists, just to show what’s what, such as William Franklin, Ben’s son and governor of New Jersey, or the interesting footnote character William Augustus Bowles.

Independence Hall & the Brazos

Posted on May 20, 2014 by admin

The main attraction at Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, as far as I’m concerned, is Independence Hall. Texas Independence Hall, that is, a much more modest and lesser-known structure than the one in Pennsylvania.

Actually, it’s the second replica of the original building, dating from the 1950s, which replaced a 1910s replica put on the site. There’s something to be said for replicas or even hasty copies. After all, much of what survived the golden age of Greek civilization was through Roman copies.

The display inside is refreshingly informal. Go in through the open door and there you are. There are no roped off areas, probably because everything inside’s a recent copy. Not that there’s much inside. Just a few long wooden tables, some straight-back wooden chairs, and a couple of jugs, maybe to represent the hard cider on hand to steady the delegates’ nerves. The small obelisk just outside the door says On This Spot Was Made the Declaration of Texas Independence – March 2, 1836.

There isn’t much else, at least in the way of structures, near Independence Hall. Various paths lead off from it through the rest of the historic site, including one to the Brazos River. The scenery along the way looks like this, at least in late April in a non-drought year.

Before long you arrive at the banks of the Brazos. It seems like an under-appreciated river. For a moment I thought I’d never been to its banks before, but of course I have – and not that long ago, when I walked along the Brazos in Waco in 2009, and even crossed it on a footbridge. But it hardly seems like the same river, even though maps tell me that it is.

Something I didn’t know about the Brazos before today: it’s the 11th longest (source-to-mouth) river in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and for that matter the longest within Texas. It used to be navigable as far north as Washington-on-the-Brazos, but its career as a river of commerce didn’t really take off. Finally, no less an authority than Hank Hill says that Alamo Beer is “from the lukewarm headwaters of the mighty Brazos River.”

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site

Posted on May 19, 2014 by admin

Not far south of College Station and Bryan is Washington, Texas, an unincorporated place with a small population. In some alternate universe, it’s a major city sprawling along the Brazos River in Washington County – and it’s the capital of Texas (the state, or an independent nation; maybe that’s two different alternatives), best known for a large public university, its tech industry, and a thriving music scene. Popularly called Brazos, to distinguish it from that other Washington on the Potomac, the city also has a countercultural streak: Keep Brazos Weird, the bumper stickers say.

For a while, little Washington on the Brazos River was the capital of the Republic of Texas – 1842 to the end of independence in 1845, but then a town further west permanently won the prize of state capital, where it remains. Along the way, the back-and-forth of the Texas capital location led to the odd incident known as the Archive War, which wasn’t really a war, and which I don’t remember being discussed in 7th grade Texas History class.

These days, Washington, Texas, is best known as the site Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836, a fact that was taught in Texas History class. That event is memorialized at the 293-acre Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, owned and operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. More about it here.

Jay and I took a look at the site on the way from College Station to San Antonio on April 25. I’d never visited before. The site has three major components: Independence Hall, the Star of the Republic Museum, and the Barrington Living History Farm. We saw the first two, along with the visitors center, where we each bought a small Come and Take It flag in the gift shop because how many places can you do that? (Amazon doesn’t count.)

Near the visitors center is a bronze of this fellow: George Campbell Childress (1804-1841).

Another of the long line of Tennesseans who came to Texas early, and a brother-in-law of James K. Polk, Childress was honored with this bronze because he’s acknowledged to be author of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Note the quill and scroll. He was head of the committee tasked on March 1 to write a declaration, and it was ready the next day, so it seems likely that he’d already prepared the thing. The document clearly owes a rhetorical debt to Jefferson. The first paragraph says:

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

Even so, the list of grievances is specific to the time and place, such as abrogation of the 1824 Constitution of Mexico and the annoying union of Texas with the state of Coahulia, but mainly boiling down to the assertion that no dictator in Mexico City’s going to tell us what to do.

The deco-like statue itself dates from 1936 – the centennial of Texas independence – and was done by Raoul Josset, a French sculptor who immigrated to the United States in the early 1930s, and left behind a number of works, including Childress but also “The Spirit of the Centennial,” now in Fair Park in Dallas, and the Fannin Monument in Goliad, Texas. More about Josset here.

The George Bush Presidential Library

Posted on May 15, 2014 by admin

I’m told that we went to the Eisenhower Library when I was a child, but I don’t remember it. Since then I’ve visited other presidential libraries or museums: Lincoln, Hoover, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter. And now the George Bush Presidential Library, focusing on George Bush the elder. Jay and I visited just before we left College Station.

His library opened in 1997 on the Texas A&M campus, though it’s way out from everything else. Bush didn’t attend A&M, famously being a Yale man, but presumably the Aggies put in the best bid. Besides, he did make his name in the oil business in Texas. A&M oversees the place with the National Archives and Records Administration. It’s an HOK design, which from the front looks a little like it’s missing a dome.

Presidential history’s interesting (of course it is), but I thought that the most interesting exhibit in this particular museum was a temporary one about offshore oil drilling. Called “Offshore Drilling: The Promise of Discovery” (sponsored by Shell), the museum says that it’s “a tribute to [Bush’s] role in the development and use of the innovative independent leg offshore jack-up rig Scorpion launched by LeTourneau in 1956… It focuses on the history, development and future of offshore drilling, with an emphasis on the work of George Bush, emerging technologies and ongoing research at Texas A&M University.”

An independent leg offshore jack-up rig is a mobile offshore platform stable enough for the open ocean, but flexible enough to be moved when the time comes. Before 1956, offshore platforms mostly had to be fixed permanently to the bottom, limiting their usefulness; the few floating platforms couldn’t stand heavy seas, so they tended to be near shore. LeTourneau was an inventor: Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (1888-1969). He was, says Wiki, “a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery. His machines represented nearly 70 percent of the earthmoving equipment and engineering vehicles used during World War II, and over the course of his life he secured nearly 300 patents.”

Drilling Contractor (Sept/Oct 2005) further tells the story: “Although the concept of a deep-sea, mobile offshore platform aroused considerable interest among the oil companies, none of the companies were prepared to help finance construction of such an expensive (nearly $3 million) and unproven project. Then [in the early 1950s] Mr. LeTourneau proposed the idea to Zapata Off-Shore Company of Houston, headed by future United States President George H.W. Bush.” (The article is here.)

Zapata. You have to like that name for an oil company. (Apparently Bush and his partners were inspired by the movie Viva Zapata!) So Zapata became the first oil company to use an independent leg offshore jack-up rig. The exhibit tells that story, but even better, it includes models of various rigs, platforms and supply vessels that have been used over the years by the industry — exceptionally detailed models — as well as pieces of drilling equipment.

The rest of the museum has pretty much what you’d expect: exhibits about different stages of the life and career of George Bush the elder, including his harrowing escapes from death as a naval aviator in the Pacific in 1944 (over the course of the year, his squadron suffered a 300 percent casualty rate), though no mention of this story that I saw, and his various public-sector jobs, both elected and appointed. A well-done set of displays, but even so it’s hard to think of any presidency that happened while you’re an adult as history.

Other items included a big hunk of the Berlin Wall, a replica Oval Office – any presidential museum worth its salt has one – and a life-sized bronze of Bush, depicting him as Ambassador to the United Nations.

I didn’t make a picture of the oddest bit of art we saw in the museum. Called “1000 Points of Light,” it was painted for the Points of Light Foundation, which encourages volunteerism. A presidential George Bush reaches for a nimbus-ed U.S. flag, while a crowd of enraptured everyday Americans watches. I’d call the style Socialist Realism, but there’s no socialist content here. Maybe Volunteerist Realism. The artist is Frank Hopper, who seems to excel at this kind of thing, and is also fixated on mermaids.

Stranger still are the ghost presidents in the sky, watching. And not just any ghost presidents. With the exception of Washington and Jefferson and either Madison or Monroe, all the rest of them are ghost Republican presidents, all the way from Lincoln to Reagan. The faces are a little spectral, but I think the only ones left out are Arthur and Harding. Take a look.

In the plaza outside the museum stands another work of art, “The Day the Wall Came Down,” by Veryl Goodnight.

Bronze horses racing over replicated bits of the Berlin Wall, with graffiti copied from the actual wall (the west side, naturally). With the horses, the plaque tells us, “representing the freedom of the human spirit.” Fine figures of horses, and all very kinetic, which is fitting for the destruction of the wall, but I’m not sure how well beasts of burden stand in for the unconquerable human spirit.

Though the pieces of the Berlin Wall in “The Day the Wall Came Down” seem to be simulations, the sculpture (and the actual piece inside) did get me thinking. Like pieces of the World Trade Center, or moon rocks, where are all the scattered bits of that former communist concrete now? Relics tend to get around.

A Small Sample of Aggieland

Posted on May 13, 2014 by admin

Texas A&M University is a big place. I looked it up: the main campus currently occupies 5,500 or so acres, and accommodates 56,000+ students. Systemwide – because there are other campuses – the school boasts an endowment of $7.6 billion. It also seems like a lot of construction is going on, so those figures will probably be outdated in a few years. A&M’s pretty much the main industry in the twin towns of Byran and College Station, Texas, which also have the distinction of not being on an Interstate, though I-45 runs fairly close.

Jay and I took a stroll around campus for an hour or so, which is time enough to see a small fraction of the buildings, as well as a lot of Aggies. They look pretty much like college students anywhere in North America, except for Corps of Cadets members mixed in, who are easily distinguished by their uniforms, which have a remarkable resemblance to WWII vintage U.S. uniforms, in as much as I’m familiar with them. Membership hasn’t been mandatory in 50 years, but the Corps is still a defining tradition at the school. But of course there are many Aggie traditions, some of which are common knowledge among Texans.

If we’d done much planning, we might have been able to see a building or two dating from the time our grandfather attended A&M (again, he was Class of 1916). Mostly, though, we came across buildings dating from the 1920s and ’30s – there seems to have been a large building boom then – as well as some remarkably brutalist structures from more recent decades. Of the structures we saw, I most liked the Civil Engineering Building, built in 1932.

The plaque on the building describes it this way: “A classical revival two-storied stone structure is faced in brick, with cast stone and ceramic tile ornamentation.”

Note the ornamentation here: two Hermes figures, a cow, a couple of horses, and a couple of dogs. Elsewhere, pigs.

The reason for all of those animals on the Civil Engineering building? The plaque again: “Originally used as a veterinary hospital with two additional buildings in the rear, used as [a] stable and anatomy laboratory.”

Not far away we happened on the Cushing Memorial Library, where there’s an exhibit for the centennial of the opening of WWI: “The Great War: Memories of Service and Sacrifice, A World War I Exhibit Featuring the Aggie Experience.” Just the thing to see – free, not too large, and connected to our family’s experience. Class of 1916 meant that it wasn’t long before Grandpa was in the Great War. We told a woman behind the desk at the entrance about him, and she seemed pleased to hear it.

The displays featured some material from Aggies who’d been in the war, but the exhibit had more than that, including wartime posters, photos, letters, everyday items, and more, and not just from American soldiers, but also British, French, German and Italian. (What, nothing from little Montenegro?). The material is from the Ragan Military History Collection at the library.

“A enlarged image of the tattered Gold Star service flag that most prominently captures the World War I Aggie experience will also be exhibited,” notes the A&M release about the exhibit. “Part of a national tradition that began with World War I, the service flag contains approximately 2,000 maroon stars honoring those Aggies who served, and 50 gold stars memorializing those Aggies who gave their lives in the war.”

Fortunately for him and his 13 descendants (so far), Grandpa came back from France, though as an engineer, unexploded ordnance — and the Spanish Flu — were likely the main dangers he faced.

Corsicana

Posted on May 12, 2014 by admin

Everything about this picture says Texas: the Collin Street Bakery sign, marking a famed Texas bakery; the Texas flags; the HEB grocery store; the pickup truck driving by; the onion domes off in the distance. Onion domes?

First a little background. On April 24, 2014, Jay and I drove south on I-45, the main road from Dallas to Houston. About 50 miles south of Dallas is Corsicana, seat of Navarro County, and home of the Collin Street Bakery. I’ve been eating its fruitcakes on and off for years, mostly by mail order, but in 1996 (I think) I passed through town and visited the bakery store.

As the web site notes: “The DeLuxe Texas Fruitcake or Pecan Cake you order today is still baked true to the old-world recipe brought to Corsicana, Texas from Wiesbaden, Germany in 1896 by master baker Gus Weidmann. He and his partner, Tom McElwee, built a lively business in turn-of-the-century Corsicana which included an elegant hotel on the top floor of the bakery.”

The hotel is gone, but you can still buy baked goods at the bakery store, including the signature fruitcake. We bought one to take to our mother, plus some smaller items for more immediate snacking. From the parking lot, we noticed those nearby onion domes, and being curious about onion domes in small-town Texas, we went over for a look. After all, how often do you see Moorish Revival buildings in small-town Texas? Probably more often than I’d think, but anywhere there one was.

It’s the Temple Beth-El, a former synagogue on 15th St. in Corsicana. A shot from across the street is here; it’s a handsome building.

Like the Collin Street Bakery, Temple Beth-El too dates from the late 19th century. The Jewish community of Corsicana isn’t what it used to be – they probably went to Dallas, like everyone else – so in more recent years, the building’s been a community center overseen by the Navarro County Historical Society.

Now fully in a look-see mood, Jay and I went over to the Navarro County Courthouse grounds. Navarro himself was there. A statue of Jose Antonio Navarro, that is.

The Smithsonian tells us that “the sculpture was commissioned by the Texas Centennial Commission to honor Jose Antonio Navarro (1795-1871), a native Texan lawyer, merchant, and rancher who founded Navarro County and co-created the Republic of Texas. Navarro named the County seat Corsicana after his father’s birthplace, Corsica. While on an expedition to Sante Fe, Navarro was captured by Mexican soldiers and given a life sentence for treason. He escaped in 1845 and upon his return to Texas was elected as a delegate to the Convention which approved the annexation of Texas and drafted the Constitution.”

Nearby Navarro stands “The Call to Arms,” a Confederate memorial. It’s a little unusual, not being a soldier standing at attention or the like.

The statue’s plaque says that it was erected in 1907 by the Navarro Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy “to commemorate the valor and heroism of our Confederate soldiers. It is not in the power of mortals to command success. The Confederate soldier did more – he deserved it.”

History’s written by the victors, indeed.

Indiana’s Central Canal (A Fragment)

Posted on May 8, 2014 by admin

Canals were all the rage in North America the 1830s, inspired by phenomenal success of the Erie Canal. Something like dotcoms were the rage in the 1990s, I believe, and that didn’t turn out so well either. Yet fragments of both investment-speculation manias survived the inevitable collapse, such as Peapod in the case of dotcoms, and a stretch of Indiana’s Central Canal from the earlier mania.

We spent some time on Easter Saturday afternoon walking next to Indiana’s Central Canal, which had been planned to connect the Wabash River in the northern part of the state with the White River in the southern part and then on to the Ohio River. Work began in 1836.

Then came the Panic of 1837. Only a few miles of the canal were ever built, running through Indianapolis. It’s had various uses over the years, but ultimately the canal-builders of the 19th century bequeathed recreational infrastructure to us in the early 21st century. It’s a pleasant place to stroll, or paddleboat or kayak, on a warm spring day.

The last time I visited the canal was on a cold day in early 2005. It wasn’t quite so pleasant then, but I did notice the memorial to the ill-fated USS Indianapolis near the canal. This time we saw a memorial that wasn’t there in 2005, Project 9/11 Indianapolis, on a rise just above the waterway.

The memorial was dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, and includes two 11,000-pound beams from the Twin Towers, standing upright. One of them has a bronze American eagle perched on top. It made me wonder: how many fragments of those buildings have made their way around the country?

Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles

Posted on May 7, 2014 by admin

Until recently, I was only dimly aware of chicken & waffles. As a combined meal, that is, apparently known to the Pennsylvania Dutch and as a soul-food specialty in the 20th century. (More about it here.) Not long ago, Lilly started mentioning the combo. Not sure why. Maybe she picked it up from a let’s-go-there-and-eat-something show (e.g., Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.)

Anyway, the notion had lodged in my mind just in time for me to see a listing for Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles, which is at 132 N. East St., right at the eastern edge of downtown Indy. The area’s still mostly small commercial uses and parking lots, though I spotted a couple of apartment complexes being developed nearby.

Once I saw the listing in one of those publications left in hotel rooms, and did a little reading about the place – this is the age of Yelp, after all – I suggested it for Saturday lunch, after we’d finished with the Eiteljorg Museum. I didn’t want to end up at some restaurant that could be anywhere, just because we couldn’t think of anywhere else to go, and everyone wanted to eat right now.

Maxine’s is about a 20-minute walk eastward from the museum, across the heart of downtown Indianapolis. Along the way we spotted the statue of Vice President Hendricks, but also another memorial that goes to show the veneration we still have for President Lincoln.

It marks the spot where Lincoln stopped to speak, on February 11, 1861, on his way to Washington City to become president. (We should still call it Washington City. Maybe that usage will return if DC wins statehood.)

We arrived at Maxine’s for a late lunch. Good thing, too, because I’ll bet the place gets really crowded on Saturday morning and into the early afternoon. As it was, it was mostly full. According to a sign on the wall, and its web site as well, the place only dates from 2007, founded by the children and grandchildren of Ollie and Maxine Bunnell, whose large family had a knack for cooking (Maxine’s regular job was cooking at St. Francis Hospital).

I’m glad that the restaurant survived the recession. Not every venture started in 2007 would be so lucky. But I don’t think luck was the main factor. We all had a variation of chicken & waffles – plain, blueberry and strawberry waffles – and they were terrific. So seemingly simple, so artfully made.

As you can see, it’s your basic waffle, adorned by three fried chicken wings, with a bit of honey-butter on the side, along with syrup. The combo works. They complement each other. After you’ve eaten some of the sweet waffles, you switch to the mildly spicy chicken, and then back. From beginning to end, not a bad bite in sight. Not even a mediocre one. Whatever soul-food recipes the heirs of Ollie and Maxine have come up with, they’re winners.

Subtropical March ’13

Posted on March 30, 2014 by admin

Slowly warming over the weekend, but not enough to call spring. It’s this time of year especially when I miss the springs of South Texas and Middle Tennessee, or even the Kansai, which are already under way. This time last year, San Antonio was greening up nicely.

Such as at the Sunken Gardens, officially the Japanese Tea Gardens, when we visited last year. I expect it looks this way again about now, complete with greenery along with edge of expansive koi ponds.

We discovered that the garden also sports some plant graffiti. Floroffiti, maybe?

Other places were greening, too. But not that green. At Mission San Juan, the grass was still its usual winter brown.

Grass also gets brown under the heat of summer, which can last a long time. So it’s better to say that the predominant color of South Texas grass is brown, with interludes of green at certain times of the year.

This was the San Jose Burial Park, which isn’t far from Mission San Juan.

We didn’t spend much time there, but it looked like a peaceful burial ground, not much known expect by people who live nearby.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History