Tag: tourism

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Comanche Moon

You don’t know open space if you live on the coasts.  The middle of America has a lot of emptiness.  They called it the sea of grass and the metaphor is apt.  In many places the land here is as featureless as the sea. Above is a landscape near Perryton, Texas.

I am interested in the high plains.  The Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado (his statue is above in Liberal, Kansas) named it the Llano Estacado, which means palisaded plains.   There is some disagreement about what he was describing, but the most accepted explanation is that the plateau starts with escarpments that look like fortification palisades or a stockade. I didn’t see this “fortified” part, since I came from the north, where it is less abrupt.

I have been listening to the audio book Empire of the Summer Moon, about the rise and fall of the Comanche.  The Comanche were primitive and not very successful Indians until horses came to the Great Plains after they escaped from the Spanish. They quickly learned to use the horse and it changed their tribe.   The mobility provided by the horse allowed them to kick other tribes, mostly Apaches, off the Llano Estacado in what would be called a genocidal war if it happened these days.  Like most horse nomads, the Comanche were violent and cruel.  Their main passion was raiding, which included lots of torture, rape and pillaging.  It was essentially a type of terrorism designed to … well terrorize opponents.   

The Comanche were a formidable fighting force.  They stopped the Spanish conquests and held back the Mexicans. One reason why the Mexicans welcomed Americans settlers in Texas was that they wanted a buffer against the Comanche.   Nobody could really cope with them until the Texas Rangers learned to fight in the mobile and flexible fashion used by the Comanche themselves.  It takes a network to defeat a network.  The revolver was a great help in fighting the plains Indians. An Indian with a bow enjoyed an advantage over a man armed with a single shot rifle or pistol.  The six-shooter evened the odds. The U.S. Cavalry finally defeated the Comanche in the 1870s, mostly by sheer persistence helped by the destruction of the buffalo herds.

Above is the marker for the battle of Adobe Walls. There were two of them here. During  the second battle the Comanche were attacking buffalo hunters holed up in an adobe inn. Although there were 700 Indians and only 29 hunters, this was a bad idea. The Indians couldn’t burn the hunters out, since adobe doesn’t burn and the hunters were well armed with long-range rifles. They were able to shoot the Indians at very long distance. Read about it in the book I mentioned.

Dealing with the tribes reminded me of the tribal diplomacy in Iraq and defeating the Comanche “insurgency” probably still has lessons for us today.  Anyway, it is a good book and I recommend it, especially the audio version that you can listen to in the car as you drive across the endless sea of grass where the Comanche used to ride.

I have more pictures and thoughts re the high plains and will post more.  It was a good day to look around.

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Get out of Dodge

Dodge City makes a much bigger impression on American folklore than it does on American geography.  Above is Wyatt Earp, one of the town’s most famous marshals. Others included Bat Masterson & Charlie Basset. There really isn’t much here anymore really of theirs. But I wanted to stop anyway. I am beguiled by the legend. Below is what is left of the “real Dodge.”  The parking lot occupies the space where all the taverns and whore houses used to be. The real Dodge of the old west was probably flimsier and less permanent than the movie sets made to portray it. They were always worried about it burning down and the good citizens of the city finally got rid of what they considered an eye-sore that attracted the wrong sort.

So many of our Westerns are set in Dodge.  I grew up watching Gun smoke with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon.  Each episode started off with Matt winning a gunfight in the streets of Dodge.  Westerns were popular when I was a kid.  You wonder why any bad guys would ever show up in Dodge with Matt Dillon around.  He gunned down a couple of them every week. I wonder what the cumulative total was.

Cumulatively, I bet there are more total hours of TV and movie time about the Wild West than there was during the actual Wild West period.  Dodge City was at the end of a branch of the old Chisholm Trail. It was where the big herds from Texas met the Railroad. You can see the rail depot and tracks above and the longhorn below.

Dodge was the big cattle town for about ten years.  It replaced Abilene as the railroads moved west. The cowboys didn’t want to drive the cattle any farther than necessary. It was hard on the men and on the cows. They lost weight and hence value, so they loaded them on rail cars as soon as they could. The whole period of the big cattle drives – the Wild West – was only around twenty years from around 1870-1890.  After that, rail transport became widespread enough that the days of the picturesque but dangerous and grueling cattle drives were over.

When you think about it, life on the frontier was not much fun. The settlers understood this very well and fact, tried to bring civilization (such as the Carnegie Library, now an art center, pictured above) as fast as they could in order to avoid all the excitement of gunfights and Indian raids.  But if you don’t actually have to live through these those sorts of things, they capture the imagination. In the absence of danger, everybody imagines himself the hero.  It is exciting in retrospect to have built something up, wrested from hostile nature and dangerous primitive men.

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Amana Colonies

I was vaguely aware of the Amana Colonies, but the name was familiar mostly because of Amana appliances.  In fact, as I write this in the Holiday Inn in Dodge City, the air condition is an Amana product.  But there is much more to the story than stoves and refrigerators.

There are seven Amana colonies in Iowa.  They were founded in the 1840s by a German sect.  They were related to Lutherans, but had a more communal point of view. It is the usual story.  They were persecuted in Europe, so they came to set up a new life in America. Below is a model of one of the farms.  There is a “barn museum”.  It has models of all sorts of local buildings.  They were all made by a single local guy with a lot of time and significant model making skills.

These kinds of colonies were successful in the U.S. because the adherents believed in hard work and were well disciplined.  That is pretty much all it takes to be successful in America.  The thing I like about the German-culture sects is that they have very well organized agricultural operations and they don’t shun beer.  Beer is a integral part of central European culture.   IMO, it is an integral part of pleasant civilization, but that is another story.

The Amana colonies were integrated agricultural enterprises.  They are not like the Amish.  The Amana folks embrace technologies and machinery.  Farms were communal until 1932, when they all got shares in an Amana corporation.  They farmed, processed farm products, made crafts and later on even made appliances.   The Amana Corporation, which is still in existence, still runs a prosperous enterprise.   I was interested in that they own and manage a large – 7000 acre – forest reserve.  It produces forest products and is run sustainably.  The hardwoods from the forest supply the wood for their furniture making businesses.  A guy I talked to told me that they do TOO good a job with wildlife.  He cautioned me to be careful driving around because the deer would be jumping over the road, especially at dusk.

Beer drinking, hard working, not complaining and forest loving – I like these people.

As you drive around in the American countryside, you realize how many of these sorts of groups there were – and still are – in America.  We tend to forget about them or think they are just historical artifacts.   But they seem to have developed sustainable systems, both in the natural and the human ecology.  We talk about diversity in America.  This is actually a very important part of it.

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John Wayne

Not too far off the highway is the birthplace of John Wayne in Winterset, Iowa.  I drove over there to look.  They said it was a modest house and that was true.  You can see by the picture that it is not much bigger than one of these little cabins you can rent at the campgrounds.  I didn’t figure it was worth it to take the tour.  John Wayne was not famous for his deeds in Winterset, Iowa.

I was talking to Jerry & Dorothy about John Wayne.  Jerry & I like him better than Dorothy.   Dorothy pointed out that John Wayne wasn’t much of an actor.  In fact, he was not an actor; he was a movie star.  The two are not the same.  A movie star needs to create and maintain a personal brand.  So no matter where you see John Wayne, you can recognize the character.  His persona transferred well in westerns and war movies.   When he tried to play Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror” it didn’t work at all.  That is why the movie is one of the ten worst of all time.

An actor can play many roles and blend into them.  This is very good for the craft of acting, but not so good for fame and fortune.  They have a name for such people.  They call them character actors.  When they die, the newspapers often call them “beloved” and when you see their picture you say, “Oh yeah, that guy.”  But you would not have been able to name him unaided.  And more than a quarter century after they die, they still won’t be famous – actually iconic – like John Wayne.

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Midwestern Landscapes

It was surprisingly rural so close to Chicago as I continued down the country roads through Illinois & Wisconsin.  I went through Kankakee and then up State Road 47.  It was mostly corn fields and evidently home to a thriving ethanol industry. The gas stations sell E85, which I understand that some cars can use. I don’t think mine can, so I didn’t try.

I crossed into Wisconsin in Walworth County.  Southern Wisconsin sort of merges with Northern Illinois.  There is rich, black soil.

Not many people know it but it used to be that some of the Southern Wisconsin counties were prime tobacco country. It was the cash crop that paid for a lot of the mortgages. It was also a way that young people could make some money.  It helped to be young, since hoeing tobacco was almost literally bank breaking work. I still recall the tobacco barns in Dane County. They were long and narrow and had open sides so that the crop could dry out.  I dislike cigarettes, but the smell of tobacco curing is actually kind of pleasant. Wisconsin tobacco tended to be chewing tobacco and not used for smoking. They don’t grow much tobacco anymore.  Demand has largely dried up; tobacco support programs are gone and besides growing the weed is really hard work.  Young people have other options or are lazier, depending on how you want to view it. Tobacco is a finicky crop that requires significant skill and experience to cultivate and cure. 

Chrissy’s father used to grow a little tobacco. 

I kept on going north and caught up with I-94 at Johnson Creek. I needed new running shoes, so I stopped at Johnson Creek outlets. They have a Nike outlet there.  This is a new development.  The area around the freeway exit is not part of the original Johnson Creek.

I used to stop in Johnson Creek or nearby Helenville when I rode my bike between Madison and Milwaukee. Jefferson County, which sits between Dane and Waukesha, was (and still mostly is) a nice mix of farms and little towns.  I used to also ride from Lacrosse to Milwaukee, which required an overnight stop. One trip, I made it as far as Johnson Creek. I was looking for a hotel, but they were all filled. I ended up at a place called “the Gobbler”.  It was a funky place, sort of a 1970s dream with a kind of a purple color scheme and shag carpets. They only had one room left, which was a bridal room.  I was tired and it was getting dark so I took it. That night I slept in a water bed with a mirror on the ceiling over it. It came with a dinner as part of the package. The dinner was for two, so they saved a little money on me, although I ate a lot.     

They are out of business now.  

The pictures are a barn in Walworth county, black soil in Northern Illinois and a cornfield in Northern Illinois on state road 47. 

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Tippecanoe & Windy Ridge Too

Just outside Lafayette is the Tippecanoe battlefield. This is where William Henry Harrison defeated the combined forces of the local woodland Indians.  Not many people were actually involved in the battle, but it was decisive.  It was the last time that the Eastern Indians stood a chance of stopping, or even slowing American settlement. 

Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) tried to build a vast Indian confederation to push white men back.  But the Prophet moved too soon and provoked the battle of Tippecanoe before the confederation was ready. The Prophet told the Indians that his strong medicine would make it so the soldiers bullets couldn’t hurt them. He was mistaken.

The site of the battlefield is very pleasant.  There are lots of big trees, mostly oaks and maples. Look at the shape of that oak tree. Lots of the older trees in the Midwest have that basic shape. I think it might be from growing up with other trees nearby, making the long trunk, and then having them cleared so that the tree is free to branch. Along side is just looking up one of the big oak trees.  I just enjoy doing that and thinking about how long they have been growing. 

Not many people visit the place anymore, so it was quiet.  I walked around a little near a creek the feeds the Wabash.  It was a beautiful early fall day with some leaves slowly drifting down.  

I heard that there was a lot of construction on I-65 near Chicago, so I took the more scenic, country road route. Between Lafayette & Remington I ran into this forest of windmills.  Most were turning.

I drove down one of the gravel roads to get the pictures. Gravel roads are still common in Indiana farm country.  I guess there really is no need to put asphalt on everything.  They make good running trails but are probably hard on the cars’ paint jobs. Below is a landscape scene from Tippecanoe. They were having some kind of antique car rally, so I got the 1929 Model A Ford in the photo.

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John Gets a Speeding Ticket

On the Road – Maryland, WVA, Ohio & Indiana

My almost cross country trip started today with the rather long drive from Virginia to Lafayette, IN.  Why Lafayette?  I lived here for a couple of weeks way long ago. I landed the job of Director of Marketing Research at Microdatabase Systems right out of B-school. Of course, there was nobody in the marketing research department except me. That is why I was director. Sort of like the guy who has 1000 people under him at work – cuts grass in the cemetery. Never trust titles.

I worked at MDBS for five weeks before I took the job in the FS. I think I made a good career move.  How different life could have been. Lafayette is a very pleasant place, but there is not much here besides Purdue University. I suppose that I would have found more to like if I had been here more than a few weeks.  Running trails were good. I used to run on the country roads through the cornfields.

It was a long drive. I got a speeding ticket. It is the first I got since 1992. I have only had two in my whole life, so it was actually more exciting and interesting than unpleasant. I thought about trying to outrun him, like in the Dukes of Hazard or Smokey & the Bandit, but the Civic-Hybrid probably was not up to the job. I was going 80 in a 70 zone. That is what the cop said, and he was right.  I know because I had the cruise control set to that, so I didn’t try to claim that I didn’t know or it was some kind of mistake. I would have had to pay up w/o complaint. He got me fair & square, but he only gave me a warning ticket, no fine attached. Nice guy. 

Always be polite to policemen, none of those rude questions or complaints. My old Milwaukee upbringing tells me that if the cops stop you, they must have a good reason. And I know they have a tough job.  I suspect a lot of the people they stop give them a hard time. I would have taken his picture for the blog, but I figured it was not a good idea to push my luck, so I just said “thank you” and drove off – chastened – at the legal speed, until I got across the state line. I did try to keep my speed lower for the rest of the trip, but it is hard. All the trucks pass you if you drive the speed limit and it is very nerve wracking. I try to stay with traffic.

Let me tell you about the pictures.  On top is a western Maryland landscape.  It is a pretty place.  The thing that looks like a canyon is the cut through Sideling Hill on I-68.  They blasted through in 1985. It must have been hard to go over the hill before that time. The mountains in the Appalachians are arrayed in long folds.  In many ways, they are tougher than the Rockies, which although they are higher often have less relief and wider passes. The picture at bottom is I-70 just passed Dayton, Ohio. It is a typical Midwestern road picture, pretty with flat fields and isolated oak trees. There were lots of trucks on the road.

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Wine Tasting

I don’t understand “good wine.”  I tend to like sweeter wines, which are considered “cheap” and less classy.  I also like the “oak” flavors.  Chrissy and I went to the wine tasting at the Biltmore.  They gave us a kind of a checklist.   I thought that three of the wines were okay: a Biltmore Estate Chardonnay, a Riesling and something called Tempranillo.  Some of the wines come from North Carolina grapes, but others are California wines according to the Biltmore recipe.  I think that means that they put it in bottles at the estate. You got a special deal on three bottles, so Chrissy bought one of each. 

I don’t know how they will be in larger quantities. Lots of things taste good in small amounts, like they give you on the tastings. But we got it now, so I guess I will see. I would have enjoyed a beer tasting.  I know I like beer in larger quantities.

When I was in Warsaw I got to take part in a bourbon tasting, sponsored by Jim Beam. The organizers told us lots of stories and legends about bourbon and the various kinds of bourbon. I think they made some of them up, but they were good stories so why mess with the legends. You really can tell the black label from the white label bourbons, but only if you drink one right after the other.  A good time was had by all.  The Jim Beam guys were smart. They had a lot of their wares for sale and offered them while everyone was in the type of exuberant moods provoked by whiskey tasting.  I bought three bottles of higher-class/higher-price bourbon than I would have normally.

I learned a little. Bourbon is aged in warmer places in North America.  It is good to go in seven years.  After that, it gets  a little harsh. Scotch can be aged up to 18 years, since it is cooler in Scotland.  But it doesn’t get any better after that. Actually it doesn’t get much better after 15 years, but paying more for anything over 18 years is a waste of money.

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The Bridges of Catawba County

We saw a sign for the “Bunker Hill covered bridge” and found it after driving down a couple of country roads and a gravel path. The bridge was built in the late 1800s and it is an example of a lattice construction.   There were thousands of these kinds of bridges back then in the U.S. and hundreds in North Carolina. Now this is the last one.

The covering protects the wood.  An uncovered wooden bridge lasts around twenty years. The covered variety can last 100. The covering also made the horses feel like they were in the barn and they didn’t spook because of the water.

This bridge was build by a guy called Haupt. He literally wrote the book on building such bridges as the the note about it says, Haupt was “Chief of Military Railroads for the Union Army during the Civil War. A Philadelphia born civil and military engineer, author, professor, inventor, and industrialist, Haupt’s improved lattice truss bridge was a response to Ithiel Town’s 1820 and 1835 patents for the plank lattice timber truss. Haupt used the analytical methods he developed in the 1840s to design a more efficient lattice truss which consisted of web members positioned only at locations which required support. Redundant members were removed, resulting in the improved lattice truss as described in his book General Theory of Bridge Construction published in 1851.” It is good for a man to have a passion.

Today the bridge goes from nowhere to nowhere. It has outlived its usefulness, but I suppose that 100 years ago there was a road that people sometimes needed.  

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Wreck of the Old 97 & the End of the Confederacy in Danville

When there is a big industrial accident these days, the lawyers come out and drain any of the real emotion or truth out of the event and displace it with cash.  In the old days, at least in the southern hills, they wrote a ballad.   So it was when a train with Joseph A. (“Steve”) Broadey’s hand on the throttle plunged into a ravine near Danville, VA in 1903.  Nine people were killed and seven injured in what the plaque called one of the worst railroad accidents in Virginia history.  This is what they mean when they say you are heading for a train wreck.

I heard the song as a kid. My father’s version was sung by Boxcar Willie (I think), although there is a Hank Snow rendition and Hank was my father’s favorite singer. I thought it was just a song, not a real historical event, but it had some very precise lyrics.  “They gave him his orders in Monroe Virginia saying ‘Steve you’re way behind time’” … “It’s a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville and a line on a three mile grade.”

So in the wonderful world of Internet, I checked it out and found out it was true, so when I drove through Lynchburg I went looking for the place.  A couple people claimed to have written the lyrics.  It was first recorded in 1924 and you can listen to the original version at this link.

This is the whole story from the Danville Historical Society.

All that is left now is this easily overlooked historical marker along a seedy patch of Highway 58 just to the west of Danville.  There is nothing left of the trestle or the tracks and the ravine is overgrown with brush and vines.  It must have been really big news around here in 1903, but more than 100 years later only the song abides.  The picture of the train, BTW, is just a train crossing in Danville, unrelated to the Wreck of the Old 97, except that they are both trains.

Another thing about Danville is that it was the last capital of the Confederacy. This lasted literally only a matter of days, as Jeff Davis and his cabinet fled south, with Union troops in hot pursuit, after the defeat of Southern arms. Davis took up residence in the house of a prominent local man called William Sutherlin.  Sutherlin made his money in the tobacco business and was a successful and flexible businessman both before and after the Civil War.

Davis was a great man, according to his lights, but he was misguided. Robert E Lee and Joe Johnston did the right thing and in April 1865 contributed to saving the United States and making it the country whose freedom we love today. Davis wanted to keep on fighting, even after Appomattox. At some point, hanging on stops being noble and becomes stupid, pernicious and immoral.  I admire Lee & Johnston, Davis not so much. The guide treated Davis as a hero. I don’t agree. 

Chrissy and I visited the house, an Italian style mansion. Pictures are above and below. The woman in the painting above fireplace is the Sutherlin’s daughter on her wedding day. The house is restored to the period of around the Civil War. You really get the old South feeling there. The Daughters of the Confederacy use the place for their meetings. One of the rooms is deeded over to them.