The Blues and the Prairie

Summary, Odds and Ends

A pretty much unedited summary. I have given up trying to be stylish. Even grammatical. I misspell things. Probably the only half-decent writing is the story about the bison I encountered when I got lost walking on the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve.

I think this trip was about 3,000 miles. Since the wives died in 2009, we have maybe been 30,000 miles - some in Bob's Z4 sports car and some in his Land Cruiser. On this and other trips we have seen a lot of the middle and eastern parts of the country - every state east of the Mississippi. I don't know what I have learned. But the U.S. is big.(I have developed a fondness for it which is odd for me because I don't do much belonging.) You don't know big until you get butt numbing and mind numbing tired. You've got to be on the road. You've got to be bored most of the time. 400 to 500 miles a day. We've seen lots of sights but it is the land one of us watches while the other drives. That sticks with you. The gradual change of country and crops. Feeling the heat the wind blow (OK we ran the air conditioning - even in the Z4 with the top down and usually stayed in Hamptons). The passage of little towns - the smallest mostly run-down. Witnessing economic changes first hand. Also realizing that these people are people. That the men are red faced and strong and that knowledge-workers probably don't need bodies. That seems important. On other trips we went though long stretches of Appalachia where there where no stores, no schools, no doctors - only combination gas stations and frozen pizzas places. I don't know how we did all this without killing one another. I snapped once. I also appeared to wake up crazy one morning and Bob drove the sports car straight through from Detroit to Gastonia. I called it going down the backbone of the witch. And Bob got quiet. But it was probably his morning stories that kept us going. (Some of New England had bad places - like Appalachia.)

I don't know - I just don't know.

If I go back - and I surely won't - will I? I'll go to the prairie then to the great sand dune and then up North to watch nephew Henry race. I'd like to climb down to St. Jacob's Little Well cross the fence to where the Buffalo graze - maybe see the one who now wears my hat to see what the big old ill tempered son-of-a-bitch has to say about that. I'd to lie out at night and watch the stars. The brochure says you can do that. But it all depends on courage, health and sanity.

Bob's Detail List Of Trip

Bob is a list maker and he did a fine one here.

Day one:

North Carolina

Shelby
Asheville
Waynesville
Cherokee
Nantahala Gorge
Murphey

Tennessee

Enter near Ducktown
Lunch in Ocoee at Subway
Cleveland
Chattanooga
3 miles in Georgia on Interstate 24
Monteagle
Stopped for pictures at the University of the South in Sewanee
Train engine picture in Cowan
Winchester
Fayetteville
Pulaski – birthplace of the KKK
Lawrenceburg and David Crockett State Park and the Trail of Tears –

Day Two:

North to Memphis – 11 miles
Visited Peabody Hotel: No ducks
Drove down Beale Street
Visited Sun Studio “Birthplace of Rock and Roll”

Meet two brothers traveling from Calif. to Florida. Had been to Austin, Texas now in Memphis, going to Nashville. – One brother has recording studio in England the other was retired in Calif. One had meet Earl Scruggs and in fact had been part of a band that had played at an event with Scruggs. Saw them again at Graceland.

Back to Peabody- the ducks had come down
Lunch at BB King’s on Beale Street

Graceland after I caused us to tour the Memphis Air Port and Fed-XLeft Graceland to return to Hernando and Interstate 55 was a parking lot.

Mississippi

Selmer – turned south to Corinth, Mississippi
Cross North Mississippi to Olive Branch for rest room stop behind church
Horn Lake turned south on Interstate 55 to Hernando, Mississippi
Checked into Hampton Inn and ate leftovers from manager’s party at motel
Turned right on 304 and drop into delta country in Tunica, Mississippi.\Clarksdale: Greyhound Bus Station:

Ground Zero: Intersection of the devil; Coffee Shop; Morgan Freeman's place, and my old friend Ronnie Drew at his store “Blues Town Music”. This was a surprise because I asked a member of the band at Morgan Freeman’s place if he knew Ronnie and he told me Ronnie was four doors down at the music store.

Cleveland for the night at Hampton Inn
Boyle
Greenville: Stopped at Welcome Center then toured downtown including the levy; the Mississippi was high covering some of the light poles.

Arkansas

Pine Buff: Lunch at Chinese Buffet where Tom’s fortune cookie contained no fortune.
Hot Springs and Hot Springs National Park (tom: place with enema and douche machines)
Hollis

Dardanelle - Fort Smith for the night at Hampton Inn after dinner Red Lobster

Day three:

Oklahoma

Fort Smith National History Site: Judge Parker the hanging judge’s court house (tom: hang six at a time; one man tried to hang dog)
With the threat of bad weather we drove straight thru Oklahoma on Interstate 40
Many Indian Nations
Oklahoma City
Clinton
Elk City: Checked into the Hampton Inn; Cheyenne: Visited Back Kettle National Grassland and Washta Battle Field where George Custer wipe out Chief Back Kettle’s people. Visited a graveyard on a high hill in the prairie and returned to the hotel. Ate lunch at BBQ in front of hotel and dinner at Mexican Place downtown Elk City.

Day Four:

Cheyenne
Shattuck
Laverne
Rosston

Kansas

Crossed into Kansas at Englewood, Kansas – Wide open spaces two bathroom stops on side of US 283

Big Basin Prairie Preserve
St. Jacobs Well
Minneola
Dodge City for lunch at Mexican Place near Boot Hill
Mullinville –Yard art
Greensburg – Big Well
Pratt – Lettuce train passed us while we were going 70
Hutchinson: Hampton Inn Dinner at nice Italian Restaurant downtown

Day Five

Newton
Peabody
Strong City: Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
Emporia
Burlington
Yates Center: Lunch at Pizza Hut
Neodesha
Parsons

Missouri

Joplin
Springfield: Hampton Inn: Dinner Cracker Barrel

Day Six

Springfield
Mansfield
Poplar Bluff
Sikeston

Illinois

Cross Mississippi river into Illinois at Cairo

Kentucky

Cross Ohio into Kentucky at Wickliffe:lunch at Hill Billy Café (Tom: not the same as two other times on Henry trip)
Clinton
Fulton

Tennessee

Wildersville pick up Interstate 40 east
Cookeville: Hampton Inn: Dinner at Cracker Barrel

Day 7

North Carolina

Interstate 40 to Asheville
Interstate 26 to Tryon
Hwy 74 east to Gastonia

Here are pictures that can't be fit in any of the other categories.

I could find categories for most of these but the day is late I am out of energy,

In Clarksville Miss. Decay - the onset of entropy is more interesting than neatness which is really entropy in the making.

Entropy is working on this Greyhound station in Clarksville. The Australian woman's coffee shop (below) on the other corner.

Woman sits at coffee shop counter in Clarksville Miss. I went in on a whim, running across street. A friendly Australian woman runs coffee shop. This picture was supposed to include her. She would not tell me how she got here - just smiled and said it's a long story. I had been referring to the owner as British and the other woman said her friend did not like that. It was across the street where there is a run-down Greyhound bus station (above).

Bob likes trains and knows a lot about them.

At 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM Mallard ducks are herded down the elevator in and out of lobby in fancy Peabody hotel.

We just thought it funny. I don't know where.

Continuing my interest in decay, this is in Greenville.

Ducks in pool in Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

Big Hebrew Temple in Greenville Miss.

Should be in Blues section.

Boat ramp in Clarksville. Does not look as steep as it is and is damp - the surface is slippery. We were afraid to get any closer.

Bag of trash and based of lights underwater. I suppose I am bragging but Bob and I have crossed the Mississippi in every state in the mid west.

A marker noting path of the Trail of Tears when Federal government moved Eastern Indians to get their lands. Lots of the markers until we got to where the descendants now live.

Every now then we drove through sections of the old coast to coat Route 66 (remember the song). In this one the town is out to make a buck. Many of these towns take advantage of whatever history or geography they've got. However I don't remember towns connections with the plains. It generally seems too wild.

Yard art and hand dug well in Kansas

Yard Art

We turned off a road where we discovered hanging on a fence and sticking up in a field the art of M.T. Ligget of Mullinsville, Kansas. The pieces are made from cut up scraps of metal and old car parts. They are labeled with political scatology and what ever struck M.T's fancy. Later riding through Greensburg, Kansas, we talked to the lady who runs the Big Well attraction. When I asked about M.T. the woman replied with passion that M.T., whose cousin married the woman's son, is a son-of-bitch. She and everybody else in the town regards M.T. and his opinions as shit. He says he is one of the eight wonders of Kansas.

Hand Dug Well

Started in 1887 and finished in 1932 this is the largest hand dug well in the world. The well is 109 feet deep and 32 feet wide. The stairs stops above the bottom. The water is 10 feet deep. It is so clear you can't tell how deep - it is damp and cool. The well is located outside of Greensburg Kansas. In May 2007 95% of the down was wiped out by a tornado.

Maybe the strangest story - like all stories about people. This one was told by the docent. She is a heavily wrinkled but still attractive woman who used to run a bar with she and her husband, When I asked if she knew the guy who did the yard art in the next town over, she got a stern look on her face and said she knows the old son-of-a-bitch. It appears that M.T. is the town's character who enjoys enraging his neighbors. One Church celebration and fried toy cannon from his lot across. To make it worse, the woman's son married M.T.'s niece.

Kansas prairie - St. Jacob's well and bison story

We ran across St. Jacob's well by accident. There was a small sign marking a gravel road to nowhere and we turned.

The "well" pictured here is not a well but a depression where water stands. Running low on gas we turned back without realizing the extent of what we had found. Not too much further down the road was a basin with a mile of water. And there is supposed to a spring that has never gone dry.

The road to the bigger "well".

The Tall Grass National Prairie Preserve where I got lost.

Bison Story

I think about an old movie, The Big Country with Gregory Peck. He is a ship captain who comes West to prairie country to marry his true love whom he met back East in coastal country. Early in the movie the Peck character rides out on the prairie with a compass to get a feel of this vast land. That’s what it looks like in front of me now. Low rolling hills that go on forever. I expect to see Custer or Geronimo or Wild Bill in any moment come over the next crest.

I am on a park service trail in the Tall Grass National Prairie Preserve in the southern part of Kansas. The trail is three miles long and I’ll get back in an hour and a half to the parking lot where Mr. Bob waits.

Cobble stone size rocks have been stacked into a wall beside the trail. Beyond that is a stand of scrubby trees. It will make good foreground for a picture – shooting low, leading the eye to a vanishing point. I slip over to the wall and walk to the trees. Standing, squatting, moving to one side and the other I take the pictures; the digital camera makes clicking noises as if it has a real mechanical shutter. I think the shots will be good. I move down the hill turning back to get other views.

During the course of this movement I think I have circled around the hill as went down. I cannot see the park service trail. Just hills, all different but all the same. There is an uneasy feeling in my gut.

I walk up the hill where the trail should be. It is not there. Moving faster, but still careful of the pebbles I continue to the top of the hill. It is the same in every direction except for a creek at the bottom of the hill. I have seen this creek before.

I take long strides down to the creek. It is maybe ten feet wide and no more than six inches deep. There is a barb wire fence on the other side. I might have seen the creek from the other side of the fence.

I leap across the creek trying to stay out of the mud but I don’t and it comes over the top of my boots. I squish.

The bottom strand of wire is at most two feet off the rocky soil. I stand here for a moment. I shrug mentally, sit, lie on my back. I push myself under the wire. I have to lift the bottom strand for my chest to pass under. No dirt or pebbles have worked into my clothes. That’s good.

I walk to the top of the next hill. It is lower and not so far. There is nothing but other hills. Whoever said the prairie is like an ocean and the hills are like huge swells is right.

I look into sky say out loud, “Ah.” The sun is in the East, the Ranger Station is South. I am a little embarrassed. I should have thought of this before. Even if I miss the Station I’ll cross the East-West road that passes in front. Relieved I squish South up the hill.

There is a snorting noise. I look around. “Goddamn.” I see Buffalo and they are close. I was so focused I didn’t see them just below the crest on the other side of this hill. . One seems to be in front. A clump of stringy hair hangs from his belly so I assume it is a male. All of them face West. He is the lead animal in that direction so he must be head bull.

The ranger warned us about Buffalo, saying not to get too close. Cross a line, about 100 yards and they will charge. I crossed the threshold when I slid under the fence.

Slowly I edge back to the fence. It is might be a 100 yards away. I guess the bull is about 100 yards away, at the threshold. We are a triangle. I look at him; he looks at me. He snorts. Snot comes out of his nose. The rest of the herd also look.

The big one charges and the rest follow. I run. Their hooves beat the ground like a drum. I wiggle back under the wire, tearing my shirt but managing to beat the bull.

My cap fell off on the other side. The bull bellows, pees on the cap, stomps it and hooks it with a horn. The horn penetrates the fabric and when the bull lifts his head the cap stays on.

The bull wears the cap. He lumbers off and the others follow the leader with the rakish red cap.

I walk up another hill and there is the trail. I decide to continue my walk.