Wayside_Wisdom Heard Along the Way
Museums, Historical Sites, and Places of Beauty
In our travels we find enjoyment in visiting museums and many other interesting places. Fr example:
THURSDAY, MARCH 23 - Today we toured the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton, Oklahoma. It is housed in a new building, and has quite an impressive series of exhibits about life on the Great Plains from prehistoric times.
Life-size models of a prehistoric bison and mountain lion introduced exhibits of an archeological dig in central Oklahoma which unearthed the skeleton of a mastodon. Then, educational exhibits which illustrated native American life of Oklahoma in the 1700's; western migration of white settlers; relocation of the "five civilized Indian tribes" from the eastern US to Oklahoma in the early 1800's; white buffalo hunters, beaver trappers and Indian traders in mid-1800's; Indian sympathies with the Confederacy during the Civil War; the Red River Indian War of 1880's; Oklahoma land rush at about the turn of the century which pushed the Indians off the land that had been promised them.
There was an extensive exhibit of native American clothing, moccasins, jewelry and art objects from the estate of a family who had operated an Indian trading post in Oklahoma for 90 years. There were also objects documenting the agricultural settlement of the state: a windmill, blacksmith shop, bank, general store, and vintage agricultural implements.
An added bonus was an extensive exhibit of the work of art students of a local college. We also enjoyed watching the large family of prairie dogs that makes their home on the museum grounds.
MONDAY, MARCH 27 - Today we toured Botanica, the Wichita Gardens. No doubt it’s lovely at every season of the year but the spring flowers today were especially soul-soothing! Pansies of every imaginable color and combination of colors, tulips, daffodils, jonquils, hyacinths, narcissus, flowering decorative pear trees, and new leaves budding forth on many other trees. We spent an hour and a half wandering through at a leisurely pace.
SATURDAY, APRIL 1 - St. Joseph, Missouri, right on the Missouri River, has
lots of museums. Today we chose to go to The Pony Express Museum. Although the
Pony Express operated for only 19 months, the
museum is full of fascinating exhibits – many of them interactive – of the
history of its development, operation, successes and dangers.
In 1860, the new state of California was demanding faster and more reliable mail service connections with the eastern states. Three Missouri businessmen rose to the challenge and developed the pony express service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, a distance of nearly 2000 miles. From Feb, 1860 until October 1861, individual riders on fast horses carried the mail over 65 to 80 miles sections of the route before passing it on to the next rider to carry across his route. In this way, mail could be delivered from Missouri to California in 10 days in the summer and 15 days in the winter. (Stagecoach mail took at least 3 weeks and steamship transport required several months.)
The service was an instant success and immediately became the source of fascinating legends. Two months after it began, the pony express service had to be suspended for 2 months due to raids by the Paiute Indians in the Utah territory. Eighteen riders were killed, 7 stations burned to the ground and more than a hundred horses were lost or stolen.
When the service resumed in May, 1860, mail was delivered, both east and west, twice a week rather than once. By October of 1861, the sponsoring company was nearly bankrupt, despite receiving a federal grant to provide such services. By that time, telegraph services spanned the continent and could provide east-west communication almost instantly. So, the swift ponies and their brave riders of the pony express were permanently retired after less than two years of operation. What a delightful afternoon!
SUNDAY, APRIL 2 - After morning worship, lunch and rest, we went to another museum, the Glore Psychiatric Museum also in St. Joseph, Missouri. It is a very unusual – but interesting – collection of displays and artifacts relating to the treatments of mental illness through the centuries. It is housed in a section of the old Missouri State Mental Hospital and much of the equipment on display was part if its operations. Life-size displays illustrate various means of "treatment" developed through the years in both Europe and America. Many are quite grim, and make us thankful that we live in an age when mental illness is considered a disease rather than demon possession or criminality!
In the same building are housed the "Museum of African-American History" and a special exhibit of "Native American" portraits. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could do them all justice!
TUESDAY, APRIL 4 - Museum-hopping again today, in Hannibal, Missouri! We
started this morning at the Interpretive Center
and
the Mark Twain Boyhood Home, which has been restored and the rooms have period
furniture and life-sized figures portraying Twain’s last visit back to his
hometown and quotes from some of his writings.
From there we walked across the street to the Becky Thatcher House which has also been restored and partially re-furnished with period items. It, too, has a life-size "talking" figures who quote from some of Twain’s writings.
Next door was the office of Sam Clemens’ father, John, who served as Justice of the Peace. It, too, is being restored and contains one life-sized scene illustrating an episode from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In that adventure, Tom, afraid of the whipping he would get at home, sneaks into his father’s law office to sleep for the rest of the night. There, in the moonlight, he discovers a corpse on the floor beside his bed!
Next door to the law office was Grant’s Drug Store, which was also the home of the family of Dr. Grant. It, too, has been partially restored and re-furnished with period apothecary equipment.
We enjoyed lunch in one of the many unique little eateries scattered around the town. Many put second-hand or cast-off furnishings to good use in their interior decor. It may be an economy for the management but it certainly adds charm and character to the atmosphere. Oh, the food was good, too!
In the afternoon, we spent several hours at the Museum Gallery, three floors
of a large building filled with Twain memorabilia! Letters;
photographs; a reconstructed steamboat captain’s deck; a reconstruction of the
fence being whitewashed and the cave in which Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher got
lost; a "raft" like the one Huck Finn and Nigger Jim used to sail down the
Mississippi; a "stagecoach" with video clips from Twain’s book Roughing It;
narrations of some of Twain’s most popular short stories (including my favorite,
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"); a map of Twain’s early and
lengthy tour of Europe and the Middle East as a young newspaper reporter; copies
of many of Norman Rockwell’s sketches and illustrations for a special edition of
Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; the
academic gown Twain wore when he received an honorary doctorate degree from a
prestigious English university; and much more!
It was a delightful, entertaining and educational day. We were reminded again of some of Twain’s priceless witticisms: "Always do right. It will please some people and astonish the rest." "The lack of money is the root of all evil." "The greatest threat to good literature is too much truth..." "Human nature cannot be studied in cities ... a village is the place. There you can get to know your man inside and out. In cities, you learn to know only the outer crust of a man, and that crust is a lie." "In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy everybody was poor and didn’t know it..." "The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated."
And so, there you have a glimpse of what we’ve been doing. We only wish you could have enjoyed all of it with us! We hope to see you on down the road.
Bruce & Mary Sue