Читать книгу A Road Trip Into America's Hidden Heart - Traveling the Back Roads, Backwoods and Back Yards - John Drake Robinson - Страница 11

It’s safe now.

Any time of day, folks drive between Kansas City and Nevada, Missouri, with little fear of being stopped to demonstrate their allegiance to one warlord or another. Shoot, there’s hardly anybody hiding in the bushes anymore. And telephone poles have replaced bullets as the primary cause of death along these back roads.

Things have calmed down considerably since the 1850s and ’60s, when people in Kansas and Missouri killed each other and kept score with scalps. Everybody hated everybody else. Nobody trusted anybody. And leaving Kansas City for a trip in any direction would agitate a succession of local ruffians, the first of which would likely convince you to turn back, if they didn’t kill you on the spot. Tough crowd. After the Civil War, Missourians began their long journey toward civility. Commerce and people slowly crept back into the towns along the Kansas border. Remnants of families returned to their farms to bury burned bodies and rebuild their charred homesteads.

Today, my trip would be easy. Oh, Missourians still instinctively clutch for weapons at the mention of Kansas, but the modern weapons are footballs and basketballs, mostly. I must admit, when I left the comfort of the Raphael Hotel, that sweet old relic overlooking the Kansas City Plaza, I had no particular route in mind. I just wanted to explore some back roads on my way to the tin ceiling factory in Nevada, three hours south. And I had the luxury of time. The path of least resistance is Highway 71. A recent peacetime project turned this turbulent trail into a four-lane fast track, slicing down through the stack of counties bordering Jayhawk Nation. Leaving KC, my tires rejoiced on the 71 speedway. Nowadays along that route, the telephone poles go by fast.

I can’t blame folks for being in a hurry. It happened to me once, too. So I continually remind myself to slow down and take my cue from gawkers and rubberneckers and Sunday drivers, who avoid such velocity. It traumatizes the neck muscles when your motor outpaces your curiosity. And if you want to absorb the history of this war-torn region, abandon the four lane highway.

So I took the back roads.

Early morning—well, late morning—first stop was a farm in Grandview. There, I stood in the nation’s most talked-about kitchen, even though nobody eats there any more. Almost a century ago, a young farmer stood in the narrow covered breezeway between the hot stove and the farmhouse and uttered the second most famous phrase in the study of human conflict: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, that’s what my tour guide said. Turns out, when Harry Truman ran the farm, the breezeway and the oven weren’t at that spot in the back of the farmhouse. But even though the current cooking area was added after Harry had left the farm, the old cookstove stands as a reminder to visitors that cooking and politics generate a fair amount of combustion. Never mind that Harry probably didn’t originate that quip; he made it famous.

On this farm, Harry used some of the cooking skills his mother taught him to feed farmhands who worked the 600 acres that bordered the railroad tracks, tracks that snaked from nearby Grandview all the way to Kansas City, 17 miles away. This was Harry’s second tour of duty on the farm. First time around as a young child, his mother taught him to be curious about the world around him.

This time around, his mother credits the farm as the place “where he got all his common sense.” He became Grandview’s postmaster, he established Grandview’s Masonic Lodge, and he held Saturday evening jam sessions on the front porch.

Locals didn’t think he’d survive as a farmer. And his culinary skills never transformed his slight frame into anything near a lumberjack’s build, but that didn’t stop him from hard labor. He couldn’t see very well, either, but that didn’t stop him from voracious reading. There’s a pattern here.

During his farming years Harry overcame his deep shyness to pursue a young lady from Independence, so he’d often hop the Frisco and ride the rails to Kansas City’s Union Station, where he’d switch to the Independence train.

Bess Wallace liked Harry, but her folks didn’t think much of the relationship. After all, she was a Wallace, born to wealth and class. And he was a farmer. That didn’t deter Harry. There’s a pattern here.

***

Down the road, Belton shows off its collection of old railroad cars, right downtown. And an excursion train offers a short round trip for nostalgia buffs. I bought a ticket to ride the train, just like Harry Truman did, except his fare was a dime to ride the Frisco High Line all the way to Kansas City. My excursion was two miles each way, and cost about $2.25 per mile. What would Harry think? I suspect he’d bring the railroad to its knees. Still, it’s nice to see somebody maintain a part of this old short line, and offer children a taste of transportation their great grandparents knew as a way of life.

I don’t know whether Dale Carnegey ever rode the short line, but I bet he did. Riding a train is a great way to win friends and influence people. Another way to win friends and influence people is to change the spelling of your name to the predominant Carnegie, the one for which the concert hall is named, thanks to the millions of influential greenbacks behind Andrew Carnegie.

Dale called Belton his hometown, even though he was born up the road in Maryville. Early in his life, his parents moved the family to a farmhouse outside Belton, and it still stands. Dale is buried in the Belton Cemetery, where everybody is equally friendly and influential, except for the size of their monuments. His grave and the neighboring plots of his parents and daughter are simple markers atop door-sized slabs of granite. The granite slabs may be insurance against grave robbers. Early in my travels I began to notice a pattern of heavy cover over the graves of many of Missouri’s rich and infamous.

She may not have been rich, but the lady buried in a nearby grave sure was infamous. This is the final resting place of the most fearsome woman ever to smash things with a hatchet. No, not Hatchet Molly. Not Lizzy Borden, either.

This six-foot battle ax waged all-out war against liquor. She first married an alcoholic, and that bad marriage steeled her resolve to destroy the tools that supplied liquor to men. Later she married a preacher and editor of the neighboring Johnson County Democrat newspaper. His last name and a slight change to her first name—oh, and her propensity for violence—would propel her to the forefront of the temperance movement.

She crusaded as Carry Nation, and she smashed whiskey barrels with sledgehammers, threw pool balls at barroom mirrors, and later employed a hatchet to smash up barrooms, to “carry a nation for Prohibition.” Her intemperate temperance crusade lasted a decade, during which time she was beaten, bloodied, battered and arrested nearly three dozen times. Carry’s crusade preceded American Prohibition by several years, but her efforts wrung the booze out of Missouri’s public places in all but the most robust river towns.

She was sought by circus promoters and sideshows, but she traveled as a one-act revival, driving the demons out of married men, a few of whom came willingly to her crusades. While she did most of her damage in Kansas, a dry state at the time, with only a few establishments that served liquor “for medicinal purposes,” her influence spilled over to Missouri, too. In 1906, less than a third of Missouri counties were dry. Three years after her death, 80 percent of the state was dry. Imbibers could buy a drink in only 23 of 114 counties. Almost all of those 23 holdout counties clung to rivers, those arteries that delivered the sternwheeling swift boats, too quick for Carry’s hatchet. The boats delivered the demon rum and witches’ brew and kept the old river ports steeped in a lifestyle that put the wild in the west.

I left the headstones of Carry and Carnegie, polar opposites in their approach to public relations, and headed for the wide open spaces. The back roads delivered a succession of towns whose very names hold the promise of good stories: Cleveland, Freeman, West Line. Oh, and Peculiar, a place with the motto, “The odds are with you.” A sign downtown proudly proclaims the town’s Civil War history: “In 1861-1864 while bloody battles raged throughout the southern states, nothing happened here.” Nobody wanted to die for a Peculiar cause.

But a hundred years later, the town almost became famous. The owner of the Kansas City Athletics baseball team, an eccentric named Charley O. Finley, brought more innovation to stadium sports than any other person since Caligula: Colored jerseys. DayGlo orange baseballs. He installed a mechanical bunny rabbit under home plate that would pop up like a Jack in the Box to give the umpire fresh baseballs. And he threatened with regularity to move his team away from Kansas City. In one spat with the city, he vowed to move the team to Peculiar. The Peculiar A’s. The name might’ve become a synonym for arsehole, but the move never materialized. Eventually, Charley huffed off to Oakland with his team, whose players cultivated handlebar mustaches and won pennants.

***

Within spitting distance of the Kansas state line, I stumbled onto a real find. I almost passed by an unimpressive metal building, except for the modest sign at the gravel drive entrance: Frontier Military Museum. The building resembles a small aircraft hangar. Avoiding the urge to judge this tin book by its cover, I pulled into the parking lot. Inside that simple metal building sits perhaps the greatest collection of military saddles in America.

Since Mark and Virginia Alley retired more than a decade ago from the aircraft industry in Wichita, they’ve focused on presenting their collection to the world. It’s not where you think it would be. Not on the Smithsonian Mall. Not Texas or Tucson or anyplace known for riding tall in the saddle. It’s not in Kansas City—or any city. It sits on the eastern edge of tiny Drexel, Missouri. Mark admits that the museum is out of the way. “But we love the area,” he said. And after all, this was the frontier when many of his fifty saddles were enlisted.

Each saddle reflects the status of its rider, from the plebeian soldier’s ride to the elaborate officer’s saddle. I’d never thought about it much, really, that an officer sat on a leather Lexus, while a regular soldier perched on a stripped-down chassis. Rank be damned, the museum’s caretakers ensure that every saddle tells a story, thanks to its supporting cast of characters including tack, boots, headgear, canteens, uniforms and firearms. A replica of the Drexel Mercantile Company displays frontier-style dry goods. Relics add perspective from several local Native American tribes: The Osage, Sac and Fox. Mark relishes in showing the displays and talking about the collection. It’s nice to see somebody spend a big part of his retirement time and money showing people their past.

Thanking the Alleys for their pioneer spirit, I jumped back in my saddle, and spurred the horses under my hood ornament to take me down the trail. Minutes south of Merwin, I met up with a cowboy in a field. More precisely, Merwin Mike is a scarecrow-like dummy of a cowboy, riding up and down on the rocker arm of an oil well pump. Curious, I later Googled, “cowboy riding the rocker arm of an oil well pump,” and I can say with some confidence that this sculpture is one of a kind. The visual conjures memories of rodeos, or the Wyoming license plate. But a real cowboy would point out that this art more closely resembles a tin horn on a teeter totter than a bronco buster. Still, in the middle of the prairie, artist Jerry Johnston earns his spurs. Since my first trip, Merwin Mike has migrated from the open prairie to Jerry’s corral in downtown Merwin, population: 83... 84 if you count Merwin Mike.

***

The prairie? Today you see less of it. Most land has converted to cultivation. But the area remains rural, and remote. As Erifnus and I caromed between farms, fields and forest, locals kept talking about the mountains in southwest Cass County. Mountains? In the middle of the prairie? Amaroochie, they said. Turns out to be the Amarugia Highlands, sticking out like warts on the smooth landscape. Their altitude doesn’t rival the Rockies or even the Ozarks, but from a flat start, Erifnus got a workout on her gears. And she got a view at the top. The conservation area turns out to be a popular recreation spot. Who knew? This close to Kansas.

All this galloping flipped my switch to gourmet. I set my compass to take me from Amaroochie to Archie, home of a high school team called the Whirlwinds and the second most unique water tower in Missouri. Water towers generally are the first peek at a town’s personality, visible from miles away. These small-town skyscrapers assume an infinite number of shapes, with only two requirements: hold water and become a billboard for the town’s number one obsession. The Archie water tower is diamond-shaped, and the town’s name cascades down the stalk. Under the shadow of the tower, I passed BJ’s Rise ’N Shine Restaurant. The parking lot was packed. I glanced at my watch. It was 3 p.m. Curiosity propelled my car to the last available parking space, and I entered this roadside diner to find good food, like Piranha chili, and a counter covered with homemade pies. Ordering desserts here is a bittersweet process of elimination. The Pizookies® are fresh-baked cookies smothered in ice cream. The beignets are baked, not fried—the best beignets this side of Café du Monde.

I love small-town restaurants and their reasonable prices. Down the road in Adrian, Winfield’s Restaurant served up a special of stuffed peppers, mashed potatoes and gravy with green beans and cherry cobbler for less than six bucks. I ate again. Then I found shelter for the night and regrouped for the next day.

***

A statue stands on the courthouse grounds in Butler. That’s not unusual, since statues seem to prefer such places. But this bronze likeness of a solitary soldier honors a turning point in the Civil War, a turning point that goes largely unnoticed. The Battle of Island Mound wasn’t much more than a skirmish, although at least seven men were killed. This was the first Civil War battle involving African American soldiers. On the old Toothman Farm, where the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry had built Fort Africa, federal troops repelled a larger Confederate force. The battle gets overlooked by just about everybody, save the most astute Civil War historians. But now the state plans a historic site. It’s about time.

Under the neon sign at Sam’s Hi-Way Hamburger, a line of kids waited at the service window to buy ice cream. My stomach wanted to stop for ice cream too, but my internal clock kept my foot to the gas pedal, since a stop would put me in line behind the better part of two little league teams.

On my way out of town, I stopped to see Linnie Crouch, a Butler legend. Well, I didn’t see him. He’s six feet under in Oak Hill Cemetery. I hope he lived an interesting life. Good, bad, I don’t know. He died in 1898. But his fame extends beyond the grave, almost six inches. His plot sprouts the world’s smallest tombstone, certified by Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It’s less than six inches square. He may or may not have been a Bushwhacker. But I’ll bet he knew a few.

Driving down the highway, I did a double-take. Ahead, a garbage truck slowed to pick up a load. The sign on its side proclaimed, “Bitter White Trash.” I looked again, closer this time, to read, “Better Rate Trash.” Hey, my road is long, and the key to keeping my interest involves random sights, random thoughts and the ability to sort through trash.

Many Missourians are sensitive about the persistent belief that the state is overrun by white trash. It’s a lasting scar that came from the shapers of popular opinion back during the years leading up to the Civil War. For political purposes during those prewar years, the abolitionist media portrayed Missourians as Pukes. The word was capitalized to formalize this subhuman culture, interested only in drinking whiskey, fighting and owning slaves. Missourians were almost universally described as illiterate and obnoxious, with vacant pig-like eyes and tobacco-stained teeth. Truth is, there were Pukes among Missouri’s Civil War population. But like any other subclass of heathens, they were outnumbered by law-abiding citizens. They just shouted louder, shot more often, and burned and looted and raped their way into American lore. And with the help of the Union press, the whole state was branded with an image that persists today. Pukes. Bushwhackers. Hillbillies. Bitter white trash.

I didn’t intend to pick up the scent of Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers and cavalries in blue and gray. But that’s the allure of taking a random route and pinballing through frontier territory. I learned that while things have changed, much remains the same. Many western Missourians still hold to Southern sympathies. Documents in Missouri’s “Bushwhacker Capital” of Nevada proclaim that “19 out of 20 Vernon Countians were Confederate sympathizers. Not counting Bushwhackers, the county sent more men per capita to the Confederate army than any other in Missouri.” That could explain why Union General Thomas Ewing issued his controversial Order #11 in 1863. To flush out the Bushwhackers, Ewing burned four counties to the ground. Ewing’s torching of Missouri’s Kansas border wasn’t the first act of eminent domain, but it’s among the most heinous. His reign of terror punished the innocent as well as the guilty. There is still deep resentment among farm families in western Missouri who suffered in Ewing’s effort to eradicate the Bushwhackers.

For a closer look at Bushwhackers, I pointed the mother ship toward Nevada, pronounced with a hard “a” (nuh VAY duh). Minutes later, I crossed the radar of another hard “a,” just doing his job, and he handed me a warning ticket for speeding. Fitting, then, that my first stop downtown was the drafty old jail. It’s a museum now, and I suspect local parents relish taking their miscreant teens to view the “cell room of medieval malevolence.” They actually kept prisoners here until 1960. Its stone walls shout century-old hieroglyphics, haunting testament to time spent in Hell. Accentuating the spooky aura of the jail, somewhere outside its thick walls, the mother of all sledgehammers repeated its dramatic thud at half-minute intervals. I searched for the sound, conjuring images of anvils dropping into claw-foot bathtubs.

The dull pounding persisted, every 30 seconds, reverberating through downtown. I followed my ears around the business district, past the courthouse, a work of art under a red tile roof. I followed the sound, passing murals that leapt from brick walls like giant tattoos, telling vivid stories of the Katy Railroad and the Civil War.

I remembered what a waiter on the Delta Queen had told me: “When you enter Nevada, listen. You’ll hear the sounds of old W.F. Norman.”

And suddenly, there it was. Right in the middle of town. The W.F. Norman Sheet Metal Manufacturing Company sends its stamped tin ceiling art everywhere in America, to places as far-ranging as the wedding-cake ceilings of the Delta Queen to the ornate mouldings atop Washington, D.C.’s Willard Hotel, where President Grant and Sam Clemens smoked and drank.

I was fascinated. Right here is a uniquely American art form that flourishes only in this one red brick factory. This town owns the tin ceiling market, thanks to the perseverance of a company well into its second century of turning ordinary sheet metal into architectural ornaments.

The W.F. Norman Company stamps tin into original designs, based on customers’ wishes. Even today, the company produces exact duplicates of mouldings and marquees, crestings and caryatids, to restore America’s stately mansions.

At the edge of this tin ceiling factory, I stood outside an open window, not a jon boat’s length from the ancient stamping apparatus. An iron-bottomed hunk of oak timbers, heavier than a Chevy Tahoe, raised slowly toward the ceiling, straining its giant hemp halter, and dropped like a guillotine on the unsuspecting sheet of tin. The tin was impressed. So was I.

The huge press offered a time-capsule trip to the Industrial Revolution, and with some adjustment I suspect this contraption could hammer a Humvee into gargoyles. Ropes as thick as Popeye’s forearms raised and lowered the giant press, the same way it operated nearly two centuries ago.

Best anybody can tell, the press was built not long after Zebulon Pike explored the nearby Osage River. W.F. Norman bought the press in 1897, and began transforming copper and brass and bronze into balusters, finials and weather vanes. Many of the tin ceilings survive. In fact, next time you’re downtown anywhere, walk into an old building and look up. Chances are, you’re looking into an original tin sundae, stamped into a ceiling by this most unique company.

As I stood at the W.F. Norman factory, on the outside looking in, I realized it wasn’t my high school history teacher, nor my unnatural attachment to my 1952 World Book Encyclopedias that launched me on a journey to see every square inch of Missouri.

It was a waiter aboard the Delta Queen.