The Oregon Trail... Just Shoot Me Now ~ The Americana Kitsch and Culture Tour

The Oregon Trail... Just shoot me now! 

~ The Americana Kitsch and Culture Tour

~ Originally posted 16 Jul 2011

 

Dear MM’s, You know it’s time to come off the road when… Your RV transmission spits the dummy and dumps oil all over the car park at Bear Country USA. Yesssss… I am undecided at this point what is energetically going on with this. I am at the shock and a strong Bacardi and Diet Coke stage. The panic has been abated by the alcohol and half a tin of Rescue Remedy lozenges. Oh shit, oh dear…as my dad would say.  If anyone wants to jump in with possible energetic causes for this – please feel free. I do know that transmissions are about being able to move forward, or move full stop. So, somewhere I have not been listening and have been avoiding STOP signs. This is not a good thought for the day/week/month/year… And ‘weirdly’ enough but not too surprising, the last time I came through this neck of the woods; if you have read the book…you will know that I also had transmission issues. Do I feel like we are not moving forward in our life? Well…honestly—yes. We need to make a decision—pronto! (Later, I realize, it’s more to do with being on a ‘mission’ (transmission)—Thanks twin. And I actually need to go with the damn flow more! And trust that there is enough time, money, energy for whatever we need to be doing.) And I was just talking to my twin last night too and he has up and RUN away from the life he was living. Sprinted, in fact. No ‘logical’ thoughts, ‘realistic’ reasoning or anything ghastly like that. His heart just said, enough…of the situation he was in and 2 days ago, he got up, packed up his truck in 4.5 hours and hightailed it out of there. Way to go!!! He doesn’t know how things will work out—just that they will. This is abSOULutely brilliant! This is the first time I have seen him use his heart energy in over a year. And as we are twins and always do things in unison—I have a feeling I am about to make some sort of leap of faith too. I suspect this might be IT. Trust in the heart energy… Okay…so this is um…fun…in a weird sort of way. Kind of like being on holiday. Considering we live in a camper, we have spread out amazingly well in the motel room. It already looks like we have lived here for a month! Good grief. Oh yes, did I mention, that we are now at the motel and the novelty of having a bathroom that’s bigger than an aircraft toilet is rather nice. Leo has had a marvelous time —all NIGHT! Oh, let me look out the window, let me get a drink, the window, mums bed, dads (queen beds but stuck against the wall, so too awkward, we opted for one each) Leo spent all night taking turns as to which bed he would be on. Ever taken an excited 5 year old on their first trip somewhere… Yes—exactly like that. Under the bed, on the beds, on the window sill, use his toilet, drink some water, window again, food, window, bounce on mums bed. Gee, not sure why mum is turning the light back on and reading again. It’s like 5.00 o’clock in the morning mum? So, I’m awake but not human yet. And of course, Leo is EXHAUSTED, so he is drifting off to sleep on the other bed. No surprises there. And while it’s weird to be off the road, it kind of goes with the rest of the week really. NO... And thank God for that... Nebraska - Optimist State The whole last week has been a mishmash of things. We have done all sorts of bits and pieces and been back in the dreaded Mid-West. I cannot even begin to describe how boring it is. The people are nice but the energy is as flat as a pancake. Despite this, we manage to find a few things to do, but honestly—(current circumstances and all) if I never see it again—THANK GOD! We left Memphis, TN, with not a CLUE as to where we needed to go next—most disconcerting and it was worrying me…a lot… We headed to Western Kentucky knowing that at least we like Kentucky. I need SIGNS for god’s sake and I felt like I hadn’t had a one. I don’t want to have to work things out with my head! Imagine the stupid mistakes that would be made! And this was what was worrying me partly. I hadn’t had ANY bloody signs. And I did not want to make a head decision. Also, the fact that I had had no signs was really worrying. Was I off path somewhere? Had I taken a wrong turn? What now? Where now? In my mind, Tennessee was the last stop on this trip and we’d left the State with nary a clue of what or where to go next… Eek. So, going on a wing and a prayer, we toddled up into Kentucky—going with the feeling, that at least, we KNEW we loved Kentucky and the Kentuckians. Our first stop over the border was in a little Podunk town, which the name escapes me now. But the entertainment factor was HUGE and reminds us of how much we love the Kentuckians.  They are the nicest people. We stopped in for lunch at a wee diner called Patty Sues Diner, circa 1972. First of all, you get the smoking or non-smoking section?! We were a bit nonplussed about that. I couldn’t really fathom that any restaurant these days would have a smoking section. And I loved the smoking ‘section.’ The whole place reeked of smoke. Ugh. I never get this concept—it’s not like cigarette smoke knows the rules and stops at the non-smoking section. I thought this might be a one off, middle of nowhere type thing. But we struck it again in Missouri at a family chain place called Joes Crab Shack. It was bizarre. So, despite the weird ‘non’ smoking section we opted for, we did stay because we were starving.  Everyone was very friendly and it gave us a warm thrill to be back in that lovely Kentuckian energy. No matter who walked through the door or out it, people acknowledged you and said hello. The older men all wore suspenders and trucker caps. You get the picture. So, the conversation at a couple of tables over kind of went with it all. There were 3 people talking at the table and it was almost impossible to not hear them. Americans voices carry. At first we thought they were talking about some family member, as they seemed to have all the details and knew everything that was going on with the situation.  And all said in VERY thick Kentuckian hill accents. Think—hillbilly accent. One person said. “Weeeell, eyeee haaaave aan o-pinnnn-ion; you knooow whaaaaat, in marrr o-pinnnn-ion…” Boy, we sure do love the Southern accents and the hill accents are quite the deal. I have a friend Jim Bird the Third who was from the Kentuckian Eastern Hills – gen-u-ine hillbilly. It took him YEARS to tone down his accent. He got hell for it when he worked in oil engineering. And most of them are Texans—so that gives you some idea of the hill accent! I then voted them, best in category for the most innovative use of ‘drug’ I have ever heard. Here you didn’t need to worry about illegal substances. Here you had to worry about illegal speech! They were talking about what the mother had done and the brouhaha surrounding it.  And you MUST say this in the thickest hill accent you can manage: ‘She done drug three of her work mates into it.” LOL. We sat there in pop eyed wonder at this. :-) Good grief! What’s even funnier about this whole thing is that we thought it must be a local thing. Hot gossip around the place. But no, it’s some case in Florida —they don’t even KNOW the people?? Good lord! So that amused us for the rest of the afternoon as we headed north. Worth the price of the sandwich alone!   The next day we went into Louisville, KY to go to the Louisville Slugger Museum. Not Ali…but the baseball bats. This was fun. There is a HUGE 120 foot tall bat outside the factory and we went on a wee tour of the factory, where they show you how they make the famous baseball bats. This company started out making things like butter churns. It was started by J.F. Hillerich back in 1855. In 1884, his son Bud snuck off one day to watch a baseball game. The bat broke and Bud convinced the player to come down to his dads shop and get a bat personally made for him. His dad was not very impressed and really just wanted to make the stair railings, porch columns and the butter churns.     But it caught on with the players and his dad slowly came around. The bats were originally called the ‘Falls City Slugger’ until Bud took over his dads company in 1894 and changed the name to the now famous ‘Louisville Slugger.’ The bats are made from one piece of wood, usually white ash or maple and there is still a surprising amount of hand work done with them. Each logo is burned into the wood by hand still. Some of the famous players are contracted to Louisville Slugger and they have about 120 bats a year made for them. Each bat made to specific specifications for that player, weight, height etc and with their own signature burned onto the bat.         Aaron with Mickey Mantle bat Signatures of some of the greats in baseball. Their signatures are all burnt onto the bats. It's an interesting process to see. A lot of hand work is done.   Jackie Robinson - First black player in Major League Baseball ~ Go and see the movie 42. Fantastic.  At the end of the tour, you get a small Louisville slugger bat to take with you, which is very fun. You can even get your own bat personalized there! This was fun and then we had the odious task of finding an RV park for the night. Over the river to Indiana we went—that counts right for a State visit! Anyway, we found a RV park over the river and I have to say, I was feeling pretty low on it. I had hoped that Louisville would be THE place that we had been looking for in Kentucky but it didn’t grab me at all. I found it industrial and really busy. Damn. So, feeling terribly ugh with it all, I hunkered down on the computer for a bit—then wondered where Aaron had gone. I finally went outside the camper and there he was talking to some lovely people Dawna and Todd Spencer! We ended up spending the evening with them and their kids and it was soooo nice! That made me feel better and what really put the icing on the cake, (just when I thought the damn Guides had gone to the Bahamas —again!) What topped it was that Dawna was born in South Carolina, brought up in Kentucky and Todd LOVED Seattle. Well hot dang! I realized in a blinding flash of inspiration that I had shrunk my dreams and slit their throat. And thus, you got the, ‘I have a dream’ blog! This bolstered me and I felt that we WERE on the right track. I just had to expand my dreams again and stick with them. So off we set for Washington State, coming up through the Mid-West and into the Wild West part of the States. I have never seen so much corn in my life! Well, there was one other time—that was the LAST time I went across the Mid-West! Good grief! There are acres and acres and acres........ of the damn stuff, all across the Mid-West  We rolled into St Louis, Missouri and omigod… I had truly forgotten just how steamy the Mid-West can get. The Mississippi River was extremely full. There is a statue of a man on the River Front car park and it’s mostly underwater! You can just see his head and part of his arm. Wow… St Louis Arch Paddle Steamer on the Mississippi So with the river this full and the heat up in the 90’s—it was like sucking in water. I could literally barely breathe. This is not very fun. What we were doing there was seeing the St Louis Arch or the Gateway Arch. It’s very impressive as you head towards St Louis. A massive steel arch that sits on the river front and is the ‘gateway’ to the Mid-West. As we were walking up there, we got talking to Don and Larry who were truck drivers from Utah. We kept talking as we staggered up the zillions of steps to the monument. We went into the monument museum, which thankfully is very air conditioned and underground. We got tickets to go up to the top of the arch and it’s on some strange system, so it was going to take a bit. I was gasping for air, so I sat down and the guys went off to see the exhibits. Later, I saw the photos and, of course…they looked fun.   It was extremely disorganized and finally after what felt like HOURS, we finally got to go up to the arch. What an utterly creepy experience. The Arch is not very wide, so they take you up there in these capsules. Imagine putting 5 kitchen chairs in the tightest semi circle you can get, with everyone’s knees touching, and some people having to bow forward because it’s not tall enough for their heads. Then they shut the door. Four claustrophobic minutes later, you are at the top. These were the tiny capsules they squeezed us into. Ugh. Okay, you think, I’m at the top now, it’ll be much better. It’s not. If anything, it’s almost weirder. You get off the capsules and you are on the observation platform, which goes up a bit of a steep incline and it’s very narrow. It’s also very small, the windows are like slits and yes, you get to see St Louis 630ft below. But after only a few minutes, we’re all done. It’s very weird and very creepy. Other people are flicking nervous glances and smiling bravely – they are done too. We come back down in the creepy capsules and all heave a sigh of relief when we get back to the bottom. On top of the arch bit at the top.   Ugh. We exit there and stagger back to the camper. I am gasping for air, it’s horrible. Notice the statue holding the hat. Well, normally you can see the whole statue. That's how swollen with water the Mississippi was   We gladly leave there and get on the road. We stop twice to try and find a restaurant to eat in and just crossing the car park is like a mountain trek in the Himalayas at extreme altitude. The humidity has to be about 110%. It’s awful.   The next day, we hit Kansas… And I threatened to call this blog, ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore…thank god.’   In Kansas, we did find an Air Combat Museum to go to in Topeka and it’s pretty cool…but so damn HOT. We give up seeing another Civil Rights attraction I had found and push on. Our energy is wilting with the heat. We are in the nineties here, all the way through. Translation—about 35 degrees Celsius on average. Whew. We wave at the Wizard of OZ museum as we drive on through. Inertia is setting in. Through the endless corn fields, and up into Nebraska. And oh gosh, more corn—fabulous. We stay in Lincoln, NE for the night and are so tired, that we manage to find a RV Park that is not only ‘Ye olde Freeway Park’ but “Ye Olde TRI-Freeway Park.’ It defies logic. We just can’t understand while anyone would put a RV Park right on the bloody freeway! After a while, the corn became a blur...   On the up side, it’s so hot, that we have to run the AC flat tack all night—this drowns out the freeway noise. Nebraska…surely to god there is even LESS to see in Nebraska. But it surprises us. This was an amazing sight. We were driving down a freeway and I said to Aaron, 'I could be mistaken, but I think that's a B-17.' Sure enough, it was!! Amazing! Doing summer tours. How cool. It feels like the longest drive across a State—some 500 something miles… Long. But we stop at North Platte at a Trading Post that has a miniature Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. That was kind of fun. You start to realize that out here, it was the wild wild west.    Look at the beadwork on this regalia. A miniature of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show   From there, we arrived in the wee town of Ogalalla, NE, an old original cowboy and western town.  Up until 1885, the town was booming! Cattle were driven here on the big Texas cattle drives. And the town itself was home to saloons, saloon girls, bordellos and cowboys! Many a gunfight was to be had here in the saloons and streets. Up on a small hill just outside the town centre, is a small cemetery called Boot Hill. Here there are cowboys buried with their boots on—hence the name. Some of them are unnamed. Quite a few have died from gunshots wounds. Really wild wild west.   We pull in about 6.15 and park in a decent wee RV Park, with no freeway noise. Wow. We are told that the Front Street show at The Crystal Palace starts at 7.30 but be there at 7.15 for the shoot out, out front! Aaron dons his cowboy hat and off we go.       Front Street is a small section of ‘old town.’ All the facades on the buildings look like they came right out of the old West. There’s a saloon, an eating house, jail, general store and a couple of other buildings. At 7.15, there’s a gun fight out the front, complete with some racy dance hall girls! What fun! That starts the evening’s entertainment. After the gun fight, we all troop inside for the rest of the show, through the swinging bat doors and into The Crystal Palace. Up on stage is the piano player, the walls have red flocked wallpaper on them, and the bar looks pretty original.   Our players are local high school students and every year for about 47 years now; this show has been put on here at Front Street. It tells the story of the cowboys that came through with stock on the cattle drive and the Oregon Trail Wagon trains filled with New World hopefuls going the other way.  They did a very funny skit where the kids in the kids in the back of the wagon are doing the 'are we there yet/I'm hungry/I have to go to the bathroom/are we there yet' routine. It gives new meaning to 'road trips.' Imagine coming across these prairies with kids. Just shoot me now! There are parts of the Oregon Trail and prairies where you can still see the wagon ruts… I can’t imagine how these people did this. It’s excruciatingly boring in a RV. And they probably didn’t even have the corn to amuse them. How on earth did they not go insane in a wagon? And the wagons are tiny. Really tiny. I had imagined them to be much bigger. But if you sat people either side, say, on plank benches, you might get 4 or 5 people on either side. Not very big. Along with this very uncomfortable ride, they also had to contend with heat, cold, Native Americans, wild animals… I wonder how many people went insane?   Anyway, we have a lot of fun at the show. Almost a bit of old Vaudeville in there, which I love. The kids are very talented and we get a good potted history of the West and the Prairies without having to do an ‘interpretative exhibit’—nothing is called a museum anymore… They dance, they sing, they tell awful but funny jokes. They involve the audience. We have a great time! We also get talking to Mark Irvin who owns over 20,000 records and who is a music man who contracts copyright songs out to people. What an interesting job! Don’t people do cool things?   So far on this trip—we have met a balloon maker/stilt man, a Duck Master, and now a Music person! Wow. And what interests me about these people is that you NEVER seem to meet them in everyday life. But someone has to have the fun jobs and I always like to meet the people who do. Imagine being at a BBQ… “So, what do you do for a job?” “I’m a Duck Master.” Blank look from the other person and thinking that this guy was taking the Mickey. (This means in Kiwi-speak—having someone on) “Oh yes, and er, what does a Duck Master do?” Again, it’s the fun part of life. The part we are SUPPOSED to be living. The part I think I forgot to do as we did our own personal Oregon Trail across the flatlands. I was on a mission!!! I realize now that the best thing I can do, is STOP, kick back, get back into the flow, and trust I am looked after—always. And to let go of the reins…and to trust the dream will be at the other side of the trail.