Wednesday, 21 April 2021
In last night's campground, I saw a Bluebird. Nice to see one again.
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| today's route |
On the road
I was continuing my drive along US 36 today. Inches from the outside lane line I saw a squirrel squatting down, and it took me a minute to realize it was alive. It didn't seem to be hurt, but it didn't move a muscle while I watched. It wasn't really looking at anything, just sitting there. I hope it managed to stay alive.
I started passing flat farmlands in countryside that began to look similar to Kansas which, after all, is the next state over.
Chillicothe
"Home of Sliced Bread" is Chillicothe's claim to fame, and it's not a bad one when you think about it. I'd been assuming the town (pop. 9,515 in 2010) was named for the town in Ohio, though I find there's one in Illinois, Iowa and Texas as well. But Chillicothe is a Shawnee word meaning "big town," and since 1774 the Shawnee Indians had been living in a village known as Chillicothe, about a mile from where this town was later founded. The town for US citizens who'd migrated to the area was surveyed in 1837. It's now a county seat.
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| Livingston County Courthouse in Chillicothe |
I mistakenly failed to note the address or directions to the museum here that has the bread slicing machine and, though the town had a sign about it, they didn't include an address or directions, so I never did find it. I can tell you, though, that on July 7, 1928, the Chillicothe Baking Co. began selling pre-sliced bread at area grocers, and that this was the first time anywhere in the world that sliced bread was available commercially. And anyone who's ever baked a loaf of bread and tried to slice it while it's still warm knows just how hard that is to do without mangling the whole loaf. This machine was truly an innovation.
Otto Rohwedder, a jeweler in St. Joseph, had actually created a prototype machine in 1912, but the machine and all the designs for it were destroyed in a fire, and it took Mr. Rohwedder until 1928 to come up with this version he sold to the baker. And to follow up on this earth-changing development, Mr. Rohwedder's 2nd machine was sold to a St. Louis baker who figured out an improvement that would hold the sliced loaf together long enough to allow it to be wrapped by machine. This development was promoted by the Holsum Bread folks (remember that brand?), and in 1930 Wonder Bread (another long-lasting brand) was among the first to sell sliced, wrapped bread nationwide. So now we know.
And now the phrase "best thing since sliced bread" has an actual time dimension: since 1928.
And though I didn't find the museum, I did find a number of murals of all kinds, scattered all over town.
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| This mural is on a short wall of the Citizens Bank & Trust, subject of the mural, and still going strong apparently. |
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| These windows don't exist - the door at left does, and the sign does, but the windows showing haircuts in each aren't real. |
Back on the road
Today I drove 120 miles and saw 3 Trump flags.
I passed a red barn on a green hillside dotted with black cows. Very pastoral.
I started seeing quite a few facilities labeled MFA, though nothing told me what that was and I had to look it up. It's a Midwest-based farm supply and marketing cooperative, serving 45,000 farmers in Missouri and adjacent states. So a big deal. One facility in particular I noticed was a setup that looked like a mining operation, with a conveyor belt that ran up high and dumped material into a pyramid-shaped pile. Only this pile - all of it - was completely covered in white plastic, and I couldn't figure out why. Now that I know it's a farm-oriented operation, maybe it was a pile of seed or grain? And it was covered to keep the birds from eating it all? It still seems odd because this pile was at least 2 stories tall.
Hamilton
Twenty-five miles west of Chillicothe is the town of Hamilton, pop. 1,809. They say they have 2 claims to fame: "The Boyhood Home of J.C. Penney" and "Quilt Town USA." Hamilton has several murals of its own.
There's a J.C. Penney Museum in town, and I'd originally planned to visit. But oddly enough, I had to hunt for it because it turns out the address I got online is the local library - I think the museum is inside. By the time I finally figured it out, I was feeling grumpy and decided to wait until my next visit to the area.
To back up their claim about the quilts, though, I can attest that I found quilting and sewing shops all over town. And it's not even a very big town, so I don't know how they can all stay in business. This seems like a nice little town, though my impression is that the range of local interests is mostly limited to farming and crafts.
Kingston and the Latter-Day Saints
Despite being only one-sixth the size of Hamilton, Kingston, pop. 348, is the county seat.
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| Caldwell County Courthouse in Kingston |
At a side road marked for the town of Far West, there was another sign that said "A Historical Site of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." When I looked it up I learned that Joseph Smith had originally wanted to establish his church in Independence (MO), but after a few years non-church settlers there ran them out of town. A few years after that, the state created Caldwell County specifically for the Mormons in compensation for the losses they sustained when they were kicked out of Independence. The Mormons established Far West as the county seat. It's apparently not much more than a ghost town now, due to what was incorrectly called the Mormon War of 1838. Some of this is on that historical marker and more is at this link. https://en.wikipedia.org/Far-West
Back on the road
I was near tonight's campground so I checked in there and dumped my waste tanks. Nearby I noticed a recycling drop-off area and, for the first time since I'd left Richardson, I was able to get rid of all my recycling stuff. At a few state parks before this, I'd been able to recycle aluminum cans and plastic bottles, but I had a backlog of glass containers and mixed paper. This place took it all. What a treat.
From there I drove south to the Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site - only to find that it was not only closed but also had no information displays. Online I'd learned that this is the last textile mill in the US that still has its original machinery intact. It operated from 1860 to 1898; the state's historic designation protects the machinery, the business records, and the building itself. And none of that did I get to see. I was very disappointed.
But it turned out the state had a campground and a picnic area on the grounds too, so I took the dogs to the picnic area for us to walk around a bit. Honestly, with last year's leaves still on the ground and the so-recent winter weather, it looked and felt like autumn instead of spring. But we had a nice walk.
Still, I had another disappointment when I let the dogs out and then noticed I'd lost a hubcap from my right rear tires. My poor little RV is really looking like it's gone through the mill (an appropriate metaphor here).
On the drive back to the campground I passed a sign saying, "Entering Freedom's Frontier." I was afraid that was some kind of separatist movement or something, but it turns out to be a National Park Service area that encompasses parts of eastern Kansas and western Missouri, dating back before the Civil War and, in fact, to some extent the cause of it. Remember all that Bleeding Kansas stuff? That's part of it. I found a remarkably coherent explanation on this NPS website, if you're interested. https://www.nps.gov/freedom-s-frontier-national-heritage-area
Tonight's campground only reopened for the season on April 1st, and there were still very few people there - though that was likely as much to do with it being a Wednesday as anything else. It had 4 sections, and I was one of only 3 campers in my section, which was nice.
At one point in the late afternoon I saw the park host go talk to some folks who I'd assumed were going to be tent camping or just staying in their car, because they hadn't brought a camper. After the people disappeared, I asked the host what that had been about, and he said they'd been picking mushrooms and he'd had to ask them to leave. I walked the dogs over there and didn't see any mushrooms so wonder where they found them. When I was a little kid, there was some kind of mushroom/toadstool brouhaha that I never really understood - other than eating the wrong thing can kill you, which has made me unwilling to eat wild mushrooms ever since.
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