Day Eleven 5 July, 2014
Day Tweleve
Day Eleven 5 July, 2014 Kansas City to Mountain Grove, Missouri 283 miles
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| Harry S Truman Independence, MO home |
I certainly do not begrudge Eisenhower a farm in Gettysburg and spending his winters in Palm Springs. Little enough reward for defeating Hitler but there is something intensely appealing about Truman's strongly held belief that he was only the servant of the American people not their savior. Whatever the case, I am sure we will not see another like him. Subsequently I was reminded that Jimmy Carter was not so grand after he left office. That is right. He was non-Imperial enough that I forgot him completely.
I stop for a quick bite to eat in the small town of Lexington. I remember my Mother bringing me here as a boy and being told about the Battle of Lexington in the Civil War. She showed me the yankee cannonball that was lodged in one of the pillars of the County Court House. That Civil War battle had taken place about 90 years before my being there to view the residue. I realized with some surprise that it had been 60 since my last visit. The Court House looks relatively unchanged, me, not so much.
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| Yankee Cannonball in Lexington Courthouse |
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| Lexington Courthouse |
After passing through Lexington, it is only a short ride to my boyhood home of Higginsville. My parents moved here when I was about 2. My Father was a school administrator and teacher while he worked on finishing his Phd in Education at the University of Missouri. I remember as a small child visiting what at that time was the Confederate Soldiers Home which was located on some average just outside of town. At that time there were no surviving Confederate war veterans but I remember being told that there were still three widows of veterans living in the home. The main buildings were not open to the public but we joined many others in having picnics on what I recall were fairly extensive wooded grounds. On subsequent visits to Higginsville while we were living in Michigan I remember being told that the Home was converted into a school for the handicapped but ultimately was made into a state historical monument.
This area of Missouri was settled fairly early in Missouri's history, primarily as a result of its location in the valley of the Missouri river. The land was exceptionally rich and productive and remains so today. The agricultural opportunity were so good that many of the early settlers were also slaveholders, using their "property" as field hands. I can also recall that there was so much Confederate currency around that we used it as play money when we were kids. I looked up some of the Confederate bills on eBay and if I had known then that it would be worth so much, I would have kept a bunch. It certainly would have been a better investment than many of my later investment choices were.
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| Statue Confederate Memorial |
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| I had another tourist snap a shot of me at the Confederate Graveyard |
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| Inside the Memorial Chapel |
My father returned from the was in Europe in 1946 after some time in military government after Germany's defeat. He would have stayed longer since he was having a wonderful time being the military "Mayor" or a small Bavarian town. My mother told him if he wanted to stay married he could come straight home. Once he was back, he started work on his Phd at the University of Missouri. Our first house was a tiny stone cottage backed up to the railroad tracks and grain elevators immediately behind. I remember some of my time there but not a great deal. We then moved to a more spacious house across town that was only three doors down from my Elementary School where I attended Kindergarten and First Grade.
This was the tiny school close to my home in Higginsville. I had forgotten the brick streets that I had to cross to get to class but I recalled them when I rode the bike down the street in front to take these shots. The school looks like it has been disused for some time and is boarded up but I guess the town council just can't bring themselves to tear it down. The building sits on its own large block of land and would make a nice park if they so decide.
I did not spend much time in town on this trip, just cruised the place really. I had visited a couple of times before on other trips and this time was not the severe shock of how small the place seemed when I first returned after being away for almost 25 years. We went back often when I was a chile and after the family had moved to East Lansing, Michigan and later to Denver, Colorado since my parents had maintained the friendships they had made in Higginsville. Those family friends are now all gone and the only person I even have a vague connection with was the son of the John Deere Deanship owner who inherited his father's business that continues in town today. But he was a bit younger than I and I really did not know him well although his sister was in my same grade at school. I heard somewhere that she had married and moved away years ago. I think he still lived in his parents old house which I rode by on the small gravel road that leads from town to the Confederate Home. I remember we thought they lived in a mansion since the house was all brick and of the new "split-level" design. They also had a pond in their backyard which we kids thought was neat as well.
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| Home of Higginsville John Deere Dealer |
As I cruised the little town, I did not see any place to grab lunch so I rode some 10 miles south to where the Higginsville road intersected with Interstate 70 and had a burger at a very busy McDonaldss co-located with a large truck stop. From here it is a pretty much straight ride south to the Lake of the Ozarks country. The Lake is man-made and formed by a power company dam that was completed in the 1930's. At the time of its creation, the lake was the largest man-made body of water in the US. In addition to power generation the lake soon developed a large tourist business and I had visited the area several times on family trips, mostly when we were on our way to visit my Mother's family in the extreme Southern part of the state. One of my father's family also had a connection with the lake. This was his Mother's parents who owned a large farm with extensive lake shore frontage which was located just outside the town of Warsaw, Missouri. He family name was Wiseman but the family was not particularly close and I only remember that one visit. What I recall most was the family story about the patriarch who bought the land in the mid-nineteenth century. Even then, river bottom land was highly prized and expensive. Apparently this ancestor had taken one of the wagon trains West to San Francisco at the time of the 1849 Gold Rush. He did not make any money as a miner but was a very successful hunter and established a business providing game and other foods to the mass of people desperately trying to strike it rich. He was so successful in this business that he became very wealthy and after a few years was able to take a Clipper Ship around Cape Horn and on to New Orleans where he took a Steamboat up the Mississippi where he then bought his extensive farm property which had remained largely in family hands. I have no idea what might have happened since my visit in the 1950's and would not know where to look but I thought I would at least ride through Warsaw on my way to Peace Valley.
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| American Clipper Ship Flying Cloud |
The rest of the ride was fairly eventful although I stayed totally on the backroads so the scenery was enjoyable and some of the views of the lake were quite beautiful. I was hoping to get all the way to West Plains which is the closest town to Peace Valley but I got quite tired in the afternoon and stopped in the town of Mountain Grove. I would have pushed on to a town that I remembered my Mother taking about one time and which had a very interesting sounding name. That is Cabool. But I was not certain if I would be able to get a hotel there so Mountain Grove it was. I made a quick commentary before heading off to dinner at a Subway just down the road. I subsequently looked up the history of the town of Cabool and according to the local historical site, the name was given because an early resident was reminded of the scenery he had seen when he was in the British Army and posted at Kabul, Afghanistan.
Day Eleven Commentary
Day Twelve 6 July, 2014 Mountain Grove, Mo - Peace Valley, MO - Moline, Ill 277 miles
This is the day that was the reason for the trip. For some time I have wanted to revisit Peace Valley where my Mother grew up and where we visited often when I was a child. At that time we had many relatives living in the area and we made the rounds of them all. Now that Mom is gone so are most of the individuals that I had visited as a kid. I still have very many relations in this region of Missouri but most are quite distant and largely unknown to me. There were 7 children in my Mom's family. Her dad had 11 in his and her mother 13 in hers. We did not visit with the families of these 24 Great Aunts and Uncles because we had so many closer relatives to see but most of them and their progeny lived in the area. I never visited the region in adulthood and I often asked myself why the desire to return after over 50 years but I never developed a good answer. I think it was simply to once again feel close to my Mother who I still miss. I was not a particularlly dutiful son and perhaps did not attend to her enough when she was alive but I always loved her dearly and still do.
Most of my memories center around the small hamlet of Peace Valley which I recall as having a single general store and was where my Grandmother lived in a small house without indoor plumbing or even a water well. Her children often offered to have water installed but my Mother always said that her Mom just thought that was a foolish way to spend hard-earned money and she really did not mind having to walk the few blocks to the community pipe-well and carry her water back to the house. I can remember having to learn how to "prime the pump" in order to make it work. Mom did tell me that years later when Grandmother finally had to move into a nursing home in the nearby town of West Plains, that what was most amazing to the old woman was the inexhaustible supple of hot water. She just could not believe that it was so easy to have "as much hot water as you could ever want".
I had arrived on a Sunday and was disappointed that the general store was not open. I remember it having one old-style gravity gas pump out front and the iconic "cracker barrel" inside. I suspect it was the only place in town with a cooler and we kids always enjoyed the cold sodas and popsicles that the locals would give us while they explained just how we were related. I remember when my family had moved from Higginsville to East Lansing, Michigan where my father was a Dean in the School of Education we often would drive the car down with only my Mom and my father would join us later. We had a big Buick and with the Michigan license plates we were initially ignored and shunned by the locals. The general store was not anxious to sell to outsiders and we would at first just sit in the car out front while we were pointedly not asked to be served. My Mom would adopt her most outrageous South Missouri accent and ask in a loud voice if there were any Gilliam or Bennetts in the area. As soon as she opened her mouth, it immediately became old home week and we were warmly embraced and longer strangers.
I recall the old gravity pumps because they were so unusual. This picture is not of the one at Peace
Valley but was like the one that they had. You had to manually pump the gas with the crank at the bottom of the pump up into the glass, see-through tank on the top. This let you see how many gallons were in the take and when it was the amount you wanted, you would then drain the tank into your car's gas tank using gravity.I was able to get quite a few photos of Peace Valley and of the several Churches that are located in the village. The family historic church was a Methodist congregation which was built on land donated by my Grandfather AlonzoDobbins (Dobb) Bennett. The building was once used regularly but now if used only infrequently but is still pretty well maintained. At one time the family must have been fairly religious since Grandpa Dobb's father was named after the first Methodist Bishop in the Americas, Francis Asbury Garrett. After I had left the area and on my way to visit friends in Canada, I thought that I should have gone by the New Hope Baptist Church as well and looked for some the Gilliam family graves that I know are located there but I limited my stops to the Village and to Bennett Chapel.
I had planned on asking at the general store for directions to Bennett Chapel but since there was not anyone around I went searching. I thought I had a pretty good idea where it was from town but after a mile or so on pretty poor gravel roads I stopped at a crossroads just to see if I could find it using my GPS equipment. No luck there but I took a video of the area. Once I stopped, I thought I might see a stile over one of the fences that surrounded the fields. I tried to remember when the last time I had used a stile was but all that came to mind was that it was probally on one of my visits here as a kid.
Crossroads on the way to Bennett Chapel
When I finally got to the church, I was surprised at how good a shape the building was in. I had expected some decay and an overgrown graveyard. Not only was the building still sparkling white but the grass had been recently mowed and there were flowers on many of the graves.
Bennett's Chapel
Bennett Chapel Panorama
Once I had spent some time at the graveyard, I returned to Peace Valley and made a couple of swings through the town to see if anything might jog my memory about my Grandmother's house. It is entirely likely that it might have simply fallen down and no been resurrected. I know that she would have moved into West Plains sometime in the 80's and it might not have been reoccupied without indoor plumbing. I seem to remember that Mom said the girls, she and her sister's, had insisted on installing running water to the kitchen but I do not think a toilet ever replaced the privy out back. In any case, nothing further came to mind and I headed back to the main roads and headed East.
Day Twelve Commentary
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