Dixie’s just down the road

I rode over to Cardwell, Mo. yesterday afternoon for a six-pack of Samuel Adams Cream Stout and a bottle of Bacardi Gold rum. I didn’t know that’s what I was going to buy. I like to browse and surprise myself.

And I took a roundabout route, Pine Log Road east to the Brookland “business route” of U.S. 46, then Ark. 220 to Dixie (see photo above), then Ark. 135 north to U.S. 412 at the east edge of Paragould, and on east to Mr. T’s Riverside just across the St. Francis River (and state line) in Missouri.

In case you’re wondering about Dixie, it’s nothing more than a crossroads out in the Mississippi Delta. Just a couple of houses, nothing you’d recognize as a town, but they get to pretend they’re a place with a name.

Yesterday was mostly overcast with a high around 65. Today is a different story, being the first day of spring and all. It’s sunny and already 70 degrees by 11:30 a.m. and I’m going to have to try hard to think up a valid excuse not to do some yardwork today.

The grass is getting long but I need to hitch up the wagon and do a sweep of the yard picking up fallen limbs and sticks before I can mow.

This nuclear plant is about 100 miles downwind from us

No, Pam. Radiation is measured in millirems, not milligrams. Twit.

My first weekend motorcycle ride

Last weekend was one of those late winter weekends with an unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday, followed by a cold and rainy Sunday.

It reminded me of one such March weekend back in 1966 when I was a student at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.

My friend Steve Dolbow, a TKE at ISU, had a small Japanese motorcycle. I think it must have been a 250cc or maybe a 350cc.

I don’t remember whose idea it was – probably mine since it involved friends of mine – but we decided it would be fun to ride his bike up to Crawfordsville and go drinking with my Delphi High School buddies Ed Cook and Gene Snipes at their Sigma Chi Fraternity house on the Wabash College campus.

It was my first motorcycle trip of more than just putting around town. Steve had a spare helmet, so I figured I had all I needed.

The two-up (Steve at the controls) ride up to Crawfordsville was a delightful 60-mile lark in the sun. U.S. 41 north of Rockville, Ind., has a lot of fun curves and changes of elevation that continue when you turn east on Ind. 47. It was great fun and I think we got appropriately drunk, as college kids are wont to do, that night.

Coming back to Terre Haute was a different story.

A cold front overrode Saturday’s warm air overnight and we left for Terre Haute Sunday morning in a cold drizzle. My memory of the ride back was mostly of being soaked to the skin and horribly, miserably cold. I suspect the temperature was in the low 50s, but that’s crazy cold when your clothes are wet. I remember we stopped at a laundromat in Rockville to wring out our jackets and to try to fashion some kind of rain gear out of trash bags. By the time Steve dropped me off at my dorm, we were both deep into hypothermia.

I shucked my soaked clothes and shuffled down to the showers where I spent about an hour trying to warm up under hot water. Then I went to bed, turned my electric blanket up all the way and slept the rest of the day and night.

I suppose that would have put some people off of motorcycling for life. I don’t think Steve rides anymore. It obviously didn’t have that effect on me.

Off to Memphis for Bagels and a helmet

I promised myself I’d go for a ride today, so I did.

I rode down to Memphis and to City East Bagel Co. (formerly Memphis Bagel Co.) and snarfed up a dozen of their splendid, real Jewish bagels.

I’ve been wanting to check out the HJC IS-MAX BT helmet, since my Arai is long past the point where I should have replaced it. The HJC IS-MAX BT has a flip-up face and has an internal drop-down sunshade. And HJC wired it for Bluetooth devices, just to sweeten the deal. Since I use custom-fitted in-ear speaker/earplugs, the Bluetooth feature isn’t that much of a selling point. I had a Schuberth helmet when they first hit the U.S. market and found a lot to like about it, especially the drop-down sunshade. But the new Schuberth  retails for about $700. At an MSRP of $199, the HJC IS-MAX BT is the poor/thrifty man’s Schuberth. Since neither is certified by the Snell Memorial Foundation (whose relevance to motorcycling I have come to question), there’s no sticker snobbery involved in the choice.

When I pulled into a parking space at City East Bagel, I noticed a McDonald’s next door. So after I put the bagels into my left saddlebag, I whipped out my iPod Touch, locked onto the McDonald’s Wifi signal and Googled the HJC web site. Checking their dealer listings, I found Memphis Honda Yamaha. I called and determined they had the IS-MAX BT in the full range of sizes. They were only about 15 minutes away so, after stopping at an Exxon station to top off my gas tank, I rode to the dealership, tried on an XL version of the helmet and bought it. They had it in black and silver. I chose silver because it will be marginally cooler in the blazing heat of summer here.

Like most new helmets, there’s going to be a break-in period and the 87-mile ride home let me identify some areas where the padding irritates the tops of my ears. I think it’s fixable. The helmet seems to vent ok and the visor and sunshade move as they should. The chinstrap buckle needs a little pull-tab (a la Arai) for easier release, but that’s the only fault I can find in it so far.

I feel slightly guilty for not buying a helmet from Grass Roots BMW. They’re my dealer and I believe in supporting your dealer whenever you can. But they don’t carry HJC. So there it is.

I think he’s running…

Do I think Donald Trump has what it takes to be president?

My initial response is doubtful. Then I compare him with who’s in the White House and I realize he has infinitely more real world experience as an executive and a leader than does a “community organizer” with a murky past.

I also think he raises a valid point on the Constitutional legitimacy of the Obama presidency.

Amazing tsunami damage photos

ABC News has a stunning before-and-after comparison of tsunami devastation on its web site.

It starts out with the “before” view of 27 affected locations. If you sweep your cursor from one side to the other, the “after” view is revealed.

This is an aerial view of Sendai Airport, showing the tsunami-scoured landscape on the right.

Click on the hypertext or the image to visit the site.

Suzi Barrett

This is Suzi Barrett, who plays the sarcastic girl in the Esurance insurance commercials.

Most of my blog hits in the past several months have been the result of searches for information on Suzi.

There is a web site - “Who is that Hot Ad Girl?” – dedicated to identifying all of the attractive women who appear in TV commercials and they include Suzi in their listings.

A little perspective

Before we go all spastic about a deadly radioactive cloud from Japan, let’s remember something: atmospheric testing of atomic weapons, which is immeasurably dirtier than what’s coming out of those Japanese reactors, has been going on since July 16, 1945.

To quote Wikipedia:

Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them. Testing nuclear weapons can yield information about how the weapons work, as well as how the weapons behave under various conditions and how structures behave when subjected to nuclear explosions. Additionally, nuclear testing has often been used as an indicator of scientific and military strength, and many tests have been overtly political in their intention; most nuclear weapons states publicly declared their nuclear status by means of a nuclear test.

The first nuclear weapon was detonated as a test by the United States at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, with a yield approximately equivalent to 20 kilotons. The first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike", was tested at the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands on November 1 (local date) in 1952, also by the United States. The largest nuclear weapon ever tested was the "Tsar Bomba" of the Soviet Union at Novaya Zemlya on October 30, 1961, with an estimated yield of around 50 megatons.

In 1963, all nuclear and many non-nuclear states signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, pledging to refrain from testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater, or in outer space. The treaty permitted underground nuclear testing. France continued atmospheric testing until 1974, China continued up until 1980.

Underground Tests in the United States continued until 1992 (its last nuclear testing), the Soviet Union in 1990, the United Kingdom in 1991, and both China and France in 1996. After adopting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, all of these states have pledged to discontinue all nuclear testing. Non-signatories India and Pakistan last tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

The most recent nuclear test was announced by North Korea on May 25, 2009.

The most intense period of testing started two days after I was born and continued through my senior year in high school. People were concerned about the levels of strontium 90, a radioactive isotope of the element strontium, in the milk kids were drinking during those years because of the radioactive crap in the atmosphere all over the world.

We’re still here after all that. So maybe it’s time for the media to get some perspective and ease up on the hysteria.

Shearing time for Ruthie

Ruthie is at the Petco beauty shop getting “the works.”

Now that the weather is warming and it’s almost spring, it’s time for her annual shearing. I dropped her off at 11:30 a.m. and expect to retrieve her around 4 p.m.

In the meantime, I picked up a 40 pound bag of IAMS Weight Control dog food. We seriously overfed both dogs over the winter. It’s particularly noticeable in Pete’s loss of agility and his obvious girth. I’m curious to see if Ruthie shows any weight gain after her winter coat is off.

 

Five hours later, after two baths (they couldn’t get the shears through her fur without bathing her twice), a shearing, and nail trim – all for $76 – Ruthie is a changed dog. She even smells nice, which is very puzzling to Pete.

Made about the time I started riding - this video makes me smile

MUSIC VIDEO RIDING SEPTEMBER from Hush on Vimeo.

Had enough?

Trout fishing in Arkansas

Meet Nick Nicholson, 63, of Jonesboro. I found him fishing from the dock at Walcott Lake in Crowley’s Ridge State Park this afternoon.

It was 2:30 p.m. and he’d caught a good-sized bass and a rainbow trout.

The lake was stocked with 500 rainbow trout recently for a Boy Scout event, but it rained that weekend and the scout fishing event was pretty much a washout. So the public is invited to angle for the trout before the water warms up and they die. Trout aren’t found in lakes around here because they can’t take the heat.

Here’s the press release:

Area residents are invited for a limited time to fish for rainbow trout at Crowley’s Ridge State Park. As part of the Boy Scouts of America Quapaw Council camporee, which was held this past weekend, rainbow trout was stocked in Walcott Lake to introduce Scouts to fishing. Although many of the boys participated in the activity, there are still trout available for local residents to catch. Please remember anyone 16 and older needs to have a fishing license plus a trout stamp. Both are available at the park’s visitor center.

This is a one-time only event and Arkansas State Parks does not plan to stock trout in Walcott Lake in the future.

For more information, you can contact the park at 870-573-6751.

Happy Sunshine Week

President Obama’s only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press.

According to his public schedule, Obama has four behind-closed-doors meetings from 10 a.m. to 3:05 p.m.: his daily briefing, a talk with the USAID administrator, a session with senior advisers, and a huddle with his defense secretary. All of the meets are in the Oval Office, and all of them are “closed press,” the White House says.

But at 2:55 p.m., Obama will emerge to “accept an award from a coalition of good government groups and transparency advocates to recognize ‘his deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people’ in conjunction with Sunshine Week,” the White House said in guidance to reporters.

And, importantly: “There will be a pool spray at the top.”

The White House didn’t specify what Obama will say, if anything, when he accepts the award. But he probably won’t mention that his administration acted on fewer requests for information last year even as it was asked for more, a tally documented by the AP.

Get to the point

There are a couple of commonly used phrases that, if you give them any thought at all, are desperately stupid and should never be used.

“…will be (going, starting, hosting, traveling, xxxxing…)” Somehow, everyone in public relations and way too many people in the news media think this is an erudite classy way to talk about something that’s going to happen.

No. No. No. Just say, “X will (go, start, host, travel, whatever).” There is absolutely no reason to use such tortured syntax for such a simple concept.

“I’d like to (usually used to thank someone).”

No, moron. Just say “thank you.” When you say, “I’d like to thank…” it implies the desire, but no follow-through.

If you use these phrases, you brand yourself as a dumbass who has no regard for proper word choices.

So tempting…

My neighbor Tony, knowing our fondness for Australian shepherds, sent me a link today to this online ad for an Aussie up in Missouri:

I have a 9 month old Black Tri Australian Shepherd.... he is a male and is papered but I don't have the papers yet but I am in the process of getting them... please call if interested

He’s a good-looking pup. Looks a lot like Pete.

The asking price is $100, which is pretty reasonable. I just don’t think we’re ready for another dog. But then that’s what I said when Maria started lobbying for an Aussie five years ago…

 

My Jesse James tour

I used to freelance for motorcycle magazines. Here’s a piece I wrote for RoadBike, based on a Jesse James tour put on by the Missouri tourism folks around this time of the year back in 2001.
By John M. Flora
I stared at the ragged hole in the red-and-white wallpaper and let its significance sink in. That, according to legend, was where the bullet that killed notorious outlaw Jesse James lodged after passing through his head.
I realized I was roughly where Bob Ford must have stood when Jesse stepped onto a chair to straighten and dust a framed sampler. My right hand flexed as I imagined Ford silently easing his .45 caliber Smith & Wesson Schofield revolver from its holster and firing the fatal shot at his unsuspecting friend.
“The dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard” flashed through my mind. That’s the only line I remember from the song about Jesse’s betrayal by a James gang member, who was seduced by a $10,000 reward. I’d come to learn about Jesse James and it seemed I was starting at the end of the story.
Road Research
Missouri has always been one of those states I have to ride through to get to more interesting places. Frankly, it was my least-favorite part of the route from my Indiana home and the West. Missouri meant hours of truck-filled, bumpy Interstate 70 with the troublesome traffic of St. Louis and Kansas City at either end.
Counting mile markers to the state line, however, I noticed abundant James-related tourist attractions and began to realize that Jesse James looms large in Missouri history. Since this Jesse James thing represented a gap in my knowledge of U.S. history, I decided to combine a weekend motorcycle trip with some personal research.
Jesse James is a folk hero hereabouts. They name streets, antique malls, museums, and conference centers for him. Hardly the kind of recognition accorded other American bad guys like Billy the Kid, Al Capone, and John Dillinger.
That’s because Jesse fought for the Confederacy (albeit as a guerilla and not as a regular soldier), and came to symbolize the plight of the post-war South, suffering the vengeance of the North and the humiliation of defeat. Tom Goodrich, author of The Day Dixie Died: Southern Occupation 1865-1866, says many Missourians and other southerners saw Jesse as “the last Rebel soldier.”
“The south was under total Union control,” Goodrich said. “So up comes somebody like Jesse James who a lot of people even in Florida and Alabama recognized as a former Rebel soldier, a guy who had not given up… can you imagine what that did for Southern hearts to see this guy … Jesse James was the only viable option to the suffering they were going through all of these years and they were willing to buy into it.”
Whether it was politics or expediency, the James gang targeted banks and railroads -- the most conspicuous examples of Yankee Republican influence in their part of the country.
Following The Trail
The Patee House Museum in Saint Joseph, Mo., is a good place to pick up Jesse’s trail. The imposing brick structure at the southeast corner of 12th and Penn streets was built as the Patee Hotel in 1858. The house where Jesse James was killed April 3, 1882 was moved to the museum grounds from its original location about a block away in 1977.
People come from all over the world to visit the four-room wood frame house and their fingers have worn away the wallpaper and plaster, enlarging the bullet hole to an opening about 3” by 7”. It’s now enshrined in a gold-colored frame, screwed to the wall.
The adjacent parlor features an exhibit based on the 1995 autopsy and DNA research done by Professor James Starrs of George Washington University. It proved to his satisfaction that the body in Jesse’s grave down in Kearney is, indeed, Jesse. The exhibit includes a reconstruction of Jesse’s skull, which came out of the grave in 32 pieces, showing where Ford’s bullet entered behind Jesse’s right ear.
Outlaw Bound
My next destination was the place where Jesse and Frank began a life of outlawry. An hour’s ride down U.S. 169 and Missouri highways 92 and 291 took me to Liberty, and the site of the nation’s first-ever daylight peacetime bank robbery.
The Seth Thomas calendar clock in what was once the Clay County Savings Association Bank is perpetually set to the date of Tuesday, February 13. On that day in 1866, a dozen men rode into town by various routes and gathered in front of the two-story brick building on the northeast corner of the courthouse square.
Two men entered and pointed guns at head cashier Greenup Bird and his son, William. After stuffing over $62,000 in bonds, cash, and Federal revenue stamps into a feed sack, they put the Birds into the vault, and rode off.
During the commotion outside the bank, a young boy watching from across the street was fatally shot. His family later received a letter of apology from Jesse James, who said no one was supposed to be injured in the holdup.
The building is now the Jesse James Bank Museum. For a modest admission fee, you can see where an amazed Greenup Bird was confronted by desperados and peer into the vault where he and his son were left.
There’s more evidence that Jesse James is fondly remembered across the street. Born and raised up the road near Kearney, Jesse was a Clay County boy, and is immortalized in the 28’-wide central panel of a mural in the Clay County Courthouse. There’s Jesse on horseback, pistol in hand. The James family farm is behind him. And, if you look closely, you can see brother Frank and the James boys’ mother, Zerelda.
From Liberty On
Lexington was the scene of the James gang’s second daring daylight bank robbery. There are faster ways to get from Liberty to Lexington, but it was a pleasant day and I decided to spend about 90 minutes taking the 46-mile the scenic route up Highway 33 to U.S. 69 through Excelsior Springs.
Jesse and Frank were already outlaw legends when Excelsior Springs got its start as a resort town. In June 1880, a local farmer took the advice of Indians and hunters and let his sickly daughter try the waters at the spring there. After a few weeks of bathing in the spring and drinking its water, the girl was cured of tuberculosis. Others claimed cures for various conditions and Excelsior Springs became known as a place of healing waters.
I took Missouri Highway 10 east out of town, then turned right onto twisty Highway O (I love these letter designations for Missouri’s secondary roads). Winding my way south and east to Orrick and 210, I took Highways T and H to Henrietta. From there, it was a short run on Highway 13 across the floodplain of the Missouri River, over the river on a picturesque iron bridge and up the river’s southern bank to Lexington.
Sharp-eyed visitors will spot a cannonball embedded near the capital of one of the columns on the Lafayette County Courthouse on Main Street. It’s a relic of the 1861 Battle of Lexington, in which Confederate forces defeated Union troops.
Seven months after the Liberty bank job, five riders appeared outside the Alexander Mitchell & Co. Bank on Oct. 30, 1866. Cashier J.L. Thomas, who was alone in the bank, said two men presented a bill to be changed, then forced him to hand over about $2,000.
Today, the bank building at 827 Main Street is Frederickson’s Fine Wines & Spirits. But you can still walk through the big white double doors the holdup men used to exit with their loot. I picked up a bottle of Missouri wine for later and wrapped it in a sweater in my saddlebag. The next stop on my James Gang pilgrimage involved backtracking up Highway 13 for a 9-mile sprint to Richmond.
By the spring of 1867, Jesse and Frank had been joined by their cousins, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger. They rode into Richmond on May 22, 1867, whooping wildly to scatter the townspeople. The Jameses and the Youngers burst into the Hughes & Wasson Bank and quickly emerged with about $4,000 in a sack. Three other gang members -- Tom Little, Andy Maguire, and Dick Burns -- waited outside, guns drawn.
Unimpressed by the brazen assault, some townspeople started shooting. When the smoke cleared, Mayor John B. Shaw, Jailer B.G. Griffen, and his 15-year-old son Frank lay dead in the street. The Jameses and the Youngers escaped but Little, Maguire, and Burns were captured.
The old bank building at 201 West Main Street is a dental office now. But Dr. Raymond Finke and his wife Susan welcome visitors with an interest in the place.
Continuing out West Main Street (also old Highway 10), I found Sunny Slope Cemetery. There, near the crest of a small hill, is a small bronze plaque marking the final resting place of Bob Ford.
Reviled for killing a folk hero, Ford quickly left Missouri with his reward money and became a saloon keeper in Colorado. He was gunned down in a barroom brawl in Creede, Colorado, on June 8, 1892 at the age of 32. His grave marker proclaims his name, dates of birth and death, and the epitaph, “The man who killed Jesse James.”
Satisfied with a day of chasing the James gang around northwestern Missouri, I picked up Highway 10 west and rode the dozen miles back to Excelsior Springs. There, I checked in at the Elms Resort & Spa.
An Excelsior Springs institution, the Elms hosted President Harry Truman, boxer Jack Dempsey, and gangster Al Capone.
After a hearty Kansas City strip steak dinner in the hotel restaurant and a relaxing soak in the pool-side outdoor hot tub, I sauntered back to my room for a glass of that Missouri wine and a good night’s sleep.
Back On the Trail
Eager to resume my history lesson the next morning, I had a light breakfast, loaded my bike, and followed Highway 10 west out of town five miles to U.S. 69. Turning north, I followed the road another 39 miles north. Although I could have made faster time on Interstate 35 (U.S. 69 crossed its path twice on the way to my next destination), I wanted to avoid the superslab and take my time on secondary roads.
The route took me through Cameron, where members of the James gang boarded a Chicago-bound passenger train the evening of July 15, 1881. I dropped my side stand about 10 miles later at the depot in Winston.
The depot is a museum today. As I studied railroad memorabilia and admired the curved cage designed to keep travelers from burning themselves on the waiting room wood stove, I tried to imagine a second group of gang members making themselves inconspicuous as they waited for the train.
The train pulled out about 10:30 p.m., but traveled less than a mile before two gunmen clambered over the express and coal cars to reach the engine cab. The engineer and firemen jumped to safety and fled, leaving the robbers to halt the train near a trestle where the gang’s horses were tethered.
In the course of the robbery, the gunmen shot and killed conductor William Westfall and also murdered Frank McMillan, an elderly laborer working to reinforce the wooden trestle with stone. Two robbers emptied the express car safe while their confederates robbed the passengers. They galloped into the night with about $800.
Turning back south on U.S. 69, I charted a course for the touchstone of all James gang lore, the legendary home northeast of Kearney. Here, the boys grew up and plotted many of their capers.
I took U.S. 69 about 33 miles south to Highway MM and turned west. About three miles later, I jogged south again on Endicott Road, a twisty little country track that intersects with NE 164th Street after 2.2 miles. Then it was back west again to the entrance to the Jesse James Farm and Museum.
Riding at a leisurely pace, I regarded the fields and farms and wondered how much of this scene Jesse and Frank James would recognize if they could see it today. Surely, the contours of the Missouri countryside haven’t changed much in the 130 years since they haunted these parts. Take away the asphalt pavement, power lines, and utility poles, and you could almost imagine you were riding out to the white farmhouse the locals came to call “Castle James.”
Access to the James house is through the James Farm Museum, a well-organized collection of James and frontier-related displays. It includes a brief film biography of the James family, a detailed James family tree, and such memorabilia as the feather duster Jesse was holding when he was killed. Admission gets you a self-guided tour of the museum and a guided tour of the James farmhouse.
The house, with its rough-hewn floorboards and stone hearth, exudes history. The log cabin portion of the James structure was bought in 1845 by the Reverend Robert James and his wife, Zerelda. Jesse was born here September 5, 1847. The Victorian cottage that forms the front portion of the house was added in 1893.
Frank James surrendered after Jesse was killed and was put on trial for murder the following year. By most accounts, it was a show trial, since the James boys had been folk heroes of a sort.
Frank inherited the farm after the death of his mother in 1911 and lived there with his wife Anna and son Robert. He outlived his younger brother by nearly 33 years and died of natural causes in 1915. Heirs sold the property to Clay County in 1978 as an historic site. I chanced to be there on a day when Greg Higginbotham, a James family historian, was playing the role of Frank James.
While he stops short of calling the Jameses 19^th-century Robin Hoods, Higginbotham said, “I honestly believe they kind of picked and chose who they wanted to rob. Frank James, in particular, would look very carefully to see who he was robbing. They say he had an eye for a person and might look at his shoes or shake his hand or listen to how he spoke.”
Higginbotham recounts the story about Frank getting the drop on a man, taking his money and then noticing his victim had rough, callused hands. Frank asked about the man’s work and found he was robbing a farmer. Apologizing, so the story goes, Frank returned the man’s cash with a bit more to boot.
Zerelda James Samuels brought her son Jesse’s body to the family farm for burial beneath a 10-foot-tall stone obelisk in the front yard. The gravesite and house became a major tourist attraction. Mrs. Samuels would let visitors take a nail from the cabin wall for a small fee, hammering in new nails for the next batch of tourists after the previous group left.
But Zerelda fretted that grave robbers might steal her son’s remains and put them on exhibit at fairs and circuses – a fate that befell the corpses of some other outlaws of the period. So, in 1902, Jesse James Jr. exhumed his dad and reburied the body next to that of Jesse’s widow in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney.
I found the cemetery on the south side of Highway 92 on the west edge of Kearney, across the street from the Big V Country Mart. I easily negotiated the hard-packed gravel lane into the cemetery, dismounted, and searched down the gentle slope of grave markers.
Jesse’s wife, Zerelda Mimms James, a first cousin named for his mother, died on November 13, 1900. So her presence in Mount Olivet Cemetery made it a logical final resting place for Jesse.
Their graves are marked with a simple granite stone, laid flush with the ground. Visitors have chipped away fragments of the stone around the carved letters and numbers. A vertical slab in the style common to Civil War veteran graves recognizes Jesse’s time with Quantrill’s Raiders.
This is the grave Professor Starrs reopened in 1995 for DNA tests. The excavation also yielded a Civil War-era bullet thought to be the one Jesse took in the chest when he tried to surrender at war’s end.
Tom Goodrich’s words came back to me: “Jesse tried to surrender along with other rebel soldiers in June, 1865, in Lexington. He ran into a Union picket post, and they shot him as he was flying a white flag – shot him just above the heart. Jesse recovered, but I think he said from that day forth, ‘That’s all the surrendering I’m going to be doing in this lifetime.’
“Jesse could not come back and live like a normal person anymore. So rather than be run around from pillar to post like a lot of his former comrades, he went to a life of outlawry,” Goodrich said.
While nobody knows the exact numbers, it’s a safe bet that Jesse’s legend has put more tourist dollars into the pockets of his fellow Missourians than he ever dreamed of taking from the banks and railroads of his day.

SOURCES

The Elms
Excelsior Springs, Missouri
800-THE-ELMS
www.elmsresort.com
James Farm Museum
Kearney, Missouri
816-628-6065
Jesse James Bank Museum
Liberty, Missouri
816-781-4458
Patee House Museum/Jesse James Home
St. Joseph, Missouri
816-232-8206
www.stjoseph.net/ponyexpress

Hisssssss

When we ran out of Swiffer WetJet cleaning solution a few weeks ago, I put it on the Sam’s Club shopping list.

I was about to buy a three-pack of the stuff when I noticed the Shark steam mop, which uses plain water and washable pads.

The price was close to $50, but I figured that over a year or so, it would pay for itself, since WetJet pads and solution aren’t exactly cheap.

I really like it, so far. It cleans and sanitizes with a confidence-inspiring hiss, has a generously long cord (which they omit from their illustrations to make you think it’s cordless), and costs next to nothing to operate.

So there.

My mother hated the Japanese

It’s probably a good thing my mother didn’t live to see the Japanese Trifecta Disaster.

You see, Mom hated the Japanese with an implacable white-hot passion.

Why? Because her nephew Norman was a U.S. Navy ensign who was captured by the Japanese in the fall of Corregidor, the last U.S. stronghold in the Philippines in World War II. Norman suffered through three years of brutal abuse in a Japanese prison camp. At one point, American prisoners of war were being shipped from the Philippines to Japan to work as slave labor in the mines. Norman was judged too ill to make the voyage, a twist of fate that saved his life. The transport ship in which he would have sailed was mistakenly torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine.

All of this, plus his condition when he returned home, fed a hatred that became stronger and more irrational in Mom’s later years. I remember several occasions when we took her to lunch or dinner and noticed Japanese students from nearby Purdue University. She would mutter darkly and make us cringe for fear of serious public embarrassment. Fortunately, it never went further than that.

I’d like to think she’d have some pity for the Japan of today, but I kinda doubt it.

For his part, Norman is alive and well at 90, living in southern California. He was an ad exec for Toyota before his retirement in 1985.

New boots on Monday

The UPS guy brought my new Bates GX-8 Gore-Tex Composite Safety-toe Boots this morning.

I knew from the UPS tracking site that they were out for delivery today, but it’s rare for the UPS truck to get to our neighborhood before noon.

My Gore-Tex BMW motorcycle boots are about a decade old and are showing their age, so I decided this was the season for new boots. In my experience, dedicated motorcycle boots tend to be overpriced and are seldom comfortable enough to wear all day, every day for two or three weeks.

So I went to the BMW MOA forum and looked for boot ideas. The Bates Gore-Tex boots got good reviews in the forum and also from Amazon.com customers, so I pulled the trigger last week and ordered a pair.

They feel fine after three hours or so of wearing them around the house and I have yet to pull out the stock insoles and replace them with my custom orthotics.

I’ll write more after a get a few miles on them.

Weekend report

It’s been another low-key weekend.

I took the K75S out for a spin in the sunshine yesterday morning – just a little jaunt down to the post office and a roundabout way home via Goobertown that ended up as a 14-mile ride.

I was going to do more riding in the afternoon, but Maria had an attack of cabin fever, so I changed into street clothes and we drove in to town for lunch at the new Chipotle Mexican restaurant, a visit to Hancock’s for fabric and then down to the Parker Road Walmart to pick up some prescriptions.

Chipotle is not the build-your-own burrito chain of that name in Indiana. It’s a real sit-down restaurant and the first Mexican restaurant in this dry county to get an alcoholic beverage club permit. The ambiance is nice, but the food is overpriced and just so-so on flavor. I have no desire to go back. If I want a beer or a Margarita with my Mexican food, I’ll drive up to Paragould where the dining is less pretentious and the food actually has some zip to it.

I fired a few test rounds with our new Mossberg 20 gauge shotgun, blasting birdshot into the huge fallen tree in our back yard. The neighbors didn’t seem all that concerned – our neighbors across the cul-de-sac routinely shoot clay pigeons in their back yard – but Pete freaked out.

The first shot sent him hauling ass into the house where he cowered in his kennel until the shooting was over. Pete hates thunder, fireworks and gunfire. He’ll never be a hunting dog, but then who wants to try to teach a herding dog to hunt?

About 6:45 p.m., we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to drive back to town to see Rango. It was a good choice. I’ll say no more, other than to recommend it.

Thanks to the time change, we didn’t get out of bed until about 10 a.m. We had a late breakfast at noon at IHOP, then loaded up on groceries at Sam’s Club.

Maria worked on a special quilt this afternoon and I hung out and surfed the Internet, which brings us up to the present. Maria’s cooking something for dinner that involves a lot of garlic. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I’m in Gilroy, Calif.

Happy Birthday, Lauri!

Today is our friend Lauri’s birthday. Her thoughtful husband Jim gave her a Mac with a full design suite, which will come in very handy for the classes she’s going to take now that she’s no longer a wage slave in the Philip Smith Salt Mines.

Cell phone bill

I got the cell phone bill today and noticed it was up sharply from last month’s bill.

Austin, who has my old Treo 700p smartphone, racked up $35.76 worth of Sprint Data charges, i.e., Internet access.

He’s been cautioned about that, but I suspect he’s doing something that accesses the Internet without realizing it’s happening. My best guess is that he’s posting stuff to his Facebook page, thinking Sprint will consider it just another text message.

So rather than complain about it, I called Sprint and disabled that feature on his phone.

He’s also seriously into text messaging, which is fine, because our plan allows unlimited texting.

The bill shows 2,350 text messages to and from his phone last month.

I’m the next biggest texter with 33.

That’s right, his text volume is 71 times mine.

Interesting times

“May you live in interesting times.”

Chinese curse?

Well, maybe not. “The Yale Book of Quotations” says, “No authentic Chinese saying to this effect has ever been found.”

Regardless, if these are not interesting times, I can’t imagine what would be.

From a journalistic perspective, the inanity of the talking heads on TV is always at its worst when they attempt to cover huge breaking news events like the earthquake off the coast of Japan and the ensuing tsunami.

The apparent need to say something, anything, turns most of these people into jabbering fools. FOX News’s Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum, who come across as superficial twits on a good day, are making me want to scream this morning.

Absolutely hilarious!

You don’t have to be a Trekkie to enjoy this brilliant piece of work.

Mitch was six years ahead of the curve

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal reiterating the merits of his decision to restrict collective bargaining for state employees.

I had to smile when I read this paragraph:

When Gov. Mitch Daniels repealed collective bargaining in Indiana six years ago, it helped government become more efficient and responsive. The average pay for Indiana state employees has actually increased, and high-performing employees are rewarded with pay increases or bonuses when they do something exceptional.

Wisconsin Senate GOP Votes to Strip State Workers of Collective Bargaining Rights

Bypassing Democrats hiding out in Illinois, Wisconsin Senate Republicans voted Wednesday night to strip state workers of their collective bargaining rights.

Republicans voted 18-1 to pass the stripped-down budget bill in a hastily arranged meeting. None of the Senate Democrats were present.

The state Assembly votes on the bill Thursday.

All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's so-called "budget repair bill" -- a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall..

The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, and a special conference committee of state lawmakers approved that bill a short time later.

The lone Democrat present on the conference committee, Rep. Tony Barca, shouted that the surprise meeting was a violation of the state's open meetings law but Republicans voted over his objections. The Senate then convened within minutes and passed it without discussion or debate.

Spectators in the gallery screamed "You are cowards."

What does it mean?

English is a rich language with an enormous vocabulary of words borrowed from other languages that bring to it shades of meaning you just can’t get in most other tongues.

That richness puts a lot of tools into our linguistic toolbox, but like any toolbox, you can’t get a good result if you reach blindly and grab the first thing that comes to hand.

As Mark Twain said, the difference between the almost-right word and the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and lightning.

And when a wrong word shows up, it can be startling and jarring.

A woman whose blog I visit has just such a problem with the word banal. When she and her friends get together for friendly socializing, she calls it “banal discourse.”

Here’s what Dictionary.com has to say about the word:

ba·nal

   /bəˈnæl, -ˈnɑl, ˈbeɪnl/ Show Spelled[buh-nal, -nahl, beyn-l] Show IPA

–adjective

devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed; trite: a banal and sophomoric treatment of courage on the frontier.

Judging from the context, I really doubt she means to be so insulting to her friends and herself.

The editor of my college newspaper somehow got the idea that the word dildo meant a silly or dim-witted person. She was horribly embarrassed when she learned that a dildo is an artificial erect penis. Fortunately, she never used the word in an editorial.

There’s a short copy editor’s prayer that goes, “Lord, save us from the things we think we know.”

If you’re even a little unsure about what a word means, look it up and save yourself some embarrassment.

Don’t be a dildo.

Clean bill of health

The vet’s office called this afternoon to report that Pete’s definitive heartworm test came back negative, validating our suspicion that the initial test result was a false positive.

We are understandably relieved.

A tip for writers

My blog gets the occasional visit from young or aspiring writers who think I might know a thing or two about the craft, having spent my whole adult life in and around newspapers.

One of the best insights I ever got came from a writing coach from the Poynter Institute when I was a young reporter at The Indianapolis News. He opined I was over-writing, using big words when short synonyms would do.

And he introduced me to the Gunning Fog Index, which measures the readability of text and estimates the level of formal education needed to understand it the first time through. For instance, an index of 10.0 is at the reading level of a high school sophomore.

The light bulb came on and ever since, when I re-read my stuff, I declare war on big words whenever a short word will carry the same freight. (I also declare war on “that.” It’s often just a useless stumbling block in a sentence.)

You can copy and paste some of your writing here and get a Gunning Fog Index number for it.

This blog post has a fog index of 10.58.

So much for being retired

I’m not feeling very retired this week.

I have two more stories to research and write for the upcoming special section and I just got called off of the bench this morning to substitute for a sick photographer.

I’m headed for one of the major industries in town to shoot an environmental portrait of the new plant manager.

Did I mention I’d rather be at the Flagler Beach pier, staring out at the Atlantic Ocean?

What motorcycle rider hasn’t wanted to do this?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to do this. I’m pretty sure the K75S is low enough that I could clear the underside of one of these things. If I were a bit younger and stupider, I’d do it.

A tip of the hat to my neighbor Tony Micenhamer for discovering this one.

Two down, two to go

I finally got leverage on myself this morning and knocked out the first two of four stories I’m writing for an upcoming special section of the paper.

Were it not for this project, there is about a 70 percent probability that I would be at Bike Week in Daytona Beach this week. I’m trying not to grouse too much about it because I want to be helpful, but the timing is bad when it interferes with my need to ride.

Threads of Life

Nancy Chrisman, Maria, and Sharon Jones sold raffle tickets yesterday at the Stories in the Forest storytime program at the Mall at Turtle Creek.

Maria is a member of the Women’s Advisory Council of the St. Bernards Development Foundation. The group supports the programs of St. Bernards Hospital in Jonesboro.

She’s created a Facebook page for the Council’s Threads of Life Quilt and Fiber Art Show, April 2-3. Check it out at www.facebook.com/pages/Threads-of-Life.

They’re raffling a hobo quilt – featuring symbols hobos used as their secret language to designate places where food was available, where people would welcome them or have them arrested, etc. I think Maria said she made three of the quilt blocks for the project.

A clown, whose name I failed to get, reads “How do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?” to a gaggle of kids at Stories in the Forest.

175 years ago today–the line in the sand

Facebook friend Neil Burrell has a running day-by-day commentary on the 175th anniversary of the siege of the Alamo.

Today’s entry:

Day 12, March 5: Col Travis drew his famous line in the sand asking those willing to die defending the Alamo to cross over. Everyone crossed over except Louis Rose, a mercenary and Napoleon veteran who stated that he was not ready to die.

Even James Bowie was carried over as he lay in his cot. Cannonading continued all day.

Crowley’s Ridge State Park on a sunny spring day

If you've for the bandwidth to support it, watch this video full screen and bump the resolution up to 720p or 1080p.

Friday stuff

The vet’s office just called to report that Pete came through his dental cleaning just fine and that I can pick him up in a couple of hours.

I’m always a little concerned about the effects of anesthesia on our dogs and it will be a relief to get him home again.

I shot some video on my ride through Crowley’s Ridge State Park yesterday afternoon and am getting reacquainted with Windows Live Movie Maker. One of the nifty features of the software is that it lets you add music and balance the volume of the music against the volume of the ambient sound on the original video material.

I like the music and visual stuff to match up, so when I determined I needed a song exactly 5 minutes 30 seconds long, I opened up iTunes, clicked on the “time” column and scrolled down to see what songs in my library are 5:30. Turns out there are 22, which gave me a nice variety from which to choose. I picked Montana Banana from the Bluesiana II CD.

The video is uploading to YouTube now and since it’s 1.08G it’s taking a long time. I’ll post it when it’s finished loading.

Windows–from the Beginning

Andrew Tait, a serious geek, did sequential installs of every version of Windows, starting with v 1.0 and ending with Windows 7. You may be surprised by what he learned.

For those of us who have been using Windows for 20 years or so, it’s a stroll down digital memory lane.

Riding on the ridge

 

Maria’s 1994 BMW K75S turned 10,000 miles this afternoon, which means it’s still a very low mileage 17-year-old motorcycle.

We bought it on Oct. 31, 2000 with 2,417 miles on the odometer, so the remaining 7,583 miles are all ours.

One of my writing assignments includes Crowley’s Ridge State Park, so I went for a ride up Crowley’s Ridge Parkway to the park to see how things are doing there.

The trees are just starting to bud, so it’s still possible to see the split trunks and broken limbs that remain from the January, 2009 ice storm. I know they’ve done a lot of cleaning up since then, but the damage will take decades to heal.

I stopped at the Paragould Wendy’s for a bowl of chili before completing the loop on U.S. 412, Ark. 69, and U.S. 49.

It’s a delightful, sunny 70 degrees this afternoon.

Thursday morning stuff

With the Vernal Equinox only 17 days away, I have to say this has been a remarkably mild winter in northeast Arkansas, especially compared with the hellish parade of blizzards that plagued the states north and east of us.

We had a little more snow than usual, but it most cases it was gone in a day or two and served as a picturesque reminder of what we left behind when we moved here from Indiana in the autumn of 2007.

In case you’re wondering, the Vernal Equinox occurs at 6:21 p.m. CDT, Sunday, March 20. (Daylight Savings Time begins a week previous, on Sunday, March 13.)

Things are starting to green up here and the crop dusters are out like big dragonflies. One has been working a field south of us for the last hour or so, making his turns over our back yard.

Oddly enough, our dogs take no notice of low-flying aircraft. Ruthie is mostly deaf, so she probably isn’t aware of them. Pete ignores them, but is deeply disturbed when he sees jet contrails defacing his pristine blue sky. He’s the only dog I’ve ever seen who pays attention to the sky and he barks angrily whenever he sees contrails.

I have a couple of stories to write, but I’m resisting. They’re not due until 5 p.m. Monday, but since my wife is the person who has to edit them, it would be bad manners to add to the avalanche of last-minute story filings that she’s bound to get. So maybe I’ll write them this afternoon. Or tomorrow. Or maybe Saturday.

I’ve already shot and submitted the photos to go with them, so it’s all down to sitting here and cranking them out.

Several Facebook friend have asked if I felt any of the Arkansas earthquakes over the past week. Nope. Not a one. They are centered around Greebrier, Ark. about 100 miles southwest of us, so the effect here has been slight. Nevertheless, some people in Jonesboro claim to have felt one or two of them.

Even though there is seismic activity in this region almost daily, I have yet to feel any of it because it’s mostly what they call “micro earthquakes.”

The most recent occurred less than an hour ago. I didn’t feel it either. Here’s the report from the Cooperative Central and Southeast U.S. Seismic Network:

A minor earthquake occurred at 9:31:49 AM (CST) on Thursday, March 3, 2011 .
The magnitude 3.0 event occurred 4 km (2 miles) NNE (22 degrees) of Greenbrier, AR .
The hypocentral depth is 6 km ( 4 miles).

Should the Big One come along the New Madrid Fault, I’m sure I’ll notice.

Mmmmmmm

Had dinner at Outback Steakhouse, washed down with a couple of tall Sam Adamses.

Another heartworm test for Pete

I took Pete back to the vet this morning to have more blood drawn for more definitive heartworm tests.

Pete is a timid little guy and, like most Aussies, worries about changes in his environment. Since we moved here, the only time he gets to ride in the car has been to visit the vet, so he doubtless associates the car with getting shots or spending a few days in their kennel while we’re out of town. Consequently, he’s not much of a car dog.

The only time I’ve driven him somewhere other than the vet was a month or two ago when I took him along on a brief run down to the post office. It was a Saturday morning and Maria reported that Ruthie was beside herself with envy when she noticed Pete was going somewhere without her. So I haven’t repeated that exercise.

Pete stays close to me at the vet’s office and prefers to shelter under my chair.

He always seems more relaxed on the drive home, and is more interested in the world outside the car. We had to wait on a train at a railroad crossing and he appeared happy to watch the rail cars creep past.

The vet says it will take a couple of days to get the test results. I will, of course, report the results here when I get them.

Maintaining a mower and a dog

John from the local John Deere dealership showed up about 1:45 p.m. to pick up our John Deere LA125 lawn tractor/mower for its spring service.

The “needs service” message started blinking on the LCD display the last time I mowed last fall, so the timing is right. And I’m delighted that Greenway Equipment has free pickup and delivery. It would be a huge hassle for us to haul the thing down to the dealer and retrieve it every year.

Minutes after he left, I got a call from our veterinarian asking me to bring Pete in for another blood draw. He said Pete tested positive for heart worms today. He used a second test and it came back negative, causing him to think it was likely a false positive. Nevertheless, he wants to be sure so he’s going to send the blood sample off to a lab to have a definitive test done. So Pete gets to return to the vet’s office tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’ll be delighted.

No wonder they’re getting fat

Pete and Ruthie are flopped down on the upstairs office carpet after a visit to the vet for their semi-annual exam and shots. I guess it takes a lot out of them.

We recently noticed Pete has gained some weight. Turns out Ruthie has too, but it’s hard to tell because she’s so woolly.

Pete weighed in at 64 pounds this morning, up from 55 pounds at his last visit to the vet.

Ever since we noticed his weight gain, we’ve cut back on the treats.

Maria started buying Milk Bone for large dogs because they were priced to sell at Sam’s Club. The big Milk Bones are about 4 inches long and we usually broke them in half, giving one half to each dog. Even so, a half of a large is more than twice the size of a regular Milk Bone and we were distributing treats pretty much every time they came in from the back yard.

The vet said he and his staff determined that the caloric content of one regular size Milk Bone is to a dog what a Snickers bar would be to a human. Holy crap! No wonder they’re getting fat.

Time for a diet, dogs.