05-20-11 I’d rather trust a farmer

05-20-11

I’d rather trust a farmer who works with his hands
He looks at you once, you know he understands

130.8 Miles

I get the tent broken down and repack the car and drive over to showers and dump the trash in the dump bin. As I drive over I hear something scraping under my wheels. I get out and look and see my radiator is on the ground and  bent. I bend it back and place it where it belongs and realize there is a single screw missing.

I had seen the unit hanging low and crooked since  I got the tire work done in Destin, but for it to have traveled all these miles and states and to come off now. A shear miracle. And for it to come off now…
 I bend it back into shape, a feet I didn’t think was possible with radiators of the past…but this device is mostly made of a plastic material. I use the cars frame to bend it back into a straight shape and replace it into it’s moorings. The only thing missing is a single screw to whole it in place. “for the want of a screw the radiator was lost; for the want of the radiator the car was lost, for the want of a car the Journey was lost - and all for the loss of a screw…” (my apologies to Todd Rundgren and William Shakespeare).

Have you ever been in need of a good screw? I drove from the bath house past my campsite towards the camp hosts hoping the device would hold in place till I got there - the distance of a few hundred yards at most. I almost did. About  30 feet in front of the Host’s site it dropped and started scraping against the asphalt. I got up to them and explained the obvious. Anyone have a screw for this radiator? I figured with two camp hosts (and some friends) that these “Handyman types would have jars of different sized screws…but of course, no. But they did have zip ties. I was dubious at first but he managed to get it threw the threading and secured in place. I hoped it would take the rough roads the 5-7 miles back into the town of Troy.

Going into town it holds up well enough for me to get to a auto parts store and see if I can get the one screw I need to  secure the device for the rest of my trip - the right size in threading and dimensions, The clerk can’t really get down to see the place where the screw needs to be (he’s got a bad back) but shows me many possible screw possibilities. I ask if there are any repair shops and he sends me to a place called Creason’s about a mile and a half up the road. I hope my luck continues to hold out…and the zip tie too.
I get there and it does. I explain my situation to the woman at the front desk and she gets the mechanic and tells me he can’t put in the screw today but that it’s a “number 10” or some similar words type of screw. I feel like Ash in Army of Darkness trying to remember the words.  Nicto…necko…necktie…I said the words…basically. We know how that worked out. I asked if they could write down the exact size for me to take it down to the parts store again. He says “hold on” goes back and comes out with two screws and gives them to me. I ask if I owe them anything and they say no. They say it without really even looking at me with a sort of “get outta here kid, ya bother me” delivery as they are looking at something in a schedule book as they brush me off.
I take the screw out and it looks a little small to cover the opening between the two metal flanges it needs to secure to keep the device in place, but I try it. Screwing it in by hand it seems to thread without any problems. I can only do it hand tight, but it goes in pretty far and seems secure (the zip tie is still there as well so I feel it is secure enough for me to keep my meeting on time with  Kenneth Taupin up the road about 30 miles. I should have just enough time to get there at he appointed time of 10:30.

I drive to meet Kenneth Taupin. I put in his address n the Garmin and it routes me just the way Kenneth’s directions did, so I’m confident of the path there. I stop just before his turn off  near a town called Eiola for a pit stop and then continue to the appointed crossover and up the gravel road and see his property. I’m happy that over the bumpy gravel road I don’t hear anything dragging under the car. The screw holds on rough surfaces!
Driving up the driveway there are two houses and I know which one is Kenneth’s. I go towards the back as I don’t see any activity or clear open parking place in the front.
As I gather my camera tripod and Mischa a man comes out of the barn area. He is a tall, solid man. A bit taciturn, but welcoming without being overly expressive. He is gracious and observant in a low key way. He acknowledges Mischa almost immediately and doesn’t show any upset or concerns that she has just urinated on his lawn within seconds of leaving the car. He lead me to his kitchen saying Mischa is free to roam off leash in his house. He offer’s me something to drink and I opt for water. (my gout is trying to make a comeback in my right wrist). We sit at  his kitchen table and chat for a little bit about out mutual friend David Hungate who was responsible for suggesting this meeting. Then we start the interview. It is a revelatory conversation and harkens back to kitchen conversations I had with my Navaho blood brother Roy Winston Yellowhair Sellers  who had been adopted (or fostered ) by the farmers the Sellers in Orange, Ca. back in the early 60’s  - even the kitchen table seemed the same. Solid wood tables, straight backed chairs, cloth curtains fluttering in the window above the kitchen sink. Small functional kitchen space with the table in the center of the floor.
But Kenneth is  a student of the farming game and a man of his times. He’s been farming over 30 years, starting with his father and then farming on his own. He talks about  farming like an entrepreneur talks about the stock market. He deals in stocks (Livestock) and commodities (grains) in much the same terms - yields, forecasts & markets. Making good guesses can mean a profitable year, guessing wrong can spell disaster.
He is running his farm with only 4 people and two of them are only part time. It is long days and constant  work. I ask him why he does it. It the satisfaction of seeing something you do with your hands come out right. Making a living and scheduling his own time and generating income from his own efforts. And the work is healthy and honest. I leave there with a whole new appreciation for farming and farmers. I imagine cities opening and planning for farms in them as they would plan for city parks and golf courses or cemeteries. Certainly as good a use of land as any of the others, and potentially more productive to the community at large.

I go towards Hannibal and stake a side route to Louisiana a nice quaint town on the Mississippi River. Lots of old Victorian houses. The house with the confederate flag being the noticeable exception.
Towards the river there is the bulk of the old town and many of the more stately Victorian homes. I take a path from there towards Hannibal to be as close as the roads will allow to the mighty Mississippi .

Hannibal detour. I get only so far until I see a sign saying road closed. I have to use the Garmin to figure the detour. As I’d feared, it routes me back to the main highway into Hannibal. I save a little time but lose some interesting back road discoveries I’m sure.

Hannibal.  A big town with an old section dedicated to being a tourist trap.  I divert from the main drag of modern businesses and gas stations that would lead across a bridge to Illinois and head south to the Tom & Huck Statue as directed by the Garmin. I pass thre Molly Brown Home and then see a spinning Coffee Cup in the air with the words Mark Twain on it and assume I’ve arrived.  There is signage everywhere and just down this block is the Statue. Bronze. Well done. Nicely framed in a park that  the main tourest street dead ends into so it can be seen all the way down the long street. (Well Done Hannibal!) The whole street looks like a combination of Disney’s Main Street and the decorations of the buildings in Frontierland. Some of the buildings are historic (The Old Plaster House - Samuel Clemens childhood home) and some may have been from the 1800 but have been refurbished (or reconstructed) in the period style. I park next to the Old Plaster house and see a Banjo player strumming on a bench outside an Ice Cream parlor. At that moment I’m thinking more about a restroom than I am Ice Cream and cross the street hopefully. Successful, I ask the proprietor about the buildings history and the whole area. I get much information and a few pointers. I see the flavor Huckleberry and have to order some Ice Cream…in Mr. Finn’s Honor. A cup of  Huckleberry and Strawberry Ice Cream  and I’m happily impressed. Good Ice Cream , a sunny day and a banjo player who knows John Harford can really enhance any mood. The historic buildings and tourist traps, not withstanding, this area is pleasant and currant in it‘s own right. A local fraternal group is doing a barbecue fundraiser just down a block towards the Steamboat landing. Cyclists are getting ready for a ride. Mischa and I walk down to the landing across railroad tracks much as Samuel Clemens must have over a century ago. I think of My friend in Orlando who just got Mark Twain’s posthumous diaries this Christmas and wonder that the revelations he’s reading. Just before I graduated from UCSC in 1984 I helped a classmate interview the curator ot the Twain Project up at UC Berkeley and he had mentioned the one hundred year release of his writings, but at that time it seemed too far off to imagine. Now it’s here and I want to read them! Maybe sometime down the road.
We walk out to the Landing and there is a statue of Samuel Clements piloting a riverboat. (John Harford followed in those footsteps.) There is a lovely park and an observation deck along the waterside. I look at the vast expanse of the Mississippi and it’s flowing grey waters and think of the trouble down stream today and the last few days with towns flooding and the path of destruction that this magnificent river has caused, is causing and will cause. Nature. Engineers can devise levees and lochs and spillways and the river will find a path and change it’s course. Nature is a force best prepared for by respecting it and staying out of it’s way when it gets extreme.
I see across the water, way to the south, puffs of black smoke. It is the paddlewheeler “The Mark Twain’ coming up the Mississippi hugging the shores of the islands in the stream. I decied to wait fo it to come in. As it gets closer - mid stream and veering towards me, I hear a long horn blast. I realize a bit later it’s not The Mark Twain - it’s a locomotive coming up the tracks. This somehow seems classic to me. As the front of the train comes into sight, blowing it’s horn regularly, the Mark Twain begins to sound off with calliope like music. The train is a long one and I think for a bit that the Twain may land and disembark before the train clears the town and we’ll all be caught on “the wrong side of the tracks”. (At least for getting back to my car.)
The train, though long wins the race and is gone before the Mark Twain docks. I guessed that they would come to where it say “Landing”, but they come in to the south of me to where, if I’d have been at the observation deck, I would have had a closer view. At this point, I didn’t care enough to rush over, so I just took some stills and a little video from my vantage point.
It was time to leave Hannibal but I wanted to drive and see Old town Hannibal. There were some old buildings a  few Churches that I though might have been around when Samuel walked these streets.  But as I leave I take a few more pictures. The “Huck Finn house” was on the way out.  The memories I’ll  keep. The Mark Twain steamboat coming in to dock. The mighty Mississippi itself.
And Molly Brown too!

On to Wakonda!

I get a Tent by a lake. I “negotiate” using the electricity from the site next to me because the electric box on MY site is like 20 feet away and the other sites electricity is 2 feet from me. I keep looking out my tent because the view in front of me reminds me of some painting I’ve seen. The Lake scene reminds me of a Manet or Monet French park landscape. The little girl riding her bike in front of the lake makes the scene almost complete. All I need is to see a tall man and woman walking arm in arm -impeccably dressed. Not gonna happen. But I take a few pictures thru my tent mesh to give the pictures that artsy diffused look.

I surrender to sleep early. Not much happening here. Just a waypoint for tomorrows Journey. From what I’m told nothing much around here for miles. No wifi sites, few other places of interest until Keokuk…but that’s in Iowa. And Illinois is just across the river. Maybe I’ll make tomorrow a 3 state visitation. Missouri is a fine state…but tomorrow seems just like filling time. Maybe I’ll make an early exit. Who knows?!