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I WILL NOT POST AGAIN UNTIL SEPTEMBER 1, 2020. I INTEND TO WASH WINDOWS, CLEAN OUT CLOSETS, AND COOK EXOTIC DISHES . . . BUT I'LL PROBABLY JUST READ EVEN MORE BOOKS. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BROWSE AMONG PAST POSTS LISTED TO THE RIGHT BY MONTH AND YEAR. MY BEST! RJ photos from favorite Vacations
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My Book World Heyerdahl, Thor. Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft. New York: Rand, 1950.
This book may have been written for adults, but I have to believe its adventurous tale appeals to the child inside each one of us. A Norwegian scholar develops a theory that at one time people of Peru crossed the South Pacific; Heyerdahl acquires this idea because huge statues on Easter Island so closely resemble ones found in Peru. Very quickly it seems he scrabbles together a crew of five other men and from drawings of a raft that would have been used in earlier times, the men build the Kon-Tiki essentially from nine huge balsa logs. That feat itself is a large undertaking as the men somehow receive permission from Peruvian officials to go into the forest and harvest such logs from balsa trees—even though commercial logging of balsa has been disallowed for some time. Then there is the 4,000 mile adventure in which, at first, the raft with a sail is seized by the Humboldt Current. However, as they escape its grasp, the six men embark on a most idyllic, though challenging, cruise across the South Pacific. They worry little about food (though they’ve brought certain stores with them) as they are besieged in the morning with flying fish that they either cook for breakfast or use as bait to catch bigger fish. Creatures large and small are curiously drawn to their vessel, and, though the men are wary at first, they become friends with the aquatic beasts. The primitive raft has its shortcomings so when they finally come upon an island, because of the raft’s steering limitations, they must pass it by. Sometime later, however, they spot another island group, and this time their voyage comes to an abrupt end as the raft breaks up on a reef. What follows may be the most delightful part of Heyerdahl’s perfectly arced narrative. Curious natives from a nearby island of 127 inhabitants see smoke from the men’s cooking fire and carefully approach them. The six men become heroes to the village and are treated royally for weeks on end before they are able to use their ham (amateur) radio and contact Tahiti and then Norwegian officials. A 4,000 ton ship is dispatched to pick them up, and then the six men and all villagers part with tears in their eyes. The book may be tinged with a childlike naiveté, but it is also filled with a certain curiosity and courage, qualities that are necessary for cultures to cross boundaries and for its inhabitants to realize they have more in common than they don’t. FRIDAY, SEPT. 4: My Book World | Kate Lardner's Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the forty-eighth post of fifty. Montana (2014, 2015)I first became acquainted with Montana when, as a child, I learned that a great uncle lived there, was superintendent of schools in Miles City for nearly thirty-five years—although I would never visit the state until many years later. In 2014, while visiting South Dakota, Ken and I made a day-trip to cross over into North Dakota and Montana. We returned to the state mid-June 2015, to enter Yellowstone National Park. A mistake tourist-wise—way too crowded—but still, we did attempt to enjoy its stark and majestic beauty. We hope to go back either in May or September one year. Montana became the forty-first state on November 8, 1889. Historical Postcards & Trunk DecalsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Robert Caro's Working
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the forty-seventh post of fifty. North Dakota (2014) Our visit to North Dakota was rather abbreviated. We were staying in South Dakota, and one day we got in the car and drove to their neighbor to the north. We had been aware that much in the way of oil drilling was going on because big trucks with oil rig business would pass us on Highway 83. When we actually crossed over the border we saw how intense the drilling was. ND’s area is 70,698 square miles. Its GDP is $52.527 Bn. Forty-four percent of its population of 755, 393 is college educated. And its capital is located in Bismarck. North Dakota became a state November 2, 1889, the fortieth state to enter the union. Historical PostcardsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Garrett Peck's The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath.
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the forty-fifth post of fifty. Nebraska (2014)Ken and I stayed at one of those nondescript road motels that begins with an “H.” The young woman at the desk asked me what brought us to Nebraska. And I told her that I was attempting to log visits to four of my last ten states. She seemed to have an inferiority complex about Nebraska which I’ve witnessed before. One time, I met a young gay man visiting Texas from Omaha. I simply asked him what gay life was like in Omaha, certainly assuming it was better than Lubbock’s, and he got all defensive about it, as if I were making fun. Anyway, I told the woman that driving north on Highway 83, we’d seen some of the most beautiful land ever. Northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska are not entirely flat, nor entirely agricultural. There is a very pastoral scene there, even if a Nebraska waterway called the Dismal River runs through it. Nebraska, you’ve got some PR to do. You can’t rely entirely on your ‘Huskers to make your name in the world! You need a WillaCatherLand or something. Nebraska became the thirty-seventh state on March 1, 1867 and celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2017. Historical PostcardsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer's Less: A Novel
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the forty-third post of fifty. Washington (2011) The only place I’ve visited in Washington is Seattle, where Ken and I embarked on a Holland America ship headed for Alaska (see my profile next week). But we spent a couple of days there before leaving and a day upon return, giving us a good feel for the city. I was surprised by the topography, that it gives San Francisco a run for its money on its steepness, known informally for its “seven hills,” like Rome. Hee hee. I loved the outdoor market, where you can watch the vendors toss a fifteen- or twenty-pound salmon to a paying customer, who’d better catch it. I loved the vibe, the fact that much public art adorns the city, that it was one of the first cities to raise its minimum wage to $12. And then there’s the coffee, ah, the coffee—if you like that sort of thing. Washington was the forty-second state to be admitted to the union in 1889. Historical Postcards & Trunk DecalsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Pam Houston's Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the fortieth post of fifty. Idaho (2008, 2010, 2015)Some places you visit because you know people who live there. In teaching graduate students at Texas Tech summer school, my partner Ken introduced one of his female students to a young English professor who was teaching creative writing at the same time (I believe this to be true). The couple later married, and the professor was instrumental in getting me into the MA program at TTU. Before I could finish my degree, Ann and Daryl moved to Boise, and years later, after Ken and I retired, we visited them at their home, once in summer and once in autumn. Boise is a well-kept secret, with a fine university. A river running through it (couldn't resist), in fact, a cultivated green belt for athletes, zoo-goers, museum attendees, and fresh-air breathers of all kinds. A great center for cinema, especially the Egyptian Theatre. A breeding ground for writers and authors. Most of all, a humane population. One night, after the four of us had attended a play at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival Amphitheater, the crowd strolled toward a huge parking lot. I figured, as in Texas, that there would be a huge push—cars streaming in all directions—to scramble to the closest exit. I was astounded when, as we reached a certain nexus, a four-way stop, each line of drivers took his or her turn heading for the exit. Ken and I asked if that was normal, and our friends quietly insisted it was. A state that uses a saying like “Drive Friendly” could sure learn something from that genteel bunch of Idahoans. Ken and I confessed that if we’d only encountered the place ten years earlier, we might have retired there. Of course, it just could have been a bunch of talk. Idaho was the forty-third state to be admitted into the Union on July 3, 1890. Its state bird is the Mountain Bluebird, and it boasts a population of 1.7 million people. HISTORIC POSTCARDS AND TRUNK DECALSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the thirty-ninth post of fifty. Rhode Island (2003)I must admit that Rhode Island is one of the fifty states through which I made one of those pass-through visits, as I did with Delaware. However, I feel a literary connection with the state because of one writer, Edith Wharton. If Ken and I had had time, we most surely would have visited her former residence, Land’s End, located in Newport and portrayed in her novel, The Age of Innocence. I visited her other home, The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts three times over the period of a decade, and so, upon my return to the state Newport shall be my first stop. Rhode Island became thirteenth of the original thirteen states, in 1790, and its official name is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Historical PostcardsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World | Milkman by Anna Burns, Booker Prize Winner
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the thirtieth post of fifty. Georgia (1990, 1991, 1992, 1994)The first trip of four that Ken and I made to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we flew into Atlanta, Georgia. The Atlanta airport was touted as being one of the world’s busiest, and I had no argument with anyone about that, as we busted our rears to get to our gate. Our fourth trip we motored from Texas and drove through a bustling Atlanta, a city I would like to see more of. I would like to visit Savanah. I would like to see where author Flannery O’Connor lived. I would like to see free and fair elections in Georgia before my life ends. That's when I may return to Georgia. Georgia is fourth of the original thirteen colonies and celebrated its bicenquinquagenary in 2013. Historical PostcardsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World, The Real Lolita
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the eighteenth post of fifty. Arkansas (1967-68, 2009, 2010, 2012) Arkansas River Why do natives of Arkansas pronounce the state the way they do but call themselves AR-kanzuns, and not Arkansawyers? (I think we know why.) Why is the river whose headwaters begin in Colorado and pass through the state of Kansas called the AR-Kanzus River, but when it reaches Arkansas it becomes, well, you know? One state’s denizens feel superior to the other’s because each group feels it is so right. I know, because I’ve lived among both camps. Several people on my block in Wichita had relatives in Arkansas, and a couple of others moved to Northwest Arkansas to retire. My first trip to Arkansas came in the late sixties when, once again, my college choir’s annual tour ran through that state. We sang at a civic auditorium in Rogers to a fairly large crowd. We stayed with a host family I cannot now remember anything about.  My second encounter with Arkansas came over forty years later when I obtained a two-month residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, located in the northwest quadrant of the state. It was the first time since college since I’d lived alone. Ken flew up for a week to stay in the area. I would write in the mornings in my one-bedroom suite at the colony (where guests were not allowed to stay) and then we would meet up at his motel in the afternoon to sight see. Over thirty inches of rain fell during that two-month period; it must have rained at least fifty percent of the time, including much of Ken’s visit, so we didn’t get to see much. He’d attended the University of Arkansas for his MFA, so he was well acquainted with the area, but it had changed a great deal. Northwest Arkansas now boasts over 525,000 residents, larger than some self-contained cities—and its character seems largely suburban sprawl.  We returned in 2010 and 2012 to visit a friend who had once lived in Lubbock. At that time we went to visit the Crystal Bridges Museum. It was in May before the weather became hot and humid, and weather was beautiful. Arkansas bears the distinction of being the nation’s twenty-fifth state, who celebrated its centennial in 1936. 347 If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the seventeenth post of fifty. Colorado (1964, 1965, 1967, 2000, 2011)  1/1 In my youth I was a church goer, mostly by default, de fault of my mother (har har). Our youth group spent two different week-long sessions in retreat at a cabin our minister owned near Silverton. It was a ten-hour drive from Wichita, and some of we luckier kids rode in the education director’s car, which had a rather new innovation: factory-installed air conditioning. You weren’t exhausted from the wind whipping your face hour after hour or from its roar in your ears. Your skin didn’t stick to the seats. She even let some of us drive! The retreats were great. Short on Bible and theological discussions and long on FUN. We hiked, made day-long climbs up particular mountains, cooked outside. And it was cool! No AC was needed as it was back in Wichita. On my flight back from LA in 1967, my plane stopped in Denver. As I was flying standby, I was bumped from the flight to Wichita . . . late at night. I called my mother to explain what had happened. She encouraged me to spend the night in the airport, just sleeping on a bench, as she had during World War II, waiting for a train. I’d seen too many movies about people sleeping on hard benches and declared that I was staying in a motel. And I then lifted one of those white courtesy phones connected directly to a motel and took its shuttle. The room cost me eleven dollars, and I tipped the bell hop fifty cents and had no idea whether that was too much or too little. It had just rained and was in the mid-fifties. The air, after I had lived with the smog-filled air of LA for two weeks, seemed splendiferous, providing a natural AC. In this century we’ve stayed with friends in Grand Lake (2000) and in Denver (2000 & 2011). In 2014 we drove widely around Denver on E-470, a toll road, not really wishing to partake of its urban sprawl. We spent the night in Pueblo, taking short trips out to see things such as Rosemount and the raptor center. The Colorado Centennial was celebrated in 1976, the same year as the nation’s bicentennial year, the same year Ken and I began our longtime relationship. HISTORICAL POSTCARDSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the sixteenth post of fifty. Connecticut (1957, 1959, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2012)The greatest thing about Connecticut may be that it’s not New York. To me, the Merritt Parkway is emblematic of the state: quaint, a bit pastoral, and yet sophisticated. My paternal grandmother lived in Stamford in a smart little apartment many years before moving back to Holland to live out her waning days (she lived to be eighty-eight). Several of the apartment buildings had green awnings over the main door, and I told my four-year-old brother that one of them was where Grandma lived, as a joke, when I knew it was indeed the one we parked nearest. As soon as we got out of the car, my brother dashed across the busy street to the one I’d said was Grandma’s. My mother knew immediately why he’d done it and practically choked me. I was a bad boy. Thankfully, Vic must have known what he was doing for no catastrophe resulted. I believe Ken and I drove through the state the very afternoon that Paul Newman’s death was announced on the NPR station we were listening to in our rental, mere miles from where both he and my father had lived, at different times. It seemed like a strange juxtaposition: my father’s birthplace, Paul Newman’s death. To whom was it more of a home?  In 2010 we visited Mark Twain’s home and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s in Hartford. In 2012 we met up with a friend I’d gone to Southwestern College with, who now lives near Hartford. It was a great autumn weekend, and we watched wild turkey feed in my friend’s suburban back yard. Connecticut is fifth of the original states, having been established in 1788. HISTORICAL POSTCARDSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the thirteenth post of fifty. New Jersey (1957, 1963) The man my father’s older sister married, in 1939, was Italian. His father had come from Italy early in the twentieth century. In the sixties, that elderly gentleman lived in Vineland, and a carload of us sojourned from Washington DC one Sunday afternoon to visit Pop F. He was a rotund, white-haired man, quiet-spoken, taciturn to a fifteen-year-old like me. It was boring sitting around while the grow-ups yacked. My cousin, the swimsuit thief, is now probably older than his grandfather was the day we visited him in 1963. My eldest cousin, a college student at the time, winked at me and said, “I’m probably going to get to drive back to DC. Mom and Dad are too drunk.” ¶ The old Italian-American had what seemed like a small farm, compared to my grandfather’s wheat farm back in Kansas, but the man certainly had plenty of fresh vegetables. ¶ New Jersey, the butt of many jokes, is, in part, a bucolic state, not near as urban as its neighbor across the river. NJ is third of the original colonies, became a state in 1787. It celebrated its bicenquinquagenary in 2012. HISTORICAL POSTCARDSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the twelfth post of fifty. Virginia (1957, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1973, 1974, 1989, 1990, 1994, 1999, 2010)In Northern Virginia, where my aunt and uncle lived in Fairfax County, it was difficult to separate, at times, Washington DC from the southern nature of its surroundings. The lilting dialects, the Georgian colonial architecture with red bricks and white columns. Even the White House is a southern building. And yet my aunt and uncle were New Yorkers; it seemed like an odd fit. In the dozen times that I’ve been to Washington, I’ve viewed multiple sights multiple times: The Smithsonian Institution (including the Air and Space Museum located a thirty-minute cab ride from DC in Fairfax County), the Capitol, the Washington Monument, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s, the World War II Memorial, The Vietnam Memorial (I had previously looked up the address of our Wichita neighbor, R. E. Jenkins, who’d been killed at nineteen, as well as the man for who I’d worn a steel MIA bracelet, Stephen Adams, Iowa), Georgetown, Mt. Vernon, the home of former president, Chester A. Arthur (a bed and breakfast where we stayed in 2010), on Logan Circle. The closest I came to the White House was Pennsylvania Avenue, where I took an iPhone picture through the wrought iron fence. I’ve seen both of Thomas Jefferson’s homes, Monticello and the one in western Virginia, Poplar Forest, a three-day trip by horse cart for its original owner. I’ve strolled through the quad at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where the Jeffersonian buildings provide space for qualified students to live. ¶ Virginia is tenth of the original colonies, established in 1788. Historical Postcards & Trunk DecalsIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the eleventh post of fifty. Maryland (1957, 1959, 1963) L-R: Lou, Carol, Richard, Victor | 1963 Visit to DC  In 1963, I was fifteen when we visited Aunt Gladys in Washington, DC. My cousin was seventeen, and he and his sophisticated friends invited me to go with them to the beach in Maryland. On our way we stopped in at Nordstrom’s in the Seven Corners shopping center. I watched as my sophisticated cousin and his friends shoplifted identical plaid swim trunks. We rode out in a red Impala convertible, and when the traffic backed up surprisingly, the driver, one of my cousin’s friends, headed for the soft grass median rather than rear-end someone. ¶ At this Maryland beach, my cousin and his friends looked like they all belonged to the same fraternity and flirted with girls older than they were just for the fun of it. I never told my parents what my cousin had done. It was one of those events that advanced your childhood pretty quickly, traveling with delinquents, and you knew you could never go back. ¶ In the Baltimore neighborhood where my aunt and uncle lived in 1957, people attached ceramic cats, mostly black, to the roofs and sides of their homes, perhaps as a way of identifying theirs as they approached it on the street. My dad bought one before leaving for Kansas and it hung on the side of their house in Wichita for over fifty years. ¶ Maryland became seventh of the original thirteen states in 1788. Its bicenquinquagenary was celebrated in 2013. HISTORICAL POSTCARDSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the ninth post of fifty. Pennsylvania (1957, 1959, 1963)  Barges. Coal. Coal dust. On our 1957 vacation, my family and I spent nearly three days in the mountain town of Brownsville, waiting for our Packard Clipper, a ’55, to be repaired. My mother tried hard to find ways to entertain us while we waited around on repairs that could never be made. She took movies of us running up and down the bank of the Monongahela River, me waving a jaunty striped cap I’d gotten for my ninth birthday. “Run, darn you,” my mother said. “It’s a moving picture.” And run we did, like little fools. The hotel where we stayed was so rife with coal dust that Mother had to wipe down everything (including the toilet seat) before we could sit.  The Jesperses' New 1957 Pontiac and Brother Vic At the end of that brief but drawn-out respite, my parents bought a new 1957 Pontiac, and we broke it in on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was one of the oldest in the nation, and the roads were not that well engineered, not near as sleek as the Kansas Turnpike (you could travel at eighty mph), but it was certainly scenic. ¶ Philadelphia is the city where some of my grandmother’s German cousins lived, but when I try to google the address where they lived, it seems that the street must have disappeared or been renamed. It’s as if they never lived. The city is also where my Dutch grandparents landed in the early 1900s. ¶ Pennsylvania is the second of the original thirteen colonies, established in 1787. Over 230 years old! HISTORICAL POSTCARDS If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the seventh post of fifty. Indiana (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 1976, 1994)  Shoals was our first stop when my family drove east in 1959. My father put in a good nine or ten hours of driving—over 650 miles and four states in one day. During that trip—before the interstate highway system was complete—we passed through downtown Indianapolis. My mother took a Super 8 film of the experience, flags billowing off some important building. Hot. Exhaust pouring in the windows of our Pontiac. On the second day, my father would drive through three states in one day (Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia), and we would think we were making grand time, but we were in the mountains and it took from dawn to dark to drive 550 miles. We were two hours from my aunt and uncle’s home in Falls Church, Virginia. It would be my third trip to Washington, DC, and I was only eleven! In 1969, my college choir performed in South Bend, and I was able to visit with the daughter of one of mother’s high school teachers, Jo Leatherman Perkey, who made a special effort to see our performance. The choir had fun touring the Indy 500 track (above). ¶ Indiana is the nineteenth state. Residents celebrated its bicentennial in 2016. Historical Postcards If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link: NEXT TIME: My World of Short Fiction
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the sixth post of fifty. 6. Illinois (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 2006) When I was a child, Illinois was one of the four states my dad drove through in a single day as we headed to Washington DC to see my aunt and cousins. Beyond that, Illinois didn’t mean much to me until 1969, when my college choir’s tour included Chicago. In the middle of February with dirty snow piled onto the sidewalks like little mountains, a college friend and I walked under cloudy skies and chatted about what most twenty-one-year-olds do. The choir sang at a Methodist church in Evanston, and as a rising organ pupil I played the postlude. The sanctuary was cold. ¶ Even later, in 1976, Ken and I would venture across the Mississippi River to visit his grandparents’ old farm near Thebes, not far from Huck Finn’s haunt, Cairo. The humidity was so unbearable that we were drenched standing in full shade viewing his grandparents’ graves in the cemetery. In 2006 we traveled on AmTrak from Fort Worth to New York and changed trains to the Lakeshore Limited in Chicago. We took a brisk walk around during our layover. It was early May, and the trees were just beginning to bud out. We’d already had ninety degree temps in Lubbock, so it seemed that we were stepping back in time. HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk DecalsIllinois is the twenty-first state. Its centennial was held in 1918. The year 2018 will be another big one. Check it out! If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the fifth post of fifty. 5. Missouri (1956, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1976 + many others)  Richard and Brother Vic and Sister Peggy at Bagnell Dam, Missouri—1956 On my family’s first trip through the Show-Me state, in 1956, we visited Bagnell Dam in the Lake of the Ozarks. I imagine that we took U.S. Highway 54 because it was as a direct shot you could get from Wichita. The trip was a tryout for my brother, who was three at the time, to see how he would take to long periods in the car. During that trip we also visited mother’s family friends in Tipton, not more than an hour’s drive from the dam. We stayed in a mom-and-pop motel, and I witnessed one of the hardest rains I’ve ever seen in my life. We traveled through Missouri every time we went back East to visit my dad’s family. One memorable sight were the charcoal factories that were nestled among the trees of the rolling hills. Some of them were partnered with rustic establishments where you could breakfast on eggs and smoked bacon. In Brownington is located the grave of my great-grandmother’s first husband, who drowned when, during a rainstorm, he drove a team of horses into a river, drowning him, his horses, and a calf loaded in his wagon. The year was 1884. ¶ My partner Ken’s family are all from the Saint Louis area. In the seventies I began to get a closer look at the state: clear streams and rivers, fried catfish, verdant woods and lawns, friendly people who embraced me as one of their own.  Richard Feeding the Fish at Missouri Hatchery—1976 Historical PostcardsMissouri is the twenty-fourth state. Its centennial was held in 1921, so it won’t be long until another hundred years have passed. I wonder why there is a forty-year gap between Missouri’s and Kansas’s statehood—so close and yet so far. If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
Dear Fellow Travelers, I offer you the second round of photographs from our November trip to Barcelona. This time I picture primarily the lovely people of that city, from those selling their wares on the street to those joining us as we stroll down one of the grand boulevards. Appreciate your generous comments from last time! RJ Click on Barcelona Photographs 1 if you missed that installment. NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-5 Missouri
More Photographs of Barcelona Once They're Processed!
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the fourth post of fifty. 4 Louisiana (1950-52)I remember little about Louisiana, except that my family lived in a forty-foot trailer in Pineville, located near the air base at Alexandria. I recall cypress knees that my father brought back to Kansas and sanded to a sheen and varnished, using one to make the base of a lamp, the rest surviving as sculpture occupying various places in our tiny house. I recall the Po Boy sandwich my mother adapted by using “French” bread you bought in those aluminum foil wraps (instead of baguettes), shredded roast beef, topped with a mixture of ketchup, mustard, and Worcestershire sauce. This was as spicy as my parents could tolerate, even as young people. Their Kansas palates didn’t care for the traditional sandwich of fried oysters, vegetables, and coarse Creole mustard. The black-and-white photographs taken by a black box camera tell me more than my memory. There are surviving pictures of my sister, coy and cute, poised beneath a large metal bridge all by her lonesome. Shots of us playing in the dirt outside our trailor. Shots of my handsome soldier father in his uniform. I later visited New Orleans when as a member of the SMU seminary choir we toured there. I remember wearing the choir stole jauntily around my neck as if it were a scarf. Getting a little tipsy along with the other seminarians as we partied on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. My fellow students grinning as if viewing the real me for the first time. ¶ Louisiana is the eighteenth state. Its centennial was held in 1912, its bicentennial, well, you know. One forgets how long the state has been established, part of the Old World, as it were. HISTORICAL POSTCARDSIf you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link: NEXT TIME: My Book World
MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the second post of fifty. 2 OklahomaOklahoma is the state I traveled through first when I was but a toddler, on the way to Louisiana, where my father was stationed in the Air National Guard for over two years. In time I passed through Oklahoma—north to south, west to east, southwest to northeast, across the panhandle—scores of times, but I never visited anyone, rarely had any business there except to buy gas or stay in a motel, so I wouldn’t have such a long trip to . . . wherever I was headed: Kansas, Texas, Arkansas. ¶ My maternal grandfather, James Brown Richards, did his basic training as a soldier for World War I at Fort Sill in Lawton. The 1918 photographs in the photo gallery below depict a fairly barren place, but now the town has many beautiful tree-lined boulevards, even where the fort remains. After back surgery, I often stayed there as a halfway point between Lubbock, Texas, and Wichita. I would eat at a Chinese restaurant whose name I cannot now recall. ¶ My second trip to Oklahoma came when I was twelve and our church youth drove to visit St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in OKC. I was probably dazzled by the sanctuary at the time, but can recall little of it now. I remember more the dinner afterwards when I ordered fried shrimp. My parents had given me enough money to eat what I wanted . . . I thought. The next day the education director (PG) at the church, who’d been one of the trip sponsors, castigated me for ordering such an extravagant meal when everyone else ate hamburgers and fries. Had I ordered more than I could pay for and the adults had covered for me? Or had the director taken it upon herself to judge me as if she were God? ¶ Oklahoma is a beautiful state, deserves more than a drive-through, particularly the eastern third. Angling northeastward on I-44 in early June, you can see grand rolling hills, even larger ones, the Ouachita Mountains. Unlike the 1930s, when this part of the country suffered great drought, Oklahoma has recently enjoyed anywhere between thirty and fifty inches of rain a year. Verdant stretches of green fields and hedgerows of trees, not to mention veritable forests in the eastern third of the state, as you approach the Ozarks, are eye-popping and inviting. ¶ In 2007, Ken and I, on a trip to Wichita, made a reservation to stay in the Price Tower boutique hotel in Bartlesville. The tower, a Frank Lloyd Wright design, was erected in 1956. The designer had combined what looked like two offices to make one largish hotel room. ¶ The most recent news about Oklahoma is the number of “earthquakes” it has experienced largely, residents assert, because of the practice of fracking by oil companies in the area. The state is also known for one of the last botched executions of a prisoner, when the injection concocted by prison officials did not work properly. ¶ Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state in 1907. Proud Oklahomans celebrated their centennial not that long ago.    Photos 1&2: James Richards on right. Photo 3: James Richards
NEXT TIME: My Book World
Introduction  Oceanside, Oregon With a 2015 visit to Oregon I concluded a life-long tour of the United States—only my first, I hope. The Jespers folk who resided on South Main Street in Wichita were not wealthy, so the only road trips we made were to visit family who lived in other parts of the country. Likewise, as an adult I was a public school teacher with little in the way of discretionary savings, but early on, if I needed to do so I would borrow money to make, for example, my first trip to Hawaii.  1977 Queen's Surf, Author on Right As I paid back my credit union, month by month, I would recall and cherish favorite scenes from my travels. Upon retiring Ken and I have journeyed out at least twice a year. And so now the list is complete. Some states I only visited once and quite briefly at that. Others I’ve returned to again and again. Yet others I’ve resided in. At any rate, through the years I’ve kept journals, scraps of memorabilia, and photographs, and I would like to share what I’ve enjoyed about our fifty states. Travel is always a good thing, even if it’s only a few hundred miles away, and the wider your travels take you, the more you may learn about yourself and others. One might think that America is this homogenous mass of people, and, in a way national customs and holidays would imply that it is, but at the same time one must realize that Maine is distinctive from Florida and Arizona and Washington and North Dakota and Kansas and Texas. I hope to put up at least two posts a week about my visits to all fifty states, a journey I began in the 1950s. Some people who embark on this sort of venture say that one must DO something significant in each state. I do not. One state, Delaware, I passed through as a child in less than an hour, but still I do count it toward my total because I must! Each post relates anecdotes that make my accounts personal, while also giving short factual information about each state, such as its order of entry into the United States, significant celebrations like centennials, and special events or customs. I am posting personal photographs by way of galleries or slideshows, as well as scans of professional post cards I’ve collected through the years. I hope you will come along for the ride! Share your stories under Comments, your photos at Facebook. I begin with the state where I was born. 1 Kansas When I was old enough to study geography and scrutinize maps, I realized how isolated the state of Kansas was. In 1957, when it took several days to drive from Wichita to the east coast, I realized an even greater disparity that may not be discernible today. Now you can stay in a Holiday Inn Express in the burg of Garden City, one that’s like thousands of other Holiday Inns, but back then the majority of motels seemed to be individually owned and operated. Back then it appeared that the rest of the country was more established, more sophisticated somehow, than the agrarian state of Kansas. ¶ I later realized the place where I was born and raised profoundly affected who I would be for the rest of my life. My mother, for example, lived on a farm until she went to college and then married my father from New York, whom she called an Easterner, but she never stopped using the word “worsh” whether she was speaking of the laundry, or Worshington DC as if she could not discern the difference—never felt entirely comfortable living in Wichita, a city of 350,000 at the time of her death in 2001. ¶ Even though I left Kansas at the age of twenty-two to attend graduate school in Dallas, Texas, I never stopped considering the little boy buried deep in me, the lad who once played on his grandfather’s discarded tractors and combines, who capered along the crumbling banks of the Arkansas River located a couple of blocks from the home I lived in for over twenty years. Whenever I return to the tiny Upchurch cemetery outside Norwich, I am overwhelmed by the sense that I might just belong there with my grandparents, my parents, my sister, and piles of other bones from previous generations. The primordial chant, "Rock Chalk Jayhawk," still gives me chills when I hear it on a ball game on TV. ¶ The school I attended, Southwestern College in Winfield, without a doubt, shaped my life. Sixteen hours of music theory formed the backbone of my music degree. Countless hours of rehearsal at the large Reuter pipe organ in Richardson Auditorium culminated in a senior recital of seven or eight pieces. I still have the scores from which I learned all that music. When I listen to my recital tape, transferred to a CD and my iPod, I shiver to think that I was once that accomplished. Below are from my personal collection of historic travel postcards. Historical PostcardsNEXT TIME: My Journey of States—Oklahoma
Dear Fellow Travelers, This first installment of my Barcelona Photographs—made during UMC's Seniors Are Special trip in November—is comprised of as many candid shots I could get of our group of thirty-two. In the coming days I'll also post photographs of the region's architecture and its colorful people. Stay tuned! NEXT TIME: My World of Short Fiction 2018
NOTE: I wrote this post a year ago. For reasons I can't recall I decided not to put it up. Today Ken and I celebrate our forty-first anniversary together, and I share last year's post belatedly! Ken and I met forty years ago, in 1976, at a rather notorious bar, late at night on Valentine's Day. Located off Marshall, David’s Warehouse of Lubbock, Texas, was a foreboding place, like a remote outpost of a foreign land. Eerie fluorescents contributed to an apprehensiveness, almost a fear, and patrons' cars were clumped close like horses with their reins loosely tied around a hitching post. Inside, amid the warmth and the steady thump of disco music someone introduced us. Ken asserts that I had been snubbing him for weeks. I maintain that I was just shy. In those days I felt compelled to pound down three beers at my apartment before heading out to face the meat rack at David's. Well, we now talk as little about that as possible—just what followed. Seeing each other every day—Ken would bring little gifts like tiny potted cacti—we became acquainted rather quickly, and by June made the decision to move in together. We had an open house, and a few of the items we received—some dessert plates and four blue plastic glasses—are still part of our daily use. Not long after that we made the trip to Kansas and Missouri and Michigan, to introduce our newly formed union to, respectively, my family, Ken's family, and friends where he’d taught in Kalamazoo. It was like a honeymoon. We even took a mini-cruise by placing our yellow Datsun on a ferry that transported us from northern Michigan to Green Bay, a pleasant four-hour voyage. Our first seven years were the most difficult. It was the 1970s! Open Marriage, the Sexual Revolution, and Gay Liberation all conspired to make us think we could have it all—that is, have every man we saw, plus the one at home. AIDS, whose clutches we were fortunate enough to escape (don’t think that we don’t still suffer some survivor’s guilt), made us stop and think. Once we committed only to one another, what, I suppose, history had been trying to tell us, we became much closer, committed. In 1986, for our tenth anniversary, we threw a party. Ken gave me a ring with a fire agate as the setting. Funny story: years after his Grandfather Dixon died, Ken watched as his Grandmother cleaned out a drawer. He eyed his grandfather's gold dental work and asked if he could have it. His grandmother was more than glad to be rid of a ghost's smile. Prior to our special day he asked a jeweler friend to shape the gold into a ring. In the future, whenever Ken's relatives would comment on my beautiful ring, he and I would exchange winks. I even think you could hear his grandfather chuckle. In a similar vein, the ring I presented to Ken was made, in part, from my discarded wedding ring. BELOW: Left, the ring Ken gave me and his Kappa Alpha frat pin. Right, the ring I later gave Ken and my Phi Mu Alpha pin. We occasionally wear the pins on a night out, our little joke. In 1996 we celebrated our twentieth anniversary with a Hawaiian cruise. The eight-day voyage was only marred by the day on which we left Honolulu, the very morning the bomb went off in Atlanta. At the airport, everyone’s luggage was dump-searched, and we arrived home exhausted. What survives, however, are great memories of cruising the peaceful Pacific. Having never traveled much by train, we celebrated our thirtieth in 2006 by taking Amtrak from Fort Worth to New York, by way of Chicago. During the forty-eight-hour trip in First Class, we reminisced about our first thirty years, some of the same things we’d always reminisced about when we got sentimental: our beginning at a tawdry bar in north Lubbock. But what else? Art. Music. Literature. Film. Gossip. Very little ever seemed out of range for our discussions. And as with all good friends, we daily seem to pick up where we left off last time we talked. So here we are again, Sunday night, February 14, 2016—our fortieth anniversary, the same night of the year as always. We usually avoid eating out—selecting an adjacent evening—not finding it very festive to celebrate such a special day with the hoi polloi and their sentimental frills like chocolates and roses. That’s just not us. I take charge of glasses. Oh, get the doorbell, would you. It is our pizza! Then an episode of Downton Abbey. Later, we raise our glasses to the next ten years, and the next! We, same as Mr. Milne, can hope, can’t we! BELOW would appear some photos from our fortieth-anniversary trip, a Caribbean cruise to Aruba, Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica, and the Caymans . . . ONLY WE NEVER GOT TO GO!
Due to a health crisis in our duo, we were forced to cancel our October trip at the last minute. When Ken would share with the nurses and doctors at University Medical Center that we were to have celebrated our fortieth on the cruise, most emitted an authentic "Awww." Gee, how the world has changed. Forty years ago we wouldn't have even shared such information with strangers, especially those holding needles. Since our travel insurance check arrived, we are determined to go SOMEWHERE for our forty-first year. Now the fun comes in deciding WHERE? NEXT TIME: My Book World |
AUTHOR
Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA. See my profile at Author Central:
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