Lonely Jensen's Point

The day didn't know itself what it wanted: cloudy, uncertain, and so was I, trying to find Jensen's Point in Pacific, until I read that this reclaimed historic site's little park is next to the Red Cedar Inn, the red-and-white Route 66 old restaurant nobody can miss. Unfortunately the Red Cedar Inn isn't operating; everyone who sees it wishes it were.

I had Jensen's Point to myself. On private land for 25 years, and falling to pieces, Jensen's Point was finally bought and restored by the City of Pacific, absolutely ruining it as a teenage  drinking and make-out lair and shelter for vagrants.  It re-opened in 2016. Many stone steps lead up the bluff to this stone structure at the top, built in 1939 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, honoring Lars Peter Jensen, the first manager of Shaw's Arboretum in Gray Summit. He held the job for 18 years. The Missouri Botanical Gardens' Gardenway Association hoped people would take Route 66 from St. Louis to Gray Summit and see the Arboretum, now called Shaw Nature Reserve.

It's a useless structure except for its quaintness and view of distant hills toward the west, and toward the south, the trains that made Pacific what it is, between the mighty and temperamental Meramec River on one side and old Route 66 on the other.

A Day in Franklin County Missouri

U.S. Senator Roy Blunt's "mobile office" hour for Franklin County was at Sullivan City Hall today. The room was filled (photo shows one-half of the room); about 50 people. We took turns talking one-on-one in a small room with the Senator's aide, a young woman who took notes about our concerns--5 minutes maximum.

Some people wanted the aide to come out and listen to us all, town-hall style, but "it doesn't work that way" and instead we each chose one issue to discuss with her and took our turns in line. I discussed with her the Affordable Care Act repeal (a done deal, I'm sure) and replacement (where is it?) and the fact that some rural Missourians this year had only one ACA plan to choose from, and we of Missouri are waiting for Senator Blunt (Republican) to do the ACA one better. Surely he can do better. Or the Republican Party told us so anyway. Meanwhile the people waiting made a video to send the Senator. Each attendee who wanted to stood up and spoke for up to one minute about the political issue that concerned him or her the most. Very eloquent people and an invigorating hour. BTW, Senator Blunt does not do town hall meetings. At all.

Thinking all the way about how much I love Missouri, I then drove to Washington MO and deli lunch at Farm to You: roast beef and cheddar on rye, sweet-potato salad and a Million Dollar Orange soda, and took a photo of a beautiful Missouri scene, but understanding better now that Missouri is its people.

January Hike - 1852 Graveyard

Twelve days previously this scene was buried in a foot of new snow and well below zero at night. In fact winter is can be great for hiking: no heatstroke or chiggers and an antidote to cabin fever. Yesterday, with a  high around 40 degrees, the hiking group walked the 12-mile circuit of Little Indian Creek Conservation Area outside of St. Clair, MO; its 4,000 acres straddle Franklin and Washington Counties. Among the few highlights of this mostly forested multipurpose (horse-appled) trail is a little cemetery with weathered stones, most unreadable, yet with a few graves decked with fresh artificial flowers. At the cemetery, about 5.5 miles along, we met sudden high winds and light wintry mix, perhaps because we were uninvited and disturbing the peace. Quickly we departed without finishing our lunches and soon the winds calmed and the sun broke out. Near the 7-mile/3-hour point I'd had my hike and bailed, taking the connecting path back to the parking lot for a total of 7.9 miles, which is plenty.

Ice-Cream Social in Catawissa

Homemade ice cream: peach, pineapple, strawberry, chocolate and vanilla at the twice-a-summer ice-cream social at Catawissa Union Protestant Church, the church I'd join if I were a church person because of  the food. At the ice-cream social in the church basement, we ate barbecue sandwiches and pies and cake along with the ice cream, for the price of a free will offering. Ace, a former farm boy born in 1938, now retired, is among my favored companions for church lunches and suppers. He knows what Missouri food should taste like and that homemade piecrusts differ vastly from purchased ones (those things hard as turtle shells!), and he can tell them apart. Church people recommended the peach pie made by one congregant and we made a beeline and got our slices, but when Ace went up for seconds it was gone, so he settled for the slice of spice cake with cream cheese frosting that he's finishing here. Another ice-cream social occurs August and we will head there EARLY to secure the PEACH PIE, with everyone else in the county in hot pursuit.

Osama bin Zombie

We firearm enthusiasts of Missouri's rugged Jefferson and Franklin counties are a fun-loving group that likes to get together, talk about and try out firearms, and practice shooting, and later sit in rockers on the porch as the sun sets trying to figure out how to gig frogs without a boat, but mostly we shoot at bulls-eye targets, and now and then we do stacks of cans, license plates, and plastic bottles, and shotgunners shoot at skeets. But I had left over from the days when the gun club met at my place, this one last zombie poster, at one time hilariously funny and now just tasteless and outmoded. So this was our belated good riddance to our country's old enemy. In the photo my friend Morris sets up a juice jug for more target shooting. Morris has a .22 rifle with a mag that holds 25 rounds. Big fun!

Bethel Methodist Church, Labadie, MO

Built in 1868 in the Greek Revival Style. In 1993 this building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Taken on one of those marvelously unsettled late spring days.

St. John's Church, Mount Hope, MO

This gorgeous April day I found St. John's E&R Church of Christ, a 1905 country church along Highway 47. Although it's labeled "Mt. Hope, MO" it's technically in today's St. Clair in Franklin County. Behind it is Mount Hope Cemetery with a great vista, and some of the gravestones facing the vista (nice). The church looks fragile but it has a ramp so it must be in use. The windows are covered with wood painted a beautiful soft green. The unlovely outhouse is separate, as it is in all good classic wooden country churches.

The Roberts Cemetery in Robertsville

In a corner of Robertsville State Park, at the end of a dirt path, in a clearcut beneath electrical wires, the Roberts family forever rests. This face of the larger monument honors Edward J. (1817-1899) and Ann (1826-1852); another side honors their sons who died at ages 2 and 24. Their son James E. Roberts, remembered on another side, was born in 1852 (the year his mother died) and died in 1886. His wife Mary F. Roberts, born in 1848, was the last Roberts buried here, in 1920.  A few of the graves still have the old-fashioned headstones like the one at right; some have no stones, but their names on engraved at the foot of their graves. The monument with the sphere looks modern but is not new; the side with the two boys' names is weather-worn and close to illegible. A locked Victorian-type iron fence surrounds the little family cemetery, which except for memories is a very lonely place.

The Battle of Pacific

At sunrise on Oct. 1, 1864, Confederate General William Cabell and troops set fire to the then-new and modern railroad facilities at Pacific, Missouri, burning them to char, and looted the stores for good measure. They also burned two railroad bridges. On Oct. 4, Union army troops commanded by General A.J. Smith came by rail from St. Louis up to the first burned bridge, and then marched into town to confront the Confederates. The Confederates held the top of this very high hill atop the Pacific silica bluffs, and shot cannons down at the Union army. The Union army shot back. Eight Union soldiers were wounded but none killed. The Confederates withdrew (the number of their casualties is unknown), their work of interrupting Union supply lines already done. Smith's troops then joined in Sherman's March on Atlanta.

About two years ago this hilltop was officially recognized as a Civil War battle site and is now Blackburn Park. The cannon is marked "Steen Cannons, Ashland Kentucky." There's a cannonball welded just inside of the cannon mouth so that it can never be shot.

Hitching a Ride

The Shaw Nature Reserve is 3000 acres in the next county over, and today I renewed my membership there and went for a camera hike. Walked an hour and a quarter just to get to my planned starting point, the picnic shelter, then down the bluff to the gravel bar on a bend in the Meramec River (above). Enjoyed my visit. Hiked back up the bluff to the shelter. By then I had been walking for three hours and was worn to a thread. After drinking water and resting I faced the hour-and-a-quarter walk back to my car, in the noon sun. For once I didn't relish the thought.

Somebody else was up there in the shelter, a staffer, packing up his janitorial stuff and getting into his Shaw Nature Reserve pickup truck when I got inspired (or desperate) and called to him, "Can I have a ride?"

He said, "Why, sure!" And he cleaned off the passenger seat and, hallelujah, I got a ten-minute ride back to my car.

My escort was Mr. Thurman. He said he'd never cared for flowers or gardening until he visited the fabulous Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. Next day he dug up his back yard and planted roses. He'd worked 27 years in a factory, quit, found this janitorial job in the paper and worked it full-time. Turns out he also rescues people: moms with double strollers who've miscalculated how exhausting it would be to push the kids around 3000 acres, and he looks for and gathers up hikers from the trails when a thunderstorm threatens. And grants rides to tired middle-aged lady hikers wearing dumb-looking sunhats. And I learned I hadn't had to walk that first hour at all. Mr. Thurman said visitors could drive up to the picnic shelter Mondays through Thursdays, and start from there.

He took me straight to my car and waited until I had my keys in hand. Priceless!