It’s been great being in Missouri, our first trip to the state. We return later in the trip, but the first three days have been fun.

We’re in Hamilton, a small town of about 1200 people. It’s not quite a company town, but Missouri Star Quilt Company occupies a big hunk of downtown with their 13 storefronts (plus the quilt museum in an old high school and the quilting retreat center and the quilting airbnbs). On top of all that…the town has famous citizens. J C Penney spent his childhood here (and the high school is named Penney HS, the Hornets!), and baseball Hall of Famer Zach Wheat is from here (well, he’s been gone a very long time. You may need to look him up…).

So, Leila has been looking forward to this stop. We spent something over five hours going from shop to shop, and she gained inspiration from nearly all of them, plus she gained parcels from nearly of all of them. Her quilting projects are lining up nicely, she’ll have a busy winter.

Since the quilt shops are closed on Sundays we switched gears and drove to Independence, MO. They had the middle of town all blocked off for a Labor Day celebration of the Santa Fe, Oregon, and California Trails that all began in Independence. It was quite a festive scene on a really warm day. The event featured people in period clothing giving a sense of what things were like in Western Missouri in 1840 or so. We got a great tour of a log building that served as the county courthouse for a while starting in 1829, and again as recently as 1932 when Judge Harry S Truman presided there temporarily.

Yes, that Truman. He went on to become a US Senator, and then in 1944 was elected VP…serving just 88 days (if I have the story right) before he became president on FDR’s death. We were able to take a tour of his home, now a National historic monument. It’s just as it was at Mrs. Truman’s death. President Truman truly was the last average American to hold the office…no gated estates, no fancy vacation home, just a nice house in a nice old neighborhood in Independence. He even had a Frigidaire refrigerator like those we sold at Korten’s in the early 1980’s, and a Zenith French provincial console TV. The 4 door sedan he bought six months before his death is still in the garage; not a sporty car, a really sensible family car.

We also visited the Truman Library. I thought they did a nice job of working through his complicated career. Truman was not a successful businessman, and was a product of a corrupt political machine, but he was an honest politician. He once was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but became a key figure in integrating the armed forces. Truman managed to lead the country through turbulent times; the atomic bomb, post-war recovery, the beginning of the Cold War, the beginning of the Korean War were all on his watch. It’s impressive, and incentive to reread his biography.

So, we turn our faces towards Bemidji tomorrow. The first drive is a short one…more then.