REFLECTION, RUMINATION & RHETORIC FROM THE ROAD: KC
5. The Flip is a Flop
We’re up too early next morning for coffee at Kaladi’s (Main Street, Galena IL) but we sit at one of their open-air tables anyway to flip a coin.
It is Van Stein’s turn to flip and mine to call. “Tails.”
It comes up heads and we check our destination choices.
Kansas City, Missouri.
Kansas City, Missouri.
(Self-determinists, we both.)
Starbucks in Dubuque cranks us with caffeine under blue sky and sunshine and more amazing cloud floating overhead.
The first leg is a backtrack, never desirable on a road trip but cannot be helped. We roll by Des Moines just before 11 a.m. and aim for Smoky D’s BBQ in nearby Polk City just as they open for biz, first in line for a rack of baby back ribs, baked beans, macaroni & cheese and by the time we are done a long line of chunky customers has formed.
A flat and tedious drive delivers us to the Raphael Hotel whose receptionist inexplicably upgrades me to an enormous suite with a large bathing tub I never have time to use.
Though weary we have a mission: The National World War I Museum at which, while touring around, I dictate into my phone:
There is nothing glorious about war. It is always a tragedy. It is always about pain, suffering, death and emotional strife for those left behind and about some folks growing very rich and fat off the misfortunes of others.
(Later I offer this advice on my blog: Don’t allow a mainstream narrative to propagandize you into supporting another war. As with the crock that was COVID, government is always about manipulation, control and rewarding fat cats.)
“You can’t say civilization don’t advance, however,” states a museum poster quoting Will Rogers…
And this from a returning soldier…
Prohibition.
The horror is brought home in a wooden case of surgical instruments including a hacksaw.
Field surgery.
It is a hot and sultry in KC so we seek refuge in Raphael’s bar. Not liking their wine-by-the-glass selection I can’t make up my mind on a libation until the server arrives with a Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned. It’s not mine and she realizes her mistake and delivers it elsewhere but this the signal I need from the universe to order one.
Van Stein needs to see the Seville-like architecture in Country Club Plaza so we cross over to Seasons 52 for a bottle of 2018 Sea Sun pinot noir recommended by the bartender and sitting at the bar Van Stein addresses why he thinks I’ve had no feedback from anyone regarding my blog post on Galena’s devil guy
“His presence was like sulfur,” says Van Stein. “No one’s paying attention because the devil is a D-word.”
“Huh?”
“People don’t like Ds in general, like when you get a report card when you were a kid and you got a D?”
“Yup, plenty of those.”
“You didn’t try and you’re not good enough. So when you see a D-word or talk about the devil it’s like putting a frickin’ fork and spoon into a blender.”
Idaho trout stifles the artist’s babble and we venture more deeply into the Plaza.
When here five years ago a men’s haberdashery called Pinstripe sold me a lightweight navy peacoat I lived in and loved all season and now I’m excited about a revisit, maybe find another garment I like as much, but Pinstripe is just gone, gone, gone, another victim of COVID, and I want also to be gone from KC, my least favorite destination this trip and, come next morning, gone we are after a Wickstead’s signature steakburger and a coin flip.
Again, the flip doesn’t matter since we both choose Bentonville, Arkansas.
Rolling south I consider options for a one-way flight from somewhere to our already-booked flight home from Denver. Based on how this trip is panning out, Tulsa looks nearest but in the midst of my yakking to a travel agent, on the outskirts of Joplin, the artist sees a billboard advertising United’s new nonstop from Joplin to Denver and whoops “That’s a sign from the universe!”
Passing a Missouri town called Diamond we unexpectedly happen upon the George Washington Carver National Memorial.
As a very small boy exploring the almost virgin woods of the old Carver place, he had written, I had the impression someone had just been there ahead of me… I was practically overwhelmed with the sense of some Great Presence… I knew even then it was the Great Spirit of the universe… Never since have I been without this Consciousness of the Creator speaking to me through flowers, rocks, animals, plants and all other aspects of his creations.
Or as the essayist Peter Duncan Burchard put it, Carver was motivated by his love of all creation. For him, every life—a tiny fungus in healthy soil, the ever-present flower on his lapel, a forest bird, a human being of any complexion or nationality—was a window on God and a mouthpiece through which the Great Creator spoke. He saw all living things as interrelated. His vision brought forth his teachings: A successful life is one of service through helping others; real education helps us understand life, bringing us the kind of happiness that inspires us to help humanity; true religion is expressed in love and kindness toward all life; science worthy of its name is truth, which sets us free.
It isn’t much farther to the Arkansas border and Bentonville where we dump our bags at Hotel 21C and aim for an art museum called Crystal Bridges where a Jasper Johns and a Mark Rothko stand out among an otherwise mediocre collection. Though I see a picture that seems to depict where we’re headed…
