Blog

Iowa? But what happened to New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois?

Well, the return trip is a blur, luckily my AI assistant refreshed my memory. After touring the FDR House and Museum, we could only find a crappy RV park for the night. This happens when one refuses to plan ahead. It wasn’t the worst, though. That distinction belongs to NAS Key West, of which I have my own opinions.

Pennsylvania was wet with a gentle rain falling all day.

Indiana was a pleasant drive with a pleasant stay at Pokagon State Park (pronounced poh kay gun). Did you know the Indianaians are universally friendly, polite and helpful? They are, from the state park people to Target employees and toll takers…all very gregarious and helpful. Also, did you know Indiana is right close to Chicago? It is! Practically a suburb!

Also, Indiana initiated a movement to ease the memory burden of school children by simplifying the association of state names and their capitals. In their scheme, one simply affixes “polis” on the end of the state name and voila! there you have the capital’s name! The other states have yet to adopt this approach.

Got to Iowa and stayed at Kent Park, a delightful county park. I stayed there on the eastbound leg. This time the park was practically empty as it was closing for the season the next day. Whew! Perfect timing.

En route to Offutt AFB for the night, I followed the sign to Marion Robert “John Wayne” Morrison’s birthplace and museum.

The Roosevelts had a lovely country home on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson River. Just down the road a mile or so were the Vanderbilts, with whom you are acquainted. There is no documentation of Frank Wright’s involvement in the design of the home, even though it is a detached single family residence, like those Frank likes to draw.

A young boy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt grew up at the home in Hyde Park.It was an idyllic boyhood, filled with every wish fabulously wealthy parents could fulfill, which was all of them.

He developed an intense interest in ornithology, culminating in his crowning achievement of killing at least one of every bird species native to the estate. Then his mother commissioned a taxidermist to preserve them, so the family could adorn their dwelling with the little carcasses.

Franklin also developed an interest in sailing ships. He acquired a vast collection of paintings, etchings, line drawings, and engravings of naval vessels both large and small.

As a young adult, Franklin attended (and graduated from) Harvard, a school in Boston. After graduation, he attended Columbia Law School (but did not graduate). Despite this inconsistent academic performance, he made significant contributions in two primary areas.

In psychology, Franklin demolished the conventional paradigm concerning phobias. At that time, psychologists were under the impression that people could develop fears of practically anything. Much to the consternation of the field, Franklin demonstrated conclusively that there is only one thing to fear.

Franklin also experienced a degree of success in politics. He is frequently credited with being instrumental in the fundamental restructuring of the American economy (and therefore the world economy, because they are the same thing), jurisprudence and governance. Additionally, his name often comes up when discussing the mid-twentieth century efforts to vanquish fascism. In fact, so thoroughly was fascism vanquished that it did not re-surface for nearly 80 years!

Hmmm, where to start with the Vanderbilts? The first one was Cornelius. He was born to dirt-poor dirt farmers on Staten Island. When he was 16, he acquired a little sailboat and started a shipping company. One thing led to another and he became wealthy, holding around 5% of the US currency at the time. This made him the sole success story arising from Staten Island.

Surprisingly for a wealthy person, he was mean and excelled at cheating his business partners and abusing his family. In these endeavors, he was aided by the spiritual mediums he consulted regularly.

When he died (finally!) he disinherited his daughters and gave the rest to his son, William.

William liked trains and bought many of them, along with the railroads that ran them. Nicer than his father, he endowed Vanderbilt University (which remains in existence to this very day!), New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the YMCA.

William had children, among them was Frederick, who inherited a ton of money. He toiled in the family business and also liked gardening, so he bought 600 acres in Hyde Park. Which finally brings us to the cottage. Whew!

New Haven is a small city in a small state. According to the Uber drivers and residents, New Haven is most famous for its pizza, which they claim is the very best. Did you know they use coal fired pizza ovens? They do. And did you know that they not only mispronounce the word “pizza” saying instead “abeets” (or maybe sometimes “apeets”) they also misspell it as “apizza.” I tried some and found it to be exactly like every other thin crust pizza I’ve had from a wood-fired oven.

New Haven is a college town with many universities and colleges, among them are:

• University of New Haven
• Quinnipiac University
• Albertus Magnus College
• Southern Connecticut State University
• Yale

Since I had dropped the van off for the modifications, I had time to kill. So, I cast lots to see which campus to visit. Yale won.

I was surprised to learn that Yale is holding up pretty well and performing satisfactorily, despite its age. Although I must note that Yale faculty have failed to create and develop an entirely new field of knowledge since they created Paleontology quite a few years ago. It is an altogether agreeable place, complete with old buildings, new buildings made to look old and the odd bit of statuary.

One critical tidbit of info: Yale named one of their residential colleges Grace Hopper College, after one of the most important computer scientists in the early days. It was she who coined the term “bug” in reference to errors in software. She did so when the Harvard Mark II stopped working properly and she restored it by removing a moth from one of the mechanical relays. She taped it into the log book and there you have it, the first literal computer bug.

I made a surprise inspection trip to the US Military Academy, aka West Point. Coincidentally, it is in a town of the same name, West Point, NY! Did you know that it is the longest serving post in the US military? It is! It has been continually occupied since the war of independence, when the Americans ran the super-mean Brits out of the continent.

West Point, as I suppose you know, is the world’s premier military officer training institution. It has produced many of the Nation’s most gifted and brave officers. Regrettably, it has also produced a host of traitors, like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and a slew of other rebels.

It has also produced a few genocidal jackasses, like George Custer. In all fairness, we can’t pin the genocidal part on Custer, as it was Government policy at the time. On the other hand, he earned the jackass part on his own. How? By getting his unit wiped out in an ill-advised attack on the native Americans like…well…a jackass.

The site itself is beautiful, perched on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson River. The grounds are immaculate, green and thriving.

In 1536, an apostate Catholic priest, Menno Simons, thought believers should be baptized as adults instead of infants. He formed the Mennonites. Professing a belief in adult baptism was a capital crime in those days (as some think it should remain so today), so the authorities rightfully arrested and killed them.

In 1693, Swiss bishop Jakob Amman yearned for a more demanding and severe form of Christianity than the Mennonites offered, so he formed the Amish (get it? Amman => Amish. In addition to adult baptism, Amish believe that people should wash their feet. They also believe in the social shunning of former Amish, just as Christ prescribed.

Over time, the Amish tired of being deprived of their property and lives, so they accepted William Penn’s 1681 offer to move to the part of the New World we now know as Pennsylvania.

Upon arrival, the Amish found themselves unable to cope with the hustle and bustle of 17th century Pennsylvania, so they asked Penn for some place further removed from modernity. He sent them to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where they remain to this day.

Frank Wright enjoyed sketching houses, some of which were actually built! This is one of those.

There was a time in the 1920s and 1930s that a family named Kaufmann amassed a great fortune by gouging customers at their Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, department store.

Rich people, of course, need weekend cabins in the remote woods to rest and think of new ways to fleece their customers. So the Kaufmanns hired Frank to design their cabin, which they named Fallingwater because it hovers over an actual waterfall.

The house was built in mid-Depression for a cost of around $150,000. For comparison, the guide informed me that an upper-class 4-bedroom brick house in Pittsburgh cost, at the time, around $5,000. That’s right, their weekend cabin was 30 times the cost of a normal wealthy person’s house. So great was the Kaufmanns’ fortune, that they also had vacation homes in Palm Springs, Greece and elsewhere.

Wright-Patterson AFB…wow what a beautiful and enormous base! They have every amenity imaginable: golf course, flying club, tennis club (indoor courts!), a USO club, etc, etc. If I were the type of person to use facilities like these, I’d be tempted to pack up and move!

We stayed at the FamCamp, which is what the military calls on-base RV parks. The Wright-Pat FamCamp is on the shore of the lake. That’s right, the base has its own lake.

In addition to the huge variety of units on the base (Air Force Materiel Command, National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the Air Force Institute of Technology, etc), the base hosts the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

The museum is world-class, although with a very heavy emphasis on airplanes. However, they *do* have some very interesting space exhibits, including KH-7 and KH-9 surveillance satellites. When I was in the space business in the 1980s, these were some of the most highly classified items in existence. Ha, now they’re in a museum.

These are the satellites that took still photos from 80-100 miles up and ejected the film canisters so they would parachute down over the Pacific. Specially equipped C-130s would catch them mid-air and return them to Hickam AFB, Hawaii, where the film canisters were flown immediately to Kodak for processing. During periods of conflict or heightened tension, the Government would sometimes pay for one-hour processing.

And, of course, airplanes! Many of the most iconic and famous planes in aviation history are in the Museum’s 4 gigantic hangars.

Outside, the Museum has a Memorial Garden, with many unique and imaginative displays.

And this is the part of the journey leading to Dayton.

Illinois is a bright, sunny place with mild temperatures. Heading from west to east, it starts flat and then turns hilly. I drove past the town of Champaign, which is home to a state college, and on to Kickapoo State Park. I learned that Kickapoo has nothing to do with the elimination of bodily waste.

To the extent that anyone thinks of it at all, Peoria is usually considered a mythological place, like Atlantis or the fountain of youth. It is meant to evoke thoughts of middle America. However, I have discovered that it is an actual city! A small one, to be sure, but with streets, traffic signals and mid-rise office buildings.

Aside from its role representing mainstream America, it also claims Abraham Lincoln as one of its sons. Lincoln, as you may recall, served as President of the US in the 1860s. It is notable that he failed to complete two terms, despite being elected twice. This feat places him in company with William McKinley and Richard Nixon.

So, in any event, Peoria actually exists. I have photos to prove it