John Deere Museum near Rock Falls, Illinois

If I took too long to write that last post from Springfield, Illinois, then I have taken a year longer than that to write this one about the John Deere Museum! When I visited my cousin Peggy on my Great National Retirement Tour in 2016, we stopped one day on our way to a hike at the John Deere Museum in Grand Detour, Illinois only to discover that it was closed for the season. Not to be denied an experience, we returned two years later with her husband Ralph for the tour.

The tour starts in a large building that holds the archeological dig of company artifacts on the site of what was their foundry. John Deere started out making a hand plow with his own innovation - the blade was curved to prevent moist soil from sticking to it, thus speeding up the act of plowing. We first watched a movie about John Deere and his single bottom plow technology improvement that made his company soar. He sold 40 plows the first year, 400 the second, and 4,000 the third year after he founded the company.

Here are 3 iterations of the John Deere hand plows. Notice that farmers are getting more and more interested in sitting down while they plow. Now that I am a farmer, I find this fascinating, so you will have to suffer.

The photo below on the left is a recreation of one of the blast furnace blacksmith shops where they made the self-scouring plows. Today it is a stage on which their talented blacksmith works his magic. The photo below on the right is of an 1839 painting hanging in the museum showing how faithfully they recreated the blacksmith shop. The "fireplace" is the foundry and it is stoked by a hand bellows (notice the man with one hand on his hip and the other up in the air hanging onto the very large bellow). The recreated foundry of 2018 also works with a hand bellow, which can be seen in the far left if you know what to look for.

Here is our talented blacksmith who was fabulously entertain-ing. He took out an iron rebar and asked if we could tell there was a leaf in there waiting to get out. I told him that, yes, I could hear it. He told me I was crazy - something that I totally agreed with. So as he talked he heated up the iron rebar and started hammering it with different tools which he explained as he went along. Gradually a leaf appeared bit by bit from the iron rebar. He explained that the leaf became more susceptible to breakage at the point where the stem narrows. Also, if the iron got overheated and turned the wrong color, hammering it could crack it. Nothing bad happened to my leaf under his expert handling.

And here is the copper-brushed leaf that he made just for me! Now my dilemma is what to do with it. It is so special because we watched every step of his process and every step was explained in a delightfully charming way. So, what do you think? What would you do with it if a charming and gritty blacksmith made this for you?

We also toured the Dillon mansion all decorated for Christmas, but they would not allow us to take photos. So there is nothing to see.

Reunion with College Roommate Jane

The next morning I packed up the camper and headed off to Normal, Illinois. I was thrown off a bit by having to backtrack so far into Arkansas in order to pick up U.S. Highway 55, but did regain my bearings and headed north. I thought the highway sign showing the exit to Braggadochio, Missouri was a keeper.

I arrived at Jane's "ranch" outside Carlock, Illinois by late afternoon. Jane had planned enough activities to fit into a week. But we settled on all three of us (me, Jane and her husband Bryan) going to a new craft brewery called DeStihl in Normal. It was huge with a big wall of glass behind which were all their gleeming brewing (and other) tanks almost like artwork. We discovered that they did not serve dinner on the night we were there, but we did have some excellent beers. And of course some excellent conversation.

We settled on an eclectic restaurant that I cannot remember the name of. I had an excellent Thai curry. Jane and I cyber-stalked my favorite old boyfriend from the 1970s. A good time was had by all. Well, maybe not her husband Bryan.

The next day Jane and I headed out to Springfield, Illinois to finish up the tour of the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum that we started during my Great National Retirement Tour. We got there a bit late last time and did not have time to finish the tour. We stopped first to have a chat with Old Abe in front of his Kentucky log cabin home. Last time we did do the whole tour of his log cabin, his childhood, and early young adult life, so we skipped that this time.

We headed into the White House to do the Presidential years tour. First stop was having a spot of tea with Generals McClellan and Grant. I have to admit to being a Ulysses Grant fan myself, so would not be much good in moderating their debates. McClellan does wonderfully look like a self-righteous stuff-shirt and Grant does wonderfully look like the bellicose guy who could down all the whiskey Lincoln sent him.

The tour started with Mary Todd Lincoln's famous Black seamstress Elizabeth Keckley, who has been portrayed in several movies and theater plays. It progressed thru Lincoln's debates with Stephen Douglas, his Presidential campaigns, his cabinet, the Civil War, and ended up with this fabulous display of a whole bunch of talking heads giving Lincoln conflicting advice about freeing the slaves to give a flavor of what Lincoln as President was hearing from the country, and ends up with him standing alone at his desk having just signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Very moving!!! We took in the revolving display in the center, which was all about Christmas at the White House thru the years. I most enjoyed seeing the family Christmas photos of the Eisenhowers. Then we vamped in front of the giant Christmas tree, picked up some T-shirts in the gift shop, and headed back to Bloomington for dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant there.

The third day was spent lounging around the house and reading on my part. Jane was a busy girl; she had a regular meeting to go to and her chickens to tend. She picked out some colorful eggs to send with me to my Cousin Peggy's house in Rock Falls. The three of us - me, Jane, and her husband Bryan - all went out to eat at a trendy new Asian fusion restaurant in Bloomington called Anju Above. I have taken too long to write this blog, but I think I had a sushi roll and some steamed dumplings. I do remember that the food was superb! I have a sneaky suspicion that Bryan is a true foodie. The next morning I got on the road to Rock Falls.

Central BBQ, Memphis

On recommendation of my friend Tait Danielson-Castillo, I walked across the street from the National Civil Rights Museum and had dinner at Central BBQ. First, it was packed at 5pm - always the sign of a good restaurant! You wait in a long line to place your order at what (at another time) was probably the coat check. I ordered the Bologna Sandwich (following my great experience with Southern bologna in Raleigh) and got my table marker. There was only one table left in the main room of the restaurant (there are a total of 3 very large rooms).

I grabbed the table, put down my purse and table marker just as two young men walked up with their table markers. Feeling adventurous, I invited them to join me and they did since they had no other options. Central BBQ is also a craft beer bar, so we ordered 3 draft beers. Since I like my beer dark and malty, I had to ask two different bartenders for a recommendation, and the second one did not steer me wrong. I wish I could remember the name of the beer, but it was fantastic! The two young men ordered light, hoppy beers - of course.

It turned out that they were in Memphis for the St. Jude Hospital marathon - and had competed that day! They were old college room-mates and long-time friends. One had done the full marathon and the other one had done the half-marathon. I was amazed that they did not seem totally wiped out by the experience. The full marathoner apparently does it every year; the half-marathoner is not quite as dedicated. Neither one of them finished in the prize money, but both were happy with their times. We talked about running, about children and grandchildren, and about old friends. I bought them another beer and we had a great time. I am more adventurous about sharing my table with strangers when I am out of town because I know I will never see them again. I have some kind of sign on my forehead that invites people to tell me very personal and deeply disturbing things that I do not want to hear and makes me not want to run into them ever again. These two young men seem to be those magical creatures who have nothing deeply personal they want to get off their chests. Thank goodness!

The Bologna Sandwich was everything I hoped it would be. I used the Carolina mustard sauce with it, which was OK. (I am not going to lie to you). My two companions had the pulled pork and used the red BBQ sauces which they proclaimed as excellent. I would definitely go back. It is a perfect restaurant for someone traveling alone because it is huge, loud, raucous, and you don't feel like you are sitting all alone while you eat. And 50% of the bartenders really know their beers! I picked up 6 Central BBQ cups to bring to the babies on my next trip to Louisiana.

National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis

A trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, highly recommended by my friend Tait Danielson-Castillo as a must, turned out to be the absolute highlight of my trip there! The museum itself is located in the Lorraine Hotel. If that name sounds familiar, it is because that is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.

When you first come in to the museum, you are treated to an extremely large and busy sculpture called “Movement to Overcome” in the lobby that is worth seeing. It is hard to describe, but once seen will never be forgotten. Michael Pavlovsky created a 13-foot-by-26-foot, 7,000-pound bronze sculpture that represents a collection of human figures rising from and making their way on both sides of a narrow divide. The author stated that, "It’s about the anonymous individuals that we know nothing about now that lived the civil rights struggle and participated in it. They are forgotten. But the hundreds of images of human figures on that sculpture represent those anonymous individuals."

You buy your ticket and are ushered into a large circular room that contains sculptures and curated descriptions of the timeline of American slavery. There is enough time to see most of it before they open the doors to the theater for a short film clip of the museum. After this film clip, you are free to browse thru the museum at your own pace.

There are many, many exhibits in this very well-laid out and curated museum. I will highlight the ones that spoke to me. The first was the Montgomery bus boycott. The exhibit is called "The Year They Walked."

On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL and sparked the American Civil Rights movement of the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement. Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

The Women’s Political Council (WPC), a group of black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. Approximately 40,000 African-American bus riders—the majority of the city’s bus riders—boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands. On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The exhibit contains a Montgomery city bus that visitors can enter and sit down on the bus with a life-size sculpture of Rosa Parks. There is an audio program that explains the bus boycott and the roles of Rosa Parks and young Rev. Martin Luther King. Outside the bus are life-size sculptures of the anonymous Black women who walked to and from work for a year to earn the right to sit anywhere on the bus they desired. In other words, they walked to work for a year to gain human dignity and set in motion a Civil Rights movement that would grow beyond their wildest dreams and thrust both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King into the headlines and the history books.

Human rights stuggles do not appear as if by magic in one stroke of a woman who will not give up her seat on the bus. In February of 1956, a young man named Bayard Rustin arrived in Montgomery to help Dr. King and Rosa Parks with this nacent movement. Rustin had organized the first Freedom Ride in 1947 - a ride called the Journey to Reconciliation taken by 8 Black men and 8 White men from D.C. to Louisville to take action against discrimination on interstate buses. Bayard brought with him masterful organizing and strategic capabilities that grew the movement into a national force, and a firm commitment to Gandhi's nonviolent civil disobedience. Never heard of him? Perhaps because he was a gay man - a Black gay man.

Wyatt Tee Walker, a Freedom Rider who was arrested more than 17 times for challenging segregation in the South, had become executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1961 after King called to recruit him. Walker was the most famous man that no one ever knew during the Civil Rights campaigns. The local police were always searching for him because he arrived in town before every major Martin Luther King led march to identify, measure, and target every step along the way and devise the march strategy, but they could not arrest him because they did not know what he looked like. In October of 1967, Walker was arrested with Dr. King and spent 3 days in the Birmingham jail. Walker snuck a camera into the jail cell taped to his leg and took this iconic photo of King which is displayed at the museum. What is less known is that King snapped a photo of the elusive and rarely photographed W.T. Walker that same day. This was four years after King's famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was written.

On 1 February 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck. Twelve days later, 1,300 black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike. Sanitation workers, led by garbage-collector-turned-union-organizer, T. O. Jones, and supported by AFSCME President Jerry Wurf, demanded recognition of their union, better safety standards, and a decent wage. Within a week, the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) passed a resolution supporting the strike. The following day, after police used mace and tear gas against nonviolent demonstrators, Memphis’s black community was galvanized. Meeting in a church basement on 24 February, 150 local ministers formed Community on the Move for Equality (COME). COME committed to the use nonviolent civil disobedience to fill Memphis’s jails and bring attention to the plight of the sanitation workers.

By the beginning of March of 1968, local high school and college students, nearly a quarter of them white, were participating alongside garbage workers in daily "I Am a Man" marches; and over one hundred people, including several ministers, had been arrested. National civil rights leaders, including Roy Wilkins and Bayard Rustin, came to rally the sanitation workers. King himself arrived on 18 March to address a crowd of about 25,000 – the largest indoor gathering the civil rights movement had ever seen. Following this speech, the Southern Christian Leaderships Conference’s (SCLC) James Bevel and Ralph Abernathy remained to help organize the protest and work stoppage. Despite some violence from a group supporting the protestors, Dr. King on 3 April was persuaded to speak to a crowd of dedicated sanitation workers who had braved another snow storm to hear him, giving them his famous "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech. King told them that they could not give up now and preached about his own mortality, telling the group, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life--longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now… I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land”

At 6:01 pm on April 4, 1968, as Dr. King stepped out on the balcony outside Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, he was shot by James Earl Ray with a high powered rifle from the apartment building across the street. Dr. King had been preparing for an evening event in support of the garbage workers' strike. Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams, William Campbell, and musician Ben Branch were with him that evening. King was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 pm, never having regained consciousness.

The museum tour ends at a very average 1960s-era motel room identified as Room 306. I thought it was a re-creation, as many of the items in the museum are. But no. This is the actual Room 306 that Dr. Martin Luther King was staying in that night and the room they pulled him back into after he was shot. It took my breath away. I was not expecting to have history thrust in my face quite so starkly. This was a powerful exhibit, but so exquisitely simple. It is difficult to describe all the feelings it brings up. The last photo is of the now-famous balcony. The wreath is a permanent fixture (probably not always done up in Christmas design, but a wreath is always there), as are the historically accurate 1960s era cars.

Beale Street!!!!

Day 2 started off with a foray to: (1) buy parts for my camper that I broke the day before, (2) check in at the Memphis Visitor Information Center, (3) get breakfast - which proved to be more difficult than I imagined, (4) do my laundry, and (5) take a nap to make up for the total lack of sleep on the first night in Memphis due to my broken camper furnace.

In the evening took the Graceland Hotel shuttle into downtown Memphis. They offered a drop-off and pick-up on Beale Street. The shuttles come once per hour. I was very happy to not have to park downtown. I did take some photos of the hotel interior, which was done up in kind of 1950s era Las Vegas style, but unfortunately my camera chose not to save them. It does that sometimes. The shuttle was comfortable, clean, and the driver was outgoing - good experience.

I took my friend Tait Danielson-Castillo's suggestion to eat at Flying Fish. It is a fast-casual Cajun seafood restaurant that has its very own special vibe. I did enjoy the people watching - and the food! Excellent recommendation Tait!

I walked down 2nd Street to Beale. Tried to stop at one of the many music museums downtown, but it was closed on a Saturday night, which seemed a little strange to me. Beale Street itself is blocked off by the police on both ends of a three block stretch, so the entire street and sidewalks are kind of alive with pedestrians and street performers during the evening hours. It reminded me a lot of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Went to BB King's Blues Club first. Loved the music and the people watching. There was a woman with joie de vivre to spare at the table next to me who kind of drew me into her date with her husband. She made the experience a lot of fun. Travel karma. I stayed long enough to hear three bands (each one on stage for a little less than one hour). They were all fantastic, but all very different. And they were extremely serious about their Blues music.

I walked down Beale Street, doing some window shopping, watching the street performers, and scoping out the other music clubs. Stopped at Rum Boogie Cafe next. At first, I was a little disappointed that a rock 'n roll band was playing that night. But their musicianship won me over. However, the lack of sleep on Thursday night caught up with me and I kind of nodded off at my table. The waitress woke me up, so I decided it was time to head for home.

I did enjoy Beale Street. I can see why people who are just looking for some good music might prefer an atmosphere that isn't so carnival-like, but it was great for a single person who wants to anonymously enjoy the club vibe. I returned to the shuttle pick-up spot, and was entertained for about 20 minutes by a private limousine shuttle and its passengers. The entertainment was not intended; it was just pure great people watching -- and they were some unintentionally hilarious people.

Tour of Elvis' Graceland Mansion

Day 1 started out with driving to a Target store to buy a small electric heater for the camper. Heat at last. One of those things you take for granted until you can't get it for more than 3 weeks. My camping skills were tested!

Then decided to walk next door to take the tour of Graceland. There was a handy opening in the chain link fence that separated the RV Park from the Graceland entertainment complex. So, I took a couple of photos, bought my ticket, and got on the bus to drive us across the street to the mansion. You cannot drive up to the mansion; the only vehicles allowed in the musical note gates are the buses.

We entered the mansion and followed along with the audio tape at our own pace. It was decorated for Christmas, which was a bonus. The famous peacock stained glass windows in the living room were created by Lauxhuff Designs of Memphis. They also made the stained glass light fixtures above the billiard table. Elvis was apparently a fan of billiards. There is a tear in the table fabric and no one seems to know the guilty party. There are a few bizarre rooms there, including a TV viewing room with 3 television sets. Reportedly, Elvis heard that Pres. Lyndon Johnson had 3 television sets so he could watch all three major news networks at once. Elvis used his to watch football on all three major networks. The upstairs is off limits, but the curators have brought his entire home office down into the tunnel below the mansion (called the Trophy Building) and recreated it behind glass. The collection was surprisingly well curated.

The last photo is Elvis' grave (along with those of his two parents and grandmother) in what he called his Meditation Garden, fashioned after an ancient Greek garden complete with an Italian statue. It was built by Bernard Grenadier in the mid-60s at Elvis' request. The brick wall behind the Grecian columns is inlaid with primitive, hand-made Spanish stained glass from the 1800s.

I took the bus back across the street to the Elvis Presley Enterprises museum. This huge auditorium style building houses all his career artifacts: records, musical instruments, costumes, posters, etc. His daughter Lisa Marie Presley only owns 15% of Elvis Presley Enterprises, but she is the sole owner of Graceland mansion itself. The photo mashup up below shows (clockwise) (1) a poster of photos from Sun Records, the Memphis recording company that produced most of Elvis' recordings, (2) his favorite acoustic guitar, (3) his wall of records, (4) the logo on the door - I just like the simplicity of it, and (5) his gold and platinum records. I was prepared to be underwhelmed by this museum, but actually found it really interesting. I especially enjoyed the European posters. Of course, they had about 5 shops full of memorabilia for tourists with too much cash in their pockets.

Since I didn't get a very good sleep - see cold night in the camper in previous post - I decided to skip Beale Street the first night and head over there the following evening. I went to sleep early and my new, tiny electric heater kept me toasty warm.

Picking Up Memphis, 2017

When I went on my Great National Retirement Tour in 2016, I was not able to squeeze Memphis into the itinerary. But I did want to experience Beale Street. So when my college room-mate Jane Gramoli invited me to come stay with her the next time I was in Louisiana, and since Memphis is sort of between Shreveport and Bloomington, Illinois, I decided to pick up a few days in Memphis.

My first adventure was finding a camping spot. There were three (3) RV campgrounds in the city - one far outside the urban ring road, and two on Elvis Presley Boulevard not far from downtown. I looked up the customer reviews and everyone agreed that the Graceland RV Park (yes, it is owned by Elvis Presley Enterprises) was the better of the two campgrounds. So, I made a reservation there.

I also contacted my friend Tait Danielson-Castillo who lived in Memphis for a while to get suggestions on places to visit and places to eat in Memphis. Tait gave me a list of wonderful suggestions. I'm afraid I did not have time to go to all of them, but the ones I did get to in my 2-day stay were stellar. Thanks Tait.

I got a late start leaving Shreveport because Brent and I had a regular on-going soap opera trying to open a savings account for DJ and opening up a safe deposit box for him at a credit union there. We finally got the safe deposit box settled on the last day I was there. DJ still does not have his "bank." I said all that to say that I got to Memphis late; almost midnight. I could not find my RV Park. I drove up and down on Elvis Presley Boulevard many times searching for it. I finally found a campground, drove in, and set up my camper for the night. Another night without heat since, after all the trouble I had in Shreveport with bad electrical connections, apparently the furnace also did not work. In the morning, I realized I was in the wrong RV Park. So, had to take down the pop-up, drive about a mile down the road, and set it up all over again. And yes, Graceland is a MUCH better campground than the other park was. And yes, it is also right across the street from Elvis' Graceland mansion.

This RV Park had very nice bathrooms with full shower facilities, a very clean laundry facility, and secuity guards to keep any cars without parking stickers out of the campground. They also had a "family" relationship with the Graceland hotel across the street so we could get shuttle rides to and from major Memphis attractions, including Beale Street from their lobby. I would recommend the park. My spot was on Shook Up Lane - and yes, all the driveways were labelled with Elvis' song titles.