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Rick's Blog
| I add to this when I can, or when I feel
inclined. It's mostly copies of emails to my brother and sister, but I try to be interesting to everyone who reads. Rick's current Blog
Happy 4th of July 2010
I was hoping for a little more straw and a little less museum.
I will someday post photos to my Walgreen's account
and send you the link.
The Straw Bale
Museum in Carthage is the *Carthage* city and county museum, with
all the attendant student trophies and dusty athletic uniforms,
and dusty military uniforms, decades of (unprotected) old newspapers,
replica Dr's office, post office, etc...
all of which happen to be housed in a building
constructed of straw bales with a poor plaster coat outdoors. The
roof / ceiling is metal, with roll insulation and a plastic sheet
below. They do have in-door plumbing and use corn for heat.
The ceiling fans that they say "keep it real cool in
the summer" don't work all that well. Gramma Jean got warm.
There are three places interior where the inside wall
is opened to expose a view of a strawbale.
Otherwise, precious little on the structure itself. I
was hoping for more... how do they handle bugs, summer - winter
humidity... in a place like that? Has corn gotten to be more expensive
than heating oil yet? How often do you have to re-plaster?
I thought for sure we'd be the only people there, so
was surprised to see the front door propped open and several cars at
the curb. A family reunion group was exploring the place for old
memories. And, to be truthful, this museum is really good for that.
But, the HS closed in 1983 and the remaining kids bus
to either Howard or DeSmet. The HiWay population sign says 187. You do
the math.
The three old folks who showed us around the place
dearly love that museum, and when the reunion group left we had them
ALL to ourselves. Since the place has only been open a few years, they
didn't have many answers to my above questions.
Probably the most interesting thing... they had a small
historic kitchen set-up, with the absolute oldest electric range I'd
ever seen.
Mom stopped at that for a minute and said "We had one
of those in White Bear Lake when I was a kid. One day, I was running
around with a wet toothpick or something in my mouth, and stuck it in
there." (Pointing to an electrical outlet just below the burner
controls.) "I don't remember, but I must have got a good shock
because everybody came running and I never did that again."
We dragged Main a couple times, trying not to miss
anything, and drove around Lake Carthage. The lake's only campground
was full of expensive 5th wheel campers, almost all with nearby
plates.
Remember, Carthage had a part in the movie "Into
the Wild." One of the women at the Museum said she was the
first in town to shake hands with Sean Penn.
Too early to eat, (on these trips, Mom likes
to dine about 4 PM). Looked for supper in Howard (all closed) and
nothing again until Mitchell, at 5 PM. Our first choice,
Pirogues, was
closed for the 4th, and on our way to Ruby Tuesdays, got side-tracked
by Arbeys. Good enough!
Happy 4th of July!
Rico.
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