Driving through Pennsylvania, we stopped at the Gettysburg battlefield, where Lincoln’s Union army defeated the South in the final turning point of the Civil War. Vicksburg’s 47 days of siege and death still haunted me, from our trip through the South in January. https://www.nps.gov/vick/index.htm
Gettysburg was even worse, with more than 51,000 dead and injured. The National Park Service visitor center recreates the July 1-3, 1864 battle in photos, exhibits and even a giant 360-degree walk-in diorama, featuring lifelike images of soldiers killing each other. Today it’s another national park to visit, a bucolic field with giant stone markers identifying the state battalions that fought and died there. But underneath the surface lie the bones and bullets and horrors of war.
How could anyone think this should be where to spend a family vacation? Sure enough, there were tourists, just as at Vicksburg, gawking at all the gory details. As we drove away, I couldn’t shake off the gloom of this place. The ghosts of all those desperate men and horses were still lingering there, sucking all the oxygen and hope out of the air. There was no talk in the museum about how we need to end such wars. In fact, the American Civil War was just a prelude to the larger, more terrible world wars of the 20th century.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said before the Civil War began. At Gettysburg, he rededicated us to our finest national aspirations. It is hard to overlook how divided we are again now in 2018, between Trump supporters and those who think he is destroying the world. I am among those who are distraught by Trump’s actions, while still trying to find some bridge to my neighbors who believe he is saving them.
I hoped to ease my sadness and anger, in the Amish farms of Lancaster County. Surely the Amish people would provide a peaceful contrast to what we had just seen, at Gettysburg and on the nightly news.
Like most Americans, I had a simplistic, romantic view of the horse-and-buggy Amish, with their large families, working the land without the modern conveniences of electricity and Facebook. We stayed at Bird-in-Hand, PA for two nights, and took a tour of the countryside which opened our eyes considerably. Here is what we learned.
If our tour guide is to be trusted, the Amish offer their work to God and choose not to use modern conveniences because that would compromise this commitment. They do use battery-driven tools and gas-fueled diesel engines, as needed, but the electrical power grid is forbidden. It was not clear whether solar energy is allowed. Each Amish community has elders who decide these specific do’s and don’ts. They don’t go to churches, or have ministers, but rather meet in each other’s homes for religious observances every two weeks.
The reason for the horse-driven carriages is to keep people close to their families, less than 40 miles from home, the guide said. They are not looking for a leisurely ride! The Amish, keen judges of horseflesh, like to buy horses that were bred to be racing champions, but fell short somehow, so they were put up for sale. Phone calls are permitted only outside the house or barn, from phone booths they install along the road. Portable phones are not allowed. They consult the nearest doctor when they get sick.
Even if they are born in Amish families, young people are not officially Amish until they commit themselves, sometime between the age of about 16 and 22, to join the faith. They are even expected, as teenagers, to sample the outer world before returning to their families and the constraints they require. However there is a catch—Amish children are forbidden to continue their formal educations past 8th grade. ”That’s why there aren’t any Amish doctors, lawyers or accountants,” our guide observed.
Amish students stop at 8th grade
Instead, the Amish are famous for their skills at the old-fashioned trades, such as agriculture, horsemanship, cooking, basket-weaving and carpentry. Amish children who choose to stay outside the religion must leave home. They can go off to high school and college, and visit the family from time to time. But if they choose to be officially Amish, and then leave the faith, they are shunned. There is to be no further contact with them.
It began to feel more like a cult than a holy way of life. Is it not too harsh to have to shut off your mind to advanced mathematics, science, medicine, and all the other disciplines, in order to be part of your loving family, in the community where you were raised? How could anyone make such an impossible choice?
As we drove around the well-tended Amish farms, we saw long rows of laundry waving on clotheslines. While the men worked the fields., the women were fulfilling their domestic destinies, bearing large numbers of children, washing, sewing, cooking and making a home for everyone, without the modern choices that have freed other women to pursue different dreams.
I was grateful that if we ever have a world war that wipes out the Internet, cell phones and electricity, the Amish can keep the human race alive. But I was also grateful that my own Pennsylvania ancestors were Mennonites rather than Amish. The Mennonites still dress and worship in many of the same quaint old ways, but they allow themselves an advanced education, with automobiles, and other modern conveniences.
My grandparents’ homestead
As we headed through Philadelphia toward Valley Forge, we paused briefly in front of the wood frame house where my father grew up, in a strict, religious household where not a penny, or a moment, was wasted. Both of his parents were high school principals, and he became a university professor.
Loud rap music wafted out of an upstairs window. A middle-aged Black woman came out the front door, but she didn’t notice us sitting in the car. Not wanting to disturb her privacy, we drove away.
People may try to hang on to the old ways, as a dedication to God. But they can’t stop history. And why should we? Everything changes. It is up to us to make these changes for the better.
From the gory battlefield of Gettysburg, through the frozen Amish way of life, to the Philadelphia suburbs, we were looking for America’s future. That was our journey, and we were almost home!
The email versions of my trip blog are frustrating! They are not up to the standard of what is seen on the actual website, where the Boston-Bound travel blog is actually published. Sorry for the broken links and sideways pictures. The website has the proper views! www.ellenhume.com
We were surprised at how deserted the Mississippi River waterfront was, including the tourist area around the St. Louis Arch. Where was everyone?
We found a lovely grassy park and flower garden, and plenty of parking places nearby, along the river. A paddle wheel tourist boat, and a ship consisting almost entirely of a helicopter landing pad, were anchored nearby, but without any takers or helicopters in sight. At the sports bar in our hotel, they were showing a professional soccer feed from Europe. Why was it Real Madrid v. Bayern on TV instead of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game? “I have no idea,” confessed the waitress. “Do you think there’s a Fake Madrid?” she wisecracked.
We could see the shining Arch from our hotel window, but more prominent in our view was the building directly across the street, advertising “Axe Throwing — Corporate Team Building.” That certainly made sense to me.
Walk-ins welcome
The manager said that his empty hall, with axe-throwing lanes like a bowling alley, had been open only a week. “The escape room people like the axes,” he said, hopefully.
We walked a couple of blocks up the street looking for dinner, dodging several drunks and homeless people, who were begging for money. We did what we could for them, but like San Francisco, the problem was too great for us to solve by ourselves. Our chosen restaurant, recommended by the hotel, turned out to be a little weak on both service and menu options. “We’re closing on Saturday,” the waiter confessed. We packed up our leftovers, and gave them to one of the street people who accosted us on the way home.
The next night we took a taxi to “B.B.’s Ribs, Blues and Soup” in a different part of town, where we found world-class live music, but not all the tables were filled. When we left, the streets were overwhelmed by baseball fans, pouring out of the nearby ballpark. So that’s where everyone was!
We later learned that St. Louis is the second most crime-ridden city in America. What a pity. The blossoming trees around the Arch look so inviting, and the barbecue and blues venues offer something uniquely American, in an authentic setting.
We said a final goodbye to the Lewis and Clark statue by the river, and drove off to Chicago, hoping that St. Louis might find an appreciative audience…in the summertime?
In Abilene, Kansas, we stopped by the Eisenhower Presidential Library to see its version of America. Not only was John curious to see what was there, as the former head of the JFK Presidential Library Foundation, but I wanted to research what happened to my father during the Eisenhower administration’s anti-communist purge of the State Department.
My father had proudly worked at the UN Charter conference in San Francisco, as a junior State Department economist. Seven years later, our family was living in Mexico, where he was serving in the foreign service, when he was suddenly fired with no explanation. A State Department colleague confided to him privately that he had been part of a purge of the civil service, to create more slots for political appointments. The excuse, during these dark days of GOP Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts, was that he was a security threat! This was preposterous. But apparently when Dad had gone to the UN charter conference, he had needed the sign-off from his State department top boss, someone he really didn’t know. That man’s name was Alger Hiss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss
So my father, the most patriotic US Navy reservist, intelligence officer during WW2, moderate Republican and pro-American person in every possible way, had summarily lost his government job without any discussion or official explanation from authorities. Our later efforts to find an explanation for this, when the Freedom of Information Act was passed, were fruitless. He was told that his personnel records had been purged and destroyed as a privacy measure!
The Eisenhower library staff were willing to help, but we didn’t make much headway. We drove on to Independence, MO, home of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. It was full of propaganda posters that confirmed the scary political atmosphere of the 1950s. McCarthy claimed to have evidence of an international communist conspiracy within the State Department, controlled by Russia.
Forty years later, when I served on the bipartisan Presidential Commission to Protect and Reduce Government Secrecy, I learned that there was indeed a Russian spy network in US government during the 1950s. But historians agree that the threat from a few spies was misused as a broad weapon against innocent officials, artists, liberals, trade unionists, government critics, homosexuals, and others. Fortunately, my father went on to a happy academic career, including many consulting contracts with the U.S. government, so he wasn’t ruined, as many others were, by McCarthy’s reign of terror. When he died, my father was a captain in the US Naval Reserve, and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Our current Republican President is waging the opposite kind of scare campaign now, saying Russia’s genuine efforts in 2018 to undermine our democracy, which the intelligence community has documented beyond any doubt, were manufactured by the Democrats to personally discredit him. He calls anyone with specific, verified evidence a liar, and says they are spreading “fake news.” Instead, he says, we should be afraid of the rag-tag refugees who are desperately pouring over our border from war zones.
Let’s see how history judges Trump and his approach to Russia and the refugees.
Feeling as if we were refugees from Trump’s America, and had been transported back into a simpler past in the 1950s, we stopped for an ice cream sundae at the drug store lunch counter in Independence, MO where Truman worked as a young man.
Then we got into Easy Rider, and headed back to reality. Our next stop: St. Louis, home of the Lewis and Clark expedition, wicked barbecue, and those famous Blues. We would leave white suburban America for Black urban America, with its many cultural gifts and challenges.
We left the dinosaur tracks behind and headed toward Kansas’s Chisholm Trail, stopping at the historic watering holes of Hays and Abilene. This was truly the wild west 150 years ago, when gun-slinging cowboys herded 5 million Texas longhorn cattle through this flat and fertile land, infuriating both the local cattle ranchers and civilized society.
“In 1866, cattle in Texas were worth only $4 per head, compared to over $40 per head in the North and East, because lack of market access during the American Civil War had led to over stock of cattle in Texas.—Wikipedia, The Chisholm Trail
We didn’t see many cattle, as we passed through vast stretches of wheat fields and windmills. Finally we pulled off to a side road, without any promise of a real town or a restaurant, and stumbled upon Lulu’s, whose hand-lettered sign offered no hint of the vibrant establishment inside. We sat a few tables away from a dozen motorcycle dudes in full leather and tattoos. Audie, our waitress, said the place was “blue collar, but family-oriented.” Pointing to the vast dance floor, she recommended coming back for the live bands, alternating country and rock music, on weekends. There was a horseshoe pitch out back, she added.
We reluctantly pushed off, because we needed to get to Abilene by nightfall. But there was one more unexpected stop that we couldn’t resist. “Vitame Vas! Wilson, Czech Capitol of Kansas,” said the sign along the highway. We turned off for a quick visit, eager to reconnect with our Czech memories from living in Prague from 1998-2000.
Sure enough, in the middle of once-thriving Wilson, next to the remains of a giant grain elevator and the weedy railroad tracks, we encountered the world’s largest Czech Easter Egg.
Hoping for some immigrant stories to go with it, we followed the weather-beaten signs to the Czech cultural center. Alas, it was nowhere to be found among Wilson’s modest houses and shuttered storefronts. So we stopped at the sole establishment that seemed open, a bakery and café with a homemade sign indicating its name was Made From Scratch. The waitress was friendly, especially since strangers didn’t stop in Wilson very often. But she had bad news for us. She guessed that the Czech cultural center burned down years ago. Seeing our disappointment, she motioned to an old guy at the bar, with a flowing beard. Joe pieced together some directions for where it might be. “Where are you from?” he asked. “Boston,” we said. “Take me with you,” he said.
We cruised around town, peering in the window of one possible place, hoping to try out our Czech. But no one answered the bell. Even the Chamber of Commerce was closed.
So here in Kansas was another haunted rural outpost, like Green River, UT, that once bustled with promise. Wilson had its days of agricultural glory and hopeful, hard-working immigrants. On a sunny Monday in mid-April, there was little left to see or do there.The town seemed deserted and the businesses closed. Yet still the remaining townsfolk displayed a unique contribution to America’s greatness: a gigantic, perfectly painted Czech Easter Egg. Wishing we could come back in July for the promised after-harvest Czech festival, we left, saying “Dobry Den!” and “Na schledanou” to no one in particular, out the car window, in case someone might hear us and take heart.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said before the Civil War began. At Gettysburg, he rededicated us to our finest national aspirations. It is hard to overlook how divided we are again now in 2018, between Trump supporters and those who think he is destroying the world. I am among those who are distraught by Trump’s actions, while still trying to find some bridge to my neighbors who believe he is saving them.
Like most Americans, I had a simplistic, romantic view of the horse-and-buggy Amish, with their large families, working the land without the modern conveniences of electricity and Facebook. We stayed at Bird-in-Hand, PA for two nights, and took a tour of the countryside which opened our eyes considerably. Here is what we learned.
As we drove around the well-tended Amish farms, we saw long rows of laundry waving on clotheslines. While the men worked the fields., the women were fulfilling their domestic destinies, bearing large numbers of children, washing, sewing, cooking and making a home for everyone, without the modern choices that have freed other women to pursue different dreams.
The next night we took a taxi to “B.B.’s Ribs, Blues and Soup” in a different part of town, where we found world-class live music, but not all the tables were filled. When we left, the streets were overwhelmed by baseball fans, pouring out of the nearby ballpark. So that’s where everyone was!
We didn’t see many cattle, as we passed through vast stretches of wheat fields and windmills. Finally we pulled off to a side road, without any promise of a real town or a restaurant, and stumbled upon Lulu’s, whose hand-lettered sign offered no hint of the vibrant establishment inside. We sat a few tables away from a dozen motorcycle dudes in full leather and tattoos. Audie, our waitress, said the place was “blue collar, but family-oriented.” Pointing to the vast dance floor, she recommended coming back for the live bands, alternating country and rock music, on weekends. There was a horseshoe pitch out back, she added.
