We had a nice day, mostly. We went "tripin". Road tripping, that is. Spent the day sight seeing in and around St. Joseph, Mo. I knew it was an old city, but downtown really shocked us. Really, really old. Here, most of it would be classed "blighted". Lots of huge old abandoned building with boarded up windows.
We went to the Jesse James museum and the Pony Express museum. Enjoyed them both. I almost got carded at the Pony Express museum. Lady didn't want to give me my senior citizen discount. Didn't believe I was old enough....
We drove through some of the neighborhoods and loved looking at the huge old houses. Some were so big, I can't imagine keeping them half way warm in the winter. I am thinking the windows must have been the air conditioning. Then you could drive as near as the next block, and it would be slums. What contrasts !!
We found the River Front Park and stopped there for a while. Some of the areas where you can walk out and enjoy the views were covered with flood water debris. There were a couple of gazebo like areas where you could go too and enjoy the views, but they were occupied by homeless people. One was sleeping and one looked like he was just deciding what to do next.
We saw lots of farm ground that had been under water from the floods. That includes Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri. Some still had standing water, some still hadn't dried out and areas with crops that was obvious wasn't going to produce anything. The plants were that sick yellow color from standing in water too long. Too wet to try to get in and replant and almost too late anyway.
We got home around six and a cousin called at seven to tell us about Uncle Myron. We had our lawn chairs and were in our favorite parking lot in the north part of town by 9:00 for the "show". We had 2 solid hours of fireworks before we called it a night. It was non stop, and I don't mean cheap fireworks. We even were able to watch the city display at Oak Lake, which lasted 24 minutes. We had quite a view of the city far to the south. What a sight ! We couldn't imagine how much money we watched going up into the sky.
Bet China looks forward to July 4th as much as Americans do !!!!
3 comments:
Did they quit doing Holmes Lake? Then again, I'm pretty sure that's become Holmes Pond.
I don't remember you guys EVER going anywhere to watch fireworks.
(I remember vaguely begging Dad to take us into town for fireworks one year on the acerage, other than that the 4th was always a non-holiday.)
They haven't done Holmes Lake since the year they started dredging it. Moved it to Oak Lake and it's been there every since. It probably won't go back ever to Holmes Lake.
We had the neighbors to the north of us who put on a tremendous fireworks display at the acreage so we never needed to go anywhere. Don't remember you guys begging to go anywhere for fireworks, as you were all pretty much grown up. One year we got some fireworks at the acreage and it was too cold to be outside. Shan was home from Ft. Riley and we were all outside in coats !!
We spent some 4th's in Yankton watching the display they put on over the river. That is really a nice place to go......
Did anybody see the news clips of the Iowa city that had a fireworks display? Don't remember the name of the town, but something went WRONG.. Displays blew up all at once, and very near the ground. 37 people hurt last we heard.
That was the year we begged for fireworks!
I heard about that in Iowa. Crazy.
A guy up North died on the 4th when he took a mortar round directly to his face. Yikes!
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