Category Archives: museums

The Center

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Jefferson City likes to think of itself as the center of the state and it is certainly the POLITICAL center of the state.

But, really, it IS the center of the state according to the census bureau and the post office.

If we could cut Missouri out of the United States (and 161 years ago that was tried unsuccessfully) and balance it on the point of a large pin with all of our people living where they live now and weighing the same, the state would balance on a point just south of Jefferson City.

After the folks at the Census Bureau get done counting national noses they start having fun with the numbers.  Missouri wins twice when they do.

A few weeks ago, the census geeks figured that the national population center is near Hartville, population 594, in southwest Missouri’s Wright County.  Now they’ve figured the population center of each state and Missouri’s balance point is near a bend in the Osage River east of Brazito, an unincorporated community about 12 or 13 miles from Jefferson City.

Brazito is served by the post office in Jefferson City and its street addresses have the Jefferson City zip code of 65109.

So Jefferson City IS the center of the state!  Wink, wink.

The designation as the state’s population center is one of two historical events connected with Brazito. The first is that it was named for a Christmas Day, 1846 battle in the Mexican War by members of the First Regiment Missouri Mounted Volunteers under Alexander Doniphan.

The map is from the book J. T. Hughes wrote about the exploits of the unit, Doniphan’s Expedition, published in 1847, shortly after the group returned from opening central Mexico to American military occupation after the later Battle of Chihuahua. It’s an epic story if you want to learn more about the march from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe, the Mexican capital taken without a shot being fired, and then south through the arid country side to the battle site near El Paso and then on to Chihuahua.

The other historical moment happened on August 9, 1974, about 39,000 feet over Brazito when Air Force One pilot, Col. Ralph Albertazzie, radioed Kansas City ground control from his blue and white Boeing 707, “This was Air Force One. Will you change our call sign to Sierra Alpha Mike 27-thousand?”  (That’s military language to make sure the receiving person knows it refers to the letters SAM.)

“Roger, Sierra Alpha Mike 27-thousand. Good luck to the President.”

“Roger.  27-thousand.”

It was three minutes, 25 seconds past noon.  Someone reached down and locked the box containing the secret military codes.

And the Boeing 707 was no longer Air Force One, the designation given to any Air Force plane carrying the President of the United States. It became another Air Force plane, tail number 27000.

The Airline Owners and Pilots Association says SAM27000 has the distinction of making 1,440 takeoffs as Air Force One, but it landed with that designation only 1,439 times.  This was that odd flight—on which Richard Nixon, heading back to California after his resignation in disgrace, officially left the office of President—

—over Brazito, Missouri when word came that Gerald Ford had been inaugurated as Nixon’s successor.

SAM27000 carried more presidents to more countries for more meetings and on more missions than any Air Force One.  Seven presidents beginning with John F. Kennedy, 445 missions. And, says the AOPA, “no luggage was ever lost.”

The airplane remains the property of the Air Force but it is on permanent loan to the Reagan Presidential Library. Should you find yourself there, you can go through the airplane where history was made over Missouri’s new population center 48 years ago.

(photo credit: AOPA)

 

 

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Fly Missouri

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Our son flies for Southwest Airlines.  Living the Dream.

Always wanted to be a pilot.  Went through the program at Warrensburg before it was the University of Central Missouri.  Went through the Ramen Noodle days as a flight instructor to pile up the hours that let him fly cargo planes (I told him he should always fly cargo because a box never hijacked a plane) until he racked up the hours to fly people.  Flew regionally then became a First Officer for Southwest five years ago or so.

Great company to work for.  Loves it.

Pretty handsome forehead, don’t you think? A few months ago Rob got to fly a special plane.   Missouri One.

Back in 2015, Southwest decided to honor thirty years of service in Missouri with a special 737-700.

It’s been six years since Southwest unveiled Missouri One.  Don’t know why we haven’t heard about it until recently but it sure is a beauty.  It was decorated at Aviation Technology Services in Kansas City, the first city in Missouri that Southwest started serving.

Southwest went into business in June of 1971. Flights involving Kansas City began on February 18, 1982 and St. Louis about three years later. Southwest has done so well at St. Louis that everything comes out of the East Terminal and Lambert Airport has become the line’s international gateway.

At the time Missouri One took to the air, Southwest had nine other state-themed planes. And now Rob, who lives about a half-hour from Denver International Airport, has gotten to fly his home state’s plane. It wasn’t intentional.  Crews go to the airport and get aboard whatever plane is headed to the city to which the crew is scheduled to fly.  Missouri One just happened to be THE plane that day.

We can’t write perceptive and always-correct political observations, you know.  Every now and then we have to bust a button about something.

How did Southwest get the state seal and all that other stuff on that plane?

Take a look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLKFVIbVEfk

Missouri hasn’t declared an official Missouri Bicentennial Airplane but if it did, this one would have to merit serious consideration.

Someday, Southwest will have to retire Missouri One.  Maybe the company would donate it to be with TWA Constellation, DC-3, Lockheed 1011, and other planes at the Airline History Museum at the Charles B. Wheeler Airport in Kansas City.  Might not be too soon to suggest it.

(photo credits: Rob Priddy, Southwest Airlines, worldairlinenews.com, Airline History Museum, Kansas City)

 

Michael Collins

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He was the first person who could see where every human in the universe was.

Michael Collins was the Command Module Pilot on the Apollo XI mission that put the first two men on the moon.  For twenty-one hours he was alone in the CMP, Columbia, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Armstrong “were doing their small stepping and giant leaping” on the Moon, as he put it a year later in Jefferson City.  He had watched them leave in the Eagle landing module headed for the surface.  He could look out a window and see the Earth, the only other place with humans.

No man had ever been in such a lonely position as he was in July, 1969. For part of those 21 hours, he was behind the Moon, completely alone with no communications either with earth or with the two men on the surface.

Michael Collins died yesterday. He was 90.  Only one man remains alive who shared that experience: Ken Mattingly, now 85, who was the Command Module Pilot on Apollo 16.

Only four of the moonwalkers are still with us: Buzz Aldrin, 91; Dave Scott, 88; and Charlie Duke and Harrison Schmidt, both 85.  Six men who flew to the Moon but did not land are still among us—Mattingly, Tom Stafford, 90; Fred Haise, 87; and all three members of the Apollo 8 crew—Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, both 93, and Bill Anders, who is 87.

We remember Michael Collins for the day we sat about twenty feet from him (and the other two astronauts) at the Capitol on the first anniversary of the Moon landing.  NASA had put the Columbia capsule on a big truck and sent it on a tour of state capitols.  It happened to be in Jefferson City that day.  And the radio station I as working for decided to broadcast the events at the capitol.

One of my most cherished possessions is a photograph showing me at the station table with the three astronauts in the foreground. As I recall it, Governor Hearnes’ press secretary, Jerry Bryan, sent the picture to NASA and the three guys signed it.

All three had remarks that day but I thought Collins’ comments were the most meaningful—and prophetic.

“I was born in 1930 and with luck I expect to see out the end of this century.  And when I am thinking about it in 1999, I expect to remember the 1970s as a time when oddly enough, man was hesitant about pushing his frontiers back. And in 1999 we just simply won’t be able to understand that fact because by then it will have become clearly apparent that man does in fact have the capability to step out and explore his solar system and that is something we definitely should do.”

When Collins made those remarks, Apollo XII already had successfully landed on the moon the previous November. But Apollo XIII had become the program’s most famous failure in April.  The Apollo program was in suspension while the investigation of that flight went on and there would not be another Moon landing until January of ’71, with Apollo XIV.

More ominous, however, had been the announcement in January of 1970 that the twentieth mission had been cancelled. There already had been a decline in public interest in the program, despite the drama of XIII, by the time Michael Collins spoke in Jefferson City.  “Been there, done that,” in the short attention span public mind.

About two months after the astronauts were in Jefferson City, NASA cancelled flights 15-19 and then restructured the crews for what would become the last three flights to the Moon—numbers 15-17.

Those events give a special context to what Collins said on that hot July day at the capitol.

None of the Apollo XI crew ever flew in space again.  NASA wanted Collins to stay in the program but he had decided Apollo XI would be his second, and last, trip to space (he and John Young had flown Gemini 10, practicing maneuvers necessary for a Moon landing). But he left a few months later, with no regrets. He wrote in his first book, Carrying the Fire, “I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have. This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two.”

He was the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs for a while but found “long hours…flying a great mahogany desk” was not a fit.  About a year later he became the third director of the National Air and Space Museum. He set a goal of having a building on the National Mall by the time of the national bicentennial, 1976.  The ribbon was cut by President Ford for the building on July 1, 1976.  A museum statement issued upon his death said, “That building and the museum it houses stand as a lasting legacy” to “an astronaut and statesman.”

His support for pushing the frontiers back, as he put it in Jefferson City in 1970 never waivered.  On the tenth anniversary of the first landing, he said, “It’s human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice really—it’s an imperative.”

In these times when we our vision is so often by terrestrial concerns and often-petty bickering about them, we need not forget his belief that within us is the need “to stretch, to go, to see, to understand.”

Perhaps if we look less at one another with suspicion and instead see one another as having those innate desires to achieve, we might find light.

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Sports fan Christmas gifts

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Let’s take a break from the heavy observations of the contemporary scene and help you with your Christmas shopping, particularly if you have sports fans on your list.

How about t-shirts, sweatshirts, or replica jerseys from some unique teams?  Your Christmas Shopping Advisor was prowling around on the internet the other day during the fifteen free minutes that our president was taking a breath or resting his thumbs and we found some teams your loved one would turn heads by wearing one of their t-shirts, caps, jerseys, or hoodies.

Some are based on movies or television shows:

Crash Davis’s Durham Bulls

and Corporal Klinger’s Toledo Mud Hens.

New York Knights, the fictional team of Roy Hobbs in The Natural

And for the female sports fan: Rockford Peaches—but no crying is allowed when wearing this shirt.

Minor league baseball teams:

Richmond Flying Squirrels

Hartford Yard Goats

Montgomery Biscuits

Modesto Nuts

Binghamton Rumble Ponies

Clinton Lumber Kings

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp

Wichita Wing Nuts (although they folded in 2018)

Akron Rubber Ducks

Traverse City Beach Bums

Albuquerque Isotopes (the town is the home of the Atomic Museum)

New Orleans Baby Cakes

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City has some great shirts or jerseys:

Homestead Grays

Kansas City Monarchs

New York Black Yankees

New York Elite Giants

Atlanta Black Crackers

Detroit Stars

Chicago American Giants

—and a lot of other great caps and other souvenirs

A few colleges:

University of California-Irvine Anteaters

Webster University Gorelocks—right here in Missouri

The University of Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos

University of California Banana Slugs

Campbell Fighting Camels

Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes

Presbyterian College Blue Hose

Youngstown State Penguins

Fort Wayne Mad Ants—actually it’s an NBA development league team

Hockey:

Toledo Walleyes

Halifax Mooseheads

Macon Whoopee

Odessa Jackalopes

Kentucky Thoroughblades

Lewiston Maineacs

Minot Minotaurs

And a wild card:

Thailand Tobacco Monopoly Football Club—we call it Soccer here.

We’ve also come across some great high school sports team names but we don’t know if any of them have t-shirts.  But here’s an article from T. R. Robertson about some of the more unusual names he has come across. You might check various websites to see if the schools do have a potential gift for you.

http://www.thevistapress.com/unusual-and-creative-high-school-team-names/

The Washington Football team in the NFL is playing without a name this year after being the Redskins since 1933.  Other teams with ethnic names at all levels and in all sports have come under some scrutiny from those who find the team names derogatory.  What we have seen in these shopping suggestions, however, is that there is no lack of creativity in naming sports teams. We’re confident that they’ll find a new name in Washington.  The Memorials.  The Navy Yards.  The Malls. The Air and Spaces. The K-Streeters.  Maybe they could name themselves after the man who designed the city, the Washington L’Enfants.  But probably not that one.

Or maybe they could name themselves after the city. The Washington Washingtons.  After all, George was a pretty good quarterback in his day. Stood six feet-two. And he could throw.  He did NOT throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River, which is about a mile wide at Mount Vernon, which is just south of town.  But his step-son, Washington Parke Custis, claimed he once threw a piece of slate across the Rappahannock, and threw another one over a natural bridge 215-feet high.

Whatever, we hope this has helped those of you with sports fans in your family have a happy and an unusual Christmas.

 

 

 

 

Who should represent Missouri?

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(Before we plunge into this week’s issue, we’d like to update last week’s post.  The Kansas City Star reported last Saturday that the federal prosecutor had announced the influx of federal agents in Kansas City had produced 97 arrests for homicides (5), illegal possession of firearms, various forms of drug trafficking, carjacking and being fugitives with outstanding warrants against them. In Portland, Homeland Security agents withdrew from the federal building area and although protests continued in the area they were described as “mostly peaceful.”)

In our last entry we suggested that our president and his allies on the right have spoken with forked tongues on the issue of states’ rights.  On the one hand, the president has maintained it is the states’ responsibility to fight the coronavirus but in this campaign year when it suits his purpose to override states’ rights, he has sent federal militarized forces to cities with Democratic mayors presumably to fight violent crime although no local or state officials asked for that help.

A recent incident indicates the left side of the aisle is not immune to politically-oriented efforts to ignore the rights of states and to try to capitalize on the public mood. Our example is not as severe as our entry was last week, but it shows, we hope, that neither side has clean hands on this issue.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently asked the Congressional Joint Committee on the Library to remove eleven statues from Statuary Hall in the Capitol because they are men associated with the Confederacy.  The House has approved a resolution formalizing that request and it is before the Senate as we compose this.

Our senior Senator Roy Blunt, a former history teacher and a Vice-President of The State Historical Society of Missouri, has objected.  Almost 160 years ago, the federal government agreed to let the states decide which two famous state figures should be in the hall.  Some states already have replaced statues of white supremacists and confederate leaders with figures deemed more appropriate.  Blunt thinks a hearing would be good and he wants to know what states want to do.

The two Missourians who’ve been in Statuary Hall since 1895 are Senator Thomas Hart Benton and Francis Preston Blair, Junior, a Union General who represented the state in the House and in the Senate.  Last year, the legislature passed a resolution to replace Benton with a statue of Harry S Truman.  It hasn’t been done yet and we have suggested that the legislature has targeted the wrong man for replacement.

Given these times, the legislature might want to reconsider which of our statues is replaced.  Benton represents the self-contradictory figure of which we find many in our pre-Civil War history. He owned slaves but came to oppose the institution, and refused the legislature’s orders that he follow its sentiments on protecting slavery, especially as the frontier expanded. That position cost him his seat in the U. S. Senate. We have found no record that he freed his slaves.

Our other statue is that of Francis Preston Blair Jr., who was a Union General but also an undeniable racist. He owned slaves and when the issue of emancipation came up, he proposed sending freed slaves to Central and South America. When he was the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate in 1868 his anti-emancipation speeches weakened the party’s effort, including his theme that African-Americans were “a semi-barbarous race…who are worshipers of fetishes and polygamists (who wanted to) subject the white woman to their unbridled lust.”

Harry Truman would be a fitting replacement for either man, Blair in particular.  Truman has a bust in the National Capitol already—with the others who have served as Vice President.  We have our own suggestion for proper representatives for Missouri. (At the end we’ll have a list of most of the statues that, though of marble and bronze, have feet of clay).

We have no problem with a Truman statue representing Missouri and we realize a lot of people have contributed a lot of money to create one.  But we think our idea says much more about our state and the qualities of the people who should be in that hall and the qualities of the people who represent Missouri.

Other than a few women and Native Americans, the figures in Statuary Hall tilt heavily in favor of politicians and generals. But we think of two men who were neither but would better symbolize everything our state should always strive to be than any political figure or general ever has or could.  Not that anybody would listen, but we would love to see our state represented by statues of

Stan Musial and Buck O’Neil.

I met both of them, briefly.  In 1985 on the World Series Special passenger train Governor Ashcroft arranged to travel across the state from Kansas City to St. Louis for the third game of the Series, I asked Musial to tell me about the last time the Cardinals traveled by train.  It was the trip back from Chicago after Musial had gotten his 3,000th hit.  We talked for a few minutes.  He laughed.  My God! What a wonderful laugh!  I still have that interview somewhere.  And the day his bust was unveiled for the Hall of Famous Missourians at the Capitol he spent time talking baseball and other things, laughing often and then playing the harmonica he always carried.  It was easy to love Stan Musial.

I cannot tell you a single thing John Ashcroft did or said as Governor—-except that he arranged that train trip during which I got to talk to Stan Musial.

When President Obama presented Musial with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Bernie Micklasz wrote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“We’re a polarized nation in many ways. We dig into our respective corners. Republicans vs. Democrats. Liberals vs. Conservatives. We snarl at each other. We don’t seem to agree on much. But we can agree on this: Stan Musial transcends all of that. When it comes to The Man, there are no differences in ideology or opinion. It’s unanimous: We love The Man. Even at the late innings of his life, Musial still brings people together and makes them happy.”

“He’s been doing this for what, 70 years? I don’t believe Musial has ever received enough credit for the way he conducted himself during an extremely sensitive time in our history, during the period of baseball’s integration. Musial didn’t make speeches. He didn’t use a media platform. He simply went out of his way to show kindness and concern to African-American players who had to deal with intense hostility in the workplace.”

Buck O’Neil, the great symbol of Negro Leagues baseball (and so much more than that), finally got his bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians, too, at the State Capitol although he still deserves a full plaque in Cooperstown.  The great Cubs player, Ernie Banks, advised us to, “Just follow Buck O’Neil. This man is a leader. He’s a genius. He understands people. He understands life…All of us should learn from this man. He’s an ambassador; he’s a humanitarian. We should follow him…”  Buck had plenty of reason to be bitter because he was never allowed to play a major league game.  But I heard him say one day, “Waste no tears for me. I didn’t come along too early—I was right on time.”

I sang a song with him one day.  A lot of people in a lot of meetings with him got to sing with him, too. He recalled in his autobiography, “Sometimes at the end of my speeches I ask the audience to join hands and sing a little song. It goes like this: ‘The greatest thing in all my life is loving you.’ At first the audience is a little shy about holding hands and singing that corny song, but by and by, they all clasp one another’s hands and the voices get louder and louder. They give it up. Got to give it up.”  I gave it up, holding hands with strangers, that day.

It will never happen of course, the placement of these two men in Statuary Hall as representatives of our state. But I can’t think of two other people who could represent what all Missourians should want to be and to serve as representatives of the best that Missouri could be than these two men.

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Although Speaker Pelosi refers to eleven statues, there are more that might be candidates for removal.  We’ve looked at the list and here are those whose places of honor might come under scrutiny:

Alabama—Confederate General joseph Wheeler.

Arkansas—Judge U.M. Rose, supporter of the Confederacy, slave owner; and Senator James Paul Clarke, white supremacist.

Florida—Confederate General E. Kirby Smith

George—Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens

Louisiana—Edward White Jr., Confederate soldier who as member of the U. S. Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” concept.

Mississippi—Confederate President Jefferson Davis and James Z. George, Confederate Colonel and member of the state’s secession convention.

Missouri—Blair Jr., and Benton

North Carolina—Abraham B. Vance, Confederate officer; Charles Aycock, white supremacist

South Carolina—John Calhoun, defender of slavery, Wade Hampton, Confederate officer and post-war leader of the “lost cause” movement.

Tennessee—Andrew Jackson, slave owner and president who forced the Cherokees off their lands in the Carolinas and onto the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.

Virginia—Robert E. Lee, Confederate Commander

West Virginia—John E. Kenna—Confederate officer at age 16.

In addition, Speaker Pelosi wants the bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney to be removed from the busts of Supreme Court justices because of his authorship of the Dred Scott decision.

 

Quixote

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I have a friend who thinks efforts to convince the legislature to make the casino industry financially support saving the irreplaceable treasure that is the Steamboat Arabia Museum is equivalent to Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Maybe it is.

But if you never tilt at windmills, the windmills always win.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week took a look at two of this year’s bills legalizing casino wagering on sports. After listening to the testimony on similar bills during the last two sessions, I decided it’s time to change the narrative.

—-Because the entire focus so far has been on what the casino industry wants. What it wants the legislature to do is to ignore the state’s promises to fund some important state and local services and programs with taxes the casinos don’t want to pay.

This is what I told the committee in the limited time given for individual testimony (this, by the way, is not a complaint about that. Committees try to shoehorn their meetings between other hearings and floor sessions and time is precious. So they try to make sure everybody gets to speak who wants to speak):

I am Bob Priddy, a resident of Jefferson City. A year ago when I was talking with most of you about a proposal to have casino admission fees increased by a dollar to finance construction of a National Steamboat Museum to house the artifacts from the steamboat Arabia when that museum closes in Kansas City in 2026, my research took me to a number of related issues. Sports wagering is one.

I do not oppose casinos, nor do I oppose sports wagering. I do not oppose the casinos making a lot of money. But I am concerned by the steps the industry takes to keep it. These bills are prime examples.

There is not one word in either of the sports wagering bills you have heard this morning that protects the state’s interests in casino gambling.

Taxes on adjusted gross receipts—21 percent—produce revenue for education.

Two-dollar admission fees paid to the state are split with one dollar going to home dock communities and the other dollar going to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a series of programs it administers for veterans homes and cemeteries, college scholarships, and help for those addicted to gambling.

The bills protect the interests of five corporations that operate thirteen businesses, to the detriment of services that are supposed to be supported by casino taxes.

During some House Interim Committee meetings looking at sports gambling and other casino issues last fall, witness Chris Krafcik of Eilers and Krejcik, a research and consulting firm in Irvine, California, suggested casino income from sports wagering would be 289-million dollars at maturity. The industry’s own numbers show that’s more revenue than was produced from ALL table games in the last fiscal year.

But these bills would tax those sizeable new revenues at less than one-half to less than one-third of the rate of tax on the table games. One of the tax rates would the lowest in the nation.

The result? A significantly lower contribution to education funding from this new form of gaming.

In other hearings the proponents have suggested lower taxes because the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” five percent. But a 2015 study from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research indicates a house advantage of five percent is actually pretty high, not very low.

Proponents also have said sports wagering would bring more people to casinos although I have not heard any specific forecasts. Attendance at our casinos has been dropping since fiscal 2010-11 and it’s down another three percent so far this fiscal year. State admission fee income is at its lowest in more than two decades. It will take a whole lot of people drawn to casinos to bet on sports to offset those ongoing losses.

At a conference last year, industry analysts suggested that within five to ten years, 90 percent of sports wagering would be done remotely. Only ten percent would be done in person in casinos—and they did not suggest how much of that ten percent would be people already in the casino who visit the sports book.

Either way, having only ten percent of the sports bettors in the casinos won’t do much to improve on-site wagering.  

And it certainly won’t do much for the state’s income from admission fees.

Again, the bill seems to abundantly protect and enhance the interests of the casinos but do nothing or next to nothing for the state’s interests.

And I have not addressed how the two-dollar admission fee, established in 1993, is enriching the industry while producing a negative economic impact on state services the fee is supposed to support—and how within five years the casinos are likely to make more from admission fees than they pay to the state.

Point Two: This is not just a sports gambling bill.

It is the first major move to a 21st century gambling industry. But state law and regulations remain creations of the 20th century and their adequacy should be evaluated to protect the states’ interests.

This is the first proposal for remote gambling but more will come as casinos try to appeal to a new generation of people who don’t go to the casinos but will use the electronic devices they have grown up with to place bets. Casinos must attract that demographic to replace the older constituents who are dying off—and they’re not being replaced through the turnstiles by the television and internet generation.

The spread of remote wagering already is being planned by the industry that is developing new games that can be played remotely.  

These bills offer nothing to protect the state’s interests in these circumstances.  

In these two areas the legislation tilts the already-tilted table more in favor of casinos and farther away from the state’s interests in financing services with casino income.

As I understand these proposals—

Casinos want a new form of gambling that will produce big income gains but they don’t want sports wagering taxed the same way table games producing less revenue are taxed. The justifications for such lower tax rates in light of these numbers seems to make little sense, to me at least and I hope to you.

Whether this committee or the general assembly feels it appropriate to advance these proposals that have no protection for the state’s interest, or to put them aside until the economic scales can be brought more into balance is a decision for this committee. But I hope you will seriously consider these issues that have not been much, if any, part of the discussion until now.

I have prepared a lengthy memo that goes into greater detail—and includes citations for the statements I make—that I will send to the chairman later today after I have added a few tweaks based on this morning’s testimony. I know how busy legislators are at this stage of a session but I hope you will dig into that material for more details on what I’ve been saying and seriously consider whether these proposals are in the best interests of six million Missourians or just in the best interests of five corporations and thirteen businesses.

Will the committee take any of these words to heart in a campaign year when the interests pushing these bills have a lot of influence? Will the state’s interests be protected by those elected to serve in a building where the state motto is carved over the main entrance: “Let the Welfare of the People be the Supreme Law?”

Whose Money Is It?

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—OR, how a $2 fee is having a multi-million dollar negative economic impact in Missouri.

This entry will be lengthy because we have to use a lot of numbers to make our point.

A number of bills changing Missouri’s gambling laws have been filed for this year’s legislature. But we wonder if any of them should be considered until a significant problem with one of our existing laws is corrected because it has turned into a growing economic drain on our state.

Regular consumers of these pages know that the author has been advocating a fee increase for the casino industry to pay for the creation of a National Steamboat Museum.

As we’ve researched that issue we have come across a lot of interesting other issues and concerns. We passed some of them along to the House Interim Committee on Gaming that met this fall. In some cases we think we have some answers but here’s one where we don’t. Maybe some of our lawmakers will try to provide some. Or maybe somebody will ask the court system to do look into things. Our voice, however, is puny compared to the politically influential voices of a large, wealthy, and politically persuasive industry.

First, the scenario.

In 1993, the legislature required the casinos to pay the state two dollars for each admission on their proposed riverboats. Our first two casinos opened for business in the spring of ’94 and they paid the two dollars, no problem.

Our casinos have paid the two dollars in each fiscal year since. They are obeying the law.

But there’s this thing called inflation.

In the second fiscal year of casino gambling in Missouri, the inflated value of two dollars was $2.05 and the purchasing power of two dollars dropped to $1.95. In the fiscal year after that the equivalent value of two 1993 dollars was $2.11; purchasing power was down to $1.90. (Our numbers come from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

We get into some higher mathematics now. Our casinos paid the state in fiscal 1994-95 a total of $25,216,862, a very healthy increase in state general revenue. But if they had paid the state the inflated value of the two dollars, they would have paid the state an additional $702,172.

Whose money was the $702,172? The 1993 law does not say anything about casinos being able to keep what we refer to as “windfall profits.”   In fairness, the law does not prohibit casinos from keeping that money, either.

We were around then, covering the legislature, and don’t recall any concerns that the day would come when two dollars wouldn’t be worth two dollars. Trying to determine legislative intent at this great distance could be difficult although there are a lot of people still around who were serving in 1993 and voted on that bill who might recall what it was.

Fast forward to fiscal year 2018-19 that ended last June 30. Our thirteen casinos paid the state $75,000,634. But the inflationary value of the 1993 two dollars had risen to $3.48 (and it’s $3.53 for this fiscal year). Had the casinos paid the state in contemporary equivalent dollars, they would have paid the state about $55.6 million more than they did. Instead, they kept the money. The total windfall profits after twenty-six years of unadjusted two-dollar payments had reached $888.5 million as of June 30.

Whose money is it?   And whose money SHOULD it be?

Neither side seems to be protected by that 1993 law.

Compounding this question is the continued decline in purchasing power of the two dollars our casinos pay the state. It was down to $1.15 in the most recent fiscal year. The total loss of purchasing power since our casinos opened had reached $944.2 million.

The combined total of dollars the casino industry has kept because of windfall profits and the loss of purchasing power of the two dollars the industry did pay represented an economic deficit to the state during those twenty-six years since the two-dollar fee was established of almost $1.833 Billion as of June 30.

Now the question becomes even more acute: Once again, Whose. Money. Is. It?

There are some other questions, too. Why wasn’t anybody paying attention, either at the gaming commission or in the legislature? The casino industry probably was because it was reaping the benefits but should the industry have stepped forward and said, “Hey, legislature, this two-dollar fee thing is making us a lot richer while the programs intended to be funded by the two dollars are getting poorer and poorer?”

It was under no legal obligation to do so.

Now, with the accumulated negative economic impact after more than a quarter-century of casino gambling nearing Two Billion Dollars, shouldn’t somebody start trying to determine whose money this really is?   Should these windfall funds have been set aside in some kind of an escrow account until somebody decided who is entitled to them? Nothing in the law requires that.

A complicating factor is that the customers of casinos do not pay the fee. It comes out of casino revenues, the money casinos win from the customers. When the law was passed in 1993, it was still assumed there would be boats on the rivers making two hour cruises for which customers paid two dollars. They would get off the boat at the end of two hours and a new group would get aboard (and those wishing for another two hours on the boat would get back on board), each paying two dollars. But when the present system of boats in moats ended any thoughts of customers paying to enter the casino, the decision was made for casinos to pay the state two dollars per person with a new count being made every two hours. That’s how casinos wound up with 37.5 million admissions last year in a state of only six million people, most of whom don’t go to casinos. No customer pays anything.

That means the two dollars is not a pass-through from customers to the state, in effect a user fee. It is now a fee charged to the casinos and it is paid out of their money. (Their adjusted gross receipts in the last fiscal year were more than $1.735 Billion.)

If it is the casino industry’s money, is it the industry’s responsibility to make sure the two dollars going to the state are worth two dollars to the programs and entities that the fee was intended to pay for? If the two dollars are worth only $1.15 to the receiving entity, are they really the “two dollars” promised them by the statute?

The law says two dollars. Period. No inflationary adjustments are mentioned. And the casinos have done what most of us would have done (and what we might have done in certain circumstances)—if there’s money left on the table and nobody else claims it and if it’s MY table, it’s my money.

It is time to answer the questions. Here are the main reasons why.

The two dollar admission fee is split with one of the dollars going to the host city of the casino and the other dollar going to the state gaming commission which takes its budget out of those funds and then divides the remainder among a handful of worthy causes. The biggest worthy cause is the Missouri Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund that provides money for nursing homes and cemeteries for our veterans.

Last fiscal year, each of those dollars had the purchasing power of 57.5 cents. The value is down another penny this year. Five years ago, the figure was 61 cents. At this rate, it won’t be long before the casinos are making more money from the two-dollar admission fee that was intended to offset the additional costs to host cities of a casino’s presence and to fund the gaming commission and its worthy causes benefiting veterans, college students, and programs for people who get in trouble because they gamble.

Nothing in the law says they can’t.

Nothing in the law says they can.

Whose. Money. Is. it? And—

Whose. Money. SHOULD. It. Be?

Who can answer the question? The state auditor? The attorney general? The legislature?

No matter what happens with our steamboat museum idea, isn’t it time to find an answer for our veterans, our college students getting scholarships under a program funded by admission fees, problem gamblers looking for help from a program financed by these fees, and our casino host cities?

Here are some additional figures that seem to bold-face the need to address this situation. It has been a long time since our high school bookkeeping class so we hope there is not a flaw in this reasoning. But here it is.

The state received $75,000,634 in admission fees in the last fiscal year. But because of the lack of inflationary adjustment in the two-dollar fee, it did NOT receive $55,600,438 more. That was the windfall profits that the casinos kept. The inflation-caused loss of buying power meant the $75 million the state did get was worth only $42,375,358, a loss of $32,625,276. Here is what it all adds up to:

If we add the amount of money that the casinos kept to the amount of lost purchasing power in the money the state got, the total is $88,225,744.

That means the state of Missouri and the home dock communities in the last fiscal year saw an economic DEFICIT of $13,225,110. Our analysis shows the unadjusted admission fees have produced annual economic losses to the state for the past five years totaling almost forty-eight million dollars.

That economic deficit is on track to almost DOUBLE in the current fiscal year.

In the first six months of this fiscal year (July-December) the economic loss was $$12,201,732—almost as much as all of last fiscal year. Why? Although admissions are down four percent from last year, the value of the two-dollars in contemporary money is more and the purchasing power of the money the state has received is less. The windfall profit so far this year is $28,285,835. The purchasing power loss for those six months is $20,890,844, a combined total of $49,176,680. The two-dollar fee has produced a payment of only $36,974,948.

At least, that’s how it appears from our calculator. And that’s why it is time for the General Assembly to take corrective action, despite this being a campaign year in which the well-financed casino industry can exert great pressure to keep millions flowing into its accounts while the programs the admission fee was created to pay for are victims of a rapidly rising negative economic impact. As long as that $2 fee is not adjusted, the casinos get richer and the programs and entities the fee was intended to finance get poorer.

The casinos want the legislature to let them take bets on sporting events, a new type of wagering that some expert testimony in last autumn’s committee hearings say could increase their revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Why should it be unrealistic to think the admission fee problem should be solved before these thirteen businesses are allowed to haul in even more dollars through sports wagering?

The casino industry probably would prefer this boat not be rocked, this sleeping dog not be awakened, this pot not be stirred. Its reasons are understandable. But for the others, isn’t it time somebody rocked the boat, awakened the dog, and got busy stirring?

A Ground-Source Heat Pump Nation

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It’s early afternoon on top of the Langjokull glacier (Langjokull means “long glacier” so I’m being a little redundant here perhaps) in the Highlands of Iceland. The ice is about 1,900 feet thick below us as we stand on the second largest ice cap on an island named for ice. We are about five hundred feet short of being a mile high.

And we are standing on top of two volcanic systems. But we’re relatively safe. There have only been thirty-two eruptions in the past ten-thousand years. We do not think when there might be a thirty-third.

This is a land of fire and ice, of long dark nights and long bright days, of heat and snow, of Northern Lights in the winter and whales and Puffins in the summer. It is a country the size of New York with a population equaling that of Anaheim, California. About 266,000 of the country’s 360,000 people live in one town, Reykjavik.

Iceland has about 130 volcanoes, about thirty of which are considered active. Glaciers melt from the bottom here because of the warmth of the ground. The water is pure and cold and it spills over dozens of waterfalls and careens through canyons carved through the volcanic rock laid down through thousands of years of eruptions.

In some places it’s boiling hot and there are geysers. Visitors are cautioned to stay on walkways lest they break through the thin crust and encounter boiling water. More than ninety percent of the homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal water heated by the underground magma that is part of the ecosystem of this fascinating country, an entire country that is, in effect, a ground source heat pump.

In other places, steam from geothermal sources generates electricity that provides lights to much of the island.

Heat and cold. Light and dark. The darkness of winter is setting in fast in Iceland. During our visit, we could make out outlines of mountains on the horizon about 9:15 a.m. and it was fully light by ten.   But by three o’clock we were headed back to our hotel because darkness was coming on fast.

Christmas lights go up early in November and they stay until February, not because Iceland celebrates Christmas for four months but because the people NEED THE LIGHT.

Actually, Iceland celebrates Christmas for about two weeks, beginning December 23 and running through Epiphany on January 6 with traditional events linked back to ancient Norse customs and figures such as the thirteen Yule Lads.

The lads are trolls, children of Gryla, a part-troll and part animal who lives in the mountains with her husband and the black Christmas Cat. At Christmas time she and her family come down out of the mountains looking for children who’ve been more naughty than nice. She likes to boil them in her cauldron while the boys go around visiting the homes of children.

Icelandic Christmas custom has children putting a shoe in their bedroom windows each evening for the thirteen days before Christmas. Each night, one of the lads comes by and leave small gifts—candy is always popular—for the good little girls and boys. But the child who has been a pain in the neck that day can wake up the next morning and find a rotten potato in the shoe.

The Yule Cat prowls the countryside and eats people who haven’t received any new clothing before Christmas Eve.

Those of us who live in the less harsh but soft and more temperate and light world of Missouri have a fat old man in a red suit who flies around with the help of reindeer.

The country has an officially established church, a state church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Some folks will attend holiday services at Hallgrimskirkja, the church of Hallgrimur Petursson, a seventeenth-century poet and clergyman (although that’s a statue of Leif Ericson in front of the church instead of Pastor Petursson). This modern church is the largest church in the country and at 244 feet is one of the tallest buildings in all of Iceland.

 

 

 

 

 

Simplicity is its beauty. Workers started building it in 1946 and did not complete it until 1986. The original design was for a building not as tall as this one. But it grew in design when the Church of Iceland insisted on a spire that would be higher than the cathedral of Iceland’s Catholic Church.

Yes, we saw the Northern Lights.

Our cameras saw them better than our eyes did. To our eyes, the lights were barely visible. But our digital cameras with slow shutter speeds captured the lights and (if you look closely) the Big Dipper. We had gone out on a Northern Lights tour in a boat the previous night but they didn’t materialize. The second night, we took a bus an hour into the dark interior of the island. We were on the verge of giving up when the first slight glitter caught our attention.

But on our boat trip we did see a light—Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Light that is turned on during the winter for various periods.

This year, she went to Reykjavik to turn it on in honor of husband John Lennon’s 79th birthday, October 9. It will be turned off for the season on March 27. “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world,” she wrote in a message in October. “Power works in mysterious ways. We don’t have to do much. Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking PEACE…

It’s Time of Action.

The Action is PEACE.

Think PEACE, act PEACE, Spread PEACE.

PEACE is power!”

It was late at night when I took that picture and I’m surprised it turned out as well as it did. It looks lighter than it was because of the slow shutter speed. And we were riding on a boat. Actually there are fifteen searchlights that form the column. The stone monument housing the lights features “Imagine Peace” in two-dozen languages.

Now—back to the glacier, back to where we started. Standing on a glacier is one thing. Going inside one is something else. But we did.

With sixty feet of ice over hour heads and hundreds of feet of ice and volcanoes beneath our feet we explored the interior. The tunnel was designed by a geophysicist and snakes through the glacier far enough that the trip through takes about an hour. We were given spikes that we stretched over our boots; some of our group had toe-warmers that they inserted inside their boots but it wasn’t all that bad (we thought), especially as long as we kept moving. In fact, it was warmer inside the glacier than it was outside.

There are some rooms carved into the ice, including a chapel where weddings are held from time to time, not something we could ever anticipate doing because of the hassle, if nothing else. Plus, we observed, who wants to start a marriage with a frigid spouse?

In the middle of our tour, one of our group was startled by the ringing of his cell phone. Somebody from Jefferson City was calling.   We’re sixty feet underneath the top of a glacier in Iceland, for goodness sakes, and a cell phone still found him.

The geology that shapes the island and the people who live there and the environment in which they choose to live produces some amazing lifestyle developments (at least amazing to us).

This is the biggest greenhouse we have ever seen, at Freoheimar. And it’s only one in a complex that covers about 1.25 acres that grows tomatoes and cucumbers and has restaurant facilities scattered throughout the vine-growing area. A computerized climate-control system takes care of temperature, humidity, lighting and carbon dioxide. Geothermal water heats the greenhouses. Pure cold water irrigates the plants. Plants are protected from pests by biological controls and bumblebees that care nothing about humans help pollinate the plants.

We’re not sure how tall the plants are—more than fifteen feet, we suspect. Visitors can have tomato soup and home-made bread for lunch. And, oh, is it good soup! And the bread is to die for. Each of us tasted a little tomato and this consumer who tolerates tomatoes on hamburgers tried one. Very low acidic content. It was almost sweet.

And the plastic container that these folks market their small tomatoes in: After the purchaser has eaten all the tomatoes, the container can be held under hot water and it disappears.

Iceland, where people live on volcanic lava rather than good rich (or not so rich) dirt could teach us Americans a lot about efficient, low-waste, natural living.

Two or three final things: Remember we mentioned the Christmas lights going up early and staying up late because people in long winter-dark time need light? How about this gas station/car wash?

Gas was costing about nine dollars (US) a gallon there. But people don’t drive little bitty cars. In fact, Iceland has an amazing variety of cars available from Skodas made in Czechoslovakia to Volkswagens from Germany and Jaguars from England, Subarus from Japan, and Fords from the United States, among others.

The Icelandic language is very old. It has no dialects. Old Icelandic is a derivation of Old Norse. The oldest written documents in Iceland date to about 1100 CE. Most modern Icelanders can read those documents because their language has been so unchanged. The Icelandic alphabet is based on the 12th Century First Grammatical. It also has six letters our alphabet doesn’t have.

Reykjavik also is the home of the only museum of its kind in the world. You’ll have to go to Google Images to see more about it. I cannot imagine the public reaction in most of this country if somebody opened a museum like it here. I did take some pictures of it (although I didn’t have time to get any farther inside than the gift shop—and some of the gifts would have made interesting objects on the airport luggage security cameras). Actually, it’s called The Iceland Phallological Museum but it’s best known by its sign.

Almost all of the land and sea mammals found in Iceland are represented. Including, uh, Homo Sapiens. In all, there are 282 specimens from 93 different species of animal. Should anyone want to create one of these museums in this country, we suggest locating it in Olean, the Miller County town of about 125 or so souls who have held an  annual Testicle Festival, which we understand has moved to another town.

So, we went to Iceland a couple of weeks ago. And we found it intriguing for several reasons. It’s about six hours from Chicago if you are so unfortunate as to want to leave from O’Hare International.

It was kind of an anniversary celebration for us. A week after Nancy and I got back and got the unpacking and the laundry mostly done, we celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary.

Would we go back?  We have other places on our list but a maybe a summer visit when the whales and the Puffins are there…..

 

 

 

A good time for a critical review

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As we have researched issues related to funding for construction of a National Steamboat Museum and a State Museum building, we have come to the conclusion that somebody should empanel a commission, task force, or committee to see if the laws and regulations on casino gambling in Missouri are best serving the interests of the six-million people who live here or are best serving the interests of the owners of thirteen businesses, all of which are headquartered in other states.

Frankly, we think things have evolved to the advantage of the latter and to the disadvantage of the best interests of the people of Missouri.

We don’t know if there has developed some kind of mysterious mental vortex on this matter, but it’s good to see that Speaker of the House Elijah Haahr has established an interim committee on gaming headed by Representative Dan Shaul of Imperial.

The committee already has held a hearing on Video Lottery Terminals. Efforts are being made to legalize them. Some people in the casino industry see them as illegal competition and folks in the home-dock cities of our casino boats are concerned those terminals will further erode patronage at casinos and the steadily-eroding financial support those cities draw from casino admission fees.

About two months ago, Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd sued a company that provides VLTs. He says the company has put a couple of the illegal machines in stores in Parkville, where police seized five of the machines last year. The company says the machines are not “betting devices” because lottery results already are determined before the player uses the machine. The case apparently is set for hearing in December.

We understand from talking to Rep. Shaul that the committee also will examine issues such as proposed sports wagering and other things.

We’ve had casinos in Missouri since the spring of 1994. There is ample evidence that at least one part of casino law is badly outdated, allowing the casinos to make large profits at the expense of their home dock cities, veterans, and others. And there are some serious questions about proposed sports wagering legislation.

Speaker Haahr has taken an important initiative and members of the committee and members of the legislature next year might be asked to exhibit courage during an election season in the face of a politically-powerful industry to tilt the tables back to a more fair level for the all of the people of Missouri rather than thirteen businesses.

There is nothing wrong with casinos making a lot of money. The problem is how they keep it. And after a quarter-century, it’s time for a fair but critical look at an industry that seems (from this perspective at least) to have only one goal: to take as much money out of Missouri as possible—by obeying the law. But are laws passed in the early 90s valid a quarter-century later?

They are to the casinos, who correctly note they are obeying laws and regulations. But are they fair to the people who elect members of the legislature to watch out for the welfare of all of the people of Missouri?

Speaker Haahr has appointed the committee to answer that important question.

Notes from the Road

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Before we get into this, we note that a few days after returning from a short trip we turned on our computer and got a message reading, “Hmmm…can’t reach this page.” The message offered to connect me with my usual first page by using a different web address. I tried that and that didn’t work either.   Going back to the previous “can’t reach this page” page, I noticed another line:

“Report this issue.”

I wonder how many people have gotten similar messages and have clicked on that line before giving themselves a good solid dope-slap.

Now, on to our stories:

(Oh? What did I do about that “report this issue” message? None of your business. And besides, the red mark on my forehead has disappeared.)

I always get a good chuckle, if not a good laugh, from audiences when I say that God invented Kansas so Missourians would appreciate Colorado more when they get there.   Problem is, you don’t start seeing hazy mountains in front of you until you’re more than 100 miles into Colorado. I consider that area for several miles west of Limon to be Kansas West.

And in truth, Nancy and I don’t mind driving across Kansas all that much. A lot of our ancestors were pioneers who were there when corn was the dominant crop. We like the way the sky opens up, enjoy the Flint Hills, and the rolling prairies.

It’s easier to enjoy those things at 80 mph instead of looking at the back end of the oxen for the month it took thousands of people headed to the mountains 150 years ago.

Best name for a Kansas town: Grainfield. It’s three counties in from the Colorado border, a little place of about 275 people, that topped out at 417 in the 1980 census. Children from Grainfield attend Wheatland High School (another appropriate name), where the sports teams used to be called the Shockers, as in shocks of wheat (we mention that for the city folks who think the kids might have done weird science with electricity). They’re the Thunderhawks now.

Grainfield’s old opera house is on the National Historic Register. We don’t know when the last opera or any other performance was held there. The place is an antique shop now. Not surprisingly, it’s the dominant building in a town that, like a lot of small Kansas farming towns (one up north particularly close to your observer’s heart) seems to be shrinking back into the prairie.

But if you’re on I-70 and not enjoying the experience as much as we do, you might drop in on Grainfield.

Or just down the road, at Quinter, which boasts the Fick Fossil Museum (do not try to say that real fast too many times). The oldest Mosasaur skull in the world is on display there.

Not far away is Oakley, which is near Castle Rock and Monument Rocks, the chalk remnants of the great inland sea that split present North America into two land masses about one-hundred million years ago. Nearby Quinter, about 30 miles from Oakley, is Castle Rock, from the same time period.

—The features live on in the Kansas University cheer, “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk.” At least we suspect that’s where it came from, should any Missourians care.

Incidentally, all of this silly Kansas-Missouri animosity aside, we like Lawrence and we think the KU campus perched on Mount Oread (seen from the interstate) is a lovely campus. It, too, has a nice fossil museum but it’s most famous museum attraction is the hide of Comanche, the Seventh Cavalry Horse that survived Custer’s ill-considered attack in Montana. The hide is stretched over a taxidermy mount so it looks like the horse. Although Comanche is sometimes described as “the only survivor of Custer’s Last Stand,” he isn’t. A lot of Indians survived. And about half of Custer’s troops survived a few miles away on another hill.

As long as we’re providing you with a travelogue, you might consider drifting off the interstate about 115 miles east of Quinter, in the Ellsworth area, and going to Lucas, which is the home of The Garden of Eden. We wrote about it years ago on the old Missourinet blog—about a Civil War Veteran who hated corporations and decorated his house built out of concrete logs with concrete anti-corporation figures and figures from the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, something bizarre to many visitors but also an interesting piece of self-expression through folk art.

Of course, if you want to get up near Highway 36 you can visit the largest ball of twine, in Cawker City, or if you want to drop down to Highway 50, you can climb down into the world’s largest hand-dug well at Greensburg—and while you’re there you can appreciate the effort to rebuild the town after it was flattened by a tornado almost twenty years ago.

We always enjoy driving through the miles-long Smoky Hills Wind Farm about 140 miles west of Topeka. There are 155 of these giant three-bladed machines, some close enough to the road that we can appreciate how big those things are. There’s an interesting juxtaposition near the eastern end of the farm, a church with a big windmill nearby:

 

I call the image “Higher Powers.”   This picture isn’t a good one. It was shot with a cell phone while Nancy was driving about 80. One of these days I’m going to have the good camera and we’re going to stop and do it right. We find these big wind turbines (the official name; I guess “windmills” are the old things we sometimes also see along the road that pump water for livestock) kind of fascinating.

We “enjoy” running on a couple of toll roads in the Denver area.  We saw “enjoy” because they don’t have toll booths.  Cameras take pictures of our car’s license plate and a week or two later a statement arrives in our mail box saying how much we owe the state of Colorado.

Saw a headline in the Longmont, Colorado newspaper that recalled an old television comedy show and we—for some reason—thought, “Ralph Kramden would be proud.”   For those few who peruse these entries who do not know about Ralph Kramden, let us perform an educational service.

 Ralph Kramden was a television character in “The Honeymooners” skits, a New York bus driver in the 1950s and 60s who made $62 a week and who lived in a small tenement apartment with his wife of fifteen years, Alice. Ralph was a bombastic, fat, man with who was often scheming on ways to get rich. His schemes, often hatched with sidekick Ed Norton, an always-cheerful sewer worker who lived with his wife, Trixie, in the apartment upstairs, never worked. Alice was the queen of the put-down who dreamed of a better life that included a refrigerator that didn’t need to have a bowl underneath it collect water that dripped from the ice box. Sometimes she would irritate Ralph with her spot-on observations of his girth or job or scheme and he would, in anger, threaten:

“One of these days, One of these days, Alice: Pow! Bang, Zoom, you’re going to the Moon.”

It was funny then and it remains funny in the context of its times. Of course, it wouldn’t play at all, now. But those were different times. By the end of the skit, the humbled Ralph would tell Alice, “You’re the best,” and they would kiss and the screen would fade to black and then to a commercial.

Ralph Kramden was played by Jackie Gleason, who might be remembered by some younger—but increasingly older—movie viewers as Sheriff Buford T. Justice from the “Smokey and the Bandit” films. Alice was played by Audrey Meadows. You can still see “The Honeymooners” sketches on various YouTube videos.

Ralph, a prophet in his way, and Alice, the beneficiary, might find that headline, uh, meaningful, I thought.

Longmont, by the way, is the hometown of Vance Brand, an astronaut who was the command module pilot on the 1975 flight that linked a leftover Apollo capsule with a Soviet Soyuz capsule for the famous “handshake in space” that was the first American-Soviet joint space venture. He also flew three shuttle flights, including the first fully-operational flight. He might have walked on the Moon if there had been an Apollo 18 mission.

Well, enough of these latest notes from the road, which culminated with a hike to 12,005 feet and an involuntary geological study of the relative hardness of my head with some Rocky Mountain granite that left a temporary mark on my forehead and some marks on the granite that will wash off in the next rainstorm.   Conclusion: both seem to be of equal hardness.

—which might explain why we drive across Kansas rather than fly over it.