Category Archives: Places

Jean

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We liked Jean Carnahan at our house.  She was never at our house but we were at her house a few times when she and Mel were governor and first lady.

Jean died last Tuesday after 90 years of a life well-lived. And shared.

We always think of them as “real” people, the same folks when dressed in their government clothes in Jefferson City for a few years that they were in their farm clothes back home in Rolla many more years than that. Not all first-couples have that quality.

She several times talked with me about the book she was writing about the history of the Governor’s Mansion and I cherish the two signed copies of If Walls Could Talk that are on the bookshelf in our living room. She wrote several others after her time in Washington.

In all my career as a reporter, I kept those I covered at least at arm’s length.  The Carnahan’s, especially Jean, I allowed as close as my wrist because of that “real people” quality. When she was appointed to the U. S. Senate, I told her that our relationship would have to change because she now was only a news source. She seemed disappointed.  I was not pleased to have to tell her that.

A personal story—

Mel got his pilot’s license and one evening he showed up at the Columbia airport to get some flight time on the way to a campaign meeting in St. Louis.  He needed someone to fly to Hermann with him who could fly the plane back to Columbia while he, Jean, and their Highway Patrol escort went on to St. Louis.  The young flight instructor on duty at the time was our son, Rob, who flew to Hermann with the governor.

The plane’s engine would not re-start after they landed so the Carnahans invited Rob to join them for dinner at a German restaurant they liked in downtown Hermann.  So there was Robb, a kid trying to pile up enough flying hours to get a job flying cargo somewhere, having an unexpected dinner with the first family of Missouri.  By the time they were finished, the plane’s engine had cooled enough that it could start and the group parted ways.

The news of the fatal crash in October,  2000 hit our son hard, as you might expect. The day that the governor’s casket was in the great hallway of the governor’s mansion so the public could pay tribute, Jean came down the grand stairway and went outside to greet the office staff that had come over from the Capitol.  When she came back in, she noticed me standing in the library just off the great hall.  She came over and hugged me and said, “We’re so glad we got to know your son.”

It took a little time to resume the role of the stoic reporter just coverina a story. But that was Jean.

This great lady, burdened by terrible loss of her husband and one of her sons with incredible dignity, thought at that time of that evening in Hermann with a kid flight instructor.

Rob flies for Southwest Airlines today but that dinner with the Carnahans is one of the most memorable experiences of his life. But, that was just Mel and Jean being Mel and Jean.

Her official portrait in the Executive Mansion captures part of her nature.  The group that works to preserve the mansion says her outfit honors working women by wearing the kind of professional dress working women would wear. She is holding the flower that blooms on the Dogwood, our state tree. She later wrote on her Facebook page, “I always thought a computer keyboard would have been a more appropriate depiction.”  Jean computerized the mansion by setting up a website and creating a database for all of the assets of the old house.

The Carnahans had a good time in the mansion and especially enjoyed visits from children. They started the annual Halloween Spooktacular highlighted by Mel dressed as Dracula and appearing from a window on the second floor. She held a Children’s Hour at the Mansion and they had Easter egg hunts each year. A fountain created by Jamie Anderson was installed near the front porch to celebrate the mansion’s 125th anniversary commemorates children’s health.

She wrote on her Facebook page after the 2019 visit, “I recall my vision for the sculpture came from seeing an old photo of children playing in the abandoned fountain, that was placed on the lawn more than a 100 years ago. In today’s fountain, the girl atop the basin, her toes barely entering the water, is reminiscent of the shortened life of 9-year-old Carrie Crittenden, who died at the mansion of diphtheria. Her presence is a vivid reminder of the health care needs of children today.

“The African-American boy is inspired by the youngster, who once stayed in the Mansion barn. As he reaches out to grasp the flowing water, he denotes opportunity for all children. The other boy, modeled after my grandson, stands against a backdrop of leaves, birds, and fish, reminding the viewer of our need to protect the environment for future generations to enjoy.”

She paid her last visit (as far as I know) to the mansion in 2019 (shown here with First Lady Teresa Parson standing on the grand staircase under the official portrait of former first lady Maggie Stephens, described by Jean as “one of the flamboyant and benevolent residents of the old home.”)

When the Carnahan administration began, Jean and Mel decided the governor’s office need to be refreshed for the first time since the Hearnes administration moved into what originally was a big waiting room for people seeking meetings with the governor. As Betty Hearnes had supervised that makeover, Jean Carnahan supervised the update.  Furniture was repaired and some stored items were returned. The ceiling was repainted with the state seal included—Mel was given the brush and painted the last start, now known as the “Carnahan Star” in the ceiling seal—and the worn carpet with the state seal in it was replaced with a lighter carpet with the state flower in it so visitors wouldn’t walk on the seal.  She had the seal framed and it decorated a wall in her Washington office and, I was told, became part of the decoration of son Russ’s office while he was a member of the U.S. House.

She became the first woman U.S. Senator from Missouri when Governor Wilson appointed her to serve in Mel’s place after he had been elected posthumously.  She was the same kind of Senator-person as she had been here in Missouri.  Thoughtful.  Quiet.  Effective.  Disappointed when she lost to Jim Talent in 2002 but still always looking for things to do, people to know, adventures to be had.

My wife, Nancy, always enjoyed Jean’s restaurant critiques and other comments she posted on social media after she resumed private life in St. Louis.

We have now within a span of weeks lost two special former first ladies, Betty Hearnes and Jean Carnahan, who were as comfortable to be around in the mansion as they were when they were around the folks at home. They might have seen themselves as ordinary people who lived in extraordinary circumstances and they never outgrew that  understanding of themselves.

The life well-lived.  We all want that at the end, don’t we?  They had it.

(Photo credit: Carnahan family, Jefferson City News-Tribune, Missouri Mansion Preservation, Jean’s Facebook page)

A Christmas Carol Some Christians Wouldn’t Want to Sing

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A final thought about Christmas before we focus on the challenges of 2024:

Ken Kehner, the extremely talented pianist who accompanies our great Director of Music Ministry and incredible organist, Greten Hudepohl, at the First Christian Church here in Jefferson City,played a Christmas hymn during our communion service yesterday.  I recognized it on about the second note as one of my favorites.

It’s one of the Alfred Burt carols and it’s too bad that they are not better known or more frequently performed.

Alfred Burt was the son of a Michigan Episcopal cleric who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1942 as an outstanding student in music theory, and played trumpet, primarily jazz trumpet, in orchestras and bands.  But once a year, for 15 years between 1942 and 1954, he carried on his father’s tradition of writing a Christmas carol that was sent out to friends instead of Christmas cards. He was only 34 when he died.

Actually, Burt wrote the music and Wihla Houston, the organist at the senior Burt’s Church wrote the lyrics.

In 1951, they produced “Some Children See Him:”

Some children see Him lily white
The baby Jesus born this night
Some children see Him lily white
With tresses soft and fair.

 

Some children see Him bronzed and brown
The Lord of heaven to earth come down
Some children see Him bronzed and brown
With dark and heavy hair.

 

Some children see Him almond-eyed
This Savior whom we kneel beside
Some children see Him almond-eyed
With skin of yellow hue.

Some children see Him dark as they
Sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray
Some children see him dark as they
And they love Him, too.

 

The children each in different place
Will see the baby Jesus’s face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace
And filled with holy light

 

O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering
Come worship now the infant King
To his love that’s born tonight. 

This should be a hymn/carol of our time, a time when some who are convinced only their interpretation of Jesus is acceptable or that skin color is a measure of humanity, opportunity, and place, or that believe origins presently or long ago define the quantity of equality to be granted.

But there will be some calling themselves Christians who will reject the idea that other faces see the face of Jesus differently.

Alfred Burt had lung cancer.  He died on February 7, 1954, just two days after he finished scoring the last of his songs, “The Star Carol.”

Ten years later, the singing group “The Voices of Jimmy Joyce, recorded Burt’s carols. It has been in my heart for all these years since.  Although Christmas already is fading from our lives and memories on this New Year’s Day, it might be worth listening to Alfred Burt’s carols that I hope stay with you, too, from Christmas to Christmas.

(58) Jimmy Joyce – This Is Christmas: The Complete Collection Of Alfred S. Burt Carols in 4k (1964) – YouTube

A grander performance was done by the Boston Boys Choir and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus accompanied by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the baton of John Willliams, the great movie theme composer.

(58) John Williams: The Carols of Alfred Burt – YouTube

Alfred Burt, who died 70 years ago this year, gave us a great and abiding gift with the carols he and Wihla Houston composed.

Would that we could see each other the way “Some Children See Him.”

A Creek by Any Other Name

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—is still a creek.

But what IS its name?

Jefferson City has a creek that winds through the town, divides the north part where the Capitol and the old penitentiary and the business district are located from the south side called by early German immigrants “Munichburg,” crosses under the Rex Whiten Expressway (Red Whitton, for those not native to these parts was the chief engineer of the state highwy department in 1941. Early plans for an expressway through Jefferson City were drawn up during his term, and Missouri became the first state to pave segments of the interstate system during his tenure. He was appointed Federal Highway Administrator in 1961 and oversaw early work on the interstate system.) and traverses what we call the “mill bottom” before emptying ito the Missouri River.

In flood times, the creek backs up and helps flood low-lying areas of central Jefferson City.

We call it Wear’s Creek today, or most all of us do. But it has worn various names through the peopled history of this area and the name’s origin is a mystery.

An 1825 map shows it as Wyer’s Creek.  A 1947 Jefferson City Daily Capital News article quotes then-County Recorder Henry LePage saying the creek’s name was recorded “under different spellings in different deeds.”  Some people called it “Ware’s Creek,” after Clem Ware, who owned a lot of property in the county.  But the creek’s name preceded him by many years.

He suggested that some called it “Wire Creek” because it twists and turns “in a wiry fashion,” leading to the spelling of is name as “Wier” or “Weir.”

The research for our next book, about the Capitol’s location, creation, and other history noted a report from the commissioners picked to find a permanent central location for the seat of state government that refers to it as “Wan’s Creek.”  An account of the execution of a Confederate guerilla by Union soldiers in the Mill Bottom calls it “Weir’s Creek.”

The 1947 newspaper article concludes by suggesting the then-new Cole County Historical Society could study the issue and settle the question about the creek’s name or, if the CCHS failed to do that, “Mayor Blair could appoint a commission to ponder the question, reach the decision on the spelling that could be accepted and which will permit uniformity.”

Neither the society nor Blair (who later became Governor) did anything about it.

However—

Missouri has a State Board on Geographic Place Names (did you even know such a thing exists?). It coordinates place names, working in cooperation with local, state, and federal agencies to coordinate the naming of places so we don’t have two of something with the same name.

Maybe someone should look into having this organization decide what this creek’s name should be once and for all.

On a related note:  About fifty years ago, the Cole County Court (an administrative body using a long-outmoded name from Missouri’s early days) decided to name all of the county roads.  As I recall, it was being done so emergency vehicles could find places and people in trouble.  The public was invited to suggest names. Then-Presiding Commissioner Tony Hiesberger told me that a suggestion for one road was “Old Muttonhead School Road,” a name stemming from a long-ago incident in which some rustlers took the sheep they had stolen to a country school, butchered them, and hid the remains underneath the school.   The commission decided against using that name, the reason why is lost to me but it would have taken a pretty large road sign to have the full name.  I don’t recall what name was adopted.

 

Notes from a Quiet Street  (travels with Bob edition)

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The other day I heard a commercial on the radio for a securities investment firm.  It closed with the announcer cautioning, “Investment in securities involves the risk of loss.”

If investing in securities involves the risk of loss, why do we call them “securities?”

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I have been watching gasoline pump prices rise during the summer and have yet to hear anybody comment on a key supply-and-demand contribution to their rise.

It occurred to me as I drove along the newly-resurfaced street between gas stations on Ellis Boulevard to ask: How much petroleum is under our tires instead of in our gas tanks at this time of year?

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On a related note: When I was growing up on a small farm in central Illinois, there was an annual event (or maybe it was every couple of years event, memory isn’t clear) that we used to dread. Road-oiling.

We knew it was coming when the county road department came by our house and ground up the old surface into little pieces which would be rolled smooth or used to fill in potholes.   Then a few days later, a truck would creep past our house spraying a very thick coat of hot road oil on the surface. Another truck would spread sand on top of the gooey surface.  For the next sevcral days, cars and trucks would also creep down the road as the new surface hardened. But it was impossible to avoid the oil splattering onto the car or the truck—or the whitewall tires that were part of the automobile.

One positive that came out of that operation is that cars and trucks got a new undersealing to protect against the rusting salt that was spread on those same roads in the winter.

If often seemed that the crews didn’t re-oil the road past our place until the start of school—and the bus drivers undoubtedly cursed the practice as they cleaned the goop off the buses. And I’m sure the school didn’t appreciate all the tar that was spread into the school from the shoes of students who had to step on that surface to get on the bus.

This enlightening observation came one day on the way back from Columbia when 63 drops down to the flood plain and the ball diamonds and the turf farms and there was so much dust from the gravel side roads blowing across the highway as to make driving a tad bit more dangerous.

Gravel or oil?  I choose gravel.  I helped my father clean the splattered oil off our cars enough times to appreciate dust.

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I was on the Whitten Expressway in Jefferson City and in the lane to my left was a dump truck hauling an empty trailer.  Written in regular-pickup truck-size letters on the rear gate of the truck was, “Stay back 300 feet.”

I thought, “What an I supposed to be doing?  Wearing binoculars instead of my glasses so I can read something on a truck a football field away telling me not to get any closer?

And how would you pass such a vehicle?  Or is a 50 mph truck a rolling roadblock—albeit a safe one.

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Back in the Arab Oil Embargo times of the 1970s, I recall when the 55 mph speed limit became a standard.  Not only would it save petroleum, we were told, it would save lives.

I remember thinking, “If saving lives was the goal, why not set the limit at zero.  Parked cars don’t cause fatalities.

Unless, I suppose, somebody opens the door as a bicyclist is going past.

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We went to Kansas City for a meeting a few days ago.  The shortest trip, timewise, was on Highway 50. It’s four lanes from Jefferson City to California, two lanes to Sedalia and  four from there to Kansas City.  It’s also four lanes east to Linn although it doesn’t become four lanes again until the highway funnels traffic onto I-44.

We took 50.  And most of the time we didn’t have a lot of traffic.

We wonder if the Transportation Department has considered looking at two more lanes for those stretches of 50 as it launches its aggressive expansion of I-70, which already requires great courage and patience to use.  If the department hasn’t, we hope it doesn’t say anything that would make Highway 50 an alternate cross-state route while 70 is torn apart during the next several years.

 

Sports:   First Blood for Tigers; Champion Crowned; Record Broken; Milestone Awaits

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

It’s still baseball season. But there are signs that it will end soon.  The biggest sign is that it’s also football season.  The Tigers are 1-0. The Chiefs play a real game Thursday night.  That should take our minds off of baseball.  But until then:

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals will lose their 100th game by the time we fill this space next week.   They stood at 42-96 after weekend games and a 2-8 stretch in their last ten.  They’re in a spirited fight with the Athletics to see who will accomplish the least in the American League this year.  The A’s also have 42 wins. But they’ve only lost 95.

But the Royals might have discovered a diamond in the mud in August.  Cole Ragans was picked up from the Rangers in the Aroldis Chapman trade and has been in The Show (as Crash Davis/Kevin Costner liked to describe it) for a month.   But he has become the first Royals pitcher since member of the team to be voted the American League Pitcher of the Month since Zack Greinke was a youngster full of possible greatness in April, 2009.

He’s a lefty who lead the league in ERA and strikeouts in August—1.73 and 53 respectively. He had the most Wins Against Replacement of any pitcher at 1.9.   He lasted at least five innings in each of his half-dozen starts, struck out 11 batters in two games—a career high—and never allowed more than three runs.  Only Dennis Leonard, in June of ’77 (goodness! That’s 46 years ago) struck out more batters in a month for Kansas City—55.

Greinke’s sad farewell tour saw him pitch only twice in August. He went 0-2, hasn’t won since he and he Royals beat Baltimore on May 3. He’s given up 138 hits in123 innings and has an ERA of 5.34.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals have to go 3-22 the rest of the way if they are going to lose 100 games this year.  It’s unlikely—they won four games last week alone.  But they do face the embarrassing possibility of finishing behind the Pirates, against whom they are 4-9 for the year.

possibility that the Cardinals would finish below the near-perpetual division doormats is more than Post-Dispatch beat writer Benjamin Hochman and much of Cardinal Nation can stand.

The Cardinals are four games behind Pittsburgh. They lost two out of three to the Pirates last weekend.  Hochman remarked the other day that the Cardinals have not had a worse record against the Pirates in more than a quarter-century. He calculates the Cardinals have been in last place in the division fir 119 of the 153 days of the season. The only time since the leagues were split into divisions that the Cardinals were last in their division was 1990.

The Cardinals had three managers that year—Joe Torre, whose team was ten games under .500 when he was let go, Whitey Herzog, whose team was 14 under break-even, and Red Schoendienst, who was 14-11.

A slight diversion in our narrative:  This was the team that had an opening day lineup of Tom Brunansky (traded during the season to the Red Sox for Lee Smith), Vince Coleman, Pedro Guerrero, Joe Magrane (who started the first game), Willie McGee (who was traded to Oakland for Felix Jose and Stan Royer), Jose Oquendo, Terry Pendleton, Ozzie Smith and Todd Zeile.

Zeile was starting a career that saw him play for 11 teams (only five players have played for that many teams), hit a home run in his last at-bat (one of 53 to do that—in fact his last homer was the last home run given up by a Montreal Expos pitcher—the team moved to Washington the next year—and he became the only player in baseball history to hit at least one home run for eleven teams).  The team finished 72-90 that year.  This year’s team can equal that mark by going 13-12 the rest of the way, something they do not appear capable of doing.

(TIGERS)—Missouri Tiger football fans expecting a blowout win against South Dakota in the season opener saw one—for the first half.  Brady Cook looked like a number one quarterback in leading the Tigers to a 28-3 halftime lead.  The second half, with Sam Horn under center, was uneven but the end result was a 35-10 victory.

Cody Smith ran for 148 yards; Luther Burden III showed growth in the wide receiver position; But Harrison Mevis showed uncharacteristic inconsistency as the kicker. He missed his  two field goal attempts and a point-after but got a second chance because of a defensive penalty and nailed that one.

Missouri has another tune-up game ahead—Middle Tennessee State.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs open their regular season Thursday night against the Detroit Lions.  This is the sixtieth year for the franchise in KC, moving there from Dallas when Lamar Hunt decided Dallas wasn’t big enough for his AFL team and the NFL Cowboys.

Chris Jones is still AWOL and Coach Andy Reid say he doesn’t know what Jones’ “agenda” is and he’s been focused on preparing the Chiefs to play and win regardless of Jones’ presence. “I had 90 guys in the offseason that we needed to make sure we’re going in the right direction. Now we’re getting ready to play a game, and you’re either here or not here. that’s how I go about it.”

The Chiefs have had their entire training camp learning how to play without him. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes says he team has prepared to play the game without Jones and will let the “front office” handle the holdout. “We’re going to focus on how we can win with the guys that are here,” says Mahomes.

Now for the zoom-zoom stuff.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou has wrapped up his second IndyCar championship in three years with a dominating performance on the road course at Portland. He went into the race needing only an 11th place finish to wrap up the title.

It’s rare that the IndyCar championship is decided before the last race of the year. In fact, the last time it happened was with Sebastien Bourdais in 2007.

Palou started fifth, took his time and didn’t lead until lap 22. He finished leading 69 of the 100 laps in the race including the last 27.  He finished almost five and a half seconds ahead of Felix Rosenqvist.  Palou’s teammate and only championship challenger, Scott Dixon, came home third, giving owner Chip Ganassi drivers finishing 1-2 in the championship points with one race left.  Palou becomes the fourth Ganassi driver to win multiple championships. Dixon has six. Dario Franchitti had three, and Alex Zanardi had two.

Palou’s remarkable season has seen him finish no worse than eighth in any race.

Ganassi now has 15 series championships, second only to the 17 of Team Penske. This is his third championship in four years. The team says Palou, who is 26, is only the fifth driver to win multiple championships before age 27 in series history, joining Bourdais, Sam Hornish Jr., Louis Meyer (who drove in the 1920s and 30s), and A. J. Foyt—who holds the record with seven, one more than Dixon.
IndyCar has one race left this year—next weekend at Laguna Seca.  Paloux won by more than 30 seconds on that track last year.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson, NASCAR’s 2021 Cup Champion, is the first driver to guarantee his spot in the playoff round of 12, thanks to his grind-it-out win at Darlington Sunday night.

Larson, who brushed the wall and whose transmission briefly was hung up in neutral, got past Tyler Reddick on their last pit stops with 55 laps left, then held him off the rest of the way to win The Southern 500 at Darlington by less than half a second. He outran other playoff contenders Chris Buescher, William Byron, Ross Chastain, Brad Keselowski and Bubba Wallace to punch his ticket for round two.

Larson described the race as “kind of a struggle” after his early issues but “we kept our heads in the game. That was really important. This race is all about keeping your head in it.”

Ryan Preece, who rode through a horrifying crash at Daytona a week earlier, was cleared to run at Darlington.  He started 34th in the 36-car field. He finished 28th and was never a factor.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen set a new record for consecutive Formula 1 wins in a year with his run to victory in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. It’s his tenth win in a row.  He now has won 12 races this year and his Red Bull team has a string of 15 straight top finishes.

What he has done since the start of the 2022 season (there are eight races left this year) is remarkable.  He has won 21 of the last 25 F1 races, 27 of the last 36. He now has 47 career victories, 37 of them since the start of the 2021 season.

He has been among the top three finishers 31 out of 36 times and has finished below second only twice in the last three-dozen races.

He has a strong 145-point lead in the championship chase, an almost insurmountable margin.

(Photo credits: Rick Gevers and Bob Priddy)

 

It’s a holiday

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And for the first time ever, the blog is taking the day off.

We’ll be back with sports tomorrow and on Wednesday we’ll offer more penetrating analysis of something or other.

But we don’t want you to go away unenlightened. 

This is one of the great places on old Highway 66, which runs parallel to Interstate 44 as one crosses from Oklahoma to the panhandle of Texas.  Or as two or three or more cross into the panhandle.

It’s just down the street from the Dairy Queen in Shamrock, Texas—where we stop for foot-long chili dogs and Dilly Bars, if we time it right for lunch on the way to New Mexico.

Shamrock is a real little town.  Wish it had enough money to bury that power line.

Your faithful correspondent and observer of the passing scene,

b

JUST DESSERTS

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When I’m in Indianapolis, I stay with my friends, Rick and Karen, who have a condo downtown, a few blocks from Monument Circle.  They know all of the fine downtown restaurants—I think, in fact, that Rick has a couple of places that have tables for him whenever he goes in—and, worse, they know all of the dessert places.

The most recent visit involved three excellent dinners and three visits to dessert places none of us had any business going into.  The last night we went to something called The Sugar Factory.

I should have turned and run as fast as I could the other way.

Of all the items on the menu, I thought the Strawberry Cheesecake Milk Shake sounded the most tasty and probably the simplest of the desserts.  Boy, was I ever wrong.

There was the milk shake in a sugar-topped glass and a straw.  But the straw was there mainly to hold the other elements together. Whipped cream and candy strawberries topped the shake itself, topped by the cheesecake and more whipped cream, a real strawberry, and then a strawberry/chocolate cupcake topped by more whipped cream.

God help me!  I ate and drank it all.  The cupcake was nothing to write a blog about but the cheesecake was pretty good and the strawberry milkshake was just the right thickness and flavor.

The eight-block walk back to the condo was done at a fairly leisurely pace.

I had planned to spend a fourth night, after the race, but I decided to stick around only long enough to take the pictures I wanted and then head home early, listening to the rest of the race on the radio (it is, after all, about a 400-mile drive).  I told Rick I was leaving early because I didn’t think I could survive another dessert.

If my doctors were to look closely at my blood samples, I am sure they would find I don’t have white blood cells.  I have vanilla blood cells.

Once a week Nancy and I get together with a couple friends for game night—dominoes, Rummikub, Five Crown, Swoop, stuff like that.  Halfway through the evening, or when we change games, is dessert time.  No matter what the basic treat is—brownies, cobblers, cake, whatever—ice cream is the vital ingredient.  Always too much ice cream.

On our refrigerator, amidst the numerous pictures of grandchildren, cartoons, the next shopping list and assorted refrigerator magnets, is an advertisement I found in a 1916 Jefferson City newspaper. I look at it the way some people consider their bumper stickers, “He said it. I believe it. So it’s true.”

In 1916 the ad assured buyers that Weber’s ice cream was safe to eat, produced in sanitary surroundings, and was not the impure foods of the time found in grocery stores, themeat sometimes hanging openly in the windows.   Eat our ice cream and you’ll be alive tomorrow to eat more.  That kind of message.

But in today’s FDA-regulated food environment, I am comfortable reading it another way—that ice cream is an essential food group.

I think it is a genetic flaw.

While doing some family research a few years ago, looking for references to my great-grandfather, a Union (with Sherman) Civil War veteran, I uncovered a family secret

A longer article in the Decatur (Ill.) Evening Bulletin from July 6,1896 telling me that Robert Thomas Priddy and his partner, A. A. Cooper, both experienced dairymen, had bought “the milk depot and ice cream business “in the basement of Fay’s meat market on the west side of Lincoln Square.”

A year later:

I inherited my addiction to ice cream from an ancestor who was with Sherman at Vicksburg and later helped capture Little Rock.

He died in 1925.

In the old family photographs, he’s thin. It’s clear he didn’t dip into the inventory as often as he could have.

I wonder what he would have thought of that Strawberry Cheesecake Milkshake at The Sugar Factory.

 

 

 

Sports: Have the Cardinals Resurrected a Starter? Which Royals Team Will Show Up in ’24?; Quarterbacks in competition and Bubba on the Bubble

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—Should the Cardinals pencil in Dakota Hudson as a starter next year?   Hudson, who went 16-7 for the Cardinals in 2019 and then had Tommy John surgery the next year, appears to be at full strength as his team plays out the string in 2023.

Hudson rang up his fifth straight win of ’23 (he has yet to lose) when he became a stopper against the Mets Sunday.  The Cardinals had lost four in a row, partly because of a puny offense that had generated only five runs in their four losses.

The offense bulked up behind Hudson with 15 hits and seven runs. Every starter had at least one hit. Paul Goldschmidt was 3-for-4 with a homer, three RBIs, and two runs scored.

The series marked the debut of top rookie Masyn Winn who went 3 for 11.

His first major league hit was dribbler down the third base line. When Mets’ first baseman Pete Alonso was told to throw the ball out of play, he pitched it into the crowd—-realizing moments later it had been Winn’s first hit.  He apologized profusely and the woman in the crowd who had it gave it to a team security officer.  Winn signed another ball for her.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have reverted to form after their seven-game winning streak got fans’ hearts beating a little as this team heads for one of its worst seasons ever.  They’ve gone 4-11 since that streak.  But the new week begins with hope.  The Royals open a three-game series against the only American League team with a worse record.  The Royals open the series in Oakland at 40-86.  The A’s are 34-89.

Jordan Lyles dropped to 3-14 Sunday despite an impressive eight innings in which he allowed only two earned runs.  His eight innings dropped his ERA to 6.07.

The Royals needed three to tie in the ninth but ran out of outs after scoring only two.

(THE WEAPON AND THE LEFTY)—The Cardinals’ “Secret Weapon” has an addition to his wardrobe—a red sport coat symbolizing his membership in the Cardinals Hall of Fame.  Jose Oquendo, nicknamed “The Secret Weapon” of the Cardinals by Jack Buck, once played all nine positions in a game in 1988.  He had a solid career as a player but is best known and revered as a coach of young talent.

Left-handed pitcher Max Lanier, who died at 91 in 2007, was 101-69 in 12 years with the Cardinals. His best year was 15-7 in 1943, the year he led the National League with a 1.90 ERA.

He started as a right-handed pitcher but his son Hal—who had a long career as a utility infielder and was briefly a Cardinals coach—say he severely injured his elbow twice and had to learn to throw left-handed.

(DeJong Yawn)—-The Cardinals-Blue Jays trade that sent shortstop Paul DeJong to Toronto already is a big win for St. Louis, a big bust for Toronto, and a big downfall for a former All-Star shortstop.

The Blue Jays have designated Paul DeJong for assignment, just a eighteen days after getting him from the Cardinals.  He’d been acquired when Toronto shortstop Bo Bichette went down with a knee injury. But Bichette has been reinstated frm the IL and DeJong is available for the taking.

DeJong came up to the Cardinals in 2017, hit .285 with 25 home runs and made the All-Star game. He had 30 homers two years later but his batting average had dropped to .233.  He never recovered his freshman skills and when the Cardinals sent him to Toronto he was hitting only .233.

And Toronto became a disaster for him. He was 3 for 44 with 1 RBI.

It was a low-risk, low-return trade (so far) for both teams.  The Cardinals got minor league pitcher Matt Svanson who was not one of  Toronto’s top 30 prospects. Through Friday night he had been in four games for Springfield and had a 10.13 ERA,  7 hits, 6 runs in 5.1 innings.

CHIEFS)—Kansas City Chiefs fans disappointed that the starters played only a few downs in the first pre=season game, got a look at what happens when the starters stick around a while longer in the second pre-season contest.  And they got a pretty encouraging look at the backups, too.

Chiefs beat the Cardinals 38-10. The first team offense wasn’t too impressive in the first  few series’s but they looked like the Chiefs with a ten-play 92-yard drive that ended with a Justin Watson catching an 18-yeard TD pass from Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes finished his work going 10 for 15, 105 yards and the touchdown in the first quarter.  The Chiefs finished the night with 504 yards offense.

The Chiefs went up 17-0, let the Cardinals draw to within 17-10, then polished off the Arizona birds with 21 unanswered points.

Both teams are 1-1 now.

The performance by both backup quarterbacks has started some buzz.  Shane Buechele completed all ten of his pases for 105 yards and ran for a 15-yard touchdown.  Former Missouri Tiger QB Blaine Gabbert was 7 for 8, 130 yards, two touchdowns. The question remaining for the final pre-season game is which of them will be the number 2 QB.  It would not be a surprise if the Chiefs carry three quarterbacks this year.

The Chiefs welcome the Cleveland Browns to Arrowhead Stadium next Saturday night for the last pre-season game.  The teams have only one cutdown date this year. They have to name their 53-man rosters on August 29.  Although teams can have 53 roster players, only 48 can be eligible on game day.  Teams also can have a 16-player practice squad.

(SPEAKING OF QUARTERBACKS)—Coach Eli Drinkwitz says we’ll see Brady Cook and Sam Horn splitting time in the first game of the year against South Dakota. He says he wants to “let the play on the field decide it.”

Now, let’s get up to speed.

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden will try to keep his IndyCar record of consecutive oval victories intact next Sunday afternoon at World Wide Technology Speedway just east of St. Louis.

Newgarden has won all four oval races this year, five in a row counting last year’s win at WWTR.  He seeks to become the first driver to sweep all of the oval races in a season since Sebastian Bourdais did it in 2006. Bourdais had a little easier time of it, though.  A race on the Milwaukee Mile was the only oval race held for IndyCar in 2006.

Racing at WWTR is usually highly-competitive. There were 13 lead changes and 520 on track passes for position last year before rookie David Malukas chased Newgarden to the finish line, trailing by .4708 of a second.

Only two races remain in the series after this one. Newgarden’s chances of overhauling Aledx Palou for the championship took a hard blow in the last race, on the Indianapolis road course two weeks ago, in which Newgarden (left) battled problems and finished 25th.

Scott Dixon won the race and moved past Newgarden into second place, 101 points behind Palou. Newgarden is back by 105.  A win by Palou would make him the first driver since Cristiano daMatta did it in 2022.

(NASCAR)—Fifteen of sixteen playoff spots have been determined heading into NASCAR’s last regular-season race.  Bubba Wallace is on the bubble in 16th,  thirty-two points ahead of rookie Ty Gibbs.

Although Wallace has some breathing room going into the race, nothing is certain when the race is at Daytona.  Multiple-car crashes often turn anticipated results (and some cars) upside down.  If a driver who has not won this year captures the flag at Daytona Saturday night, he’s in and Wallace is out.  The most desperate driver might be former series champion Chase Elliott, who has to win to be in.

(SRX)—A Missouri track provided the wrapup to the third season of Tony Stewart’s Superstar Racing Experience this week.  The race, at Wheatland in southwest Missouri, went to Jonathan Davenport and the championship to Ryan Newman.

The six-race made-for-television series features specially-built cars races by big names mostly from NASCAR and IndyCar ranks.

Davenport, the race winner, however, is a dirt-track champion who doesn’t run with the big dogs, Jonathan Davenport, a Georgia driver who has won the national championship in the Late Model Dirt Serioes in 2015, 2018, and 2019. On the podium with him was current Cup Series driver Brad Keselowski and Fenton’s ageless Kenny Schrader who, a few days earlier, had gone to Canada to win a 100-lap NASCAR Dirt Classic race at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario.

Schader, 68, thus became the oldest driver to win a NASCAR-sanctioned event and the first non-Canadian to win in the Pinty’s Series.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers, and Lucas Oil Speedway)

SPORTS:  The Hendrick 1100; The Chiefs Debut; Tiger Basketball Gets the Beef; Tiger Football Developing.  Then there is baseball.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(RACING)—We normally start with the stick and ball sports but the stick-shift or paddle-shift sports took some interesting turns (to coin a phrase) this weekend and we were there so we’re going to talk about things faster than a baseball pitch.

First, NASCAR and IndyCar shared the road course at Indianapolis this weekend, IndyCar on Saturday and cars with fenders on Sunday.

(HENDRICK)—The weekend was the perfect venue to unveil the cars that former NASCAR champion Kyle Larson will run next year as he tries to “do the double, .” racing in the Indianapolis 500 and then jetting to Charlotte, NC for NASCAR’s 600 mile Memorial Day race that night.

Larson, who won Saturday night’s Knoxville Sprint Car Championship in Iowa, got to Indianapolis at 4 a.m. Sunday but was at the Indianapolis Speedway at mid-morning the unveiling of the cars he will drive next Memorial Day Weekend.

.His car owner, Rick Hendrick, is partnering with Arrow-McLaren Motorsports, which fields cars for the 500.  The color scheme is McLaren Papaya Orange and Hendrick’s traditional blue. Because he’s an active partner in the effort, the event has been unofficially dubbed the “Hendrick 1100,” for the 100 miles Larson will drive that day if he completes both races.

Four other drivers have tried it but only Tony Stewart has been able to run all 600 laps in the two races.  Robby Gordon tried four times, John Andretti tried it once and the most recent driver to make the attempt, Kurt Busch, was 6th at Indianapolis but fell out of the Charlotte race with engine problems.

Hendrick, owner of 94 automobile dealerships employing 10,000 people, owned Jeff Gordon’s car that one the first Brickyard 400, the first NASCAR race on the Indianapolis oval, in 1994. At one time he considered having Gordon run both races, but Gordon was cool to the idea.

But Jeff Gordon was a strong advocate for Larson to try it, and Larson has been eager to do it.  Hendrick says Larson has shown he can win in any kind of car.

For his part, Larson says he’s not nervous although he expects the nervousness to start “creeping in” as next May gets closer.

(SUNDAY ON THE ROAD COURSE WITH MIKE)—Michael McDowell had been one of the drivers keeping an eye on drivers’ points as NASCAR’s playoff runs begins to grow close.  But his win Sunday eliminated any uncertainty about his presence among the 16 drivers competing for a slot.

McDowell, who has shown improvement as a road course driver in his career, seized control of the race that went without a yellow flag for the last 77 of 82 laps.  It’s his second CUP victory—the first being the Daytona 500 two years ago.

His closest pursuer was Chase Elliott, who desperately needs a win to qualify for the playoffs.  Although Elliott trimmed McDowell’s lead from four seconds to less than one second, he couldn’t get the win that would have put him, Elliott, into the 16-car playoff field. He gave Ford its first road course victory since 2018, whcn Ryan Bleney won the first race on the Charlotte Roval.

He’s the 13th winner this year, leaving only three playoff positions available for non-winners.  Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski seem secure in the points chase, leaving only one position, for all intents and purposes, open. Bubba Wallas holds the 16th playoff spot now, by 28 pins over Daniel Suarea

McDowell’s win reduces the number of available Playoff spots to three. Keselowski and Kevin Harvick are comfortably situated on points—barring more different winners at Watkins Glen and Daytona—but Wallace’s hold on the final spot was reduced from 58 points pre-race to 28 over Suárez. Next closest is Ty Gibbs, who’s 49 points out.

The road course at Watkins Glen is next on the schedule.

(INDYCAR)—The IndyCar race Saturday was awash in history from beginning to end.  Saturday was the 90th birthday of Speedway legend Parnelli Jones, the first driver to run a 150 mph lap, a past winner of the 500 in May.  This year is the 38th anniversary of Danny Sullivan’s famous “spin and win” 1985 500. Dixon had not planned to celebrate Sullivan’s achievement when the race started but less than one minute into the contest he spun off the track into the dirt as part of a five-car tangle.  Dixon’s car was undamaged and he got back under power before the field came back around, keeping him on the leader lap.  A pit stop four laps later would let him run the rest of the race on only two more stops while other drivers had to make three.

The alert move by his team put him in the lead late and his legendary fuel-saving abilities left him ten seconds ahead of pole-sitter Graham Rahal after the final pit stops.  Rahal bit into the lead but finished about a half-second back.

(Dixon meeting a fan)

The win is Dixon’s 54th; only A. J. Foy had more (67).  It gave Dixon at least one win in 19 consecutive seasons, breaking a tie with Foyt.  He’s known as “The Ice Man” for his ability to keep his cool during tight races but he’s also IndyCar’s “Iron Man” after making his 319th consecutive start, breaking the record held by Tony Kanaan.

The race was a disaster for Josef Newgarden, the winner of the 500 in May. His car was one of the five in the first lap crash and he never got into contending position after repairs. Dixon has replaced him as second in points but Alex Palou has a 100-plus point lead going into the last three races of  the year (the first of which is just across the river from St. Louis in two weeks, at World Wide Technology Raceway).

(HELIO)—The race near St. Louis likely will be the last chance we have to see Helio Castroneves except for the Indianapolis 500.  Castroneves is easing into retirement and his only race for 2024 for his current owner, Meyer-Shank Racing, will be his next big for a fifth Indianapolis 500.  Otherwise he’ll assume a minority ownership of the team. He’ll also run sports cars in the IMSA series.

He remains one of the most popular and charismatic figures in IndyCar.

His MSR teammate, Simon Pagenaud, is still not allowed to race because of concussion problems resulting from his horrendous crash at Mid-Ohio a month ago. His contract with Meyer Shank ends at the end of this season. Linus Lundqvist has been filling in for him. He was 12th in the Saturday race.

(ONE OTHER THING)—Imagine the players on your favorite base, foot, basket, or soft ball team pausing on their way to the field to start the game to pass among fans and sign autographs.

IndyCar and NASCAR drivers do that.  We weren’t there to collect autographs but instead we were there to photograph drivers.  One young Indiana couple brought their young children, each wearing t-shirts saying, “My First NASCAR Race.”

Chase Briscoe was one of the several drivers who saw their little girl sitting on top of the fence, held by her father whose hat was signed earlier by broadcaster Dale Earnhardt Jr., (barely visible on the bill) and signed her shirt. Briscoe finished sixth in the race.  Briscoe is 28 with a lot of future ahead of him; she looked to be three or four with even more future before her.

Forty-six years ago, a woman named Janet Guthrie became the first woman to start a Daytona 500 AND an Indianapolis 500.  A year later she finished sixth at Bristol, the highest finish in a NASCAR race ever by a woman up to that time (Danica Patrick also finished 6th in a NASCAR race, in 2017).

Your on-the-scene scribe once had an autographed Guthrie picture hanging in his daughter’s bedroom, not because he thought she would become a woman race driver but because he wanted her to know she could be anything she wanted to be.

TIGER FOOTBALL)—Coach Eli Drinkwitz started sounding a little more positive about his team after Saturday’s closed practice, especially about the defense—although the offense began to find itself a bit toward the end of the first half of the closes scrimmage.

The competition for slots on the offensive line is intensifying. He says as many as eight players are competing for five positions.  He indicates Javon Foster might have left tackle nailed down and Connor Tollison is impressive at center.

A week ago he was critical of Tiger wide receivers for their shortcomings in the blocking game but after the weekend scrimmage, he says the players have “responded really well.”

(MISSOURI ROUNDBALL)—Coach Dennis Gates has been signing some big guys to fill what has been an aching shortcoming of the Tigers for years—the lack of interior size.  His newest recruit isn’t just tall.  He’s BIG.

He’s Peyton Marshall, a 7-foot, 300-pound center from Marietta, Georgia, who has picked Missouri aver Georgia Tech, Auburn Ole Miss, Cincinnati, Georgetown, and Mississippi State, and about ten other schools.  He’s the third top 100 player in the 2024 recruiting class. He is considered to have a lot of raw but unpolished talent.

(CHIEFS FOOTBALL)—The starters hardly broke a sweat in their first exhibition game of the year against Russell Wilson and the New Orleans Saints 26-24 on a late field goal.  The regulars were in for just a few plays while coach Andy Reid got a good  look at the rookies and the newbies. The Chiefs play the Cardinals next week. The regular seasons starts September 7.

Okay, now let’s take a look at our baseball teams. It will be a short one.

Our two teams had a rare Sunday off after their two game series that ended in a split at the end of the week.  In both games, both games played well above their winning percentage.

(ROYALS)—The Royals have to win their next 50 games in a row to have a .500 season. They start tonight’s game against the Mariners 31-81.  The Royals used the day to juggle the lineup.  Drew Waters is returning from the three-day Bereavement List.

Edward Olivares is headed down to Omaha to make room on the roster for Bubba Thompson, coming over from the Rangers, who designated hm for assignment this week. At first glance, Thompson doesn’t appear to be much of a game-changer. He is hitting .170 in 27 games for Texas.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals (52-66) face another team that, on paper, would appear to be easy pickings—the Oakland Athletics, who sport a 33-85 record.  It is the first meeting of these two teams since 2019.

Just when some things were starting to look just a teeny more rosy, the Cardinals have announced that Steven Matz is going to be on the 15-dayh DL with a left lat strain.

Manager Oli Marmol hasn’t said it in so many words, but the time as come to seriously address what’s to be done with Adam Wainwright.  Last Friday night’s outing against the lowly Royals was nothing if not tragic for a beloved player who wants so badly to go out with 200 wins. Marmol promised afterward to “sit down with Waino” and “talk through a few things.”  But he says the future doesn’t look great.

Wainwright, however, will make a start later this week.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy and Rick Gevers)

 

Was it a Lynching?

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(Before we dive into this story, we ask our readers to please go back to Monday’s entry which required a major correction of information that incorrectly stated the position of a prominent former political leader from Missouri.)

Nancy and I went to Salisbury a few days ago where I had been asked to speak to the Chariton County Historical Society.

What happened during that speech is a reminder of something James Baldwin said: “History is not the past. History is the present. We carry our history with us. To think otherwise is criminal.”

William Faulkner said in a similar vein, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Those are great quotations in today’s turbulent political times when it seems we have people who want us to ignore some of the lamentable events of years gone by—shadows of some of which remain present among us.

Whenever I speak to a county historical society I like to spend a day at the State Historical Society going through the newspapers that have been published in that county. We have 60-million pages of newspapers on microfilm so a huge amount of local history is within each spool of microfilm.

Folks are regularly surprised when I tell them how many newspapers have been published in their county. In Chariton County’s case, there have been 31.  I pull random reels of microfilm and spool a reel through a reader and start looking for random news accounts or advertisements that are informative and sometimes amusing but say a little something about that particular time and place.

I have wondered if any of the people in my audience are learning something about one of their ancestors—but until the visit to Chariton County I had never heard from anyone connected to one of the stories.

Sometimes, the news article I choose is difficult to hear.  Such is the case of a 1917 article in The Rothville Bee, that began, “The body of a negro, apparently dead about ten to twelve days, with limbs tied and wrapped in barb wire, was found in the Missouri River below Brunswick Sunday of last week. The body was later identified as being that of William Wilson of Brunswick…Examination disclosed a bullet wound through the heart and a scalp wound, indicating that the negro was murdered.”

The historical society had more people watching the presentation on its streaming internet feed than it had room for in the museum (which, by the way, is an outstanding county history museum, and they’re expanding). A few days after the speech I got an email from one of those viewers:

“One of the news articles you read was from the Brunswick newspaper regarding a man found in the river by the name of Bill Wilson, I think this is about my grandfather.  I would love to visit with you about the article and see if we can uncover anything additional regarding his murder.”  

I couldn’t provide him with anything more than I had because the article had been picked randomly but I did give him the names of several newspapers in the county that might have had follow-up articles and several from surrounding counties since the body had been found in the Missouri river.  And I suggested some courthouse records he might check—if they still existed 106 years after the fact.

But I cautioned him he might not find much because Chariton County, just before the Civil War, had a population that was about 25% enslaved.  And 1917 in Missouri was a time when the Klan was active. The murder of a Black man might not have elicited the kind of investigation a white man’s murder might have created.

Last week, I was back at the Center for Missouri Studies for a meeting and I built in some extra time to run down the original newspaper article.  The Rothville Bee had reprinted a story from the Brunswick Brunswicker that I discovered originally had been published in the Salisbury Press-Spectator. Each iteration had a difference of small details.  The the original story concluded with a discouraging but not unexpected comment:

“There seems to be no special interest in the matter as the negro’s reputation was bad.”

So it will, indeed, be surprising if there are any follow-up stories. Why was his reputation bad?  That might be hidden in reports generated by the sheriff or the coroner or the county prosecutor—-if they still exist and if they went into any detail, which seems remote.  Family legend might give some hints.

The State Archives, which has thousands of death certificates from 1910 onward has no death certificate for William Wilson of Chariton County in 1917.  The archives of the state penitentiary show no William Wilson who matches the timeline or the description of this man so we don’t think his “bad reputation” was so bad as to merit prison time.

The Chariton County Prosecuting Attorney at the time was Roy B. McKittrick who later was elected to the Missouri Senate and, with the backing of Kansas City political boss Tom Pendergast, was elected Attorney General.  He turned on Pendergast and teamed with Governor Lloyd Stark and with U. S. Attorney Maurice Milligan to break the Pendergast organization. Pendergast eventually went to federal prison for tax evasion. They also broke up a major scandal in the state insurance department and sent Pendergast crony R. Emmett O’Malley, the state insurance superintendent, to federal prison for tax fraud. McKittrick and several other Democrats were involved in an effort to keep Republican Forrest Donnell from assuming the governorship in 1940.  He ran against Donnell in 1944 for the U.S. Senate but lost. He lost a race for governor to Forrest Smith in 1948.  He died in 1961 and the story of the investigation of the murder of William Wilson seems to have died with him.

Harriett C. Frazier, in her book, Lynchings in Missouri 1803-1981,  says there were at least 227 cases of “mob murder’ in Missouri during that time. The Equal Justice Initiative has counted sixty African-Americans who were lynched, 1877-1950  The archives at Tuskeegee Institute says 53 Whites and 69 Blacks were lynched in Missouri between 1882-1968.

William Wilson’s name is not on any of those lists.  Should he be?  The fact that he was bound in barbed wire, shot, and thrown into the river with a weight tied to him points to a hardly routine killing.

But the event has been lost to history, recorded only (as far as we know) in old small-town newspapers in one of our smallest counties, and barely reported at that, more than a century ago.  Even family memories or family stories have had time to fade in the telling and re-telling.

—and the only thing we know about William Wilson is that he died a terrible death in 1917 and, it seems, nobody cared much about finding his killer(s).

More than a century after his murder, the United States Congress finally got around to declaring lynching a federal crime.  One of these days we’ll tell you about a Missouri Congressman who didn’t live to see the law that he pushed throughout his career finally adopted.