Pastor Skar

 I find it interesting to come across a highway number down here that is the same as a highway number up in our neck of the woods. Yesterday, we spent some time on Highway 281, which is the same U.S. highway that goes through Jamestown and crosses Highway 2 at Churches Ferry.  I-35 splits into I-35 W and I-35 E as it passes through Ft. Worth and Dallas, just as it does in the Twin Cities. Many years ago in North Carolina, I was on U. S. 52, which runs from Portal SE across America, sometimes disappearing for hundreds of miles, swallowed up by highways that get more respect.  On the way down here we crossed U. S. 30, which is known as the Lincoln Highway out east because it passes through Gettysburg and Northern Illinois.  I don’t know who devised the U.S. highway system, but they made it interesting.

 We slept in at a small motel in Johnson City. Then we visited the LBJ stuff in Johnson City.  That took about an hour. Then we drove west to the LBJ ranch, where we visited the gravesite and the ranch complex. It was quite an extensive thing,  hundreds of acres.  We followed that up with a visit to a peach stand. Peach pie, cobbler, and ice cream, which we ate at the LBJ roadside rest Then we drove to the Cedar Lodge Resort on Lake Buchanan for the Skar reunion. We were the first ones there. The test of the Rolf Skar branch trickled in and we had a delicious pasta supper. The younger, more handsome Brian Skar’s wife, Tonya, is super organized and did a great job with the meal.  100 degrees temperature.  The ranger in Johnson City informed me that the name of the lake is pronounced “Buckanan”. I told him I taught history for 30 years and if the lake was named after the 15th President it was pronounced Byoochanan.  He informed me that “Texans like to do...

Part of the LBJ National/State Park is in Johnson City where he grew up. Part of it is 15 miles west of Johnson City where he was born and where he had his ranch and  where he had his home while he was a Congressman and VP and President. He and Lady Bird are buried in the family cemetery out on the ranch. This is the home in Johnson City where he was raised from the time he was six. Nearby is the shed he fell off of as a kid and broke his leg.  While LBJ was serving in Congress and as VP and President he travelled back and forth from Texas a lot. 20 percent of his time when he was President was spent at his ranch.  He built a runway on the ranch so he could fly there easily.  Air Force 1 was too big to land so he bought a smaller plane to shuttle him from the Austin airport where AF1 could land to his ranch. This is that plane. This was his house at the ranch. The secret Service had a smaller house out back. He held many high level meetings in the shade of the large ...

 Will Adams and I served together in Mortar Platoon, Charlie Company, 1/11th Infantry Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, Ft. Carson, Colorado, in 1975-1976. He was in charge of the Fire Direction Center and I commanded the squad of the number two gun. He and I climbed Mount Elbert, the highest mountain in Colorado. We also played on our platoons football team which was not only unbeaten in about eight games, but was in scored on. Wil was one of my closest friends. We shared a lot of good times. In this picture we are standing on the corner of Houston and Elm, directly below the window Oswald fired from.  Will waited for Ruth and me to do the museum. Then we went out to Denny’s for lunch.  It was great to see him again. 

  We parked on the west side of the Bush library in College Station, TX, the home of Texas A&M.  Then we walked around to the east side of the library to this beautiful pond.  The grave site is through the trees on the other side of the pond. Ruth looking across the pond toward the gate and path to the grave site.  Next to the library stood this statue of these horses jumping over a wall. The wall was an actual section of the Berlin Wall that came down during Bush’s term.  Bush’s grave in center. Barbara’s is on the right.  Their daughter Robin is buried to the left out of the picture. The grounds are large and beautiful.  It was a picturesque half mile walk from the car to the grave site.  We pretty much had the place to ourselves except for a kid on an electric skateboard.

I am standing on the sidewalk reading the historical marker.  Out in the street behind me is a white X painted where the Presidential limo was when Kennedy eat hit with the fatal head shot (the third shot).  Farther up the street to my right an X marks the spot where the second shot hit him high on his back. This was the “magic bullet” that went through JFK’s back and then hit Connelly.  That billet actually caused seven wounds.  Beyond me is the Texas Book Drpository.  Oswald shot from the far right window on the sixth floor. That window is behind the tree. Only the seventh floor can be seen from this angle.  Ruth is standing next to the stone pedestal in which Zapruder stood and made his famous video of the assassination.  Dealy Plaza is across the street behind her. This was taken up in the Sixth Floor Museum. This is the window Oswald shot three shots from.  The boxes are arrranged just as they were on 11/22/63.  This is the X on the stre...

 Spent the night in motel at Purcell, OK.  The low tire pressure light came on as soon as we got on the road. A flat on a Sunday morning.  “Perfect!”  Turned out it just needed some air, a dollars worth.  Nothing is free down here.   We met Wil Adams, my army buddy I haven’t seen in 45 years, at Dealy Plaza where JFK was shot.  Then we drove down to College Station where George HW Bush is buried.  Tonight in a motel in Johnson City.

  On  Friday, July 23, we drove from Minot to Sioux City, Iowa, a 10 hour trip. Motel prices in Sioux City were high. I found  hotel next to Conference Center downtown for $100, $50 cheaper than any of the major chains. Big mistake.  Back in the day it had been a classy place, the day being 1969.  The lobby was okay but the room was horrendous: dirty carpet, paint peeling on walls, musty smell.  We were up and on the road by seven.  On Saturday we drove down I-29 to Abilene,KS, to see the Eisenhower stuff and then to Oklahoma City to see the federal building blown up by Timothy McVeigh.  Found a motel in Purcell, south of the city. We will try to be in Dallas by ten tomorrow.

 Late this afternoon we stopped in Oklahoma City to visit the Oklahoma bombing memorial  earlier when we were driving down I-35, we drove past the spot where Timothy McVeigh was arrested as he fled north.  I was teaching in Upham on April 19, 1995, when the bombing of the federal building occurred.  The teachers and high school students gathered in the science room to watch as events unfolded.  Like most Americans at the time I assumed the bomber was a Muslim.  I was shocked to learn it was a home grown right wing terrorist.  We arrived too late to go into the museum.  We’ll catch that on the way home.  We walked through the grounds.  This was a sacred place, one of those places like the Vietnam Wall in D. C. Where you walk slowly and keep your voice down. The grassy expanse south of the reflection pool is the footprint of the federal building. There is a chair with a name on it for every one of the people killed, 168 of them.  The ...

Statue of Ike.  He was in the army for 32 years and never spent one day under fire in combat.  The closest he came was when he stood with MacArthur when the army rousted the Bonus Marchers out of D.C. in 1932. The building where Ike and Mamie are buried.                          Ike’s boyhood home.   I have been collecting President’s graves for many years now. JFK was my first; Labor Day Weekend 1966.  At the start of this trip to Texas, I had nine to go. I have a chance to get three on this trip, the first being Eisenhower, who is buried in a building on the grounds of his library and museum in Abilene, KS. The buildings opened up after being closed for the virus for over a year. I was in luck. The just d few days before our trip, they closed them again. So all Ruth and I got to do was walk around the grounds and take pictures of the monuments to Ike and the buildings. I’m going to count it....