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....

I have visited the burial sites of all but eight Presidents: Millard Fillmore,  FranklinPierce, Calvin Coolidge, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.  Most of the graves are rather non-descript, marked by tombstones of various sizes.  Some are buried on the grounds of their plantations or homes.  Others are buried in local cemeteries. A couple are buried inside churches.  Some are buried on the grounds of their museum/libraries.      Of the burial sites I have visited, four stand out for the magnificence of the tombs: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, James Garfield,  and William McKinley. I first visited Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, IL, in 1986.  I have since been back over a dozen times.  The first time, I was by myself.  I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up and tears coming to my eyes, Probably more because of the significance of the man rater than the size a...

     The lady in the seat across the aisle from me from New Orleans to Chicago was African American with gray hair and a voice to soft I couldn't hear what she said half the time.  She was on her way to Chicago to attend some sort of cancer seminar.  She has three sisters, two of who were recovering and one in serious trouble.  Her name was Virginia.      In the club car on the Empire Builder I met Jean.  She was a former lawyer who was traveling on Amtrak with to of her retired friends, on of whom was her college roommate from the sixties.  They had left Chicago on there way to Portland, Oregon to stay with another friend for a few days.  Then it was off to southern California and across to New Orleans and back up to Chicago.  She was not completely retired.  She wrote travel guides, mostly for Europe, particularly Croatia.  I expressed some skeptism as to Croatia as a tourist destination, but Jean assured me i...

Train arrived in Chicago at 9:00 am. I found s Dunk’n Donuts under the El about two blocks east of the Willis Tower, which used to be the Sears Tower. Ruth and I went the top on our honey moon in 1987.  The El is very loud when it goes by overhead. I’m sitting outside at a table next to two huge pumpkins on top of a couple bales. Many people stop by to admire them. One man said, “Nobody’s going to steal them things.”      “Nope,” I said, “not as long as I’m guarding them.”      “Is that why you’re sitting out here?” He asked.      I just smiled. I felt like saying, “Here’s your sign.”  But since it was Chicago, the murder capital of America,  I held my tongue.

     The Battle of New Orleans was fought in late December, 1814 and early January, 1815, culminating in the final battle on January 8.  The Americans, a ragtag bunch, made up of some regulars and some militia, plus volunteer free Blacks, Creoles, Natives, and s few French pirates We’re led byAndrew Jackson.      The British had more soldiers and they were better armed and better trained. However when the final battle was over the British had suffered 2000 casualties and the Americans less than fifty. It was one of the most lopsided battles in the history of warfare. Ironically the battle was fought after the Treaty if Ghent had ended the War of 1812.  The Americans victory ensured that the British would honor the terms.   It also propelled Andrew Jackson into the awhite house.      The pictures above were taken at the battlefield. A tell oblisk monument marks the center of the battlefield. The other picture is if the rai...

     I had a hard time getting my head around the fact that the Mississippi flows through New Orleans from west to east rather than north to south. The river dominates the city.  It actually winds through the city in a “u” shape.  The right side of the “u” actually flows south to north.  They don’t use the cardinal directions: north south east west. Instead they say up river downriver toward the river and away from the river. They also talk about before aKatrina and after Katrina.   I took a riverboat down riverfive mikes to where the Battle of New Orleans was fought in 1815. I took some pictures along the way including the dukes that are supposed to keep the river under control.

 The first thing I did when I got to New Orleans wise get a day pass for three dollars so I could ride the street cars. I got on the one that took me up north so I could see that memorial for those killed in Hurricane Katrina whose bodies were never identified . I am not sure how many there were probably dozens. The pictures below are of the memorial.  I believe the bodies are buried in the Cripts.

Shortly after I took the pictures of the cotton field I got a cup of coffee and sat down at a table in the club car across from an African American woman who looked to be in her fifties. She turned out to be 68, which I learned later.  Another couple mentioned playing cards and she expressed an interest. The couple left and didn’t come back. He lady, whose name was Marla, had been reading out of her Bible, the book of Isaiah.      She said she would teach me how to play two person solitaire.  I suggested that was an oxymoron. She suggested I was a smart Alec. We played one game, which she won. Then the conversation turned to my asking her about herself. She said she ran a house cleaning business and was busy in her church in Jackson, Mississippi. I told her I was a pastor so we talked church stuff for a while. I asked her about her family.  She is the second youngest of ten children. Her younger brother called while we were talking.      Wh...

We sat at the station in Memphis for about twenty minutes just before sun rise. I looked on the map and saw that the National Cicil Rights Museum was only about three blocks away. In 1968 that building was the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was murdered in April. I was tempted to scoot over there and have a look but didn’t dare chance it an gave the train leave me.     Steve Goodman, in his song “The City of New Orleans,” originally sung by Arlo Guthrie in 1971 and later by Willie Nelson, wrote a line “the graveyards of the rusted automobile.”  I would like to report nothing has changed in five decades.  Many junk yards full of rusted cars can be seen along these tracks.      The picture below is of the sunrise over a cotton field just south of Memphis.  Some cotton fields have been harvested.  I hope to see someone harvesting.

The empire Builder arrived in Chicago almost two hours late which turned out to be a good thing because now I have only two hours to wait at Union Station. It’s okay but not as impressive as Grand Central in New York.       One thing though. If you saw the movie “The Untouchables” with Sean Connery and Kevin Costner, you will remember the scene where Eliot Ness played by Costner was in a shootout on the staircase at Union Station.  This is the staircase where that scene was shot.

Train arrived an hour and a half late.  We left Minot at 11:20.  I was already in a bad mood because the twins lost.  I took some time to solve a puzzle out of Minot Daily News.  The I went to sleep..  But not for long. A man sitting one row ahead an across the aisle started acting up.   I could not tell if he was on his phone or was hearing voices or was engaged in a ranting soliloquy. He was mad at somebody—loud with a great deal of swearing.      Other passengers got scared and fled to the club car.  I stayed for about a half hour. Two conductors came but he just kept on. It was him and a conductor and me. She got on her phone  I heard her say something about police, so I headed for the club car. The train stopped at Lakota. Two sheriffs deputies took him off thre train in hand cuffs. We watched from the club car as they took him away.      Most of the other passengers we’re laughing and making snide remarks abou...