Abe, Harry, Buddy and Herb Part One

Hello again.  This week we are relaxing at Hurvitz North,  sandwiching a workweek between Saturday evening concerts by Danny's Acapella group, Gimble.  Last Saturday was their spooky Halloween concert, which was terrific and featured not only great singing but some very creative costumes:

Costumes included Danny as Steve from Blue's Clues; Blue; two telletubbies; the royal couple, Justin Bieber, both the good and evil ballet dancers from Black Swan, and the chimmey sweep from Mary Poppins 

And this Saturday is MacFest, where all the  Michigan Acapella groups get to show their stuff.

The great thing about being in Charlevoix this time of year is that one really gets that small town feeling. Halloween was a lot of fun; in the afternoon, the schoolchildren parade downtown and all the merchants give them treats before they board the school bus back to school for the afternoon (I'm sure not a lot of work gets done when they get back!) ; at night we actually had 30 or so kids come by trick or treating (which is about 29 more than we have been getting at our West Bloomfield home in recent years).

Didn't even know that Subway had a Subway guy 

We think Abe Lincoln might be the principal at the elementary school 

Of course, Charlevoix is not a vanilla small town; it has its special charms, even as late as the beginning of November:

It's a very relaxing week; we read, walk, work out, bike, watch movies,  cook, needlepoint, and theoretically, blog, but this is our fifth day here and we haven't yet posted about our latest adventure, which was one of our geeky roadtrips with Bethany. This one had a historical theme, and included Springfield, Illinois, which is where Abe Lincoln practiced law and politics and is also a part of the Route 66 road from Illinois to California; Louisiana, Mo., right on the Mississippi River and 12 miles from Hannibal, Mo., where Sam Clemens grew up and dreamed of being a riverboat pilot; Independence Mo., where Harry Truman lived, Clear Lake, Iowa, where Buddy Holly performed his last concert and died in a plane crash; and unexpectedly, West Branch, Iowa, where, as we are sure you know, Herbert Hoover grew up.

In this post we'll cover Abe, we'll do a separate post on the Mississippi, Harry and Herb, and a separate post on Buddy.

And speaking of small town America, this was really a trip into the Heartland and into true small town America.  We started in Springfield, Illinois, a medium sized town surrounded by farm country. This was a trip with Bethany, so we were careful to find places that she would like; our hotel was a few miles from the attractions (the Lincoln Museum, the Lincoln Library, the Lincoln residence, the Lincoln gift shop, the Lincoln office, the Lincoln hat shop, etc. etc.- it really is Lincoln land) but right down the street from a new park created out of farm land- really a beautiful spot at sunset:

We arrived late Sunday evening, and toured Lincoln Land Monday.  The Lincoln presidential museum is  different from the other presidential museums in that the other ones (there are 13 of them starting with Hoover and going through Bush 43) are Federally operated and maintained; the Lincoln museum was the brainstorm of Springfield to revitalize a dying downtown area and is funded by the State of Illinois.

 It's more glitzy, user friendly, and, how to put it nicely, "dumbed down" than the "real" presidential museums. For example, only at the Lincoln Museum can you take a picture with the whole Lincoln family:

We can't show you a lot of photos of the museum, since they don't allow pictures except in the entry rotunda, but there was a lot of interesting exhibits on Lincoln growing up, and Lincoln practicing law and entering politics, and Lincoln running for and winning the presidency. There was an entire exhibit about Lincoln's cabinet, including a very well done diorama of the cabinet members in a meeting. In the rotunda, though, there are a couple of interesting things:

Grant and Sherman sharing tea

Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas outside the White House

Young Abe outside of his log cabin (which, by the way, included a loft, but still was mighty small for the 7 or 8 people sleeping inside) 

This was our favorite- put in two quarters and a penny, and the machine flattens the penny and puts an image of ......Abe.....on the penny 

We then went to the Lincoln Presidential Library, which is a non-circulating, non-browsing library, so not a lot to see, but we did take the obligatory "Alan in front of a Presidential Library" picture:

We also visited the park across from these structures, where we walked Bethany and picnicked

Not sure what Bethany was doing here 

The building behind the statue is a railway station from the 1890s now restored to its original design

We did lots of other Lincoln stuff too:

Lincoln Law Office 

Office where Lincoln wrote first inaugural address 

Old State Ca;pitol where Lincoln practiced law (and Obama announced his presidency) 

Lincoln Gift Shop with Lincoln Bobblehead (very classy) 

We toured the home that Abe and Mary lived in while in Springfield; the entire couple of blocks has been preserved as it was in the 1850s.  Lincoln was a fairly successful lawyer and his house was actually fairly luxurious for the time:

Abe built an addition on to this home; the original size was about the size of the home two pictures down 

View of street where Lincoln home is located 

Across the street from the Lincoln home 

first living room; there were two connected to each other 

family room; the kids were allowed in here (but not the formal living rooms) 

Lincoln's bedroom; he and Mary had separate rooms; someone on the tour asked if that was because they were having marital difficulties but the tour guide said no; it was a status thing for well off couples to have separate rooms 

view of Mary's room including her own commode 

Mary's bed 

Kitchen where they would prepare food for hundreds of guests at open houses 

After the tour of his house, we went to the Springfield cemetery where Lincoln and Mary and 3 of 4 children are buried (Robert is buried in Arlington). We couldn't get into the Tomb, since it is closed on Mondays after summer but it was still impressive; the largest structure for quite a  distance.

Lincoln's corpse was stolen, not once, but twice, so his actual remains are encased in tons of concrete and buried under the crypt in the tomb that theoretically holds his remains.

We had had plenty of Lincoln, so we turned to Springfield's other claim to fame; Route 66 used to run through Springfield.  All of the brochures suggest going to the "Cozy Dog", which is a holdover from old Route 66 days.  Cozy Dog claims to have invented what we call "corn dogs". We, of course, went there.

This was actually a pretty cool library of philosophy and good literature 

Did we have a cozy dog? Of course not- Diet Pepsi for both of us! 

This guy, on the other hand, was enjoying the native cuisine  The bottle of soda in the foreground is a souvenir we brought home; official Route 66 Lime Soda.

 We then drove on the road that had been Route 66 for a few minutes

As we drove out of Illinois and into Missouri, the sun set; the sunset over the farm country was beautiful; later we found out that the Northern Lights were visible from Southern Illinois that night; we think we saw part of them at sunset

Monday was a great day on this road trip; we may make fun of Lincolnland, but a lot was interesting and historic.  Tuesday was to be even better, as will be described in the next posting!