Thread: Ramblings From The USA - 1

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I'm allowed access!
Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!
I tried to log on exactly as I have before; this time 'the machine' relented and recognised me as being me.

Many thanks Roger for being my surrogate...I don't know if this will last; so I may need to use you again, if that's okay with you.

Once again; thanks heaps, and thanks all of you for the kind comments.

Okay...here goes...copy/ paste from word:


Friday 28th August.

After my little hissy-fit of yesterday we got away today at about 8:15, and were walking in to the museum around 9:00…lots more better!
Rick didn’t want to come…that’s alright…do what you like…so we left him to guard the car.
We started at the roof top, someone (I think it was Joe Weimer, toomanytocount,) had told me about this some years ago. Well his time around we made it.
There’s a school bus up there, eleven stories up; and the nose is hanging twelve feet out over the edge of the building.
There was
no
way
in the
world
that I was going to walk out through that bus and peer out the open front door.
Eleven stories? Nah; I’m a devout coward. This is a grand area for kids young and old there are slides and climbs, and all sorts of fun activities…I saw one woman, younger than I, follow her grandchildren on a climb up the inside of a dome twenty-five feet up to the centre of the dome.
I would’ve liked to do that; but my right shoulder and right knee wouldn’t let me now.
Sob.
And the art-work!
Amazing!
Mostly collected rubbish; birds made from trombones, deer from bicycle sprockets and oe spanners, birds from air-horn trumpets, and even a working ferris wheel too!
We spent a good ¾ of an hour there, and loved it.

Back to the ground floor and worked our way up.
What a fun place!
Alongside the serious stuff is a huge amount of whimsical stuff alluding to various theme;, f’rinstance: Kenneth Graham’s Toad of Toad Hall appeared in several places/levels…with a row-boat, a gypsy caravan, and a motor car…poop-poop!
There was a lot about the architecture of the city too, focusing primarily on the partnership of Elmslie & Sullivan, who designed buildings from the ground up, including all details…capitals, finials, decorative griffins, even the down-pipes and door knobs.
Amazing stuff.
This place is a serious museum; but it’s also bloody good fun. We spent better than three hours there, and while I wouldn’t go back to-morrow, in another two/three years…hell yes!

Lunch at a Chinese restaurant at Butler Hill, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, all good. Veges you don’t get (or in minimal quantities,) with a burger,
I thought I’d get me a couple of beers for tonight, so wandered in to Schnucks, to see what was on offer.
I’m not familiar with American beers, there was a fella there stacking shelves, so I asked him what was a good dark beer.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “I’m a wine man myself.”
But we got talking, he told me he’d like to come to NZ, I told him “By all means come! We need the overseas funds!” and he laughed.
He wandered off, I wandered into the chiller and found…Arrogant Bastard!
A beer I’d tried a few years back and really enjoyed…so I bought a half dozen.

Walking across the car park, a car screeched around the corner, a fella jumped out, it was the bloke I’d talked to in Schnucks.
“Hoped I’d catch you,” he said, “we get beers in promos to give away; here, try these,” and he thrust a six pack of various beers into my hands, jumped back in his car, and was gone again, leaving me standing gob-smacked in the middle of the car park trying to stammer ‘Thanks!”
Crikey!
That was good of him!
The average American is a decent, honest, good hearted bloke. And my opinion of him rises every time we come here to his place.

Walked a bit further towards our car, saw a car I didn’t recognise, thought “what on earth is that?”
‘Merkur’, the badge said.
That rang no bells, so googled it.
It’s a Ford Mercury, based on German components, and sold as a Lincoln for the luxury market, manufactured circa ’64 to ‘’69.
I’ve never seen or heard of one before.

Okay…in to the car and keep on truckin’.
All the way to Blytheville.
Where we pulled in to a Super 8 to overnight before heading into Memphis tomorrow.



No edit, no spell check, I was just so surprised to get on to the site I just bunged it in as is.