(My report on three presidential libraries, a special exhibit at one, and a visit to the School Book Depository in Dallas will be in my next posting, after we have visited the George H.W. Bush library in College Station. Thus I drone on here with no reference to the libraries.)
Our visit in St. Louis was all about family but also about media: we watched the Oscars together and here is a surprise: Bill won the contest to pick the winners. By the time the Oscars aired, Bill had seen all but one of the 9 nominated "Best Pictures." We also visited the St.Louis History Museum, which is currently featuring a "250/250" exhibit celebrating the 250 years of the city's existence. Yes, this wonderful city was founded in 1764. I was most interested in the prominence of material about the fur trade and the Chouteau family, who were brilliant in both negotiating with native peoples and with other business interests. One really cool member of this family was Pierre Chouteau, after whom the capital city of South Dakota is named, though it is pronounced "PEER."
I was terribly interested in an entire room devoted to the 1904 World's Fair held in St. Louis. This is a permanent exhibit. Skip these sentences if you have heard this before, but it's why I have a personal interest in this event: My great grandmother Susanna McMurtry Slayton (1867-195?) was born (and thought she would be forever) in central Indiana. But as an adolescent, she met one Robert Slayton, a dashing young man who came to Indiana every year from Prineville, Oregon--might as well have been Mongolia to the Hoosiers--to buy horses. They fell in love, and moved to Prineville, where Susanna bore two daughters, including my grandmother Fern. But when the girls were 2 and 4 years old, Robert died of appendicitis--as people did in those days--and Susanna was left with (as she reported later) "two babies and forty dollars." Instead of returning immediately to Indiana, where she knew she'd live under her parents' thumbs forever, she stayed in Oregon for a few years, and opened a millinery shop. They lived in the back of the store, and, with the help of a Blackfeet woman who looked after the girls (as well as the neighbors who owned a restaurant next door and gave them food), they survived for some years. But return to Indiana they did, on the train, stopping in St. Louis to attend the World's Fair.
The exhibit focuses on the great number of foreign countries represented at the fair--the Phillipines' contingent had 1,000 people living on the grounds for the duration of the fair, making and showing their arts and crafts every day. But, of course, for me the tie-in is always the fact that my grandma was there. And the fact that the ice cream cone was invented on those hallowed grounds. Let us pay homage.
We stopped in Bella Vista, Arkansas, to visit a beloved friend of my mother's, Barbara Cota. Barbara was Mom's first "boss" when she went to work in the admissions office of Sioux Falls College (now the University of Sioux Falls) in 1959, and they were lifelong friends. Now 85, Barbara is one of those people that one always feels about 85% better after visiting, though one doesn't exactly know why. She's lived in that area for a while, but only last June moved into a retirement facility, where we had dinner and chatted for two hours. I made her tell the story (again, so I wouldn't get it wrong on retelling) of her graduating from SFC in 1953 and getting a job teaching in Lyons, South Dakota, about 18 miles from Sioux Falls, school population 60 students. Her salary was $2,900, which was higher than anyone else's, because she did drama and speech. She had no car, so roomed with a "widow lady" during the week, and then paid someone ONE DOLLAR for a weekend ride to Sioux Falls, where she hung out (Baptist Church) with her girlfriends for the weekend.
I interviewed a woman for the CLA newsletter who used the phrase "the personal is political." I didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up. It's attributed loosely to the feminist movement, to no one in particular, but it has to do with the difference between personal experience and political theory. This was in my mind as I had several experiences in the past few days, in which I was at first excited and then frustrated with myself, thinking myself a rube for relating to great art and great events only because they were meaningful to me. Three examples:
- At the Crystal Bridges Art Museum Center in Bentonville, Arkansas (you know, the museum of American Art conceived by an heiress to the Walmart fortune), one of the featured paintings is Mary Cassat's "The Reader." The commentary notes that the idea of women reading in the 19th century was both positive and negative: positive because it indicated they were actually literate and had leisure time, and negative because reading was considered a "frivolous pursuit." Instantly I though of Mom, reading Truman's biography until 9 a.m. and then, still in her robe, declaring herself a "lazy bum."
- I was riveted by the reference at the Clinton Library of his great work in helping negotiate the peace in Northern Ireland...but mostly because we met a couple from Northern Ireland once in Barcelona, who talked endlessly about President Clinton and how much he had helped their country.
- There is currently a special exhibit at the Clinton Library called "Spies, Traitors, and Saboteurs," It was wonderful (more info in my next post). But I had to acknowledge that the highlight for me was the graphic about the anarchists in the early 20th century...mostly because of my favorite novel, "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad.
In Little Rock, I went by myself to the Esse Purse Museum. It's the only one of its kind and features display cases with examples of purses and their contents from each decade beginning in 1900. The written commentary is excellent. In the 1910s, the Suffragists started a "Ban the Bag" campaign to counteract the movement that would make is fashionable and acceptable for women to carry purses. They wanted, instead, to demand that women's garments be created with pockets--which were not a part of women's clothing at the time. But the growing fashion won out! Purses were in forever!!
Hot Springs: our B&B reservation included seating in the "Jockeys' Club" at Oaklawn Horse Racing Track, which had a dress code (men wear coats; absolutely no denim). Actually, it was delightful and I had a great opportunity to watch what my lifestyle might have been like had I been born in a different place, to different parents. Do not go there without a manicure and good jewelry. There was an attendant in the ladies' room, a phenomenon I had not experienced since Charlie's Cafe Exceptionale in Minneapolis, circa 1975.
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