Day 24: October 25, 2024
Baseball, Jazz, & Loose Meat
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Breakfast was at the Sadddlerock Cafe where they bake their own bread. That's homemade honey wheat on my plate and it was delicious.
I went straight for the Madonna of the Trail when I arrived yesterday but Council Grove has other major artifacts on display. I photographed the Council Oak, which helped give the town its name, and the Post Office Oak, which helped wagon trains communicate with each other, as I departed. I took the picture of the Guardian of the Grove last night at the same time I photographed the Madonna.
The Battle of Black Jack, which many have called the first real battle of the American Civil War, took place just a few miles from the future route of the National Old Trails Road.
There's a lot more to Kansas than this but there is also a lot of this.
The building housing both the Negro League Baseball Museum and the American Jazz Museum is standing on the corner of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri, and it is just a couple of blocks off of the NOTR. The two museums are separate operations but a ticket to one gets you a discount for the other. I did the baseball side first.

I posted a picture of those autographed balls as my picture-of-the-day on Facebook with the observation that I probably wouldn't know any of the names on them but should probably know them all. Major League Baseball's unofficial but super-solid segregation kept a lot of remarkable players from mainstream attention. The truth is that I really might not know any of the players in the museum beyond Page, Robinson, and Gibson. A Canadian friend commented on that FB post with the information that Canadian musician, Geddy Lee, of the band Rush, collected and donated those baseballs.

Of course, players' names were not the only thing main stream America missed. As a Cincinnatian, I often see reminders that the Reds played Major League Baseball's first night game in 1935. The Kansas City Monarchs did it five years earlier.

I might have recognized more names in the American Jazz Museum and there is much about the music that I like but also a lot that is something of a mystery. That may not be a bad thing.

Besides spotlighting some of the music's stars, the museum offers lots of information and opportunities to listen and learn. And there's neon, too.

In Independence, I stopped at 3 Trails Brewing (Santa Fe, Oregon, California) and booked (via phone) a room for the night before walking across the street to snap a picture of favorite son Harry.
The room I booked was at the Hotel Lexihill in Lexiington, MO. It was a room with a view.
Dinner was at the local Maid-Rite where order-by-voice technology was being used. My meal was delivered promptly with price and parking spot clearly marked. I ate it from my lap, just like Mr. Rite intended, then drove off into the night.
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