6-22-2010 0700 Davenport IA. And for those of you who know, one of the Quad Cities (originally Tri Citys of Davenport IA, and Moline plus Rock Island across in Illinois, became the quad cities in the war era, when East Moline became big enough, and includes Bettendorf.) Since there are 5, you might think...but 'quint cities' never caught on....
Moline, of course, is headquarters of the John Deere company...the green tractor guys...how much more Amurican can yu be?
The best story on my quick check of Wikipedia happened in 1856, just after the Rock Island Line built the first bridge across the Mississippi between Rock Island and Davenport. Seems a steamboat tried to bash one of the bridge supports. Industrial sabotage...or just a steamboat captain, used to having his way with sandbars, taking things into his own hands?
The rocks in the river, that prompted the name of the Illinois side city, have been under water for years, due to the installation of locks.
But this is it: today we cross the Mississippi and are truly in the East. Weak tepid sunlight seeping in around the clouds. All day yesterday it was clouds and the increasingly deep green of Eastern America. We are heading out of the praries, and into what used to be the Eastern Forest. I remember reading, somewhere, that it was said a squirrel could travel from Boston to Kentucky without leaving the trees. Well, the praries are still sure here, and very green with planted crops in these first few days of summer.
And its hot and humid. Well, not hot for those who are enjoying Washington DC or for that matter Flagstaff Az, poor people in Flagstaff. I don't feel so sympathetic for those in DC...only little children can claim to any innocence there.
About noon yesterday we stopped for Sala to have something to eat. The Fazoli'sItalian Fast Food she chose was apparently a new nadir of such fare. But Fuji liked the newly rained on lawn full of robins and promise. About 3 we stopped for gas, and Sala was told the next town, Newton, had an antique store in the town center. Sure did; the Jasper County Courthouse in the middle of the full block, surrounded by well tended grass and flowers and a square of mixed for rent, upscaling, and just hanging on stores...including Pappys Antique Mall...in a building where you can still see the marks of the anchors that held the department store name in days of yore.
And Pappys, run by two blue haired ladies, was definitely a positive shopping experience.I scored a $10 shoemakers last, for pounding jewelery metal at a comfortable level for sitting, and Sala managed to strike a mother lode of green glass screw top mason jars. The car is now in a state where there seems to be room for just one more thing, so the jars are now distributed into various nooks and crannies from which they will surely cascade into ruin if we ever have to unpack hurridly. But we survived, and rolled along through the green countryside.
Yes, and it's FIFA World Cup Football time, which is playing on all the TV's of the breakfast rooms of the Inns we stay at. This is one time when the older guys have to listen to the smaller girls to find out what a Yellow Card is. Jimmy Dean has apparently just died, but his legacy of sausage lives on in the upper end of the Inns...the middle range features biscuits and gravy, and at the lower end we have frosted flakes and lumpy orange juice.
Returning to the self help section of this blog, consider the issue of being right and being wrong. Yesterday, after driving through the rolling green corn fields, it became painfully clear that the most erosive part of this eternally occurring stressor is not my being wrong, but my not immediately admitting that I was. We had arrived at Davenport, and suddenly there was a large body of water on the right hand side. We hadn't cross anything big, so it couldnt be the Mississippi, could it? But Sala knew that it was. And yes, it turns out that at Davenport the river meanders enough so much that Illinois is South of Iowa. But as it became clear that it WAS the Mississippi, did I think of saying 'Yes, darling, you are right, and I am wrong'?
Yes, one of the many signs of infirmity is memory loss, so I can expect to continue to be wrong at an ever increasing rate. Seems the only destressing alternative is to really make an effort to admit it when it happens...as soon and as much as possible.
So..today we march on towards Madison, and then, perhaps, the Upper Penninsula.
Aloha
alan
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