what I did on my summer vacation

The Mr., the stepdaughter, and I took a little vacation during the week of Memorial Day. Originally I had thought this would be a honeymoon, but we have the stepdaughter living with us so we brought her along. It was a good time, and I’m glad she came along.

However, since I was the one plannign the vacation, it was mostly things I wanted to do. Three Presidential Libraries, two Lewis and Clark sites, and five of the Mr’s siblings (he’s one of 10).

Day one: Hoover, in West Branch Iowa. It was my first presidential library, so it’s been about 10 years since I’ve seen it. Hoover was, of course, president during the stock market crash of 1929, but before that he was a successful mining engineer in China, South Africa, Australia, anywhere the British had mining interests. His wife was a sharp one, who learned languages better than he, especially Chinese and Latin. When they were in China, he had a translator who did his best to translate Hoover’s slang to the rest of the miners — but couldn’t translate his most common phrase well, and as a result Hoover became known as “Real Damn” to all of the mining workers in China. Hoover was also instrumental in feeding the poor of Europe during the Great War (WWI). Interestingly, during the Great War, the Germans were definitely the enemy and Congress passed a few resolutions declaring that we in the US wouldn’t eat Hamburgers or Sauerkraut anymore, we would eat Liberty steaks and Liberty cabbage. Frankfurters were hotdogs (that name stuck). Sounds like Freedom Fries.

Next we saw Eisenhower, which I have not seen before. It was way out there in Abilene Kansas, through the plains, but it was totally worth the trip. They had a huge exhibit on World War Two, which the Mr. enjoyed much more than the two females he was with, complete with all kinds of big guns, artilery, and (more interesting) spoils of war primarily from the Nazis. Eisenhower was also the president during the McCarthy era, which just makes me angrier and angrier each time I think about it. There was a nice exhibit also about the prosperity of the 50’s, the explosion of television and labor saving devices and bomb shelters. Oh, and Mamie had a beautiful haircut.

Last on the presidential library list was Truman, which I have also seen before, I guess about six years ago when we visited the Mr’s (then boyfriend) sister Marjorie when we first started dating. It had been the Mr.’s first library with me, and I remember distinctly him thinking we would spend like a half an hour there and it probably wasn’t going to be interesting. We spent three hours, and didn’t see everything, and afterwards he said he’d visit any presidential library with me that I wanted. I think that’s why I married him.

The visits with the family were fun - I had met them all before but didn’t have much time to talk to them at the wedding so it was nice to spend some quality time getting to know them better. The stepdaughter spent two different nights with aunts/cousins on the trip, and the Mr. and I stayed at hotels nearby - and had as much of a honeymoon as I think we’re going to get.

Oh, and we saw two Lewis and Clark sites! When we get old, I told the Mr. that we’re going to have to drive the countryside and visit as many of these as possible. He’s totally ok with that, as long as we can bike along the way.

Posted by on June 9th, 2008 under Uncategorized

2 Responses to “what I did on my summer vacation”

  1. Soy Salvadoreño Says:
    June 10th, 2008 at

    Escribo en español porque mi ingles no es bueno.
    Que divertido viaje visitando bibliotecas. En febrero estuve en EE.UU y conoci solo una biblioteca, fue esta.
    Pregunta off-topic:¿A quien apoyas, a Obama, a Clinton o a McCain?

  2. Skum_King Says:
    August 14th, 2008 at

    My brother appears to have married exactly the right sort of freak. ;)

    The Lewis & Clark thing is a great idea: on one of the ex- & my trips back and forth across the continent we half-unintentionally made our way along a bunch of them, many rather obsure, and several were high points of the trips

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