Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

 The last stop on our trip home was at the President Harry S. Truman home in Independence Missouri. I am not fond of too many Democrat presidents in American history but Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman and John Kennedy are my favorites. I have mixed emotions about Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt but these are my top five Democrat presidents. I like Truman because he was just a decent person and like myself came from common stock. He was the inspiration for the title of my blog. Reflections Of An Uncommon Common man. Truman was truly an uncommon common man who rose to be the most powerful person in the world as president of the United States. Unlike most modern Democrat leaders today, he knew hard work, and had experience running a business. Truman only had a high school education but he could hold his own with any elitist history professor in the country. Many of his political beliefs were flawed but he meant well I believe.   He avoided personal and political corrup...

 Our next stop in Gothenburg Nebraska was at an actual Pony Express station. The Pony Express was begun on April 3, 1860 by three investors and ended on October 26, 1861 after the company went bankrupt. The advent of the telegraph in October 1861 rendered the Pony Express obsolete. California had experienced a population boom after the Gold Rush in 1849 and it took mail a long time to reach the west coast from the east coast. The Pony Express made it possible for a letter to reach California in ten days as opposed to months. The starting point was the Pony Express headquarters in St. Joseph Missouri where we spent our last night on the road returning from Yellowstone. A Pony Express route roughly followed the old route of the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail. It crossed from Missouri into Nebraska across, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and ended at Sacramento California.   A Pony Express station  was placed every ten miles. These were called swing stations and the rider would mou...

 When we left Yellowstone on our long trip home we were in no big rush so we stopped at some sights along the way. Our first stop was the home of William Frederick ( Buffalo Bill) Cody in Nebraska. His home was built in 1886 and named Scout's Rest. It was built in order to provide him with a place to rest after his famous Wild West shows that toured the country. The house was beautiful and had a uniquely Victorian look about it.   

 I have always respected Ken Burns for making quality historical documentaries. So when someone with the historical expertise of a Ken Burns says something that is incredibly stupid what audience is he trying to reach? He can't be directing his comments at anyone with a real knowledge of history. He must be hoping to reach those college students who can't even tell you who America fought in WW2 or who fought in the Civil War. On CNN's “New Day”co- host John Berman asked Burns, who was on the show to discuss his new Holocaust documentary, if DeSantis’s action was reminiscent to Nazism. Burns replied “It’s the abstraction of human life, if you can use a human life, that is as valuable as yours or mine … and put it in the position of becoming a political pawn in someone’s authoritarian game, this is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. What’s so disturbing about DeSantis is to use human beings, to weaponize human beings for a political purpose,” So when one of these uni...

An old geezer at a famous geyser   On the afternoon of Friday, July 15, 2022 we all piled into three very crowded cars and drove over to to the house we were booked to stay in for the next three days just over the Idaho state line near the town of West Yellowstone Montana. We were crowded because it was going to cost my daughter Misty and my daughter-in-law Carrie a ridiculous amount of money to rent a car after they arrived in Keystone South Dakota. Somehow we managed to cram 13 people into three cars until we all went our separate ways for the trip back home. When we left the Little Big Horn battlefield it was 103 degrees but when we reached our destination in Idaho it was only 53 degrees. This was the difference in altitude. Little Big Horn battlefield is 3,159 feet but our house in Idaho was almost 7,000 feet above sea level. We passed through some thunderstorms and when we arrived I thought it had snowed because the front steps were covered with ice, which turned out to be hai...