KS Day 2 - Dwight, Dorothy, and Drinks Oh My!
Today I branched out a little bit and went exploring outside of Wichita. To fuel up for the day’s journey, I went to a super hip little craft coffee shop called Espresso to Go Go. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted by a glittering disco ball and a super friendly barista who told me a one of the longest most surprising misdirects of a joke that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Norm Macdonald Conan interview. I was thrilled even before I got my coffee, so when it turned out to be pretty fantastic that was just icing on top.
My major stops today were dedicated to two of the most famous Kansans in history. On the less fictional side of things, I began with a trip to Abilene, KS to see the boyhood home and Presidential Library of our 34th president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. While he went on to become a 5 Star General and then the leader of the free world, Old Ike had truly humble beginnings. Before Dwight was born, his father’s general store failed under national economic stress and at the time the Eisenhower’s moved into their Abilene home they had just $24 to their names. Mr. Eisenhower started working on railroads and at a creamery and was able to provide a modest lower to middle class existence for his young family, making Ike a classic rags to riches story that is so intertwined with the mythology of America. Looking at the Eisenhower home, it’s really pretty but when you see the size of it, it’s incredible to think that a family raised 7 (!) boys there.
I took a short tour of the Eisenhower home, which was almost entirely still furnished with pieces that had belonged to Dwight’s mother, Ida. Ida had been a devout Mennonite and later a Jehovah’s Witness, and she favored simple functional furniture, even sewing and making things herself whenever possible. To her, luxuries were a distraction away from God. While the house was far from extravagant, it was cute in a Leave It To Beaver sort of way.
From the tour, two stories about young Dwight stood out as particularly surprising and charming. The first story was about how Ike didn’t let a football injury stop him. When he could no longer play the game he loved, he didn’t say goodbye completely instead becoming a cheerleader so he could still be a part of things which was very sweet but not exactly the image he would later go on to cultivate as a 5-star general. Interestingly while I was double checking that fact, I found out that Ike is one of four presidents to have been cheerleaders with the other 3 being: Reagan, FDR and George W. Bush. The other story about his young life that I felt was highly indicative of his character was that when he and his older brother Edgar wanted to go to college they couldn’t afford to both go so they made a pact to take alternating years with one brother going to school for a year while the other worked to help put them through with a switch off at the end of the year. Edgar took college first, while Dwight worked at a local creamery. At the end of the year, Edgar asked if he could go for one more year because he had some momentum (he would go on to become a lawyer) and rather than be upset Dwight was completely okay with it, which I think says a lot about the kind of guy he could be. Interestingly a big reason, he decided on applying to Military academies in the first place was that they required no tuition so he’d be able to go without taking Edgar’s chance to have an education as well.
My favorite thing to see around the house were all the old photographs of the Eisenhower boys and their mama. Ida didn’t whole heartedly approve of Dwight’s military service, but she did save every photo and letter he sent home from his international travels which was pretty sweet.
The most unusual part of the home was a little bull’s horn next to the door of the kitchen where Dwight’s Dad would hang his hat when he came home from work. I would never have guessed the horn’s function without the tour guide explaining it, so for me it was just a fun bit of surrealism in the otherwise very normal home.
Besides the boyhood home and the presidential library, the Eisenhower campus also had a small but sleekly designed chapel called the Place of Meditation, which added some dynamic modernist architectural flairs to the otherwise idyllic landscape.
Inside the chapel, there was beautiful stained glass, inspirational Ike quotes carved into a smooth marble pulpit, and naturally the interned remains of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower and their eldest son Doud which wasn’t creepy at all. Once you get over the morbidness of being so close to a dead president, it really is an incredibly peaceful and well designed little church. My favorite part was an excerpt from Eisenhower’s famous Chance for Peace speech. I’d never heard the speech before, but it positively blew me away to hear a conservative President with such a storied military career make such an eloquent and lovely plea against the expansion of the military industrial complex. It’s really fantastic so I’ve reprinted it in its entirety below:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron”
After taking a moment for peaceful contemplation, it was time to move to the Presidential Library. I’ve loved all the presidential libraries I’ve visited thus far (and I was a little bit spoiled growing up so close to JFK’s), but Ike’s marked the first time I would be visiting the library of a Republican president, which while I’m certainly not immune to a literal liberal bias has really been more a quirk of geography than an intentional choice but I was happy to get to take the chance to be a bit more open minded now, expose myself to some different viewpoints, and learn some new things about history.
The museum began with a timeline of Eisenhower’s life via rings in a beautifully mighty pine tree that used to stand on the Augusta National Golf Club. Apparently, Dwight hit the tree so many times, that he developed a real hatred for it and campaigned multiple times to have it removed. The golf course always denied his requests, but in 2014 the tree was felled by an ice storm so the Library bought this slice of it so Ike could finally have the last laugh (just a little under 50 years after he passed he away). It’s a neat visual and a hilariously petty story.
The first big section of the museum was about Eisenhower’s military career. I was shocked to learn that while he certainly had a prolific and storied career with the army, he never once actually served in an active infantry role. Unlike some presidents who intentionally skirted around being in active combat, this was actually just sort of a fluke as Ike applied for every overseas deployment he could during WWI but kept getting assigned to tactical positions in the states. His leadership skills and tactical abilities had been noticed at West Point, so instead of being sent to fight he was first assigned to a division of engineers and then put in charge of training an entire tank command at Camp Colt in PA. He was noted for having strong organizational skills and being an excellent judge of officer aptitude, but the war ended before his tank corps got to prove their skills in combat. Some of his high-achieving West Point friends like George S. Patton would tease him about “missing” the war, and it was actually a big blow to his confidence and self esteem though as anyone with a knowledge of history can guess things turned out okay for him. A big reason Eisenhower was able to overcome his lack of combat experience was how he spent his time between the world wars. He was discouraged with his ability for advancement in the army, and with the advent of the Great Depression it wasn’t offering the same great career options it once had. Many other people of his comparable experience level jumped ship and took high paying business jobs, but he stayed working in various administrative roles and assisting major generals at home and abroad in the Philippines. Thus he earned a reputation as a good leader, hard-working, and loyal. He still wasn’t on the short list of becoming a general at the start of WWII but he was brought in to develop tactics and strategies for the multiple war fronts, and he further impressed people to the point that when the first choice for command of the North African campaign proved unsuitable Dwight got his big break and a promotion to General. After some initial challenges navigating the internal politics of his French Divisions, Ike proved to have a great aptitude for military strategy and leadership, and he moved from successes in North Africa to Italy to France and finally Germany. He was instrumental in planning D-Day’s storming of Normandy Beach which could so easily have been a suicide mission as opposed to a turning point for the entire war. He also personally visited and comforted infantries with the highest casualty rates, and he had the foresight to send photographers to the liberation of the concentration camps so that nobody years later could say that the atrocities never happened (somehow people still managed to be huge assholes on that front) which to me shows him as a compassionate leader rather than a stone cold tactician.
Most of the items on display were weapons, uniforms, and assorted military memorabilia but only one item stuck out as being truly insane:
After the war, both the Republican and Democratic parties knew that the man who won WWII (he probably wouldn’t accept that title but it was the public perception) was basically guaranteed to win the presidency so they campaigned hard to get him to run. Eisenhower was pretty centrist and apolitical and he really had no interest in being President. He eventually was convinced that due to escalating Cold War conflicts with the Soviet Union, China, and Korea, his military and diplomatic experience would really make him the best man for the job at a time when the country really couldn’t take chances. He decided to run as a Republican, because he disagreed with Truman’s handling of the Korean War and because he did have a conservative bend to budgeting. That being said he was even at the time considered a very Progressive republican wanting to spend less on the military expansion and more on Social Security which caused him to clash frequently with Old Guard Republicans. By today’s standard’s, he’d be much more in line with a more conservative Democrat like the Clintons or Biden, and he’s even quoted as saying “If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it… before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them anymore." Despite some internal conflicts with the two major political parties, Ike had near universal support from the American people winning in a pretty impressive landslide. My favorite bits of campaign memorabilia were photos of Ike wearing novelty glasses that made him look uncannily like Frankenstein and comic books that tied to help the at-the-time oldest presidential candidate seem hip and youthful.
The next big chunk of the Library was dedicated to the Eisenhowers’ time in office, with impressive gifts bestowed upon them by foreign heads of state, awards Mamie and Ike won, and clothes they wore to formal presidential events. Reading about all of Ike’s presidential accomplishments, I was really kind of shocked by how progressive he was. I think because of his age and his very disciplined demeanor, Eisenhower gets kind of forgotten because in his speeches (even his great ones) he’s not particularly dynamic and sort of boring, but it’s shame because he helped balance the federal budget, he created the interstate highway system, he helped push forward school desegregation, he expanded voter rights, he made polio vaccines nationally available, and he founded NASA. It’s also easy to overlook what didn’t happen during his presidency which is an all out nuclear war. All of his advisors wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea, but as a man who had seen the cost of war and those weapons first hand, he was steadfastly against it and pushed for global nuclear disarmament during the entirety of his presidency. The fact that this was such an unpopular decision makes me immensely glad that he was the president at that time as opposed to someone who might have been more easily swayed. He wasn’t perfect by any stretch, with by my personal thinking the biggest demerits against him being his increased use of the CIA to destabilize foreign governments in an effort to contain Communism and his tacit acceptance of Joseph McCarthy’s Lavender Scare which arrested hundreds of people for being homosexual. Those are nothing to scoff at, but I still wish Ike got held up as the ideal Republican president instead of Reagan, because he was Conservative but he also managed to be a million times more effective and much better for people who weren’t already rich. Something he did a lot that I wish all politicians on both sides of the aisle would do was simply that he listened to experts, admitted when he was out of his depth, and tried to do what was right for public even if it didn’t personally align with the goals of his party.
Next up was a small section about his life post presidency (which sadly only lasted 8 years). Because he had several heart attacks, he stayed out of politics for the most part beyond occasionally campaigning for and endorsing other politicians. Instead, he mostly spent time his twilight years in nature following his twin passions of fishing and painting. These hobbies allowed him to relax after a fairly stressful couple decades while still allowing him to keep his body and mind active. He wasn’t Monet or anything, but I was pretty impressed by his ability with oil painting so that was a fun side of the former president to see.
Lastly, throughout the Library there had been highlighted quotes from or about Ike so I just wanted to highlight a couple that particularly stood out to me:
After leaving the Library, there was still one more stop on the campus: The Pylons. This stately monument features five grand obelisks with engraved quotes to represent five moments in Ike’s life on his journey from Birth to the Presidency. There’s just something kind of neat in the way the columns stand out from the bright green trees all around. I was really blessed with a beautiful day for my visit.
The other major museum in Abilene is the Greyhound Hall of Fame where you can learn all about greyhound racing and more importantly play with a bunch of retired racers. Unfortunately I didn’t think I’d have time to see that and my other major destination of the day so I had to give a slight preference to the Wonderful World of Oz. The town of Wamego, about an hour East of Abilene, has, thanks to dedicated local business owners and a very helpful grant from the state government, capitalized on the fact that Dorothy’s Kansas hometown is never named in by making themselves the official Oz capital of the world. I was very excited to see the expansive Oz Museum at the center of town, but I was also incredibly hungry so I made a quick stop at the very on-brand Toto’s Tacoz. While I was mildly skeptical of authentic Mexican food being in the dead center of the Prairie, I was instantly won over by the adorable artwork all over the place.
The restaurant lived up to the artwork with super friendly service and tasty treats. I got the Dorothy Quesadilla with tender pulled chicken liberally doused with cheese and grilled in crispy tortillas. Spice-wise it was very tame, but the sheer quantity of cheese made it hard not to love. Best of all they had homemade desserts, including what might be the single most chocolate-y brownie I’ve ever encountered which was a real delight.
With a full and happy belly, I made my way to the Emerald jewel of the city, the Oz Museum:
The museum brings together over 2000 Oz artifacts from the books, films, stage adaptations, fan art, and from L. Frank Baum’s life, and it’s an incredible testament to the awe and love that the fictional land has inspired in people in the 119 years since the first book was published. To bring some of that trademark Oz magic and whimsy to life, visitors enter through a replica black and white Kansas farmhouse and into the bright colorful Munchkinland. Naturally guests follow a yellow brick road from there into the rest of the museum galleries. It’s truly like walking a mile in Dorothy’s ruby slippers.
The first gallery was all about the man behind the curtain, Lyman Frank Baum. Interestingly Baum never lived in Kansas, spending his childhood in New York and most of his adult life in South Dakota, Chicago, and California. He was a man of many interests with his biggest love really being the theater. He worked as a writer, actor, and costume designer but his only real success was meeting his wife Maud Gage. Together they ran a general store in South Dakota called Baum’s Bazaar, which went out of business because he kept getting too excited to give things away to people for free. Luckily he made some extra money editing and publishing local newspapers, which stoked his love of the written word. After moving to Chicago, he had his first major success in publishing a book of prose versions of Mother Goose rhymes illustrate by the incredible Maxfield Parrish (crazy!). This set him on his way to proving himself as a master of lovable Children’s literature. In 1900, he teamed up with illustrator W. W. Denslow to create the Wonderful World of Oz, his attempt at creating a uniquely American fairytale as well as a way to honor the memory of his sadly departed niece Dorothy Gage, for whom he named his protagonist. He self published the initial run, and it sold out within a month leading to a larger second pressing and distribution and the rest is history.
My favorite facts from his personal life was learning about his long and storied history as women’s rights activist. He was heavily inspired by his mother-in-law, Matilda Gage, a suffragette who wrote books with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (no big deal). Frank wrote essays advocating for suffrage and frequently featured brave, intelligent female characters overcoming obstacles and having adventures, a very uncommon thing in literature from that time. He also published more overtly feminine books under the pen-name Edith Van Dyne. For how much the major film adaptation of his work has been adopted by the queer community, I think it’s fun that he played around so much with his own gender expression (though there is no hard evidence of him being gay himself).
The next chunk of the museum was dedicated to tie-in products with the World of Oz including first editions of some of the many sequels, board games, paintings, and children’s toys. It was so charming seeing how many different artists brought their own unique stamp to Oz but the one common thread was a real sense of bold, colorful child-like wonder. I think that’s a big part of the enduring legacy of the books and especially the film, the way it really makes you see the world with that sense of innocence and awe again.
All that being said, even Oz isn’t above the occasional heaping helping of crass commercialism. This one’s pretty ridiculous but it did make me laugh:
A really sumptuous display came next, showcasing the incredibly dynamic and expressive artwork of Baum’s partner in crime W. W. Denslow. It’s impossible to know how much of the first run’s success would have still occured without his truly fantastic contributions that helped bring the imagined lands to life.
The next section was a special display dedicated to the Munchkins who first make Dorothy feel welcome in Oz. While some language in the archival material may be a bit out of date, it’s a pretty loving tribute to the characters and the actors that brought them to life, even including original costuming that looks so much grander than I remembered.
One particularly dedicated fan, created a breathtaking quilt-work tapestry that leads visitors into the next big chunk of the museum in the most wonderful way.
The next few rooms are the museum’s real showstoppers bringing to life full-scale scenes and set-pieces from the film (including one of the only surviving pieces of Judy Garland’s original dress) with each character getting their own room. It’s campy and silly, but so lovingly detailed it’s hard not to follow that yellow brick road without a big ol’ smile on your face.
The last gallery was dedicated to the continuing legacy of the Land of Oz since Victor Fleming’s 1939 film really cemented it as an American cultural icon. They had memorabilia from the Wiz, the Broadway show Wicked, the much scarier and less wondrous sequel films, the actors’ personal lives, and of course lots of beautiful art from fans the world over. My favorite thing to see was a diorama showing how they filmed the infamous twister scene, and my favorite thing to learn was that Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch actually loved children so much that she went on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood to explain that she was an actress and much nicer in real life because it broke her heart that her most famous role was so scary for so many young ones. I also feel like it’s kind of telling that Mister Rogers might the be the only force of Good strong enough to counter one of film’s most notorious villains.
My other favorite pieces were a dreamlike stained glass rendering of Dorothy floating down to Oz and a particularly insane Rolling Stone cover of the Cast of Seinfeld dressed like the main quartet from the Wizard of Oz. Please note how crazy 90s Julia Louise Dreyfus’ ruby wedges are. I’m just shocked that someone as finicky as Jerry would actually tolerate being painted silver.
And last but not least, as I exited into the gift shop I noticed the most nightmarish sculpture I have ever seen in my entire life. For such a care-free pose, the Tin Man really has nothing but murder in his eyes. I love so much that somebody made this, but I’ll never understand what was going through their head.
My last Oz themed visit before bidding Wamego farewll was the Oz Winery because how could I resist? It was as adorable as expected, but they also had an impressively expansive and tasty selection of wines which I was more than happy to taste. I got a light and refreshing pinot gris called Poppy Fields, a rich robust Cabernet Sauvignon called the Drunken Munchkin (far and away the best name), and decadent dessert port called the Lion’s Courage. I think the port objectively tasted the best, but it was so strong and flavorful that I can really only imagine having one glass, so depending on if you’re a red or a white kind of person one of the other two (or any other the dozen or so other options they have) might make for a better casual drinking experience. I’m a little biased towards the sweeter, fruitier Pinot Gris, but I really don’t think you could go wrong there and they also had a bunch of cheese, crackers, and Oz merchandise so regardless of your feelings about wine it’s really a great place to visit when you’re done museum-ing about.
A short two hour drive later and I made my way back to Wichita. There wasn’t an open mic tonight, but I loved my air bnb because I had a whole little mini apartment to myself in the back of a sweet older woman’s house. It was very cute and located in the cozy residential neighborhood of Riverside right near one of the city’s best public parks: Park Villa. I made the most of my free night and went for a stroll through the park, where I especially loved the whimsical bronze water features and delightfully sarcastic signage.
I also somehow failed to get a picture of the stunning old brick guest facilities they had, but luckily someone on the internet took a photo that is much artier than I would have been able to get anyways:
After my lovely evening stroll, I wound down with some writing and a film called Tragedy Girls, a gory dark comedy that’s like a wonderfully twisted update of Heathers for the social media age. It was both very bleak and very funny, and a nice way to end the day by my admittedly very strange standards.
Favorite Random Sightings: A big sign for “Fried Pies” (who says American cuisine is unhealthy?); Horse Motel (I have no clue)
Regional Observations: I saw a dug up underground bunker just on the side of the high way. I’m not sure what, if anything, that says about Kansas, but I promise you I didn’t see that anywhere else.
Albums Listened To: The Very Best of War by War (A great funk collection from a great funk collective); A Very Special Christmas 3 by Various Artists (just the very silly Oi to the World by No Doubt); Vic & Friends by Vic Ruggiero (a nice collection of collabs in a variety of styles); Vic Rare 45s by Vic Ruggiero (fun random singles)
People’s Favorite Jokes:
My barista’s beautifully long-winded tale (I love all the little personal flourishes she makes in the details):
Mr. Cookie wasn’t feeling well so he called the doctor. The doctor told him to come by at 3, so he got himself ready and showed up right on time. In the waiting room, there’s a kid running around and coughing everywhere, so Mr. Cookie is like “Gross” but keeps to himself and tries to stay out of the cross fire. The nurse takes him in and gives him all the tests. She checks his blood pressure, she checks his eyes and ears, and listens to his heartbeat. Everything appears to be normal, and she says the doctor will be right in. But he doesn’t come right in, and Mr. Cookie waits there for over thirty minutes. He reads an entire issue of Hearth and Home! Finally the doctor comes in and says, “Mr. Cookie, what seems to be the matter?” to which Mr. Cookie says, “I feel crummy”
Songs of the Day:
So much energy
Incredibly goofy
fun jazzy duet in Brazil
Vic in Punk mode