Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
President
Eisenhower, Wild Bill Hickok, a Little Girl, and Some Bees
Corn. Lots of corn in Kansas. Kansas bills itself as The Sunflower State,
but truly there is much more corn, corn for humans and for animals, and for
clotting the innards of our cars and other machinery. Cornyhol, or whatever it’s called, is about
as useful in a gas tank as a sandwich. Not
so long ago, adulterating gasoline was a crime; now it is mandatory. Corn is food, and corn from Kansas helps feed
the world. Cars don’t much like it,
though.
Abilene
is famous as one of the Old West shoot-‘em-up towns and as the boyhood home of
President Eisenhower. Ike’s mother died
shortly after World War II, and the house was immediately taken over by a
foundation. Nothing about it is a
reconstruction; it is as it was in 1947 and much as it was a century ago. The docent on the occasion of our little
group’s visit was a cranky old man with that flat, annoying Midwestern voice
one associates with cranky old people from Iowa and Illinois, and he and
another cranky old man with a flat, annoying Midwestern voice disagreed with
each other and got into a flat, annoying Midwestern voiced so-there match,
which was an entertaining conclusion to our tour of the Eisenhower home.
The
second flat, annoying Midwestern voice belonged to the owner of a Studebaker
Avanti, one of the most elegant cars ever made, and he was happy to show it off
to Texans. Yes, it bore Illinois plates.
President
Eisenhower’s home, museum, library, fake chapel (much confusion about what Ike
believed in matters spiritual), and gift shop occupy beautiful grounds in what
used to be a residential neighborhood.
One wonders what authority urged or required everyone else to move in
order for their homes to be demolished and replaced with the complex. The concept of people being forced to move
from their homes so that a monument to freedom could be built would be ironic.
The
Eisenhower museum features an excellent collection of exhibits from the early
19th century until the death of Ike in 1969. The World War II displays by themselves would
make a stand-alone museum for the interested amateur and for the professional
historian. All sort of objets d’morte have found their way to
the plains: a Norden bombsight, an Enigma machine, the uniform of a soldier
from Toronto, maps, charts, models, firearms, Ike’s Army Cadillac, a Jeep with
the hog-catcher up front, an armored car, personal items that soldiers carried,
some personalized writing-paper that Hitler doesn’t need any more, and on and
on. The exhibits feature Canadian,
English, French, German, and Russian gear, and memorabilia from the home front.
There
are numerous photographs and paintings, and four statues: one each of a
British, an American, a Russian, and a German soldier, not in heroic poses but
as weary 19-year-olds during a pause in the fighting: the Tommy, in desert kit, drinks from his
canteen while keeping his Number 1, Mark III Lee-Enfield ready. A close inspection of the rifle reveals that
it is a real Lee-Enfield, covered with thick white paint. You don’t suppose the curators also mummified
a real Tommy, do you?
The
Russian soldier, glorious in his Hercule Poirot-ish moustaches and wearing something
like a carpet on his head, gazes searchingly into the distance, perhaps
thinking about Father Zossima in The
Brothers Karamazov.
The
American soldier drinks from his canteen cup (Betty Grable for him), while the
German soldier smokes a cigarette and sneers at the other fellows.
The
1950s exhibits, too, would make a museum in themselves: television sets and
Mixmasters in pastel colors, a living room featuring the subdued colors,
horizontal stone facings, and modern (for the time) furniture and lighting and
bric-a-brac, and kinescopes of The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Howdy Doody, and
Lucy flickering on the television in the corner.
There
are grimmer sets and models: a fallout shelter and guided missiles, and an old
Constellation airliner. Eisenhower was
the first president to be lavished with his own airplane for unnecessary
look-at-me-and-the-stuff-I-got travels and his own helicopter for trips to the
golf course, and these extravagances, more appropriate for a raja or an oil
sheik than for an American, set an unfortunate example for subsequent leaders. When we vote ourselves a president who will
sell off these expensive toys and get down to the business of serving the
people, we will know the country has begun to right itself.
President
Eisenhower, his wife Mamie, and a child who died young are entombed in the
not-a-chapel, and the reek of decay reflects poorly on a nation that owes much
to Ike. Even poor Private Eddie Slovik
rests in more dignity than this. In the
gift shop one can buy cute tee-shirts and posters and made-in-China trinkets,
but only a few steps away the stench of the remains of a president fouls the
air.
A
street away from the Eisenhower grounds the old Rock Island railway station
still stands, and fronting it is a bogus “western” street. One building is advertised as “Hickok’s
Cabin,” and the inside is fitted out as a jail.
A charming little girl wearing a Little
House on the Prairie costume and speaking as rapidly as Anne of Green
Gables cautioned me several times that there was a swarm of bees on the back
door and so I should stay away from the bees because bees are good but they
will sting you if you get near them and that’s a really big swarm and it wasn’t
there yesterday but it’s there today and the bees will sting you if you go near
the back door because they’re at the back door so you should stay away from the
back door where the bees are.
And
I did.
And
we left Abilene, which is rather a nice little town, and sped north through the
cornfields.
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