Brown Mansion

Monday we took in a couple of the local attractions since we had the day off. We went to take a tour of the Brown mansion, located just a couple miles from us and it sits just on the outskirts of Coffeyville. Here is a picture of the exterior. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside.

What a beautiful house this is ! We got to see every room in the house, starting in the basement. The basement is huge, with a tool room, big laundry area, walk-in cooler (overhead area held blocks of ice to keep it cold), butler bedroom and his own bathroom, potting room, wine making and storage room (Vicki would love this), hand operated elevator and a bowling alley. Can you believe it ? And the whole thing had concrete floors and walls and was absolutely dry. It was amazing.
Mr. Brown was the first oil and gas man in the area and that is where his wealth came from. He also got into lumbering and all the wood in the house was hand picked by him. He was a very tall man...6'3" and his wife was 4'8"....her original wedding dress was still in the bedroom and her tiny little shoes. They had 5 children, one girl the rest boys...but none of the boys survived. The daughter had one child...a boy and it too also died....so there are no descendants to this family remaining. The top floor of the house had a ballroom, with two "fainting" rooms...where the women in their ballgowns with the tight corsets could go and lay down and one of the maids would fan them....How nice !
The house had a music room, parlor, living room, kitchen with pantry, solarium, a skylight made from the bottoms of Coke bottles (he was building "green" even back then) laundry chute that sent clothes to the basement from the other floors, many bedrooms (the guest bedroom was used by President Taft when he came to visit - he was a close friend of the Browns)and several bathrooms. It is a beautiful house...several Tiffany lamps and glass work and one of the original light bulbs invented by Edison. It is still going strong and has outlasted all the other bulbs around it !!
When we asked the tour guide about the extent of their wealth, she said that he brought in $5000/day from the oil and gas business and from the bath house (he had a 15 room bath house in town where people could go and soak in sulfur water as a health thing) he brought in $3000/day..Wow, that's alot of money !! The house was started in 1898 and completed in 1906. In the 30's, they returned to the house as they were getting old and grew ill. The daughter returned to take care of them. Mr and Mrs Brown passed away, two months apart...The daughter later went into a nursing facility and left the house to the historical society.
We would encourage anyone thinking of seeing it to take the tour. We bought a combination ticket (good for Brown Mansion and the Dalton Museum) for $7.50.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes.....

The town of Coffeyville has been through some horrible devastation with the flood of 2007. We've seen signs like these which are reminders of what happened.



I did a search to see if there are pictures of what the area looked like during the flood and here's a great site with pictures....pretty horrifying to see the damage. As you look at them, keep in mind we are on 8th street...on the edge of town and we are staying in Walter Johnson park...There are several of the park and our area here.

http://picasaweb.google.com/kstatealec/CoffeyvilleFlood2007#

Here is the picture of the baseball field near where our rig is....

Now there are alot of concrete slabs with no buildings on them and alot of sidewalks that lead to nowhere.....



They are fighting back and there is new construction going on. Still many closed up businesses but they are making progress. Here is a look at downtown...small but cute

Little House on the Prairie

I guess I didn't realize that the TV show, Little House on the Prairie is based on an the actual accounts of the Ingalls family in the mid west, as written by Laura Ingalls. We visited the site, outside of Independence, KS, where area folks have recreated the log cabin that the Ingalls family had. no loft area, like on the TV show where the kids sleep. Just a small bed in the corner, near the fireplace.







Next door to the "little house" was the post office, from Wayside and the one room school house, that had been located in Sunnyside. The post office had actually been in use up until 1977, until that location was closed. Here are pics of the school house, inside and out. Click on the last picture to read, in greater detail, the salaries of teachers back then. Great information on what school life was like for school children in Kansas in the early days.

History Recreated....

On Saturday, we went downtown for Dalton Days…..each year they recreate the day that the Dalton gang rode into town with the intention of robbing the two banks in town. This picture kind of sums up what happened on that day…. (click on the picture to make it bigger so you can read writing)




It was a fierce gun battle, which was really loud (was nice that they handed out ear plugs beforehand) and a lot of shooting…..





At the end the “widows or mother” of each of the fallen Coffeyville citizens told about their man…age, occupation and who they left behind and how they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Watching it all unfold, it made me think how weird it was to see men just walking around carrying firearms in the Old West. So different from today. In the alley where it all actually took place, they have outlines painted on the road where the bodies laid and here is a picture of one of the original bullet holes left behind from the gun battle.



After the re-enactment, we went home to get ready for work. It worked out well that we were able to take in Dalton days before leaving for work. We only worked 5 - 9 p.m.and now we have Sunday - Tuesday off.

We've landed in Kansas....

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks but the dust has settled and we are in our new location for the next couple of months. Left Virginia on Friday, the 19th and after 25 hours of driving, on Sunday afternoon we pulled into the campground in Coffeyville, Kansas. We are staying at the Walter Johnson park, here in the outskirts of Coffeyville. Very cute town...more services here than what we expected. We are in a back overflow lot with a few other rigs (more will be arriving over the next few weeks). We like it cause it's quiet and not so congested. I'll post some pictures of our site and the campground in the near future.



Sophisticated payment system for paying for your site.....If you arrive within one week of your start date with Amazon, you don't have to pay for any extra days.


First sunset, as seen from our rig....

Our original start date was to have been October 5th but our neighbors told us that another couple, who was supposed to start on Wednesday, had pulled out the day before we arrived. So, on Monday, when we went to Express Employment's office to do our paperwork, we asked if it was possible for us to start early. They checked and said that we'd start on Wednesday. This week is "hardening week" which means we only work 5 hour shifts. A time to get your body adjusted to long days on your feet and the aches and pains of lifting, bending, etc. Linda and I are in the "picking" dept. and we love it !! Once you're trained, you get to work on your own, pulling items from the huge warehouse, put them in totes and put the finished totes on a conveyor. We will be working a Wednesday - Saturday shift, from 5 p.m. - 3:30 a.m. So far, like I said before, we've only been working 5 hour shifts, finishing up at 10 p.m. The time goes by very quickly when you are working. I love seeing all the items that they sell. For our area, there is ALOT of walking...they told us we'd walk 10-15 miles each night. Our trainer walked over 13 miles the night before she started working with our group. The place is HUGE and they carry everything imaginable. Alot of the items I picked last night were CD's, books or movies. Nice to see that there is still a strong interest in the older movies. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, etc. but the most popular item that I picked last night had to be the Sex and the City DVD.......picked many of them for orders.
We have tonight off due to some maintenance they need to do at the factory so we have a long weekend. I will try and get some pictures this weekend and post them for you to see.

Here Comes Hanna.....

Am sitting at a Panera restaurant, posting this, as we got evacuated from the campground this afternoon. We've been staying at the Newport News campground all week and have really loved it. Ranger came around while I was up at the office doing laundry and said we needed to be out by 6:00 p.m. Luckily we had already hooked the truck up to the rig in case this same scenario would happen tomorrow while Linda is at work and I'd need to move on my own....just came a day early.
Within an hour we had everything loaded, tanks dumped and were headed down the road. We need to stick close by as Linda is supposed to work Saturday and Sunday at Busch Gardens (although a friend of mine called me and said that they will be closed tomorrow due to the storm).
We have parked in a plaza parking lot and will stay there tonight unless we get the dreaded knock on the door, from a security guard, in the middle of the night. If that happens we'll move over to the Wal-Mart nearby. That area was really busy when we arrived here earlier (couldn't be that "run out for the much needed milk and bread thing, could it ?"). The winds have intensified a bit with this storm and they are saying that winds will be 65 - 80 m.p.h. Glad our rig is really heavy !! Might be alot of rock and rolling going on tonight. So far it's only starting to rain and that comes in waves....
Just wanted to give folks an update since we've been without internet all week. We'll let you know what it was like to weather a tropical storm, in an RV, once I get access again. Till then we'll be playing lots of Skippo.

Packing up to go....

Today is Linda's last day in the office here at the campground. I will continue to clean the pool through the weekend but on Monday (Sept 1) we will be leaving. It took us about two days to figure out what our next month was going to consist of since there are so many variables to take care of (dr. appts, last days of work at Busch Garden, wedding in NJ,etc.) After sifting through all the dates, we came up with a departure date of Sept. 8...last day of work at campground of Sept. 7. Upon telling the mgmt here, they proceed to tell Linda that her last day will be Friday and if we stay past Sept 1 we will need to pay site rent. Back to the drawing board....
So, after scrambling to make arrangements at another campground, here's the plan:

* Leaving here Monday Sept 1 (once Linda gets out of work) and moving to campground in Newport News. Will be there till Sept. 8. WILL NOT have internet so this may be last update for a little while.
* Sept 8 will be checking into campground in Pomona, NJ for Linda's niece's wedding. Will stay until at least Monday, the 15th. May possibly stay till the 18th.
* Return to VA for doctor appts on Sept 19.

Will update more once we firm up our travel plans.

National Conventions.......

History was made tonight with the nomination of an African American man for the highest office in the United States ! Linda and I watched the process on CNN and it was a very moving event and one that many people did not feel would come in our lifetime. When you think about how far we've come in the last 50 years....from the back of the bus to the possibility of an African American man serving in the Oval Office. Wow !!
Linda and I have watched the convention proceedings this year but typically I don't like to watch the conventions. Convention time is a reminder to me of a dark time in my life.
In June of 1972, my grandfather went to the hospital to have an operation for a hernia that he had lived with most of this life. He had put it off because he did not like hospitals and so he had suffered for many years with it. Finally he decided to have it taken care of. He had the surgery and was recovering from it but died when a blood clot dislodged and moved to his heart, killing him. I was 12 and can still remember the disbelief my grandmother, mother and I felt when we arrived at the hospital and were given the news.
My grandmother had a very hard time with his death and my mother told me that I needed to go and stay with my grandmother for the summer. My grandparents farm was close to my house.....just a few miles away. But it might as well have been hours away, as I felt very isolated there....staying day after day when I wanted to be home. My grandparents slept in separate twin beds within one big bedroom and I slept in my grandfather's bed each night. My grandmother would cry herself to sleep most nights; grief stricken by the loss of my grandfather. My grandparents were a team, loving spouses and a dynamic couple who worked hard on the farm. His sudden death was almost more than she could bear.
I remember enduring the 1972 conventions that long, hard summer. As a twelve year old, it wasn't my choice to watch the electoral process unfold. When you live in a rural area, as we did, you got very limited TV reception. Such was the case at my grandparents farm. They got one station and lo and behold, it was covering the conventions. How lucky for me.....I would spend evenings watching TV to pass the time, until I eventually had to go to bed. George McGovern and Richard Nixon....we know how that all turned out. I haven't been a fan of conventions since then.....until NOW.
I think the shadow has been lifted on my opinion of conventions. At least I have a sense of hope.....we'll see what happens over the course of the next 69 or so days. Will we emerge from the darkness that has overtaken our country or will we fall deeper into the shadows ? It's up to us to make that determination.

By the light of the silvery moon....

Last night I had a dose of insomnia. Woke at 12:47 with "busy brain", as Linda and I like to call it. Went out on the couch and laid there for an hour, tossing and turning and then went back to bed. After laying there for a few minutes...wide awake, with no sleepiness in sight, I decided that I might as well get up and go clean the pool. If I continued to lay there, tossing and turning...then finally fall asleep and the alarm goes off at 6:00, I'll be a zombie for my drive down to see Becky. So I got up, dressed, grabbed the pool key and off I went.
The campground looks a lot different at 2:15 a.m. then it does in the daylight. And the pool looks even weirder. There are a couple of lights on surrounding buildings and two underwater lights in the pool itself so there are lots of shadows that are cast.The sky was full of stars and there was a half moon; very pretty and comfortably cool.
The water was very clear and not dirty at all so it only took me an hour to finish up everything. No frogs to rescue from the skimmer baskets (or the pool itself)so nothing out of the ordinary to take extra time.
I like working when it's quiet...no distractions....no one looking over my shoulder. Just get in there and get the job done.As I pushed the long pole through the water, with the vacuum attached on the end, weird shadows were playing off the edge of the pool on my side and the opposite side of the pool. Kind of creepy !
When I finished, I locked the pool up and walked back to the rig. The exercise of cleaning the pool was just what I needed. I crawled into bed, curled up with my pillow and slept till 6 (when I heard Linda getting up for work), then resumed sleep till 8:30.
Getting ready to leave now to go visit my daughter, who has gone to Cape Charles with a friend for the weekend. It is supposed to take me about an hour, forty minutes to get there but I have to cross the Chesapeake bridge, which I'm not looking forward to. 17 miles of bridge over open water !! Eeekkk !!!! One of the very few things I really have a fear of. But with the thoughts of seeing my daughter on the other side....I can do this !

Relaxing Morning

What a perfect morning ! Temp is in the 70's....nice breeze blowing...it's not quite 8:30 and no one is moving around much in the campground. All you hear are the birds chirping and the faint sounds of morning rush hour starting on nearby I-64. The dogs are chillin' outside with me (see Boomer there on the patio). Schroeder is laying next to me at the back of the patio. They are taking in all the sounds and smells of being outdoors. I don't go in till noon today which is a shift I don't think I've ever had before. Still needed to get up at 6 to clean the pool but now I have time to relax and enjoy the morning. Just wanted to share the view with you all....