Posts Tagged With: American Tractor Museum

St.Louis Missouri

Monday, January 8, we crossed both the Mississippi and Ohio rivers at Cairo, IL. The rivers are large here with monumental bridges and with barge traffic still functioning on the rivers below. Our destination is a NPS site home to two rivers.

Ozark National Scenic Riverways in southern Missouri protects two unspoiled rivers, the Current and Jacks Fork, in the Ozark mountains and forests. (Before we got here, I thought there must be some river named Ozark River.) This site was the first National Park unit to protect a river system in its wild, undammed state. Congress established this in 1964, before the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Karst topography is prevalent here, leading to caves, springs, underground rivers, etc. The largest spring, Big Spring, pumps out an average of 286,000,000 gallons per day.

This area is heavy on gentle recreation, fishing, camping, hiking, canoeing, etc. Since we visited in January, park usage was light. The fact that rain and snow showers were coming later this afternoon probably played a role in keeping people home. I know the weather impacted our decision to only visit a portion of the park.

This was really our only activity of the day, besides driving. We had a late lunch/dinner and made it back to the hotel before the weather was too bad.

Today, Tuesday was more active. Our first stop was the American Tractor Museum in Perryville MO. What started as a hobby has grown to a museum with almost 150 full size tractors and another 100 toy, riding tractors. In fact, when we visited today, contractors were working to double the exhibition space since they only have space to display half of the collection.

Staff were happy to show us around and answer questions. All of the tractors are in working condition and have been meticulously restored. There are numerous rare tractors and a handful that are over 100 years old.

Leaving Perryville, population just under 9,000, we headed up to St.Louis, metro population of 2,800,000. Destination, another quirky museum, the World Chess Hall of Fame. Now Chris does not play chess and my skills are so rudimentary I don’t admit I ever played. But we managed to attend an hour long guided tour, only held once or twice a month. Two topics were covered, “Where Music Meets Chess” and “T.S. Elliot, a Game of Chess”. About 30 people were in attendance. For each exhibit, a fancy printed booklet had been produced.

The music portion showcased musicians who played chess, chess masters who play music, chess moves and designs in music, etc. In a modern example, the 2015 Super Bowl half time show featured Katy Perry with her dancers dressed as chess pieces performing on a huge chess board.

The renowned poet and playwright T. S. Eliot was born in St. Louis and lived here for 17 years. The exhibit focused primarily on his well known work, “The Waste Land”. The chess references in that poem are both overt and subtle.

Leaving this small museum, we went to the Saint Louis Art Museum. I had a specific purpose, a bit lengthy to elaborate on here. In essence, the Saint Louis Art Museum is the only repository of a panorama of the Mississippi River. This is a 7.5 foot by 348 foot painting of the Mississippi River which they recently restored (in a process visible to visitors to the museum) and had it on display. I talk about it during my volunteer time with the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. I wanted a few photos to help people understand its immense size, range of topics, and uniqueness.

The only problem, it is no longer on display but is in storage! Chris and I spent half an hour talking with museum staff about the panorama, its value to me, and how to convince the museum to display it again. We will pursue a few angles but I would guess it will be in storage for the rest of my lifetime.

After the museum we checked in to the hotel and had dinner at an Italian restaurant on “The Hill”, the Italian section of St. Louis.

Ed and Chris