My friends at Country Roads Magazine asked me to write about some of my favorite places discovered as we wander about. Here’s that story.
As chance would have it, our RV park for an overnight stop was just down the road from Mesilla, New Mexico. Once the Confederate capital of the Arizona Territory, today it’s an arts community filled with very cool adobe homes.
Bear with me. I have two stories to tell that will intersect when I’m done.
Part 1: Today we visited Wheatland, President James Buchanan’s home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Some historians believe that Buchanan was our first gay president.
Today we visited Wheatland, President James Buchanan’s home.
There was no mention of that speculation on our home tour but a piece by Katherine Cooney for Time, explores that possibility in detail.
Buchanan was the only president who never married. For many years he shared a home with William Rufus King, an Alabama senator. Their relationship was reportedly so close that Andrew Jackson referred to them as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy”. When King moved to Paris to become the American ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote of his profound loneliness.
Was President Buchanan gay? His fashion forward hairdo might be an indicator. On the other hand he was opposed to dancing and didn’t allow it in the White House—a contraindication.
Part 2: Wheatland was about a half hour drive from our current RV Park in Hershey. Two and a half hours in the other direction, remembrance ceremonies are being held today at the Flight 93 National Memorial. Passengers aboard that flight are believed to have stormed the cockpit when they learned of the other 9/11 attacks, bringing the plane down in a Pennsylvania field, instead of the hijackers’ intended target—the U.S. Capitol.
One of those thought to have fought back against the terrorists was Mark Bingham. Bingham was gay. I feel compelled to point this out, because today contemporary equivalents of “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy” are still with us: “Pansy,” “light in the loafers,” and much worse.
I’ve never understood why pansy is used as a homophobic slur. Sure, it’s flashy, but also remarkably hearty and resilient.
Mark Bingham was a hero—not a pansy.
“Want to walk the dogs with us?” Meredith asked.
We spent Thanksgiving with my daughter in Washington, D.C. She recently bought a house there in a neighborhood on Capitol Hill. Not far from her place is the Congressional Cemetery, where I was a bit surprised to learn, she walks her dog.
An interesting story that. Founded in 1807 the land for this, our first national cemetery, was a part of L’Enfant’s original plans for the city of Washington. Until the mid 1830s practically every congressman who died in Washington was buried there.
But over the years the cemetery went out of favor as a burial site, was almost forgotten, and fell into neglect. By 1997, the Congressional Cemetery had the dubious distinction of being added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the most endangered historic sites.
Flash forward a few more years, and a group of neighbors nearby were having trouble finding a good spot to walk their dogs. The solution would turn out to be a nonprofit organization that now takes excellent care of the cemetery, and allows dog owners to responsibly walk their dogs (under the watchful eye of a docent on duty) in exchange for funding its care.
Meredith and her boyfriend Damon were anxious to take us there. So with the dogs leading the way, we set out.
It’s a beautiful place. And indeed there are well-known members of congress buried there, including TIp O’Neill, and one with a more checkered legacy, Elbridge Gerry. He’s the politician for whom the political tactic we see all too often employed these days—gerrymandering—was named.
John Phillip Sousa is there as well. Along with J. Edgar Hoover. So too, just a few gravesites away is Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s aide, and the man reputed by many to have been Hoover’s lover.
But the real reason Meredith and Damon were so anxious for us to visit it turns out was just a bit further down that same row of graves, on a corner.
There was the tombstone marking the final resting spot of Vietnam veteran Leonard Matlovich. Winner of a purple heart and bronze star, Matlovich was the first to publicly fight back when he was discharged from the military after he confided to his commanding officer that he was gay.
His tombstone reads: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men–and a discharge for loving one.”
Nearby the marker for another grave reads
Warren O’Reilly Ph.D: “During my eventful lifetime the only honest and truthful ending of the Pledge of Allegiance was “…with Liberty and Justice for SOME.”
Elsewhere on the corner the inscription on William Boyce Mueller’s stone reads, “Founder—Forgotten Scouts. Beloved son of Virginia Boyce Lind and grandson of William Dixon Boyce. Founder—Boy Scouts of America.”
It seems that Matlovich’s decision to be buried here convinced many other gay veterans to do the same. There are plans to build a memorial to those here—and all the thousands of others who, since the founding of our country, have served in silence.
But no more.
Thanks Mere and Damon.
SIDENOTE:
We’ve reached the point in our wanderings where things we learn at one stop in our journey have begun to intersect with things we learn at another. Case in point, last year when we visited Valley Forge, we learned that the man recruited by George Washington to train the American revolutionary army, and whose training is widely credited with turning around the course of the war, was most probably gay. Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand Steuben is reported to have arrived in Valley Forge accompanied by his greyhound (which went with him everywhere) and an attractive young male “aide” after leaving Prussia under the cloud of charges that he’d engaged in “improper relationships.”
I loved this bit about him from Wikipedia:
“As he could not speak or write English, Steuben originally wrote the drills in French, the military language of Europe at the time. His secretary, Duponceau, then translated the drills from French into English. Colonel Alexander Hamilton and General Nathanael Greene were of great help in assisting Steuben in drafting a training program for the Army. The Baron’s willingness and ability to work with the men, as well as his use of profanity (in several different languages), made him popular among the soldiers. He occasionally recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his French-speaking aide, to curse at them for him in English.”
I asked my friend and former boss, Country Roads Magazine publisher James Fox-Smith, for a bit of help making a whacky idea for The Fabulous Fifth Wheel come true. His valiant efforts on our behalf seem to have raised an eyebrow or two. http://www.countryroadsmag.com/featured/blogs/editorial-reflections/kudzu-appreciation-society
I’ve never considered myself a beach person. Lying on hot sand, no matter how crystalline white it may be, acquiring the golden glow of future melanoma, hasn’t been appealing since high school. (I still recall the summer in high school when I was briefly unemployed and acquired an actual tan. That was also the year I put “Summer Blond” in my hair to lighten it. And it began falling out. Quite coincidentally I’m sure.)
But now I’ve fallen in love with Cannon Beach on Oregon’s pacific shore. Hard packed sand you can walk for miles in search of starfish. The sand is brown, not the brilliant white we know from the Florida panhandle, but has a surprising range of nuanced color as it interacts with the sun and the sea.
Huge rocks shrouded in mist. Cliff top views. Surfers. Children. Dogs.
Something to awaken every sense.
But the pictures tell the story better than I can.
Just down the road from our current campground is the tiny Iowa farm town of Oxford—population 821. It hasn’t changed much since I was a kid growing up nearby and we’d come to the rodeo held outside town every year.
With one exception— a few years ago a new restaurant popped up in one of the pretty historic brick buildings along the couple of streets that comprise downtown. A restaurant run by a couple flooded out of New Orleans by Katrina.
And so last night we had a big family gathering at Augusta, ten of us in all, gathered around mismatched tables with pretty table clothes, surrounded by walls covered in a mixture of New Orleans mementos and the work of local artists. I had shrimp and a grit cake on the side as good as any I’ve ever had in New Orleans. Rosemary may not be one of the “holy trinity” of Creole spices, but after these shrimp I’m convinced a “holy quad” is in order. Great gumbo too, and red beans that also departed a bit from the way they’re traditionally spiced, but nonetheless delicious.
In a bit of cross-cultural irony, displayed on the wall was a newspaper article reporting that Augusta’s “tenderloin,” as the iconic Midwestern fried pork sandwich is known, had been voted the best in Iowa by the pork producer’s association.
There too, right next to beer taps where it belongs, was one of our old New Orleans neighbor Dr. Bob’s signature “Be Nice or Leave” signs.
My story about the part of this last year’s journey we spent in the Ozarks is in month’s Country Roads Magazine HERE. And here are some additional fave pix that aren’t in the online version:
Every Saturday night in Eureka Springs, the town traffic cop leads the community drum circle.
Rosie was my most favorite of many fave pieces at the Crystal Bridges Museum.
The Walmart museum housed in what was Sam Walton’s first store, has this interesting display of merchandise returned for unusual reasons.
One of the best meals we’ve had on our journey was at a student run restaurant on a mountaintop college campus outside Branson. Everything on this plate was raised on campus.
A personal fave shot of Dave taken at one of Branson’s many cheesy but delightful attractions.
Our bead throwing buddies Johnny and Robert were sporting some spectacular float finery.
This past weekend was all about parades here on our return visit to New Orleans.
I’m not sure why, but it was worth standing in the pouring rain Sunday waiting for the float to pass on which our friends were riding, so that we could be singled out to be thrown those REALLY NICE beads. (I’m special! I’m special!) We so need to feel special.
Yes, I will always treasure my hand-embroidered Princess Leila ornament, caught during a Close Encounter with the Krewe of Chewbacchus Saturday night, one of several new parades to emerge in recent years from our old Marigny-Bywater neighborhood. What could be more fun than a rolling Star Wars convention? (It also brought back memories of an equally fun Star Trek parade earlier in our adventures.)
And then there was the ‘tit Rex parade. Well that’s not really the name anymore. Because now the “e” has been replaced with a schwa.
Thanks to the schwa, this tiny parade continues to roll.
Just in case you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this symbol used to denote the vague multipurpose vowel sound found in words like “fudge,” “the,” and the last syllable of “sofa” —it looks like an upside-down “e.” I Googled how to create the schwa symbol using my laptop and here’s what I found:
Never mind. I’ll just spell it out.
So why you might ask, did they go to the extraordinary typesetting effort to make the substitution? Well who knew that a bunch of artsy hipsters walking through the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood pulling miniature floats behind them would be perceived as a threat by the landed gentry that comprise most of the old-school Krewe of Rex.
To be fair, it was all very genteel. The old Rexters were afraid that if they let one entity use the name unchallenged, there’d be a flood of copycats and they’d lose control of their branding. Sort of like Kleenex I guess. And after a conversation about various options, a solution was chosen.
Schwa to the rescue.
One of my favorites. When I passed by the creator of this float had engaged a young admirer in a fascinating discussion about homonyms.
This parade may rival Krewe du Vieux when it comes to bawdy political satire.
A favorite new addition to my vocabulary.
We’re working on our taxes for last year, and while it’s not deductible, I went ahead and totaled up my health insurance costs from 2013. For about the last decade I’ve been one of the millions of Americans without company sponsored health insurance, so I’ve had an individual Blue Cross policy.
And for the last several years, my premiums have gone up $100 a month. Not a year. A month. With a $2800 deductible. Even my doctor was shocked, given my relatively minor health issues. Last year my premiums totaled $10,185.70. Just for me.
So among the things Dave and I were celebrating when we married back in July, was the fact that, thanks to the Supreme Court, I could then be added to his excellent health plan for retired federal workers. Under which BOTH of us would be covered, without a deductible, for $200 a month.
We filled out the forms, faxed in our marriage certificate and waited. For six months. While the feds tried to figure out just what to do with these newly recognized same-gender couples. (Six more premiums for me—do the math.)
But at long last the card has arrived. And I handed it over to the pharmacy tech the other day to update my account.
“What’s your relationship to Mr. Johnson?” he asked, noting Dave’s name on the card. And for the first time with a stranger, I smiled and answered, “I’m his spouse.”
My thought exactly.
Tomorrow we suck in our slides, hitch up our wagon and end our visit to the heart of snowbird country. This part of central Florida has become such a Mecca for those escaping the cold that there are easily 50 other RV parks within a twenty-minute drive. The small community of Zephyrhills just south of us doubles in size from 10,000 to over 20,000 in the winter. Google’s satellite view of the community is a sea of RVs. It would seem that lots and lots of folks came to the realization long before us, that hauling your home behind you to whatever place offers the best weather at the moment—is a swell idea. That and owning an Arabian horse apparently. Now on to New Orleans, just in time for Mardi Gras.
Our snowbird CHristmas tree, populated with origami cranes and a starfish on top.