Minuteman

Sometimes the best historical adventures come when they're unexpected. Or at least partially unexpected. Minuteman National Historical Site is the only NHS dedicated to the Cold War. I've known of it for sometime, as did Joe. We tried to secure a tour of the launch facility, but only one ticket was available. I reserved it for Joe. Now, before it seems like I was being noble in doing so, I fully expected some lucky break that would get at least one more of us on the tour.

All five of us ended up going!

Few historical sites have surprised me as much as this one. In many ways, everything it presented came upside down from what I expected. I thought it would be a super-secret site. Instead, as the interpreter put it, this was the rattle of the rattlesnake. The Soviets knew it was there. I expected all the action to be up top. Really, the officer in command were 31 feet below the earth. I thought missiles would be at the site for us to see. Actually, the missiles at its control were located miles away.

The tour lasted one hour. Our interpreter met us at the gate, the gate being outside one of only two buildings off that particular exit of I-90. She guided us around the front of the property and took us into the residential area, a building that looked like four modular homes put together. From the outside it was pretty homely. Inside it resembled a college dormitory, 1990s style. When active, this was the domain of enlisted men. Maintenance mostly, security secondarily. Typically a crew of 8 would serve 72-hour watches there.

A photo of the launch facility before it was covered up.

Caroline and Sam exit through the four-foot-thick capsule wall.

An elevator took us to the second part of the tour which gave us access to the missile launch center. It was 31 feet below ground. In the days of the Cold War, it would be manned by two junior officers for 24-hour watches. They were the missiliers who had the ability to launch the missiles.

One of the missile control panels.

A seat from which missiles could be launched.

Well, they had something of an ability to launch the missiles. There were five different launch facilities in control of 50 missiles radiating out from the nearby Air Force base. Two officers at one of those launch facilities had to order the launch at the same time as at least one other pair of officers in the complex. It was a double-vote system.

Oh, and it was possible for the missiles to launch without any input from the missiliers. They could be launched remotely by Looking Glass. By the way, once launched, they couldn't be recalled. There was no abort switch or self destruct feature. Once launched, they were launched.

So a lot of Hollywood-like impressions of what nuclear deterrence looked like got burst that day. The finality of knowing that once the missiles were gone they couldn't be reversed unnerved me. As did the fact that once those missiles were fired, there really wasn't a point to the launch facility any more, and the missiliers would be coming back to the surface of a world that might not be much of a world any more.

Redundancy.

There was contingency after contingency in that launch center, though. The interpreter called the seats in which the missiliers sat the most over-engineered piece of equipment at the site. The seats had five-point restraints and were locked onto rails on the floor. The whole launch facility was predicated on a two-man concept: one could never be alone there. Shovels and an escape hatch would allow the missiliers to come out in the event the elevator collapsed. This was an amazing glimpse into the mentality of deterrence.

But it wasn't Hollywood. The interpreter observed that these missiliers probably never saw themselves having that duty during their Air Force careers. I was left to wonder how much of the set-up (the over-engineered chairs, the command structure, the aesthetics of the control center) was planned to address the frame of mind of these men doing something profoundly tedious and profoundly deadly.

Caroline gets sworn in as a junior ranger.

The art on the launch center door. 

Another Presidential Home

Independence, Missouri, is the home of Harry S. Truman. Therefore, Sherry and I got the chance to check off our second presidential home of the summer.

There was a disappointment here: visiting the Truman Library and Museum wasn’t possible. Apparently they had closed the week before we arrived for renovations. The presidential libraries aren’t usually as special to me as the house, though I was in the mood to see this library. Few administrations had as many crises to address as his did. And he served as president during such an uncertain and tense time.

By the way, the Library and Museum is administered by a different organization than the home, which is a National Park Service site. Beginning with Herbert Hoover, our presidents’ libraries took on more archival importance and legislation basically granted money for their interpretation and preservation. Usually presidents fund-raise to create an accompanying museum to help frame the story of their presidency. 

Truman's home as seen from the sidewalk. 

The house, though, was worth the trip. By the standards of Independence, Missouri, it’s large. By the standards of most other presidents’ homes we visited, it’s really quite modest. And that’s what Truman wanted. He married into the home, so to speak. It was built by Bess’s grandfather and enlarged by her father. It sits along the corner of a side street and what was then a main thoroughfare. Privacy was a real challenge for the Trumans in retirement and they didn’t have Secret Service protection until after the Kennedy assassination. They allowed for vegetation to grow to shield themselves somewhat. And the Secret Service did eventually erect a fence to keep people from stealing artifacts from the property such as flowers. 

Note the way the Trumans used trees and plants to make the house somewhat secluded. 

The home reflected the man quite well and helped me know more about him. He tried to return to it a lot during his presidency and often resented how he was recalled to D.C. when crises emerged. (By the way, he received the phone call about North Korea’s invasion of the south in that home.) When he did finally get to return to it in his retirement, he kept it modest. According the guide, hardly any of the political and diplomatic visitors were allowed beyond the formal living room where they received guests politely. The kitchen was equipped as virtually any other midcentury kitchen would be equipped. Wallpaper was still worn away from where the former president had repeatedly turned on and off the lamp above the breakfast table.

In his garage was the final car he purchased, a 1972 Chrysler Newport. Common car? Well, it was certainly large. But I was surprised it wasn’t a Cadillac or Lincoln. In fact, it was the same make and model of my grandparents’ car from that era.

The house points to a quote Truman was fond of saying, that (I’ll paraphrase) one should never forgot where he came from, who he was, and where he would return. The home did a great job honoring that calling he had as a leader.

Sherry and I pose for our second presidential home explored this summer.

More Sightseeing in Kansas City

The World War I Memorial Tower. 

I wrote previously of a couple of museums that taught me a great deal. I’d like to share with you some observations about other historical sites we had the chance to see in the Kansas City area. 

On Monday afternoon, Sherry dropped me off at the World War I Museum and Memorial. Sherry and Caroline wanted to check out a museum of toy miniatures. Sam had the choice and went with the girls. He asked me later if I thought he would have liked the WWI museum and I’m still unsure of an answer.

The World War I Museum was a very wordy museum. The displays were top notch and thorough, but I didn’t have the stamina to read most of it. Perhaps that’s because I felt on a bit of a time crunch (Sherry was coming back for me at an undetermined time). I was also in a mood to be picky about what I looked for, namely more context about America’s involvement in the war.

Mockup of a French trench.

Something quite admirable about the museum was how it was trying to be inclusive of all sides in the war. One area of the museum displayed how a typical British trench was constructed. It was adjacent to French and German setups. Even Russian Army artifacts were on display. A docent there told me that the variety of artifacts is a point of pride in the museum. And, come to think of it, other treatments of the war that I’ve seen usually focus on just one or two combatants in the conflict.

This truck might not appear particularly modern, but many of the small arms seemed quite advanced. 

I came away with a few new learnings. I was struck by how modern some of the weapondry looked. For the Western nations involved, many of the rifles, sidearms, and light machine guns looked like they could have been in World War II instead. Heck, a Browning Automatic Rife was on display, which I know the solider I researched wielded in World War II and which I know my father-in-law was trained to use in the Navy in the Vietnam War era.

The museum offered an interesting twist on the conventional M.A.I.N. (militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism) explanations for the war. They put more emphasis on economic factors than I’ve typically considered, using that to address concerns leaders at that time had about emerging soclialist threats in their nations and how imperiaism and nationalism may have been combustible ways to address those stressors. The museum also talked about how nationalism and the pageantry of monarchies reinforced one another as countering forces against the threat of social unrest.

Memorializing the fallen.

A small exhibit on memorialization caught my attention and gave me reason to talk off the ear of a docent there. One interesting tribute about which I learned was common among German war dead. Comrades would memorialize a temporary burial plot with an upturned bottle, staked into the ground, and containing flowers or photos in honor of he who lay buried there.

Looking south from atop the Memorial Tower.

Looking north from atop the Memorial Tower. 

The museum features a memorial tower. I went up to the top and captured some photographs of the city from up high.

This museum had been on my wish list to see for a while, and I’m glad I got there. I may have missed a neat opportunity not seeing it with Sam, but I’m glad another museum existed that had a better chance to appeal to Caroline than this would have.

The Memorial Tower as seen from near the Kansas City Fed.

Roadtripping

A long-awaited sign. Along I-94.

Our vacation is featuring a few long driving days. By a long driving day I mean a day in which the job of getting from one place to another doesn’t allow for detours or diversions. I see at least three such days on this trip.

The first came on day 1 when we left Lansdale at about 5:15 am and arrived in St. Louis around 7:30. A pretty easy trip to do. Get on the PA Turnpike, turn right in Plymouth Meeting, and going straight for about 12 ½ hours.

Sherry traverses the South Dakota badlands. 

The second is today. Day 7. We left Omaha around 8:30 with a goal of getting to Rapid City with time enough to get groceries and settle in at Yak Ridge. This involves taking I-29 north until we get to Sioux Falls, then turning left on I-90.

Our third long driving day will be a week from tomorrow. We’ll leave Medora for Willmar. This will involve perhaps the longest, straightest drive of the trip on I-94 east across North Dakota.

I took a turn in the back back with Marvin. Along I-94 in North Dakota. 

I guess there will be a fourth long driving day when Sam, Caroline, and I finish the trip next week. The kids and I will figure out if we want to extend our vacation by a day or two in Chicago, Toledo, or Cleveland.

As loaded as the van would ever be. Outside our cabin in the Black Hills. 

Magazines from the first day of driving. 

The first long driving day went more quickly than I expected. We have a lot of room in the car (we packed pretty smartly, I think). And I talked a bit about the old magazine trick in a previous post. It’s funny, I look back on that first day of the trip as a pretty good day for learning. After all, there were a few good gems in those old Economist articles. Articles about using calories as a measurement, the use (and misuse) of nostalgia in politics, why monarchy is an institution on the rebound, and the powerfully pessimistic market forces at work on car-hire services stand out among the things I read.

Perhaps the most astute comment I read on that trip was an observation by The Economist in which it said America is a nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. That's a particularly funny thing to read before trekking through the west.

Sherry's adeptness at packing lunches meant we could drive by many bad restaurants. This photo was taken at TR National Park's north unit. 

There are some interesting sites we have to pass up as we drive through the countryside. This morning we passed by some sites outside of Omaha important to understanding the Mormons’ journey westward. Today we also decided not to add two hours to our trip, which could’ve allowed a stop at Scott’s Bluff. It’s tough to say no to those places.

A tourist trap we couldn't drive by, Wall Drug. In fairness, we only stopped after passing by it for the third time. 

It’s getting easier to say no to restaurants and coffee stops, though. I guess I figure that if I drink my normal amount of coffee we won’t be able to go 2 ½ or 3 hours between stops which, I think, one has to try to do to make these trips unmiserable.

These trips haven’t been filled with the kind of outstanding scenery I’ve had on other trips. One friend sent a link to a witty YouTube video about how plain it is to drive the length of Iowa on I-80. There’s truth to it (and the same video could be produced for driving across Iowa south-to-north on I-29). That being said, we’re constantly driving by someone’s home. There is a tranquil beauty to the seas of corn we drive by as we make our way up the Missouri River valley. Also, the ability to appreciate the land as we arrive someplace means something. I’ve done my fair share of air travel recently and there’s a sense of having been plopped in someplace which creates a thrill of having gotten somewhere else so quickly but there’s also a blindspot about what lies beyond the periphery of where one has arrived.

The van at its dirtiest, entering Wind Cave National Park. 

The Trip

My intentions were good! I meant to provide updates as to what we saw and did on this trip. A few things got in my way, though. First and foremost, we had a great time and usually I couldn't break away to write something meaningful. Second, there was a lot of driving, even more than I expected. That often left me a bit too tired to write after a long day behind the wheel. The intermittent cell service during our trip was also a contributing factor.

Let me get back to that second factor, though. Here's a map of the trip:

When we got home, though, the trip computer indicated we had traveled about 5,200 miles instead. Might sidetrips and adventures have added up to an additional 1,300 miles. 

Probably. 

Let's see if I can get some posts up that give you a flavor of our trip.