Missouri would be the 18th state capital of the 50 Capitals Project. By my calculations I have now traveled about
5,000 miles seeing America.
When I was a young girl, and my
parents both had full time careers, we had a nanny from Missouri who lived with
us. Judy was an older woman who was
looking for work after raising her kids. She moved east and lived with us for a
few years, and boy, was that a culture shock for her. At the time I was too
young to understand the situation, but I remember my parents talking about it
later. When Harry Potter came out, and
she refused to watch it with my brother and me because she believed that
witches do the devil’s work. Now, my parents were never the type to hold
someone’s beliefs against them, but in this case it was much more of a
logistical issue than anything else. Harry Potter was the most popular children’s
series ever published, and everyone in my age group was really excited about
and involved in it, so it must have been awkward for her to think that it was
an evil influence and refuse to read it or put on the videos. Judy did spend a lot of one on one time with
me though. She taught me how to play many different card games, most of which
I’ve now forgotten. She played board games with me when I was sick, and made me
a snack when I came home from school. She was a part of my childhood, and as different
as her beliefs were, she is forever a part of me. Now that I was traveling to
Missouri, I remembered her with fondness. She also used many sayings that had a folksy
flavor, for instance, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time,” which I can still apply
to things I am doing today - like this trip!
I had to pick a hotel room in the nearby town
of Columbia because all of the hotels in Jefferson City had sold out. The next
day, I learned that they were booked because of a homecoming football
game. Although the distance meant that I had to travel a half-hour in the
morning, I realized that now I would gladly drive that far to get a decent
breakfast. Distances seemed so small after all of the driving I had done in
the past few months, and the inconvenience was minimal. I cooked my dinner that
night in the hotel room, and went to sleep early. It had been a long day of travel,
and I needed the rest before all of the walking I had to do the next day.
I woke up
and left without breakfast. It was early, and I wanted to get to the Capitol as
quickly as possible. When I arrived at the Capitol after a very scenic drive
through the hills of central Missouri, I found a very convenient parking place
right outside the Capitol. It was enormous, perhaps the grandest I’d seen yet.
It seemed inescapable, and the huge columns only added to that impression. The
light reflecting off of the white marble on the outside was blinding, and I had
to squint just to get a few pictures of it. The grandeur of the exterior
heightened my anticipation for the inside of the building. As I took my photos, the doors opened on the
ground floor under the main staircase in the front, and legislators began
pouring out of them. Men and women dressed in suits, talking animatedly rushed
past me as if school had just adjourned. I asked a passerby what was going on,
and he responded that there was a swearing in for lawyers at the Capitol today,
and it had just ended. Interested, I made my way inside and went to the tours
and information desk.
I learned from the kind women there
that the museum on the first floor of the Capitol is legally designated as a
state park, making Missouri’s the only Capitol to have a state park inside of
it. It was only a few more minutes before the next tour, so I waited and took
some pictures of the rotunda from the ground floor perspective. Two women and a
young child ended up accompanying me on the tour.
We learned right away that
the building came in 1 million dollars under budget, so the state used to money
to finance paintings and works of art throughout the Capitol. Our first stop was outside the Governor’s
office, which was both his working office and his ceremonial office, so we were
not permitted to look inside, but the enormous doors gave the impression that it would have been grand. Next, we took a look at some of the paintings
that brightened the hallways, and saw the rotunda from the first floor. Its
main feature was an enormous chandelier that hung dozens of feet from the crest
of the dome. All around the rotunda, there were busts of famous Missourians. The
ones that stood out to me were the busts of Harry Truman, George Washington
Carver, Mark Twain [born Samuel Clemens], Laura Ingalls Wilder, Dred Scott, and
Walter Elias Disney.
Next we went upstairs to the House
Reception Room. This room was my favorite by far. It was empty except for
chairs lining the back of the room that bore the windows and an enormous mural that stretched across every wall. Thomas Hart Benson painted A Social History of the State of Missouri
in 1936. He designed it to be a timeline of
Missouri history, from the arrival of the first European settlers to the Great
Depression. It was incredibly vivid and honest in its portrayal, including
depictions of European settlers banishing Native Americans from the land as
well as slavery, the Civil War, and the shadow of a lynched slave. In another
section, a farmer lives out a simple,
The
famous Missouri outlaws, The James Boys, were shown committing robberies. Jesse
James and his brother Frank were two of the most famous bandits in American
History. In cahoots with the Younger brothers, they formed the James-Younger
Gang. During its existence the gang robbed banks, trains, and stagecoaches
throughout the middle of the country in Missouri, Kentucky, Iowa, Texas,
Arkansas, Kansas, and West Virginia. Jesse James was famously shot in the back
while hanging a picture on April 3, 1882 by Robert Ford who was a fellow gang
member hoping to cash in on a state bounty for James’ head.
The
end of the painting showed the strife of the Great Depression. It was a
beautiful work of art, but I also can understand why it wasn’t received very
well when it was first completed. The artist created an honest, rather than
ideal, description of Missouri history through the eyes of the average person;
Benson traveled four days a week prior to painting the mural in order to get an
honest perspective of Missouri culture. He drew portraits of people throughout
his travels, and those are the faces seen in the mural, creating a masterpiece
that was true to Missouri’s history and a testament to its tenacity. It was my
favorite mural that I had seen so far on this trip.
The
next stops were the House and Senate rooms themselves, but we were only
permitted in the House gallery because the Senate gallery presents safety
concerns. A funny and unexpected highlight was a small garden gnome that
someone mischievous had placed on one of the ledges above the House gallery.
Our guide told us that she believed it was a group of kids that had visited a
few months ago. Luckily, their harmless prank survived long enough to give our
tour group a good laugh.
After
the tour was over, we returned to the main floor to take a look at the museum.
Although it was fairly informative, its collection was less extensive than
others I have visited, and the displays were a little dry. The only exhibit
that stood out to me was the model of the USS Missouri that they had protected
in a glass case. It reminded me of seeing the USS Iowa model in the Iowa State
Capitol, and how long ago that seemed. It was just a few weeks, but I had
traveled thousands of miles since then.
I
left the building in search of food. I drove a short distance down the street
and stopped to take a picture or two of the Governor’s mansion with the Capitol
dome in the background. It was a glorious house, but I could only imagine what
it looked like on the inside because tours were over for the day. I found a
restaurant called the Ecco Restaurant and Lounge, and stopped by for an
appetizer. I ordered mushroom and zucchini fries along with some chicken wings.
They were hot, delicious, and satisfying. I left a little while later with a
warm, full tummy and a smile.
On
the way back to Columbia I thought about my visit to the Capitol and what I had
learned about Missouri’s history. I loved the murals by Thomas Hart Benson
because it encompassed every aspect of Missouri; it showed the beautiful and
the ugly. I felt that it broadened my perspective. The people of this state
have been through every kind of conflict and upheaval the country has
experienced, but still the society has persisted and grown. Missouri progresses
through each trial, and evolves because of it, just like the rest of the United
States. In this way, it is a wonderful example of the spirit of mankind.
I drove
the half-hour minutes back to Columbia for the night as the sun set behind the
hills. The next morning, I checked out of my hotel. I stopped to get some gas
before a long day of driving just as the rain really began. A massive
thunderstorm was blasting across Missouri that day; luckily, I was driving west
to Oklahoma, out of the storm. Still for a good four hours in the beginning of
my journey I was engulfed in a downpour. Until this trip, it would have been
hard for me to imagine the lifestyle of truckers, or others who are always on
the road, whatever the weather. I
looked forward to reaching my next “home for the night”!
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