No More Long Drives For Awhile

After yesterday's grueling drive in 102-degree heat, today's arrival at the more leisurely, friends-visiting portion of the trip was quite welcome. We began the day in Scottsbluff, NE, and spent the morning at the Scotts Bluff National Monument. At the Visitor Center, we watched a fine 12-minute film on the Oregon Trail migration which confirmed our impression of how brutally difficult it was for the pioneers to cross the prairie midsection of the continent. One traveler reported that he could've crossed the country with his eyes closed, just following the trail by the smell of the dead bodies of people and animals along the way. Most of the pioneers packed all their belongings on their "prairie schooners" and discarded half of it along the way because it wasn't necessary and the weight overburdened the oxen, mules, and horses pulling the wagons. One wrote that if he were doing it all over again, he would've started with an empty wagon and picked up provisions along the way. On the other hand, the trail became a sort of public library; you'd pick up a book off the ground in Illinois, read it, and leave it along the trail in Nebraska for someone else to read. Add it all up, and it's an amazing saga in American history. Those people knew there was a better life somewhere, and if it didn't happen in their lifetimes, their descendants might still be better off for their sacrifice. That kind of selfless spirit would be a big help if it could be rekindled today.

From Scottsbluff to our next stop in Cheyenne, WY, was a little over a two-hour drive, much of it along Rt. 85 in eastern Wyoming. We had thought Nebraska was barren, but then we saw Rt. 85. We drove it for 80 miles and see about ten ranch houses and a couple of dozen head of black Angus cattle. Until we were within a dozen miles of Cheyenne, we didn't see two houses within a mile of each other or any sign of civilization. Think about that. We were a dozen miles from a state capital and saw no trace of society. "Capital of what?" I wondered. But Wyoming has always had a grip on me since my first trip there, though I've spent most of my Wyoming time along the western edge, specifically the Grand Tetons.

We're spending a couple of days in Cheyenne with our friends Mike and Helen, whom we met in Cooperstown ten years ago, the year they were married. Helen was attending the very fine museum studies program run by the New York State Historical Society, while Mike, a long-time newspaper reporter and editor from Seattle, took those two years to volunteer at the Baseball Hall of Fame library. He began his volunteer work a couple of months before I began working there. Mike and Helen are a fine couple and we're happy to hang out with them until we head for Colorado on Friday morning.

Mike is notable in that like many accomplished men, including the likes of Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, Grantland Rice, Peter Gammons, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, and most recently Tim McCarver, he has a plaque hanging in the Hall of Fame even though he was never elected. Mike's plaque celebrates his unprecedented volunteer work, 3,200 hours primarily spent photocopying approximately 300,000 pages of material. This is a vital part of the library's preservation process. The clippings files include thousands of newspaper articles from decades ago and even from the 19th century, and the acid in the old newsprint decays to the point where if you pick up a clipping from 1905 it quite possibly will crumble in your fingers. So you need to take those fragile items, get them onto a copier, and copy them onto acid-free paper which will endure for much longer. That's what Mike did every day for 20 months, along with other work at the library. When he left in 2004, they made a plaque posted above the copier where he did his work. At the bottom of the plaque, Mike is rightly identified as "a true Hall-of-Famer among volunteers." Linda and I are proud to be his friend and delighted to enjoy his and Helen's company for a couple of days.