This House is called the Bingham-Waggoner estate for it was once the home of Missouri artist George Caleb Bingham. the suare room on the very top is all window and is directly above the stairways, in summer the open windows draw the hot air up and out and even today not much air conditioning is needed to keep it cool. I especially like the walk-in ice box and the snaps in the wood floors to hold the rugs in place. On the grounds of the estate you can walk around some wagon swales, depressions made by the passage of many covered wagons on the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico or later to Oregon and California.

The City of Independence is the county seat of Jackson County and like many county seats in the US it has a central square with the courthouse filling the middle. This courthouse is no longer used for the business of the county but does house the courtroom Mr. Truman used when he was a judge. While the Square has fallen on hard times some new and interesting businesses and eating places have opened recently.

On our way to the Courthouse Square we'll pass by the William McCoy home one of the oldest buildings in town.

The next stop is the Truman Presidential Library where you can see exhibits that deal with the decisions he made while in office. Wear comfortable shoes!

First up on our tour of interesting places is the home of our most well-known resident, the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman. I would love to take you on the tour as I have never been (shrug) but I understand that the kitchen cabinets are painted a particularly horrid color of green!

A virtual tour of my hometown. I hope.

If you take a map of the United States (minus Alaska and Hawaii for this effort) and plunk you finger down smack in the middle you should land somewhere quite near a largish city straddling the state line between Kansas and Missouri, called (oddly enough) Kansas City. Just a few miles to the east is my hometown of Independence, Missouri where "the trails start and the buck stops."

The land here is made up of gently rolling hills covered with trees and undergrowth, so thick you can't walk through is unless there is a path. Oh, watch out for the poison ivy! We get about 40 inches of precipitation yearly, snow in winter and hard thunderstorms in the spring and summer. High temperatures in the summer can top out over 100 degrees F and in Winter below 0 degrees F. Right now we are heading into what the weather folks call the severe weather season, meaning the potential for tornados, large hail (grapefruit sized sometimes) and damaging winds. When the summer comes the humidity may get so near 100% without rain that you can feel you are breathing water! Along with that come gorgeous days of sunshine and blue skies that just make you want to stay outside from dawn to dark. It changes all the time and causes the weather people lots of trouble with their predictions.

Signs of Spring

Spring has arrived, I think. Signs are every where. Lots of really green grass, the trees are beginning to show pale green and the flowers are coming up. Even George, the toad, is showing himself!