On the road again

So here I am busily blogging away from the lovely campus of Mizzou U. After a frantic day finishing a contest submission yesterday, went to sleep at 11 pm with alarm set for 2 am to beat Chicago rush hour traffic and get to Mizzou U. and spend the afternoon pestering the good folks at the Western Historical Manuscripts Collection.

Woke up, amazingly.

Driving at 3 am is a somewhat surreal experience, but you don't have to share the road. Not much, anyway. Who are those other people out driving at 3 am, anyway?

Ah, the joys of early morning radio! Learned about the improbable evolution of bees and the discovery of the fossilized head of a prehistoric 9-foot-tall carnivorous Terror-Bird from BBC World Service. Very glad that 9-foot-tall carnivorous Terror Birds are extinct.

Heard Jimmy Swaggart give master class in evangelistic emoting. Good exegesis of story of Hosea, but some overuse of the rhetorical trope of repeating everything three times. Lambasting of homosexuals, psychologists, etc. I don't know where the tirade about not kissing the Pope's big toe came from. Then he's off on some tangent about the perfection of the body that Jesus sacrificed on the cross. He seems really, really interested in the perfection of Jesus's body. Right after ranting about homosexuals. Maybe he needs a psychologist.

And then he's gone (Hallelujah! Can I get an amen!). Replaced by James Dobson discussing pornography in a very earnest voice, and various stations playing Christian rock. If aliens are listening to our radio programs in the early morning, they must think we're very pious. One program had a kids-only Bible trivia call-in show. At 7:30 am.

Other radio alternatives: soybean price report. Extended commercial about genetically pure corn seeds. Oldies station that played "Morning Has Broken" just as eastern sky began to slowly shade into blue somewhere in mid-Illinois.

Also heard the final chapters in the tale of Uhtred, about which more later.

Was immensely amused at driving from Michigan to Missouri by way of Louisiana and Mexico. Perhaps I will also go to Nevada?

Spent afternoon at WHMC. Picked jaw up off of floor after opening first archival folder and seeing original operational data for a defunct railroad that I and another railfan have been trying to reconstruct from scattered scraps of inconsistent data for the last six months. Laughed involuntarily when one of the telegraph flimsies had the words "go to sleep now" scrawled on it in 1926 handwriting. Archival staff member looked at me funny.

Ordered many photocopies. May now be worlds second leading authority on a long-defunct railroad that only two or three people care about.

Got distracted by all kinds of fun index entries about abstruse topics. Those who think that the surreal early-day train trip depicted in Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality is somewhat exaggerated, take note:

Houck's railroads were never model lines, either in construction or equipment.... The road was known locally as the "peavine" because it was so crooked, and sometimes for days at a time there would be no trains, because the one engine and coach would jump the track. IN fact, we were passengers on the train in some instances when this occurrence would take place. At one place just south of Benton Houck had felled two trees and laid them across a small creek, building his track on this structure instead of the regulation trestle. This caused the track to rise up in order to get on the trestle, and we recall the warning which the conductor always gave the passengers: "Look out, she's going to jump!" in order that they might prepare themselves for the sudden change in the level of the roadbed." - Missouri Historical Review, v. 21 (1926-1927), p. 133

Just how firmly the columnist's tongue was planted in his cheek may remain forever unknown.

Accumulated many citations which will keep interlibrary loan department busy busy busy in future weeks.

Paused for a pensive moment and a photograph with one of Mizzou's most famous alumni. But you'll have to wait to see who it was, for the night has come, and Motel 6 awaits with open arms.