Today is my son, Patrick's, birthday. He was born 32 years ago. For some reason that just reminded me that he was 32 hours old when I met him. Patrick is adopted, but he is as much a part of me as my own soul.
On this birthday, Patrick was at the Oregon coast celebrating with his wife and two adorable daughters, while Mrs. Blogger and I were traveling from Sioux Falls to Murdo, SD. Murdo is not a metropolis, but it has its own charm. We checked in at the American Inn and RV Park, which was nearly empty. Apparently, Murdo is not a place where RVers congregate on weekends.
Once the trailer was set up we drove around the town to get a feel for how the people live. There appears to be a good deal of ag-business and not much else to provide employment, although we encountered at least a half dozen hotels. Murdo is not a wealthy community, by the looks, but the people are friendly and happy to be of service.
There is one big attraction in town, and that is the Pioneer Auto Museum. It is the most amazing collection of stuff I have ever encountered. There are 275 old cars, some restored, some original. There are old pickups, fire engines, tractors, a 1924 White truck that was converted into a home-made motor home and traveled the world in the 1920's. Somehow we didn't get a picture of the motor home, but I did get some pictures of a very unusual car:
In addition to motor vehicles, there were literally hundreds of bicycles, motorcycles, pedal cars, signs, toys, memorabilia; you name it, they got it! This place is an amazing trip into the history of American pop culture. One of my favorite displays was the old dental equipment, which unfortunately was behind a wire screen.
This thing especially gave me the willies. It is a card with several different molds of denture teeth. When I was in dental school, we would spend hours in the lab setting prosthetic teeth into wax to make natural-looking dentures. When we had completed the process, we had to take it to an instructor to have it checked. In particular, Dr. Krumbein was noted for looking over a "set-up," as we called them, and saying, "Very nice." Then he would proceed to flick the teeth out of the wax and say, "Do it again."
We met the owner of the museum and learned that he went to college in Corvallis, OR and taught school in a Lutheran school there. We felt as if he were a neighbor, since Corvallis is only about 40 minutes' drive from Dallas.
After our visit to the museum, we went back to the trailer, where we had no wi-fi signal and practically no phone signal. I hiked up to the laundry, where there was enough phone signal to call for a reservation for our stay in Rapid City, but I couldn't blog; Jill couldn't look at things online. We were able to have a brief conversation with Patrick to wish him a happy birthday.
And so, we got out a couple of old movies I had recorded off the TV and enjoyed some good old fashioned romantic comedy from the 1930s and '40s. It was a very relaxing evening. Tomorrow it is on to Rapid City and Mt. Rushmore.
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