Day 2

G3 wanted to visit the arch in St. Louis. When I travel, I don’t like to plan too much. Plans can be like prisons, locking you into something. I like the freedom of being on the road and being able to change direction and go off course if something better reveals itself. Therefore, I didn’t book tickets in advance to go to the Arch. Last night, I decided I should probably check to see if I needed advanced tickets. I do. Luckily, I was able to secure them for today. Unfortunately, the earliest time slot available was 5:00. I took what I could get and this morning, instead of heading to the Arch, we detoured to President Grant’s house. It’s the third Grant house we have visited, so G3 wasn’t as enthused as he usually is.

Grant’s parents named him Hiram Ulysses Grant. It was when he enrolled in West Point that some clerical error ensured that history would remember him as Ulysses S. Grant. White Haven, the house in St. Louis, belonged to his wife’s family. Interestingly, it was a plantation. Julia Dent’s father owned slaves. When Grant first proposed, Julia wasn’t keen on marriage. She wasn’t in love with Grant and she knew his abolitionist ideas would not appeal to her father.

After being rejected, the Army sent Grant south to fight in the Mexican—American War. He was opposed to our involvement. He believed it was an unjust war, one in which a strong country was taking advantage of a smaller, weaker one in order to obtain more land. He was not wrong. Following the war, he returned to St. Louis and proposed again. This time Julia said yes.

They married in 1848 and not long after Grant’s first child was born, he was stationed in California. He missed his family greatly. One day, he was accused of being intoxicated. He resigned from the army shortly afterward. There are conflicting reasons as to why. One account says he was forced to quit because of his drinking. Another account says he missed his family. Returning to St. Louis, he tried many different jobs, but didn’t succeed at any of them. Eventually, he moved to Illinois to work as a tanner in his father’s business. He hated it. The job repulsed him and prompted him to stop eating meat.

When The War Between States broke out he reenlisted. A series of victories made his name well known in the north and caught Lincoln’s attention. His victory at Chattanooga made way for an invasion of the South. Or course you all know Lee surrendered to him at Appomattox. Following the surrender, he let Confederate Soldiers return home with their horses.

After the War, the reunited country elected him as president. In office, he fought for racial equality. He pushed to get the 15th Amendment—which gave black men the right to vote—ratified. He gave the Federal Government power to oppose the KKK. Sadly, scandals weakened his popularity making it nearly impossible for him to continue advocating for former slaves.

When Grant left office, he and his family moved to Manhattan. It wasn’t long before he found himself impoverished after his son’s business partner made a bad investment. Unable to make good on a loan from the Vanderbilts, Grant’s son and his business partner ended up forfeiting all the family money and assets—including White Haven. Poor and dying of cancer, Grant needed to find a way to provide for his family. Mark Twain offered to help, promising to publish Grant’s memoirs if he were to write them. Grant wrote two volumes in less than a year. Days after completing them, he died. But they sold well, ensuring that his family would have some income. Today, July 23, is the 138th anniversary of Grant’s death.

How do you get your history loving mom to buy you ice cream? You do a Google search looking for food native to St. Louis. In the search, you discover that—by some accounts—Charles Menches made the first ice cream cone on this day in history—today, July 23, 1904—at the St. Louis World’s Fair. I never eat sugar cones—never. You can ask my family and they will tell you I always have my ice cream in a cup. But this afternoon, even I had to have my ice cream on a cone. We went to Cups and Cones, in a residential area of St. Louis, The ice cream was expensive, but good.

We ate the ice cream in a local park. After we ate, G3 challenged me to a game of tetherball. I prove that I am a total spaz playing the game. He laughed mercilessly at me and won each match.

On the way to the Arch, we passed the Old Courthouse. It was made famous in 1846 when Dred Scott and his wife Harriet sued for freedom. They were slaves from Virginia who had lived for nine years in Illinois and Wisconsin—a free state and territory. They initially won the case and were declared free. However, four years later, a Federal Court overturned the verdict. The Scotts’ appealed all the way to the Supreme Court where the judges ruled—not surprisingly—in favor of white supremacy. The case pissed off Northerns and abolitionists and helped bring about the Civil War.

The Arch is a monument to Lewis and Clark and Westward Expansion. (A monument to our cunning and cruelty when it came to stealing and swindling land from Native Americans and Mexicans.)To enter the Arch we needed to go through airport type security. Once in the museum. we watched a documentary on the making of the arch. If I was as interested in engineering as I am in history, I probably would have found it intriguing. But I couldn’t push through the boredom. I took a page from Kati’s playbook and took a nap.

G3 was very excited to go to the top of the arch. To get there, we had to ride up in very claustrophobic pods. We rode with a young couple from Savannah Georgia. The guy noticed G3’s Glacier hat and said he had been there years ago with his family. They used to do a lot of road trips which he loved because he got to see many states. Somehow, New Mexico came up in conversation. I mentioned that G3 hoped to go to Philmont with the Boy Scouts in a couple of years. The guy said that he was an Eagle Scout, but he had never been to Philmont. Out of curiosity, I asked him what he did as an Eagle project. He told us he made picnic tables for a wildlife preserve in Georgia.

The views from the top of the arch were amazing. G3 enjoyed being able to look down and take pictures. Of course, the St. Louis side is nicer, prettier than the Illinois side. The Mississippi River just looks icky—brown and dirty. Not very appealing at all. G3 and I reminisced about the novel Percy Jackson, which we both read years ago. In the novel, Percy Jackson gets into a fight with monsters and somehow ends up jumping off the arch and landing in the Mississippi. G3 was trying to figure out how he would’ve ended up in the water because when you look down it’s obvious that there is no way anyone would fall into the water. A fall would result in death, splattering on the grass below.

We are staying at the Meadow Campground and Coffee Shop, a quaint, privately own campground. It is about five minutes away from Mark Twain’s house. We got here just after the sunset, and we raced to put up the tent before we lost all daylight. There are mostly RVs here, but we have a tent site right on the water. It’s nice, but a little buggy. Even though it was late, G3 wanted a campfire. I happily started one, but five minutes after the wood started to burn, G3 said he was bored and disappeared into the tent. I am enjoying the solitude and the sound of the cicadas. Unfortunately, we are right beside the highway so I can also hear the cars and trucks zooming past.

Again, sorry for the typos. I am tired and can’t keep my eyes open to further proofread.