Friday, February 13…Money
Changes Everything (Cyndi Lauper)
Ooh! Friday the 13th! The
route we choose takes us through Topeka, KS, and if I was a superstitious
person, I’d be directing Rapunzel to avoid that area, no matter the cost to our
time. Last year’s tire/axle issue that
delayed us for 5 days in Topeka is still very fresh on my mind. But I’m not superstitious….well, okay, I have
been known to avoid stepping on a crack but that’s more of a fun holdover from
childhood than an outright belief that I’d actually break my mother’s back…so
I’m not avoiding Topeka. Although I did
quietly mention at breakfast that maybe I should hold my breath until we were 20
miles west of Topeka, just in case.
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In the truck and finding our way by 8:15 a.m. We left without realizing
that we had phone/truck connections problems, so I became Rapunzel’s voice
until the cord issue was resolved. More
importantly, we had about 5 hours left of our audio book. We couldn’t listen to
the book if the phone and the truck weren’t talking to each other.
Last year we whiled away the hours by listening to 3 or 4 Harry Bosch
books (author Michael Connelly); this year we changed to James Patterson’s Alex
Cross books. Listening to “Along Came A Spider”, which I’ve read but as usual
it was so long ago that I don’t remember anything but the names of the main
characters. The crime/mystery genre is my jam…John Sanford, Lee Child, James
Patterson, Michael Connelly are all authors whose books I devoured back when I
had the time to read…or maybe I should say ‘when I made the time to read’. Sue Grafton’s alphabet series, with Kinsey
Millhone as the main character, was another favorite. It’s crazy to think that
it’s been 25 to 30 years since I read these books. No wonder the book details
escape me.
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We started out this morning under a sunny sky with a slight chill to the
air. Crossed the Mississippi River into
Missouri about 9:30 a.m. with the temperature reading 44o. After about a half hour later, the last layer
of Michigan snow went flying off the camper. Not that we could necessarily tell, but our load just got a bit lighter.
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When I get bored on a long-distance drive, I turn to the Roadside
America website. First, I peruse the
appropriate state map, looking for something interesting, then I check to see
where it is in relation to our route. If it doesn’t work, I start the process
over. Today, I struck gold right away in
the world of offbeat attractions.
The Davis Memorial is in Hiawatha, KS, a little town 40 miles further west
than our next turn off US 36 West, the road we were on. While it wasn’t exactly on our route, it
wasn’t far off either. In fact, by staying
on 36 West, we could avoid the chaos of Kansas City traffic. Also, there was an alternate route from 36
West down to Topeka. Stopping to see the memorial would add a few miles and
about an hour to our ETA in Picacho. Kim was agreeable, so we told Rapunzel of
our change of plans.
The Davis Memorial is a gravesite in Mount
Hope Cemetary. The story of how it came
to be is as interesting as the memorial turned out to be. A summary from various websites:
John and Sarah Davis were hardworking, frugal, and
childless farmers who settled near Hiawatha. And apparently, they were wealthy
also. When Sarah died in 1930, people in the town wondered what John was going
to do with his money. They soon found
out when he removed the modest headstone from his wife’s grave and began
building a massive memorial. He placed a 52-ton slab of granite on 6 granite
pillars over their burial plot. Then he added two life-sized statues, carved
from Italian marble, one of himself and one of Sarah on their 50th
wedding anniversary. He liked them so much that he added more from various
points in their years together. When it appeared that he was running out of
room under the pavilion, he simply placed statues beside it. A couple of the
statues depict Davis after he lost his left hand in a farming accident, and
another one shows a beardless Davis, which was the result of another farming accident.
The only statue carved in granite portrays an older Davis sitting next to an
empty chair, aptly named the ‘Vacant Chair’. In 1934, the final pair of marble
statues arrived, which are of them kneeling. The kneelingand were placed at the
foot of their graves. Sarah is portrayed as a kneeling angel. It took four
years to complete. The
Davis Memorial was featured in newsreels, newspapers and postcards, causing it
to become a popular tourist destination. Davis erected a three-foot high
granite wall to keep the visitors from damaging the statues. In total, there are
6 statues of John and 5 of Sarah, although she is represented by the ‘Vacant
Chair’.
Legend has it that the townspeople were irritated
that he wasn’t interested in building a hospital, a park, or funding other
community improvements. Animosity grew as they watched him spend his money on
himself and not on the community, especially in the midst of the Depression. He
never revealed how much he’d spent on the Memorial but in 1938, he’d told a
reporter, “They (the townspeople) hate me, but it’s my money and I spent it the
way I pleased.”
John died in 1947 at the age of 92; he was
buried next to Sarah. Photos show that ten people attended the burial, which
may have been a big crowd considering how the town felt about him.
In 1990, the
kneeling statue of Davis was decapitated; it’s unknown if it was the result of
mindlessvandalism or done by someone with delayed anger at how he spent his
money. The Director of the Brown County Historical Society maintains that
“because it’s a historical monument, they can’t replace the head with a new
head. It has to be the original head.”
Over 30 years have passed since the statue was vandalized and there’s
still a reward of $10,000 for the return of the head.
Hiawatha eventually got the hospital, park, and swimming pool that it wanted. Although none
of it was bankrolled by John Davis, he did help the town indirectly. The
town, which supposedly despised Davis for wasting his money on himself, has
benefited in the long run by having one of the most visited offbeat attractions
in Kansas.
When we pulled up to the cemetery, there
were two older gentlemen hoisting flags in preparation for a veteran’s burial
being held tomorrow. They stopped what they were doing to talk to us and Kim
explained that we were there because I found mention of the Davis Memorial on
Roadside America and then I shared some of what I’d learned about it that
interested me, including the missing head.
At the mention of the head, one man smiled, shook his head and emphatically
said, “Somebody knows where that head is.”
I've played around with making pots out of clay but have no idea what
carving a statue out of marble or granite entails. I can say with a great deal
of enthusiasm, however, that the detail and accuracy in these statues is astounding! Threads,
buttons/buttonholes, fabrics, jewelry, facial aging, John’s beard and Sarah’s
hair, and more are all so detailed. What
artistry! No wonder Davis, being pleased
with the first pair of statues, kept adding more. I applaud his taste!
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Found a truck wash along the way…time to get the Michigan snow grime off
the truck and the camper. Four trucks in
front of us with number five in the wash bay. It took too long to get into the
wash bay and by the time we got out of there, it was dark and we were a bit
behind our mileage goal. But on the plus side we sailed through and around
Topeka with no problem…and I didn’t have to hold my breath.
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Saw a high of 65 degrees today. Time to get the shorts out of the camper
for tomorrow! Jeans and a sweatshirt
were a bit much today.
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We
pulled into our hotel in Kingman, KS, just before 11 o’clock. Lots of lightning
flashes on the horizon for 50 miles…luckily, the rain held off until we were in
our room. And of course it rained…we’d just washed
the truck.
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