Exploring Small Towns
My wife and I enjoy visiting small
out-of-the-way towns and discovering what they offer. We just returned from a visit to Eudora, Kansas, home of
Quilting Bits and Pieces, which is a quilting store with absolutely gorgeous
quilts on display. It is not
apparent from the outside but the store has quite a bit of floor space, which
allows it to carry just about anything a quilter might need. We ate at the Black Cat restaurant just
across the street from Jasmine’s Chinese and Mexican Food, a combination you
are unlikely to find in a larger city.
When I lived in Orange County,
California we used to search out the original downtowns of cities that have
grown into one continuous urban landscape. It was hard to know when one town ended and another began
unless we paid close attention to the shapes and colors of street signs, which
changed from city to city. It took
some detective work, but the cities maintain some flavor of the original
settlements.
For example, Orange, California had
a town circle (not a town square) with one restaurant used in a Tom Hanks movie
to represent 1950s America and another restaurant that had great Cuban food and
wonderful breakfasts. I admit I am
uncertain how many Cubans were involved in founding the town. The old Fullerton, California downtown
had a train station built in the 1950s and a store that specialized in items
imported from the United Kingdom.
Some Kansas and Missouri small
towns have buildings built in the late 1800s that have not been wiped out in an
attempt to modernize and ride the cutting edge of architecture. Like some of the towns in the part of
England known as the Cotswolds, one factor favoring the survival of older
building is the lack of a booming economy, which raises real estate prices and
makes tear-downs and rebuilding attractive.
Lexington, Missouri still shows
scars from the three-day battle in September 1861 between federal troops and
the state militia. A house that was occupied by both sides at different times
during the battle has been restored. The county courthouse has a cannonball fired
by Union forces still embedded in one of its columns.
Weston, Missouri houses a flock of
antique shops and restaurants where the dim outline of history can still be
seen. One of the houses was once owned
by Mary Owens, a woman who spurned a decidedly lukewarm marriage proposal from
Abraham Lincoln. She probably did
them both a favor by declining. Unlike
Mary Todd, she was a staunch supporter of slavery.
Are there historical buildings
where you live?
