Missouri River Pedestrian Bridge at Jefferson City

This morning was the groundbreaking ceremony for the long-awaited pedestrian addition to the Missouri River Bridge here at Jefferson City. I’m not an official journalist, I’m just a blogger, and an amateur one at that—but I’m thrilled that this project is moving forward!




Indeed, it’s a step forward on many accounts. It advances tourism in Jefferson City. It advances the connection of the Katy Trail State Park with neighboring communities. It advances safety for bicyclists and pedestrians as well as for the over 50,000 vehicle drivers that cross the river here each day.

(Nifty shovel, huh?)




In order to appreciate what we’re getting, you have to know what we have now. Right now, there are two bridges crossing the river—the one on the west is for southbound traffic and the one on the east is for northbound. When they built the second of these two bridges (the northbound one), back in 1991, they didn’t take possible pedestrian or bicycle traffic into account.

Meanwhile, also twenty years ago, the Katy Trail State Park was launched. Indeed, they’re celebrating this rails-to-trails park’s twentieth anniversary this month! It follows the old MKT railroad line from St. Charles clear to Clinton, Missouri.

It passes by Jefferson City right across the river at a point they call “North Jefferson”—but which many of us locals still think of as “Cedar City.” Cedar City was destroyed by the Great Flood of 1993.

Anyway, Jeff City has annexed the former town, but there’s really not much there beside the MFA, a golf range, some big soccer fields, and the Katy Trail access point.

So a problem arose: Even though the city built a nice bike trail connecting the cross-state Katy Trail to a point nearer to the Missouri River Bridge, bicyclists had hell to go through before getting across the river to Jeff City proper.




And that’s bad for tourism! And it’s dangerous, any way you slice it. The temporary solution has been to add a “bike lane” to the northbound (wider) bridge. But . . . that lane must function for bicyclists traveling both directions.




Now, if you’re a grown-up, responsible bicyclist, every fiber of your being should rebel against the thought of riding on the left side of the road, against traffic. But that is what you’re “supposed” to do if you are heading south, toward town. Argh!




And God forbid you should have to pass another bicyclist going the opposite way! —But of course, that rarely happens, since most bicyclists don’t want to attempt this ugly crossing.




Seriously—the traffic on the bridge is posted at 60 mph—which you know means many people are traveling at 70 mph. Including huge trucks.




You can’t tell from a car, but you can tell when you’re walking: Those big trucks make the bridge rumble and shake. They pass you in a whirlwind, stirring up grit and litter, creating a suction that threatens to pull you away from the shoulder. No joke.




So they finally did it—all these agencies, governments, and organizations put their heads together, and the work is beginning next week. (They would have begun this week, they said, but for all the rain.) A local company from Fulton, OCCI, Inc., won the bid.

The project is going to cost $6.7 million—the money’s coming from MoDOT, the City of Jefferson, the DNR, and the Missouri State Parks Foundation. That last is a private, nonprofit organization formed to raise money for Missouri State Parks. There was a 20 percent local match.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is naturally in charge of this project, as it pertains to Missouri Highways 54 and 63, which merge at this point to get across the river.

But, as Mayor Landwehr pointed out in his brief remarks, this has been a three-times complex project—complex engineering, complex funding issues, and complex in terms of policy, the drawing together of the governments of Callaway and Cole counties, the City of Jefferson, plus the state agencies for highways and state parks.

He also noted the good the pedestrian access will do for Jefferson City, “connecting the dots” of the Katy Trail with the State Capitol (which is a huge tourist attraction), the 12.5-mile Jefferson City Greenway system, and, one day, a development on Adrian’s Island making it friendly for public recreation.

It also makes it much easier for residents of Jefferson City to ride directly to the trail, instead of having to load their bikes into a vehicle and drive there. And that, my friends, will make Jefferson City—particularly the old-town portions near to the bridge—into a more desirable place to live.

And you know the Jefferson City CVB is thrilled about this project—there are thousands of riders on the Katy Trail, and it would be grand to have them spend the night in Jeff, eat at one of our fine restaurants, do a little shopping . . . !

So the plan is to attach an eight-foot-wide pathway against the east edge of the easternmost (northbound) bridge—which provides enough room for a couple of bikes to pass, as well as pleasant views of the State Capitol and the river. There will be a couple of places where you can stop to take in the sight.




Here is a view of the east side of the bridge, where it is going to be attached:



It must have been fun for them to figure out how to handle the trail on the north side of the river, since the bikes would have to cross the highway somehow. To accomplish this, they’re going to build a multi-staged ramp so that trail riders can get from bridge level down to the ground, then ride under the bridges to the nearby (and scenic) Carl R. Noren river access. (Which is managed by the Missouri Department of Conservation—see, I told you this is a complicated project!)

I took a picture of one of the artist-renditions of what the ramp will look like. I'm sure you can see this better on the MoDOT Web site:



From the river access (boat ramp), the trail will lead to the existing Katy Trail “North Jefferson” access point.

I don’t know about you, but as a native Central Missourian, I treasure the Missouri River, and from a young age, I have always assumed that one of the main reasons for bridges is for you to get a good look at all that water rushing below, and the landscape around. It has seemed unnatural that Jefferson City hasn’t done much to monopolize on its several potentially fabulous river views.




Mayor Landwehr pointed out, I think correctly, that the Missouri River is our own “big nature.” “We don’t have Rocky Mountains or an ocean here. But we have the Missouri.” And yes, it is unique.




As I stood there listening to the speakers at this morning’s groundbreaking, my eyes were incessantly drawn to the river going by in the landscape beyond them. It is hypnotic, it is inevitable, and it is somehow gentle. More people ought to look at rivers, and the pedestrian bridge is one step in the right direction.




They say it will be complete a year from now!




Meanwhile, they cautioned, lanes will be narrowed, traffic will be forced to slow down, and you won’t be able to get on the bridge from Main Street. I say: No problemo! Bring on the bike path!

Common Grackles

Here is a true “Opulent Opossum” topic for you: the common grackle. I’m choosing this bird as today’s subject because right now, I can hear the peeping of newly hatched grackles up in our big yew tree.

I can see the nest in the branches of that evergreen, though it’s too high for me to be able to see into it. The parents are busy gathering food. The “noise level” in our backyard plummeted as soon as courtship ended and egg-laying commenced. Indeed, the adults are practically silent, except for an occasional song or call as they fly to or from the nest, to check in with one another. Indeed, it sounds just like that. Grackle 1: "Check." Grackle 2: "Check."

Their songs aren’t as lusty and vigorous as they were a few weeks ago; instead they are softer, understated, isolated. I think the two are simply reaffirming their bond even though they are preoccupied with the business of feeding the young. I think the change is the same as when we humans experience between the breathless I love yous of new love (the “honeymoon stage”) and the I love you that people remark to each other right before heading to the office in the morning: And don’t forget your umbrella!




The reason I say that grackles are a fitting subject for this blog is that they are one of those critters, like the opossum, that’s so common people take the miracle of their existence for granted. Yes, it is true that flocks of grackles can cause serious damage to agricultural crops. They’re not “perfect” in every way in our viewpoint. But still, there is much to admire about them.

First, the bad stuff. From day one, grackles have been in love with European-style agriculture, which was imported to America, their native continent, with white settlers and spread westward from New England. Before the widespread clearing of land and establishment of crop fields, grackles undoubtedly were much less numerous. And you can’t blame them for taking advantage of a good thing: If someone offered you a free gift certificate to a fine restaurant, wouldn’t you take it?




So they feed hungrily on crops, particularly rice and corn, eating the new sprouts, eating the young kernels as they are still ripening, and then feeding on the ripe corn as well. They also hang around feedlots and any other place where grain is spilled on the ground. (They like to eat off the ground.) Supposedly, a group of grackles is called a “plague.” That sounds like prissy New England Puritan-talk to me.

But being an agricultural pest isn’t the whole story; grackles also eat plenty of insects, too, many of which are destructive. I’ve seen our backyard grackles picking big white juicy grubs out of the ground, and I know that some people resent those grubs so much that they spray poison on their lawns. Grackles also follow behind plows, picking insects from the split-open soil, even eating the occasional (destructive) rodent as well.

At any rate, Sue and I are not farmers—indeed, we purchase grain from farmers in order to feed it to the birds! (It is rather ironic, isn’t it!) The grackles in our yard aren’t overly abundant, and they don’t even seem to be the “bullies” toward other birds that some folks say they are. At the feeder, they more or less coexist with the other birds. For example, they and the mourning doves both feed off the ground, and any pushing and intimidating between them goes both ways, with the searching, stalking grackles encountering a plump, immoveable object in the seed-hoovering dove.

In terms of personality, the grackles in our backyard are simply direct. Their attitude toward the other birds at the feeder and the birdbath is nothing personal—instead, it’s as if they don’t even see the other birds. The grackles focus on what they want—the food, the water—and then get it. I haven’t seen them peck at the other birds or show aggression toward them. Instead, their foraging is as direct as their flight, as purposeful as their long strides through the grass. And I rather admire that. Grackles are cool.




Try this sometime, if you haven’t already: Next time you walk down a sidewalk with a fair number of people on it, try an experiment by altering your posture, facial expression, and gaze to see how other passersby respond. First, if you act lost in thought, eyes low, shoulders slumped, you will find yourself shifting to the side to allow more room for oncoming pedestrians to pass you.

However, if you push out your chest, shoulders back, hold your head high, stride with confidence, and gaze ahead with a proud, aware look, you might notice even big burly guys slouching a bit to the side as you pass by.

I think this is what we see at our bird feeders; the grackles simply intimidate the other birds with their body language. And the weird, pale yellow eyes might help. They give the bird an aware, penetrating expression, an intensity. Maybe it unnerves the other birdies.




I am always impressed by the grackle’s plumage. Calling it a “blackbird” is practically an insult, like calling Vincent van Gogh an “illustrator.” Though the grackle’s plumage is technically black, the structure of the feathers creates rainbows of iridescence. The subspecies or “phase” that we have here in Central Missouri is the bronzed grackle (I’m pretty sure), which has a hood of bluish-green iridescence on the head, and an indescribably nuanced rainbow of bronzy color over the rest of the body, with the tail emphasizing purple hues. The males are the most striking, but the females, though duller, still have quite a bit of iridescent beauty.




When the grackles were a-courtin’ this past month or so, the males were spectacular, with their various courtship postures accentuating their iridescence and the sleekness and splendor of their forms. When they flew, they seemed to be showing off their athleticism, the fineness of being alive. The oddly V-shaped way they hold their tail feathers when they fly during this time seems an expression of pure vitality.




Grackles are not starlings—they belong here in North America. If their numbers seem overwhelming at times, it is because we humans have created conditions perfect for their expansion. One Web source I looked at recently said, however, that grackle populations have declined in North America by 61 percent; at one point, there had been more than 190 million grackles, but now there are more like 73 million. One more declining species of bird in North America! So Sue and I don’t have a single problem with feeding them, and letting them nest in our yew tree.




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Special thanks to Sue for taking these nice pictures for me, and for letting me use them on my blog. These photos are from a few weeks ago, when they were courting, pair-bonding, and mating. Now we need to get some pictures of their nest!

ADDENDUM

See my slightly newer post for a discussion of grackle voices and pictures of the babies!

Munichburg Corner Update, May 2

I took a little stroll at lunchtime today and got some more photos for you. There have been some new developments.

First of all, if you don’t know what the Munichburg Corner is, you’ll have to look at some earlier posts, such as the one here.

Here are a couple of views of the whole shebang—this view is to the north along Jefferson:




This view is eastward along Dunklin:




The biggest new development is that they’ve torn up the old concrete in front of the wall and scraped the rubble to the side: They’re preparing the ground in front of the monument for the personalized pavers!




I also noticed that they’d gotten rid of the surplus stone left over from the building of the wall and cleaned up behind there.




Another new thing is that they’ve added the caps to the wall’s square columns. Here’s a picture of one.





Southside Commercial Historic District

Meanwhile, down the street a little ways, the 100 block of East Dunklin looks very close to being finished—at least on the outside. Look here for a recent post showing some pictures of this project in progress.




They seem finished with the sidewalks. It’s hard to tell from my pictures, which were taken at high noon, but the walks adjacent to the buildings aren’t the typical cement color—they are tinted brown.








They are now focusing on the street and curbing in front of the sidewalk, chopping up the edge of the street there and replacing it with concrete:






Oh, also, they are doing some work on the former “Texas T’s” bar; instead of it being a rude drinking and brawling establishment, they’re turning this into three different storefronts, with three entrances. I understand that they are wanting to attract businesses like a beauty shop, tanning salon, or a Curves, or perhaps even a food franchise, if the parent company approves of a nonstandard building location.




So! Things are really looking beautiful there in the heart of Munichburg’s historic business district, don’t you think?

. . . And this little dude certainly has something to smile at now!

House Wrens and the Imbuers

Each morning these days I am awakened by the twittering exuberance of our local house wren. It sounds like this little fellow is right outside the window; we’ve got the windows open again this glorious spring. Though I struggle with the pollen, we enjoy the scents of green and blooming things, and even the smell of the rain, and appreciate the lower energy bills.

The wrens came back last month. The males precede the females on the trip north and divvy up their territories first. Then the females arrive, and each male’s song turns from a wary and fairly routine “this is my space” to an urgent, vigorous love-call, full of lusty promises to the female, as he shows her his “properties.”

That’s how Sue described it Friday morning when she noticed that Mr. Wren had as his audience a female, whose attention he was clearly directing to our three wren boxes (which we cleaned out and rehung as soon as we started hearing wren music this spring).

We bought a new box for them this year, and we hung it from the rock peach tree, where the popular but ill-fated house had hung last year.

Mr. Wren seemed very optimistic about his prospects—but despite his high hopes, he never slacks in his work of self-promotion: Female wrens are notoriously picky.

Whenever birds or other creatures start seeming to me like biological subjects, soulless Cartesian automatons of meat and bone, I return to my library of old nature books. Even the ones written by scientists, for popular audiences, anthropomorphize like crazy, compared to how naturalists write today. And I think we’ve lost something in the process: Maybe, on some primal level related to our human propensity for myth and personal immediacy, we need to endow animals with human traits—first—in order to make the leap toward an objective and fair understanding. Yes—gripping emotional interest first, intellectual rigor second. Well, it’s just an idea I have.

One of my cherished books is Birds of America, edited by T. Gilbert Pearson, first published in 1917, though my copy is from 1936. The book is out-of-date—taxonomies have been revised, species have been extirpated and extinguished, and others have been introduced or have moved into new areas. The house finch, for instance, was a completely western species when this book was written, extending only as far as the western edge of the Great Plains. What a difference a hundred years makes!

In many other ways, however, this volume is timeless. The physical descriptions are thorough and precise, written back in the day when bird-fanciers were quite likely to be identifying a bird “in the hand” as opposed to tracking it through binoculars as it flits through leaves and branches at the crack of dawn.

Each species has a technical description followed by a short essay describing character, habits, and other topics; these essays can be quite fanciful by today’s ironclad objective standards. For example, this volume offers that the “Jenny wren” is, “in truth, . . . a good deal of a shrew, and a chronic scold on general principles. By the same token, Johnny is likely to present a pretty good imitation of a henpecked husband, for from the moment he promises to love, cherish, and obey Jenny, he hardly dares say his soul is his own. However, he doesn’t appear to be in the least depressed by this state of affairs, for his bubbling song is one of the merriest and most spontaneous of bird utterances” (Pearson, 3:193).

Describing the wren as “a tiny fidgety body with an up-turned tail” does give you a pretty good impression of this creature, even though the fidgetiness is an outright anthropomorphism, a human judgment-call, when the truth of the situation is that the wren is simply a fast, efficient avian predator of insects; its movements, if quick, are calculated. If we all hunted insects for a living, quick, jerky movements would be the standard of normalcy.

Natural history educators today, more than they ever have in the past, are scrupulously careful not to bestow human attributes onto animals when interpreting nature to the public, and even to children. But maybe that’s not a good idea. Maybe it is a failing experiment. It’s bad enough that fewer and fewer Americans ever “get outside”; the current obsession with dehumanizing our nonhuman companions on this spinning planet simply widens the gap, makes us care less.


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Another of my favorite books in the “birds” section of my natural history library is Joseph Kastner’s A World of Watchers, which is an incredibly entertaining guided tour of bird watching in America. Kastner devotes an entire chapter to “The Imbuers,” the countless ladies who, in the early half of the last century, enthusiastically ushered youngsters into the marvelous world of bird-watching:

A reader going through the annals of birddom, the little small-print stories in the old birding journals, comes across a fine old-fashioned word: “imbue.” It almost always referred to somebody whose name was prefixed by “Miss” and who was, often, a teacher. Miss Mary Agnes Tillisch imbued the children of St. Paul with a love of birds. Miss Fannie Stebbins imbued the children of Springfield, Massachusetts, with an understanding of nature. . . .

There were thousands like them who worked through the Junior Audubon clubs, using their ten-cent pamphlets as texts. Their teaching could be sentimental and superficial and their bird walks just an excuse for an outing. Still, they opened the children’s eyes to nature and, in the end, helped produce multiplying generations of bird watchers. Except for little pats of appreciation in Bird-Lore or in the school columns of local newspapers, these imbuers have been forgotten. (Kastner, 156)

Kastner relates that one of these “imbuers,” Miss Blanche Hornbeck of Jamestown, New York, struggled to “tame an unruly seventh-grader named Roger Peterson, got him looking at birds and sent him on to become the world’s best-known birder.” I suspect that a great many of today’s biologists got their start because someone took their hands at a young age and made nature come alive for them, in a personalized, immediate way: Touch the feather. Call the colorful male a “dandy.” Memorize a goofy lyric to learn by heart the birdsong.

For an example of the anthropomorphism these women employed, Kastner describes one typical “imbuer” as being “shameless about endowing birds with human traits. Woodpeckers are ‘phlegmatic,’ waxwings ‘gentle, courteous, elegant,’ the cardinal ‘a shining example of self-conscious superiority.’ . . . The catbird with its ‘glorious song . . . hateful catcalls and squawks’ is ‘the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” of birds,’ while the mockingbird was the ‘angel that . . . the catbird was before he fell from grace’” (Kastner, 167).

I think my Grandma Schroeder fit this “imbuer” category. As a young mother, she volunteered as a leader with the Missouri Conservation Commission’s “Nature Knights” program, which was a nature-enrichment club for youngsters. Participants received rewards such as patches and medals and went on nature outings, learning about birds and plants as well as the latest conservation issues.

Yes, my grandma was an “imbuer.”


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I started this post mentioning that I had been awakened by our local house wren, because the first thought I had upon waking was that this tiny, noisy creature was my “natural alarm clock.” This idea isn’t mine, however; it comes from my Grandma.

Living here in her house occasionally offers us fascinating new insights into her personality and life, and the life of my dad’s whole family. Our most recent discovery was a folder of typed papers, clippings, and a small stack of magazines. The papers are yellowed, and the typing was manual. I suppose my dad was the one who typed these for her. Back in the fifties, I guess. There are some corrections penciled in, and certain words are underlined: Grandma must have used these as speeches.

Maybe these were presentations she gave to the garden club, or perhaps to her circle at church. I don’t know for sure. Two have captivated my interest the most: “Adventure with Herbs,” which I’ll talk about sometime in the future, and an untitled typescript on her “feathered friends.”

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how marvelous it was to discover these short texts. Grandma wasn’t much of a writer—she was definitely more of a talker! But finding these little essays—well, she’s been gone ten years now, and of course you would just figure there is nothing new for her to “say.” You just figure she’s silenced forever. You just figure you’ve heard her voice for the last time on this earth.

In her speech on birds, she lists and comments on the birds that frequented her yard—now our yard. Some, like the purple martins she and her father adored so much, who for nearly a century were as loyal to them as they were to the martins, no longer come around. It’s the same with purple finches—Grandma wrote that they “invade our lawns and trees in March and April,” but I haven’t seen a purple finch in decades. Meanwhile, although she seems to have listed every bird that passed through her yard, she said nothing about mourning doves, which are now so common.

I’d like to share with you, from her writing on birds, her comments about the house wren. As you read it, imagine how excited I was to discover this, right when the wrens were returning to our backyard. Imagine that the wrens scoping out our birdhouses might be descendants of the same twittering Johnny and Jenny Wrens that thrilled my grandma. For my part, I imagine my grandma’s voice saying these words, in that exuberant way of hers. That's why I've italicized the words she had underlined.

The liveliest singer in our back yard is the House Wren. Early some morning in April, there will go off under our window that most delightful of all alarm clocks—the friendly House Wren, just returned from a long visit south. Like some little mountain spring that, having been imprisoned by winter ice, now bubbles up from the spring sunshine and goes rippling along over the pebbles, tumbling over itself—so this little Wren’s song bubbles, ripples, cascades in a miniature torrent of ecstasy. After the Wren’s happy discovery of a place to live in, his song will go off in a series of musical explosions all day long, now from the roof, now from the clothesposts, the fence, or lawnchair. There never was a more tireless, spirited, brilliant singer.

Year after year, Wrens return to the same nesting places. The nest is kept scrupulously clean. The house cleaning, like the house building and renovating, being accompanied by the cheeriest of songs, that makes the bird fairly tremble by its intensity. But however angelic the voice of the House Wren, its temper can put to flight even the English Sparrow. [Grandma would comment later in her speech: “Like the poor, the Sparrows are always with us.”]

The male begins to carry twigs into the house before he finds a mate. The day she arrives on the scene, how he does sing. Dashing off for more twigs and stopping to sing to her every other minute, he helps furnish the cottage quickly, and he overdoes it and then pulls them out again. Jenny is a bustling housewife and will not tolerate vermin or dirt within her well-kept home. What rent do they pay? No man is clever enough to estimate the vast number of insects on your place that they destroy. They eat nothing else, which is the chief reason why they are so lively and excitable. Unable to soar after flying insects because of their short, round wings, they keep as a rule rather close to the ground, which their finely barred brown feathers so closely match. Whether hunting for grubs in the woodpile, scrambling over the brush heap after spiders, searching in trees, or creeping like feathered mice, they are always busy in your interest which is also theirs. It certainly pays, in every sense, to encourage Wrens.

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Books Adored in This Post

Joseph Kastner, A World of Watchers: An Informal History of the American Passion for Birds (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986).

T. Gilbert Pearson, ed., Birds of America. With original paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1917; reprint, New York: Doubleday, 1936).

Kewpiesta and Bonniebrook: A Branson Excursion

Bonjour, mes amis! Or, as they say down in th’ hills and hollers of th’Ozarks, Howdy, y’all!

Today I report on last weekend’s daytrip to Branson, which is about three hours’ drive south of Jefferson City.

The impetus was that Kewpiesta was going on last week (April 21–25). It’s a five-day convention for the hardcore types, but we decided that a few hours of witnessing the Kewpie aficionados and their stuff would be plenty for us. And anyway, we didn’t want to pay the registration cost.

If you have no clue who Rose O’Neill was, or what Kewpies are, you need to look at my previous post. Here’s the link!

Kewpiesta is the annual convention of the International Rose O’Neill Club (IROC). You just know these are an interesting bunch! I think the largest number of IROC-ers are doll collectors, specifically Kewpie collectors—because Kewpies, in all their shapes and sizes, in print, on labels, on dishware and candlesticks and even Christmas lightbulb shapes, are eminently collectible!

And it is truly an international club—Kewpies were popular worldwide, were manufactured in Germany, and even today are quite popular in Japan. One year we went to Kewpiesta, and there was a large contingent of Japanese collectors there. Serious collectors. I recall they really had fun at the auction!

Other members of IROC are people interested in Rose O’Neill as a unique character, as a serious artist, as a female artist, and as a local celebrity. Most members of IROC have a sincere appreciation and understanding for the styles of the past, too. Not that they dress in turn-of-the-century garb or anything . . . but in a way, they are lay historians of popular cultural history.
You really should have a look at the Web site of the IROC and Kewpiesta.

They also provide scholarships for needy talented art students—which carries on O’Neill’s tradition of helping younger artists to get started.

It’s a three-hour drive from Jeff City down to Branson, so once we’d arrived and had lunch, the Kewpiesta, which had been going on since Wednesday, was wrapping up. Throughout the conference, in addition to the various speakers, auctions, discussions, luncheons, and so forth, the aficionados put up displays of their collections, and/or items for sale, in the windows of their motel rooms.

So all one has to do is stroll along the motel walkways, peering into windows. Most of the collectors are more than happy for you to come in and chat, and look at their items more closely.

There were tons of Kewpies to see, plus Kuddle Kewps, Ho-Hos (O’Neill’s Buddha figure, not the snack treat), Scootles dolls, and so on. Here are a few of the many, many items we saw.

The price tag on this item blew me away. It was only about two and a half inches long. I can see how pieces like this—made of china, I guess, with all those vulnerable, thin extremities—would not have survived well into the twenty-first century, so they’re probably very rare.




Here is “Farmer Kewpie,” another little china or bisque figure. There were several individual Kewpie characters identifiable by their various hats and other attributes. Again, check out the price tag!




Well, this next thing certainly caught my eye, since I’m an alumna of the Hickman High School Marching Kewpies trumpet line! This is a vintage Conn Victor cornet, probably from the 1920s (it has that weird extra linkage on the tube exiting the valve casing that could give you the option to turn it into an “A” cornet instead of B-flat—but I digress). It’s in about as beautiful a shape as you could expect a ninety-year-old horn to be.

But the kicker is that above the standard, old-fashioned, ornate bell engraving, THIS horn has been uniquely engraved with a Kewpie! Behind him is a little oceanscape, complete with distant lighthouse. Pretty neat, huh? I kept thinking how groovy this would have been in high school!




But what I find most compelling about this is that whoever owned this cornet must have been the one to have it engraved—paid to have it engraved nicely—and in the 1920s, that musician would have almost certainly been a man. Not just any man, but a trumpet-dude, a jazz dude (this wouldn’t have been in an orchestra, most likely). A studly macho trumpet dude—had a little naked Kewpie grinning on his bell, the bell of his sweet trumpet.

Which tells you about the popularity of the Kewpies, in their heyday.

Oh, and the price on this? I can’t recall the exact figure, but it was over $2,000. The original case and a Conn mouthpiece were with it, all in decent shape. The collector said he’d priced it so that it really wouldn’t sell. He didn’t want to sell it. Even though he didn’t know how to play a cornet. (Sigh!)

Here’s a picture of one of the early Kewpie dolls. The theme for this year’s Kewpiesta was “Rose’s Dolls,” so there you go. One of about a zillion, with so few left.




Below is another interesting thing to peer at: An original Kewpie Doll in an original box with (apparently) original packing material and everything. Can you imagine the thrill of a little kid opening up this box? It must have been mighty.




I mean, really—when you think of the “competition,” other dolls at the turn of the century were gorgeous, delicate, lifelike, yes . . . but they so often had a vacant stare. But the Kewpies had oodles of charm. Just look at them. Doesn’t it make you want to crack a Kewpish little smile, too?

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After we’d completed our rounds of the Kewpie Konkourse (seriously, that’s what they call it), we drove back north out of Branson. (Ooh! The traffic of folks driving into town for the night’s shows!)

Thence to Bonniebrook. As I explained in my previous post, it’s a rebuilt Bonniebrook, but I suppose it looks quite a bit like the original home, which was destroyed by fire in 1947. (Something tells me that ol’ Rose would be touched and deeply amused that the home had been rebuilt.)

Bonniebrook is about nine miles north of Branson on the right/east side of Highway 65, at the bottom of a valley between two relatively steep grades. There’s a building with a gift shop and museum, and then there’s the house itself, with its yard and walkways, plus the O’Neill family cemetery.

The house must have seemed a mansion, or a castle, when it was first built. I read somewhere that Bonniebrook had the first indoor bathroom with running water in the whole area.




In the foreground of that picture, notice the sculpture, “The Fauness”—one of two O’Neill sculptures on the grounds. Keep scrollin’.

You can tour Bonniebrook. Since it was Kewpiesta Saturday, the home was open for free (which was really nice, since we got caught in a downpour while we were there!). Here is a view looking down the several staircases in the center of the home. At the bottom is a piano. The O’Neills loved to entertain, and the house was built specifically for it.




I told you it was raining. Here’s a view from the second-floor front porch, looking down at the swelling creek they called Bonniebrook, and a little footbridge. That’s vinca, by the way, down there on the ground. It’s all over the place on that land—but thankfully the wild sweet William, trillium, and other native wildflowers were able to poke out of it.




Here is another view of the interior of the rebuilt Bonniebrook. I tried to replicate the angle of a famous picture of O’Neill taken in this very same room. Well, the same room in the previous Bonniebrook, as this is sort of the holodeck version with twenty-first-century aliens lounging around in it.




In the old photograph of “this” room, taken around 1940 I guess, the room is chock full of Kewpies and Victorian pretties, including about seven busts sitting on the mantle of an ornate fireplace (the Gothic one O’Neill had moved to the house from Connecticut?), and the chairs are eighteenth-century carved-wing-armrest affairs. Rose is sitting with her brother Clink (Clarence, but who called him that?), her sister Callista, and Vance Randolph, the Ozark folklorist we’ve talked about before. Oh, and everyone seems to be looking at the same thing—a cat sitting right on the table, licking a paw. O’Neill loved cats.

In the house and in the museum are lots of photographs of O’Neill, and here is one of my favorites, taken when she was hanging out with her artist friends in Paris. Indeed, O’Neill’s “Sweet Monster” series of artworks had exhibitions in New York and in Paris. It wasn’t all “cartoons” for her.




Here’s a prime example of O’Neill’s more serious side. This sculpture is called “Embrace of the Tree,” and she originally had it at Carabas, her home in Westport, Connecticut. When she retired to the Ozarks, she had the sculpture brought to Bonniebrook. Rose said in her memoirs: “I think the hillmen . . . had a little fun when they put the Embrace of the Tree on the lawn, though they spoke of it respectfully as ‘That there monu-ment.’”




You really ought to read her autobiography—it’s a real hoot.

Here’s another view of Embrace of the Tree. Pretty, um, powerful, huh?




Honestly, I would sooooo love to have this sculpture in my backyard. Wouldn’t you?

I understand, by the way, that the caretakers of Bonniebrook are getting ready to have Embrace of the Tree moved indoors, since weather has been taking a toll on the two-ton sculpture (they seriously need to do this, indeed). So if you want to experience Embrace outdoors, as O’Neill had intended, you’d better get down to Bonniebrook soon.

Now, here is a closeup of The Fauness, one of O’Neill’s oddly transmogrified human-beasts. I think what’s odd and compelling about it is that despite the fact that it’s a monster—it’s attractive, organic, and benevolent. And beautiful. You can tell she studied classical sculpture from a very young age, assimilating into her aesthetic sensibility such strangely beautiful beings.




As you continue to stroll beyond the house and into the woods, a path follows the brook and leads to the O’Neill family cemetery. Rose was laid to rest here in 1944, beside her mother and her brother Jamie. Her sisters Callista and Lee, and her brother John Hugh, were also buried there.






Inside the museum, more treasures await. Naturally, there are Kewpies, Kewpies, and more Kewpies. Here’s a funny little Kuddle Kewpie that was seated in the back corner of a display case. Kuddle Kewps were invented so that little kids would have a soft Kewpie they could hug and cuddle with.




The museum also bears witness to the many commercial branches of Kewpieness. The Kewpies are famously associated with early ads for Jell-O. But here’s one I’d never heard of—Kewpie mixed vegetables!




(I wonder if the Kewpie on the label encouraged any more children to eat their canned veggies?)

O’Neill wrote books, as well. When I read one of these, I’ll tell you all about it. Here’s the front cover of one.




Various items were found in the ashes after the 1947 fire that destroyed Bonniebrook. Here’s a Buddha that O’Neill had owned. I find it intriguing, given that in her later years she developed the “Ho-Ho,” her version of a laughing Buddha—which, despite being a commercial failure, nevertheless lifted her own mood in light of her vanished fortune, indeed poverty, and the ongoing World War II, which threatened to crush her spirits during the last years of her life.






At some point relatively recently, an exploration was made of the Bonniebrook grounds to hunt for possible artifacts left over after the 1947 fire. And the stuff they found is pretty interesting. Here is one example of what had been buried under the soil, a fragment of a Kewpie face.




I try to imagine how it must have felt to unearth this little sprite after so many years of its being buried in that fertile Ozark bottomland soil—more than just a symbol of indomitable cheer, it’s a powerful proof of the ability of one artist to elevate a person’s mood, a legitimately real influence from beyond the grave, a true immortality for the Kewpish spirit of Rose O’Neill.