Our first stop is the George Washington Carver National Historic Site in Diamond, Missouri, which is just outside Joplin.
Carver was born into slavery here in the 1860s.
When George was very young, he and his mother were kidnapped. The man Moses Carver hired to hunt them down brought George back, but George never saw his mother again.
George Washington Carver died in 1943. He is buried at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Moses Carver and his wife, the slave owners who raised George, are buried in this cemetery. .
After the Civil War, George left the Carvers' home to seek an education when he was 10-12 years old--about the age that our kids are this summer.
Carver supported himself by working as a servant, a hotel cook, a laundryman, and a farm labourer. In 1879, he witnessed a lynching in Fort Scott, Kansas that haunted him for the rest of his days.
Carver was working as a farmhand in Minneapolis, Kansas when he finished high school in his late 20s. He moved to Iowa to study art and then transferred to Iowa State Agricultural College (later Iowa State University), where he received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science in 1894 and a master of science degree in 1896.
When George returned to the visit the Carvers in later years, they lived in this house, which was built in 1881. Over the course of our trip, Mari read us excerpts from a 2015 biography of Carver by Christina Vella. She recommends it.
Our next stop was the Polymath Educational Cafe in Marshfield, Missouri. As I remembered it, the cafe was only open to 2 pm on Saturdays. When I realized we would just make it before closing, I called to confirm that we would be able to eat there if we arrived shortly before 2. The owner said "sure." It was only after we arrived that we realized that the Polymath Educational Cafe actually closes at 1 pm on Saturdays. She stayed open an extra hour to offer us a vegetarian feast.
After we checked in to our hotel in downtown St. Louis, we headed to the City Museum, which is open until midnight on Saturday night. The "Museum"--which was highly recommended to us by Lisa, Norah and Melissa--did not disappoint.
All we knew going in was that it had a 10-story slide.
I can now report that 80% of the Museum is a multi-story indoor/outdoor playground featuring slides, tunnels and mazes.
That's Nina in the photo above, demonstrating impressive bravery by climbing through a sky cage-tunnel several stories above the ground.
Describing the Museum as a playground undersells the imaginative work that went into its construction. Notice the school bus peering over the corner of the building in the photo above. The Museum is also a playground for the eyes.
Pablo and Emilio exited one side of the basement and emerged some minutes later from underneath the jaw of a giant white cave whale.
Later, Emilio and Nina appeared briefly among the stalagtites in one of the cage-tunnel's arteries.
The whale's tongue and throat provide one entry way into the cavern maze.
Pablo has always been a very flexible boy.
Part of the 15% of the museum that was not playground included a modern art exhibit that featured a sculpture by KAWS (not pictured here).
The museum pizza was surprisingly tasty.
Pablo and I didn't discover the dragon's lair until after I saw it in on a postcard in the bookstore on our first attempt to exit the building. We went back in to find it hidden in the cavern maze.
Our decision to visit on a Saturday night was a wise one. They say lines can be quite long during the day, but we did not encounter any during our visit. We left shortly before 11 p.m.
