Queen City of Santa-Cali-Gon

 

If you have come upon this blog before, if you've ever heard of me & my books, then you might know that I live in Independence, MO. Hometown of President HST, No. 33.  Queen City of the Trails.  Meaning that William Becknell & his mules passed through here on his way to Santa Fe right about the time that MO was admitted to the Union. And it wasn't long before this was a place of hand-over-fist, hook-by-crook, eager trading, talking in French, Spanish, English + assorted dialects of all of the above and more between between peoples of many nations as they exchanged Mexican silver & such for saddles, laces, cloth, livestock, information....That my town used to be an absolute cacophony of campfires. A teeming world of tents & wagons. A plethora of poop, that of cattle, horses, and mules. Pigs & chickens, too. A temporary empire of emigrants in the springs of the years when the Trail to Oregon was a new & frightening, thrilling & death-defying fantastic prospect - not just another cockamamie, tired-out factoid & staple of the Western Expansion chapter in your basic Am Hist. 

   And oh baybee - when word finally got out that GOLD had been discovered out in California

   SO that is why the townsfolk hereabouts decided, in 1940, to stage pageants & parades & who knows what all to celebrate the Three Trails. Men let their whiskers grow. Women spread out calico on their kitchen tables to cut out & sew new old-timey dresses. all of this is a roundabout way, my taking the scenic route to get around to telling you why my town is nuts right now & lots of people around my town are absolutely avoiding the old Courthouse Square: Pavilions. Temporary upright shoebox privies. Electrical cables. A carnival. Crafters. Food dispensers turning out hotdogs, popcorn, cotton candy, corn dogs, BBQ, shaved ice, & beer. Info dispensers turning out tracts, flyers, campaign buttons. The concerts will set the heavens throbbing. And for the next three days people, people, throngs of people will mill around  Santa-Cali-Gon.

 

What does in mean?

Summer's over. 

That and there are funnel cakes to be had mere blocks away.

wahoobaybee!