Calvin Coolidge and other things

September 30, 2024

I said goodbye to Troy, New York where I had spent the last three nights.   The Best Western is right on the river, downtown. They do a thriving business in weddings on the weekends since there is a large banquet hall/wedding venue across the street that also belongs to the hotel.   The bridesmaids and the bride have the hair done at the hotel and run up and down the halls, giggling and screaming, and then everybody goes across the street for the wedding.    The hotel also host a bus load of Danish electrician students two months out of the year as they come for the local junior college.   These young men are about as wholesome as you could possibly imagine.

I have never given it any thought, but in western Massachusetts I drove over the highest point on interstate 90, East of North Dakota! Approximately 1700 feet! Who knew?

My next stop was to the Calvin Coolidge Library and Museum, which should have meant a big whoop- de-doo.    In presidential things, the word library means the president's archives and personal papers.    What I found in North Hampton Massachusetts was a large room on the second floor of the Forbes Library,  It details a good bit of his life, but completely left out his ascension to the presidency after the death of Harding.   About the only souvenir they offered for sale is a T-shirt that says, “ I do not choose to run” Which apparently is what he said after his full term.   The library building itself is a public library.  The building would fit in very well as a Texas county courthouse.    Old, stone, very well maintained.   For an old Library, they offered jigsaw puzzles and musical instruments to check-out and they have an extensive collection of graphic novels and music on CD.   Northampton was chosen as the site as this is where he spent much of his political career, from mayor to state senator, to governor.  

From North Hampton I drove down into Connecticut and bought some gas and had lunch.   According to my personal rules, I can now say I have been to Connecticut.  I had pasta in a very nice Italian restaurant in Connecticut and would have liked to have stayed for dinner because the wine list included a German Riesling that the server said was very good.

I now pointed the car to the interstate and drove pretty much nonstop up and over Boston and into Maine.   I asked the gentleman at the visitor center to help me get a hotel. I told him my criteria was it had to be in Maine so that I could say I had been to Maine.  He liked that approach as he said he gets people who come in all the time, who walk into the visitor center, take a picture and get back in the car and go back into New Hampshire, telling themselves they’ve been to Maine.    He suggested a lighthouse and a decent restaurant where I could buy the requisite lobster roll.    I followed his instructions to the T and got a good picture of a lighthouse and a lobster roll with a very good cup of clam chowder.  The clam chowder met my Dad's standard, it was so thick my spoon almost stood up in the cup!    The lobster roll contained large chunks of tender meat.

I am back at the room, ready to go to bed, I’m pretty much intend to head from here, to Boston's Logan airport tomorrow.

I think I have gone to the Darkside as I have depended upon GPS for the last two weeks.   No paper maps, and even less idea of where I am at any given time.   I set my destination, it tells me where I currently am, and I tell it to go. It is rather scary if you think about it.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to understand electricity, television, how the heck a monarch can find my backyard; so I know I will never ever understand everything that goes into my iPhone. As far as I’m concerned, it is black magic.

Over the past two weeks I have purchased a lot of souvenir coffee mugs, and more than a couple of presidential history books.  Today I had to pay the piper! I took several bags of mugs and books into the UPS store and paid more to ship them than my hotel bill for the night! But it had to be done.  If you ever come to my house for breakfast, I will have your choice of coffee mugs and maybe even a cup of Teddy Roosevelt’s personal Bull Moose coffee!

The Baseball Hall of Fame

It’s Sunday, September 29 and I drove from Troy, New York to Cooperstown to visit the baseball Hall of Fame.  The trip took over an hour and a half and much of it was on little country roads that were too small to have a center stripe!  The foliage is getting more and more beautiful, but as I think I said yesterday, my little iPhone camera cannot possibly do justice to the beauty unfolding on these hill sides.

Cooperstown seems to be one big classy tourist trap! There are a couple of other attractions but the main one, of course, is baseball.  There are a large number of gift shops ready to take your money, and they took some of mine! Parking is about the only thing that I could complain about as most of the parking is street parking, but there is a two-hour limit and you have to pay the meter quite a few sheckles. The guy in front of the Hall of Fame suggested I go down to Doubleday field and park there where it cost $15 for the whole day. It was only a couple blocks.  One of the shops seems to be an outlet for a local distillery, who will sell you whiskey and vodka in bottles shaped like baseballs. I don’t really drink either of these, so I did not inquire as to the price.

The Hall of Fame is right downtown and covers three floors. The introductory film involved a number of baseball’s best players. each offering a few insights about baseball. It was fun to watch!  For many years baseball writers and historians stated that baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general.   Doubleday existed and was apparently apparently from Cooperstown, But I read the line in the history that says "Doubleday did not invent baseball - Baseball invented Doubleday!"

There was a display about some of the colorful terms that were used in the early days, that are no longer used. For instance, a striker is now called the batter.  I would love to watch a game where the announcer would try to include as many obscure terms as possible. Wait, they already do!

Lots of coverage of Babe Ruth and lots and lots of coverage of the Yankees! Well, why not? They are the most successful team in baseball. There were a number of displays about their various and many dynasties. My only comfort is that there will not be a display of a Yankees Dynasty after 2017! The Astros have taken care of that!  I was disappointed that there was not that much information or displays devoted to my Houston Astros.   There is an exhibit on women’s baseball and a good-size exhibit on the Negro league and the success of African-Americans in baseball.

There is a room made up like a locker room where each team gets a locker. This is where I found most of the Astros knickknacks.

I went down the street for one of the best hotdogs I’ve ever had.  Since the Hall of Fame is on the main street of town and there are many places to eat, it really makes sense that the museum does not have its own diner. Most of the on-site snack bars that I have run across were just OK.  Besides, this might be another way to keep the town happy, and sharing in the profits!

One of my favorite exhibits was this homage to the fans.  Each papier-mâché statue represents a specific, named super-fan of the sport.

A great line from Casey Stengel that I think works outside the sport as well.

In the room, devoted to baseball art, this piece of woodwork is my favorite.

I was able to exercise self-restraint in the gift shop because I figured that anything I wanted about the Astros I could get at Minutemaid Park, but then I saw a gift shop on Main Street that offered German style nutcrackers, dressed up and baseball uniforms.  I hope I can get my Astro home safely!

I bid farewell to the national baseball Hall of Fame and headed for the very small town Of Blenheim, about an hour south east of Cooperstown.   Last month, I watched an interesting episode of Nova in which this little town lost their historic Wooden bridge in a flood, And decided that the bridge was part of their identity.  The episode included lots of background on wooden bridges, both American and Chinese, And is fascinating both from the Engineering standpoint, and the aesthetic.  GPS took me down a lot of winding roads, but the result was worth it.    

The original bridge was built in 1855.  It was touted as the longest single-span covered wooden bridge in the world. It has now been rebuilt using, for the most part, centuries – old building techniques.  It may be a source of civic pride, but it really serves no useful purpose, as it lacks an approach from the town end.

I offer a few more pictures of foliage, because I did try.

Back in downtown Troy, on the front lawn of my hotel, I met this little fellow.  The hotel staff tell me he lives near the flagpole.

Martin Van Buren and The Erie Canal

This happened Saturday, September, 28.

First off, I don’t think President Van Buren had anything to do with the Erie Canal, but both are in the Albany area, thence the title.

There is a wedding party staying in this hotel. The ceremony and the reception will occur across the street, but preparations have been going on here all day and many many of the guests are here. I talk about this because when I took the elevator downstairs for breakfast this morning, the elevator opened and three young ladies exploded into the elevator, almost knocking me down! Granted, it’s not a bad way to die, but I swear there’s 20 bridesmaids getting their hair done!

After breakfast, I drove to Kinderhook, a short distance from Troy to the post-presidency home of Martin Van Buren. The only two things I knew about Van Buren prior to the tour was that English was his second language (Dutch was his first), and he was known derisively in Washington and politics as The Little Magician. He was from Kinderhook, but did not move into that particular house until after his presidency.     Very nice tour. Van Buren was one of Jackson’s vice presidents; his wife had died long before he became president and his 20 year year-old daughter-in-law took on the duties of the first lady. Far away the youngest first lady.  Van Buren had slaves (I should say enslaved people) until New York State ruled this out and so his house was served by about a half dozen Irish teenage girls. The guide got a kick out of showing us the bell system that I have seen in a few other houses. There was a lever in each room that the family could pull, and a bell rang down in the servants quarters in the basement. Much of the house is reproduction or from the same time-period. The wallpaper in the main room of the house is original and is worth the visit. It took 55 pieces of wallpaper and the French company that manufactured it is still in business . 

Van Buren supported President Jackson’s Indian removal policies and in fact carried out many more of them himself. The Trail of Tears, I believe, actually happened on Van Buren‘s watch.  Van Buren only had an eighth grade education, but was apprenticed to a lawyer and became a very successful lawyer himself.

It was warm today, so I went back to the hotel and got out of my blue jeans and went for something much cooler for the rest of the day. I have always been curious about the Erie Canal, whose eastern end is by Albany.   My tiny map on this iPhone was no help so I pretty much just started crisscrossing the area looking for the part of the canal that I wanted to see. Soon enough I come upon the Mohawk river and a 35 foot sailboat, cruising towards the eastern end of the canal. I set off to find it entering Canal Lock Six. As I watched it slowly dropping elevation in the lock I struck up a conversation with Leroy, the guy working the lock, and soon enough, it was time to open the other lock gate.    He motioned to me to come over to the control house and he pointed to the button and I, Dan Nagel, with great fanfare and bluster, opened a lock gate on the Erie canal! I followed the sailboat to the next lock and learned that there is still some commercial traffic on the canal in the form of barges.

For dinner I had a flight of four little craft beers and a Ruben made from grilled haddock! Very tasty and satisfying.

Tomorrow, I am going to try to go to Cooperstown on pilgrimage to the baseball Hall of Fame.

Chester A. Arthur and General Grant

 September 27, 2024

After a wonderful breakfast at the Inn, I headed north to Fairfield, Vermont.   Because of a mistake in my hotel booking, I ended up in upstate Vermont a day earlier than intended. This was going to get in the way of the Chester A. Arthur house as they are only open on Saturdays and Sundays, and I now found myself there on Friday.  When I discovered my problem, I talked with the owner of the bed-and-breakfast who told me she knew the tour guide, and arrangements were made for a one-on-one tour on Friday when the house was not open to the public.   Jane is a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide and I learned a whole lot about Chester A. Arthur.

Arthur’s father was a Baptist preacher who started in Fairfield.   They moved a lot and most of his experiences seem to be in New York State    He was a beneficiary of the patronage and spoils system in New York City and was basically handpicked for the vice presidency by the Political Machine after about 34 ballots, as Garfield was going to need the support of New York State.   

Garfield was assassinated early in his term by a disgruntled office seeker, and Arthur decided to honor the plans of his predecessor.   Under Arthur’s administration, serious steps were taken to dismantle the patronage and spoils system, and it was Arthur who started the Civil Service Commission.

During his administration he was becoming quite ill, but kept it secret. He did not seek the nomination and died a few years later.

The house is a replica and there are almost no artifacts in it. The guy at the bed-and-breakfast told me that at one point, thieves got into the house and loaded all the antiques on a trailer and disappeared. There is a lot of information on display boards, but this is such a low-key operation by the state that there’s not even a gift shop. As a matter of fact, many of the gift shops that I have been in cover more space than the Arthur home! 

From here I headed west across Lake Champlain, and into New York State. My route took me so far north that at one point, had I turned right I would have been crossing into Canada. I took the interstate down to Wilton, New York, not far from Saratoga Springs, to the Grant Cottage.   This is where President Grant spent his final days, finishing his memoirs. It became very important that these memoirs be finished as the family was going to depend upon the proceeds for their livelihood.    Grant had been sending articles about the Civil War to a magazine, but Mark Twain took over as his publisher, I guess, and gave him a much better deal. He died about three days after finishing the book. He was miserable in his last days and died of throat cancer. The book became a best seller and is still in print today.  I bought a copy.  It is one of the most respected presidential memoirs ever written. 

I think I was expecting a log cabin, but it was a very nice house that a friend arranged for him to live in. Former presidents, even up until Truman, did not get a government pension.  One of the staff at the site was in full Costume as General Grant.    

My final stop was on the edge of Albany at a very large and old cemetery where I found the grave of President Chester A Arthur. I had been shown pictures showing the angel at the monument had been restored at some point.  there is loose change on the monument, which I guess is a tradition from somewhere.

I find myself with some time on my hands, and I am tired of going in and out of hotels, so I booked a room at the best western in Troy, right on the Hudson river, from where I will visit Cooperstown, the Erie Canal, some covered bridges and Martin Van Buren’s home .

Across the street from the hotel and right on the river is a restaurant, Dinosaur Barbecue.   I had a combination plate and an Oktoberfest beer served in a brandy snifter! Don’t judge me!  In Houston I like New York bagels, so why not get barbecue in New York?

Presidents Pierce and Coolidge

This happened September 26, 2024

I picked up the rental car from Logan airport. Another problem with third-party booking is that I’m stuck returning the car to Logan! I have changed my Southwest Airlines reservation from Hartford to Boston, but I would’ve really rather flown out of Hartford.    Sigh

Franklin Pierce’s Home is in Concord, New Hampshire.   This is the original house, but it has been moved to an historic area.   A group called the Pierce brigade, saved the house from destruction and rehabbed it to its former glory.    Pierce was our 14th president, a strict constitutionalist.  He believed slavery was wrong, but ticked off everybody in the country over the situation in Kansas, known forever more as “bleeding Kansas”  

The tree is a reminder that President Pierce had the first White House Christmas tree.

My tour guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic, even though by noon I was only the fifth visitor of the day. They have many interesting artifacts for the house.   President Pierce did not always have a happy life as none of his three children survived childhood.    He considered Jefferson Davis a friend since Davis had been his secretary of war and even wrote nice things to him after the war.   Peirce was not able to get nominated for reelection and saw James Buchanan take his place.  Boy, that was an improvement?!

Next, I drove forever to Plymouth, Vermont to see the birthplace and boyhood home of Calvin Coolidge.   I had planned to just wander through the visitor center, but the lady convinced me to take the walk a couple hundred feet to the village of Plymouth Notch that has been preserved, mostly.   Here I saw where he was born, grew up, was told he had just become president with the death of President Harding, and even saw the upper room over the general store, that is referred to as the summer White House.  Coolidge was a man a few words, but the visitor center has a number of his witty sayings in his own voice.   

I was very impressed with a quilt that Young Calvin made. It is still on his bed. The tour guide said it is very rare for a boy to be able to do the intricate sewing required of falling blocks.  I was impressed and intrigued because I have that quilt, with different material, that my grandmother made me many years ago.   

This is the room where Calvin‘s father administered the oath of office after Warren Harding passed away.  

I was a little late getting to Coolidge because I saw a wooden covered bridge and some foliage and a waterfall, so I just had to stop!

The Coolidge site is so remote that I had to drive about 10 miles before my GPS would reconnect and tell me how to get to Fairview, Vermont almost to the Canadian border.   You may know that I do not trust GPS, but this day I had to put my full faith in it.    Coming out of Boston, I would’ve killed myself if I had had to study a map and drive, but I just plugged it in to the car display and charged along.

I stayed the night at the Inn @ Buck Hollow Farms just a few minutes south of the president Arthur birthplace.    Very nice and cozy.   Breakfast included lemon poppy waffles with real Vermont maple syrup!

This was the view of foliage from my upstairs window.  

John Adams and John Quincy Adams

September 25, 2024.    Boston and Quincy

MBTA is working on the line through Quincy, so I had to take a shuttle bus that took a whole lot longer. I want to emphasize that MBTA and the bus company are doing everything they can to make the detour work. There are employees everywhere ready to get you to your destination. 

The National Park System visitor center is across the street from Quincy Center station. There was a nice film about generations of the Adams family.  Don’t confuse this with the Addams family from the sitcom, like my auto type just did.   The film features Paul Giamatti, Tom Hanks, and Laura Linney.   

John and John Q were the only two presidents of the first seven to only serve single terms.  Father / Son.  Both had extensive service as ambassadors/ministers to Europe, as well as secretary of state. The family was in Quincy for many generations. Quincy, by the way, was a family name of Abigail Adams, wife of John. She herself was intelligent and completed John.

The tour offers a shuttle bus between the three houses and the visitors center. The old house at Peace Field Has a tour guide.  Peace Field Was refurbished a number of times after J and JQ. The kitchen displays a number of stoves from throughout its history.

Probably the most awesome site is Stone Library, right behind Peace Field, Built by one of the descendants and located behind the main house. The Library houses, the Adams book collection and many artifacts, including a desk from Congress.(?).  The tour guide called this the first presidential library!

Both presidents and their wives are entombed In the basement of the United First Parish Church, which in of itself is quite a place.  By the way, count the stripes!

I found statues of John Hancock and John Adams in town, but JQ not only does not rate a statue, he does not rate a coffee mug.   His crypt is about the only thing I found with his name.

John, the second president, successfully defended the five British soldiers from the Boston massacre. JQ, the sixth president, went to Congress after the White House and successfully defended the Amistad enslaved people before the Supreme Court. He died in the US capitol And has the distinction of having known both Washington and Lincoln, who was in Congress with JQ.   

I went into Bank of America in Quincy Center for business. This is a beautiful old bank building with its own history, but I was asked not to take pictures inside. The stately structure could be a separate tour.

I have now seen something of 31 presidents!

On to New Hampshire and Vermont.