Lila Perry Steinhoff Archives

November 14, 2014

Tis The Season …

Road Warriorette and former bike partner Anne, who abandoned me to move back home to Texas, arrived for a West Palm Beach visit Thursday afternoon. I got her settled in at her motel, then we went out for a great dinner, visited bike partner Osa, stopped by another of Anne’s friends, then headed up Flagler Drive where we spotted this house all set for Christmas.

The palm trees – and the balmy 70-degree temperature – gave an indication I wasn’t in the Midwest.

Pining for the ocean

Anne’s a Texan by birth and inclination, but she did admit to pining for the ocean. I turned right on Southern Blvd., and took her for a ride along Palm Beach. When we got to one of the few places you could park and get public access to the beach, I told her she could get and and frolic in the sand and surf if she liked, but I preferred the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean.

When we left, I asked if she’d like to go to the north end of the island to the Palm Beach Inlet. That’s like asking if bears fertilize the forest.

“Don’t fence me in”

When we got to the inlet, there was a chain holding the gate to the small park closed. I put my car in park with the four-way flashers blinking and let her out. I assumed she was going to stand at the gate and look out toward Singer Island’s lights across the water.

I heard her humming “Don’t Fence Me In,” a rattle of the fence and she was gone from sight. She never did things like that when she was a Floridian.

“That’s not a happy sound”

On our way back to the motel, I told Friend Anne, “That’s not a happy sound. I think I’ve got a flat tire.”

Indeed, the left rear tire was flat.

Maybe I can give it a shot of Fix-a-Flat or pump it up with my portable air compressor, I considered. The only problem was that I had taken all those options out of the car last night when I unloaded it, but hadn’t replaced them. Plan C was to put the doughnut spare on, something I really hated to do since the Honda jack is the worst piece of equipment ever devised.

I had just started attacking the problem when a car pulled up behind us. It was Patrol Officer Larry Ferguson of the Palm Beach Police Department. I figured he’d run our tag, ask for ID, shine his flashlight around inside the car, then leave us in the dark when we came up clean. (Well, I knew I would come up clean. There’s no telling what Friend Anne has been up to in the Lone Star State.)

It turned out Larry was a nice guy who went way beyond the call of duty. I’m going to write a letter to the chief telling him that Larry is a great representative of his department.

How to have a fun evening in Palm Beach

Here are few of the things that happened:

I didn’t have the jack on the frame properly so it slipped off.
The doughnut spare was flat, so I called Wife Lila to bring my tools and compressor. Larry offered to take me someplace to get it aired up, but I said it was such a hassle to jack the car up that I’d rather leave it on the car and bring the compressor to the tire.
Lila arrived, we hooked up the compressor and it hummed away in the humid air for several minutes. I was beginning to regret having that second glass of tea with dinner.
Larry felt around the rim, felt air escaping and said the tire was so flat it had lost its bead and would NEVER fill up.
We jacked up the car again, removed my spare, and put put on Lila’s spare (we drive the same model van). At some point, my jack twisted and became inoperable, so we had to switch to Lila’s jack.
We offered Larry an opportunity to escape, but he pitched in fighting the jack. helping lift the tire onto the studs and making sure Anne had tightened the lug nuts properly. Wife Lila didn’t get a shot of me toiling away with sweat splashing off my forehead, but she did capture me in a supervisory role.

Things that put the jolly in the evening

With Thanksgiving coming up, I should give thanks for a few of the good things that happened.

Patrolman Ferguson, a native of West Palm Beach who moved back here after serving as an officer in Washington State, was not only a tremendous help in getting us through our tire difficulties, but he was also a genuinely nice guy who was fun to talk with and who gave us an interesting perspective about how the area had changed since he was a kid going to Twin Lakes High School.
Wife Lila showed up with everything needed to get me back on the road. I’m glad my flat happened in Palm Beach and not in Nowhere, Ga.
Anne provided help and moral support once I explained to her that we were in Florida not Texas: “No, Anne, it didn’t ‘throw a shoe.’ We don’t have to call for a blacksmith.”

Buying two REAL jacks to replace those Honda pieces of junk will go to the top of my to-do list tomorrow.

November 10, 2014

Burr Oak Lodge

As you’ve read before, my lodging needs are pretty simple: I look for a clean, cheap room with a decent bed, fast internet connection and a good shower. Even some of those things are negotiable.

I usually stay in the second-cheapest motel in Athens, Ohio. So far as I know, they haven’t let a body go undiscovered for long periods of time, like the CHEAPEST place, which carries the local nickname of The Meth Motel.

No room at the Inn

This trip, however, everything for 30 miles around Athens had been booked because it was Fathers Weekend at Ohio University. Curator Jessica, as a last resort, called the Burr Oak Lodge , a place I thought would be too expensive. It turned out they had ONE room left, and it qualified for “Savvy Senior” pricing for the weeknights.

The only catch is that it is north of Glouster, about 30 minutes out of Athens over some of the hilliest, curviest roads (when they say 15 mph, they mean it) you’ll ever see. By the time I got to the Burr Oak Lodge because of circumstances I may write about later, it was well after midnight and all I wanted to do was collapse. I DID snap this shot of the front of the building, however,

Wow, this is NICE

Since I usually spend all my time sleeping, editing or roaming around, I hardly ever check out the surroundings of the places I stay. I don’t use their gyms, swimming pools or business centers.

Sunday morning, though, I thought I’d stroll through the lounge area of the lodge. I HAD noticed that the large fireplace had openings on both sides and that people were sitting in a sunken area chatting in front of the blaze.

Great view of Burr Oak Lake

There is an outdoor walkway off the lounge that puts you into the treetops where you can commune with birds and look out over Burr Oak Lake.

Overlooking the overlook

There is a balcony overlooking the lounge area that has its own fireplace, game tables and lots of comfortable seating. As you can see, the lounge is comfortable enough that a guest is napping on a couch.

If I can convince Wife Lila to come to Athens with me, this would be a perfect place for her to sit and quilt while I’m roaming around the countryside.

The lodge has a restaurant, but I discovered a diner about five minutes away that has good home cooking, big portions and small prices. It’s friendly enough that the second time I came in, the waitress brought my iced tea the way I like it without being asked.

“Mommy, what is Bambi doing?”

Cabins are also available. They’re full of deer hunters right now. In fact, one of them had two deer hanging on the front porch. That might be hard to explain to your kids: “Mommy, what is Bambi doing hanging from a rope on that porch?”

This odyssey is coming to a close. After a lunch meeting on Monday, I’m pointing the van south to head to family and warm weather.

October 29, 2014November 2, 2020

The Lithium Spring

We had to take Wife Lila and her buddy Jane Rudert McMahan to the airport in St. Louis way too early in the morning. Mother and I had lunch at Pappy’s Smokehouse, then paid $2.55 a gallon for gas at Peveley before hopping on Hwy 61 to take the scenic route home.

Just south of St. Mary and just north of Perryville, I saw a sign pointing down M to Lithium. Since our goal is to find a road we had never been on before, we set our sights on Lithium.

Before long, we spotted the city limits sign of a hamlet so small they didn’t even bother to show the population. (The 2010 census reported 89 people, 28 households and 22 families living there, but those figures may have included folks living in rural Perry county outside Lithium proper, an AP account said.) Lithium had a ZIP Code of 63775, but it has since been declared by the United States Postal Service to be “Not Acceptable – Use Perryville.”

This well-kept church didn’t have a name on it, but it is the St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, organized in 1896.

The Ole Houck

The village has a sizable park which contains this artifact labeled “The Old Houck.” It looks more like a cart you’d find in a mine than a railroad, but I don’t know exactly what it was for.

Fungus? Mushroom? Toadstool?

These brown somethings were dotting the park here and there, particularly where there was a tree stump or other organic matter. I’m assuming it was some kind of fungus.

Lithium Spring

The most interesting thing for me was this white, shake shingled gazebo with a sign “Lithium Spring.” Inside the structure was a pit that contained a pipe with clear water running into a basin from one side and going out a grate on the other. The flow wasn’t as strong as the artesian well outside Marble Hill, but it was steady.

Mother wanted to taste the spring, so I emptied a plastic bottle and handed it over to her. “Tastes like water,” was her verdict.

A contributor to findaspring.com said it is “It is a highly mineralized spring, more like water for healing…Not your everyday drinking water but will definitely start to heal you. I drink it every once in a while, additionally to my regular Spring water from Mountain Valley Spring.”

Lithium had TWO big springs

The State Historical Society of Missouri’s website of Perry County Place Names, 1928 – 1945, has this information about the town and springs:

The town: A small town in the eastern part of Saline Township. It was surveyed and laid out as a town in 1822 by C.F. Laurence. The first settlers were Dr. Henry Clay Tish, R.P. Dobbs, and James G. Christian, who came from Illinois and settled at this place where they found two springs of mineral water known as lithium, because containing one of the lithium salts. The town grew rapidly because of the springs and was incorporated in 1883.
[Note: a reader sayid Henry’s last name was actually “Fish,” not “Tish.”
The springs: Two large springs located in the northern part of the county in the present town of Lithium. One of the springs is owned by the town; the other by Mrs. Richard P. Dobbs, wife of one of the first settlers.

October 27, 2014

Hemman Winery in Brazeau

The banquet tables at the Immigration Conference were set with bottles of Hemman Winery cranberry wine.

[My presentation went well, thanks for asking. The audience looked at the videos I had produced of The Last Generation of German speakers, laughed where appropriate and had eyes glistening with moisture where appropriate. It’s always a rush to watch folks enjoying something you produced.]

Mother and Wife Lila accompanied me to the banquet after enjoying some great music in the museum. Lila likes a good wine, unlike me, who has never found a good replacement for the bottles of Ripple we OU Post photographers kept stashed in old photo paper boxes in the fridge. I mean, who is going to open a box marked “Open in darkroom only?”]

She thought the cranberry wine was good enough that she wanted to go to the winery in Brazeau, just up the road from Frohna’s Saxon Lutheran Memorial and not too far from Seventy-Six. Class of ’66 buddy Jane Rudert McMahan was in town, so the four of us headed north, with a stopover at the Altenburg museum.

Bonnie did the pouring

Bonnie Hemman had a full array of wines set up for tasting.She did a great job explaining each wine and how it was made.

Before we got out of the place, Lila had picked up a case of mostly fruit wines that may show up as Christmas gifts for some lucky people.

The place also had a spinach – artichoke dip that was excellent. I suspect Bonnie may see us again when Curator Jessica hits town next week. It seems like every other email I get from her has a wine mention in it, so I gather she is fond of the grape (or the cranberry or blackberry or rhubarb).

Lots of eye candy

While you are waiting for your turn to taste, you can wander around looking at the antique items displayed on shelves around the room. We didn’t discover the outdoor seating area with music until we were out in the parking lot headed home (almost).

I’ve been having some battery problems lately, and needed a jump. A couple of guys pushed my van out to the middle of the parking lot where my jumper cables could reach a jeep one of them pulled up. When it when it finally cranked, I tried to give them some money, but they refused to take it. I offered to buy them a bottle of wine, but they refused it. I told them to take the money inside and buy somebody ELSE a bottle of wine or a couple of beers, but they refused that, too. Perry County has some nice folks in it, for sure.

Barber chair older than mine

The building housing the winery used to have a barber shop attached. The barber chair might be just a few years older than the one we have in our living room, based on the arms and color.

Sweeter than cranberry wine

While Mother was checking out the music action on the north side of the winery, I was scoping out the view to the south. That’s sweeter than the cranberry wine.

For more information, including wine varieties, hours and directions, go to the Hemman Winery website. If you stop by, tell ’em we sent you. Say hi to Bonnie for us. And, you won’t find a better place to have a dead battery.

Click on the photos to make them larger.