EXPLORING THE NOWHERE

One of the best things about living in the middle of nowhere is exploring the nowhere. Yesterday Becky drove out into the perfect, late-spring morning through fields, hollers, bluffs, towns, farms, woods, and valleys.

We passed through the town of Lathrop, Missouri, which has this dubious distinction:

We stopped at an antique shop in the historic town of Lexington, where I spotted an old music cabinet with some interesting carvings in it:

Somewhat predictably, it has Beethoven there on the left, but on the right is a composer I didn't know very well: H.C. Lumbye.

Apparently Hans Christian Lumbye was a 19th-century Danish conductor and composer of waltzes and other light fare that was popular enough to earn him the moniker, "The Strauss of the North." Perhaps the odd pairing of Beethoven and Lumbye was commissioned by the cabinet's original owner, an enthusiast of both (and a Dane him/herself maybe)?

Here's a recording of Lumbye's A Promenade on the Deer Park Hill by the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra. Most of the music is unremarkably chipper, but the ending has an impressive cacophony of different tunes in different keys all combined together—an interesting precursor of Charles Ives's work decades later.

Our next stop was Excelsior Springs, a 19th-century resort town known for its mineral-water springs. In the 1930s as part of a WPA project, The Hall of Waters combined 10 different springs in an impressive Mayan-inspired bathhouse.

The Hall features a really cool room that boasts the claim, "world's largest water bar," where you can still sample one of the local mineral waters. (See the different mineral types posted above the bar, "soda, iron, manganese, and calcium.")

Last stop was one of our favorite spots, Justus Drugstore in Smithville. In addition to delicious food, they have a spectacular bar. I ordered a cocktail which used their own date-infused bourbon.