I have been going through stuff my parents had, consolidating & packing the stuff to keep and throwing away many things that were saved for some reason I cannot determine. Some things I have donated, and I found a few more things to donate that my mom had amongst the (literally) 20-30 plastic tubs and boxes I whittled everything down to.

I found two items that had a local connection in Tonganoxie, a town between here and Lawrence, KS. I wanted to make sure they got these items as one was an item from a long-closed local department store.

So I loaded up my granddaughter and off we went. The plan was to drop this stuff off and head to Lawrence to get out of the house plus score a Dubai chocolate along with some other tasty treats from the European markets there.

We got to the museum and the people there were so nice and very helpful. They would not let us drop & dash and one docent took Addy around to see things kids would be interested in. I looked around while she was busy and they had some very interesting things, some of which I had never seen and some that I had seen many years ago. Native American artifacts, local history items, and this weird thing:

There was a main building, which was a barn on a family farm many years ago. They had a fire department building with a 1932 fire engine that was restored.

They had a one room schoolhouse that we got to go in.

There was a church that they had moved from a now-defunct town eight miles away to where it now is on the museum grounds. The story was pretty incredible on how they moved it. They picked up the whole building…in one piece! It was put on a truck and moved down the highway. Apparently there were no permits to do such moving as they were stopped by the highway patrol after six miles and told they could not go any farther on the highway. Don’t really know what their options were going to be as the building would block the whole road.

So, they simply took off cross-country through farm fields and the mission was a success! Pretty ingenious.

The church was used in a locally-filmed TV movie and in a town this small that was big news.

You could really see the local pride in the people we talked to, but one lady mentioned how it is slowing down there with visitors. It’s a shame really. They work hard at keeping the history alive and that can only go on for so long given places like this are for such a specific audience; it’s not like seeing any of the historical things in Washington, D.C.. or a Civil War battlefield.

I thought that for a small, local museum they did a very good job on displays and the buildings were very well maintained.

We left and went to Lawrence to score our chocolate. Au Marché was the first stop:

Next door is a store called Brit’s, which is all products from the UK. Probably one of the best selections of teas that I have ever seen in a store. I didn’t get a picture of the store, but these two share a common entry in downtown Lawrence.

It was a hot day that ended up with a heat index of 107° F so we left and went back home. Too bad, as Lawrence is a cool town to walk around in.

Anyhoo, that was yesterday’s adventure. Until next time…

Shawn