Entire text of this post is taken from the Time article “Wedding Day at Independence”

“I feel that marriage vows are sacred,” memoired Margaret Truman recently, “and I hope that mine will be spared the hurly-burly attending a news event.” Last week in Trinity Episcopal Church at Independence, Mo., where her parents were married 36 years ago, Margaret, now 32, saw her hope accomplished; she became Mrs. Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr. with more dignity and less hurly-burly than a former President’s daughter and TV-radio star could expect.

A month after her engagement announcement, Margaret left Manhattan for Independence stubbornly determined on dignity. She disappeared into the family’s 14-room, white Victorian house at 219 North Delaware Street for a week’s seclusion, emerged only to greet New York Timesman Daniel when he flew in,

later to meet his parents arriving from ZebuIon, N.C., then to attend a rehearsal and post-rehearsal dinner for the bridal party.

On the wedding eve she relented slightly, agreed to join Daniel in a 20-minute press conference for 50 encamped reporters. (Sample exchange: News hen: “I would like to ask what may be an embarrassing question . . .” Daniel: “Don’t ask it.”)

The wedding day burst fair and warm; Margaret Truman walked out of the 91-year-old house a last time on the arm of her ever-punctual, this time solemn father.

A crowd had circled the Truman gate to admire her gown of antique Venetian lace, pale beige in color because “white doesn’t become me.” Margaret paused to smile at them, then ducked into a limousine for the five-minute, six-block journey to Trinity Church. “She looks beautiful, Mr. Truman,” called a voice from the crowd. “Thank you, thank you very much,” said the farther of the bride. “I think so too.”

The tiny, freshly painted church was half full; some 60-odd were there, including ten reporters chosen to represent the corps. The guests were relatives and friends.

Among them were a handful whose names were familiar: ex-Treasury Secretary John Snyder, New York Real Estate Magnate William Zeckendorf, John Frederics (whose lace-crowned bridal veil Margaret wore), Italian Couturière Micol Fontana (who was commissioned to create the wedding gown because it was a Fontana dress Margaret was wearing one evening last November when she first met Daniel).

The Rev. Patric Hutton, 30-year-old rector of the church, read the marriage ceremony, watched as Daniel slipped a plain gold band on his bride’s finger.

After the wedding a select but friendly 250 gathered at the Truman home for a reception.

After 30 minutes in the receiving line, bride and groom slipped away to catch a train for the first leg of their honeymoon in Nassau. Margaret Truman had not been the only important bride of the week, but when it was all said and done, hers was the wedding that gave the U.S. that next-door feeling even if the nation stood on tiptoe to catch every detail of the other one.

Margaret Truman Daniel passed away in 2008 at the age 83.

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Apparently Just Plain Folks make their home in Williamsburg, KS.

Them are the folks who know who is to blame for the 9/11.

Other than the classified information the folks possess a building built in the year 188…

…a combination Tavern/City Hall…

…a weapon of mass destruction…

…a city park…

… a nondescript building…

…a front-yard antique car display…

…a dilapidated elevator…

…and possibly a cafe…

…adorned with rim-art.

Next to Williamsburg is a so-called ghost town of Silkville, KS,

of which I was able to locate this building,

next to a huge stump of possibly a Russian Mulberry tree used to grow silk-worms.

If you are one of them plain folks, there is some room for you in Williamsburg.

Move in and start donating your junk for the playground construction.

And now we dance:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IisjOLsrbK8

Edit: I am being told that the Guy & Mae’s Tavern is a wonder of Kansas cuisine and has unbelievably awesome ribs.

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April 12th is the Cosmonautics Day celebrating the first manned space flight accomplished on that day in 1961 by the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. I mentioned it last year so today I will just post some pictures and a video clip.

This is the Monument To The Conquerors of Space in Moscow.

Space theme in the Soviet Greeting Cards. Notice that the Soviet postcards didn’t include any text so a person had to actually write something, not just sign their name under some sappy Hallmark verse.

Lastly, this song “Do you know what a guy he was” about Gagarin became the Song of The Year in 1971. Gagarin would have been 75 this year.

httpvh://youtu.be/sMeOrfu6f8U

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The Flower Box City: 1952–1968

Since the 1950s Neosho has been locally well-known as “The Flower Box City”, the name dubbed after the city earned the All-America City Award in the 1950s. In 1955 the town applied for and received a $5,000 grant from the New York Community Trust for a civic beautification project. Local companies provided lumber at cost, and the Jaycees formed an assembly line to build more than 200 wooden flower boxes. Pet Milk Company donated 400 used, wooden barrels for container gardens, and town nurseries supplied plants at reduced rates. The city even dressed up trash cans and parking meters around the courthouse square with flower baskets.

The effort earned Neosho a coveted All-America City Award from Look magazine and the National Municipal League in 1957. The Flower Box Promotion Committee has supported beautification ever since, awarding ‘Beauty Spot’ prizes each spring and summer to homes and businesses with outstanding yards, flower gardens, and flower boxes.

Life magazine photojournalist Wallace Kirkland covered the event for the magazine. A life collection of his photographs from this assignment, many previously unpublished, can be found in the Life photo archive, hosted by Google.

There are too many photos to post,so I am concentrating on the ones with old cars.

The rest of the set by Wallas Kirkland.

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In 1959 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev visited the USA.

On his visit Khrushchev had two requests: to visit Disneyland and to meet John Wayne, Hollywood’s top box-office draw. Due to the Cold War tension and security concerns, he was famously denied an excursion to Disneyland. He did, however, declare Iowa corn superior to Soviet corn.

On his California visit, the Soviet leader got a show of American consumerism and the American way of life. This marked the first time a Soviet leader set foot on U.S. soil. But he was annoyed that the main event of his first day was a lunch with 300 movie stars and other celebrities and a visit to the set of the movie Can-Can at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles, rather than an inspection of an aerospace plant.

After Khrushchev left the studio, gawkers pasted tomatoes on his limo as the doubly offended leader and his 30-car, heavily guarded caravan made its way through city streets. Local authorities would later report that a bomb was planted in a tree along the route and that a man who said he was deer hunting was arrested on suspicion of carrying concealed weapons just moments before Khrushchev’s motorcade passed by a Los Angeles street.

Khrushchev declared himself offended by the chilly reception and even threatened to go home. “The thought sometimes — the unpleasant thought sometimes creeps up on me here as to whether perhaps Khrushchev was not invited here to enable you to sort of rub him in your sauce and to show the might and the strength of the United States so as to make him sort of … so as to make him shaky at the knees. If that is so, then if I came — if it took me about 12 hours to get here, I guess it’ll just — it’ll take no more than about 10 and a half hours to fly back.”

Khrushchev’s visit to Coon Rapids Farm in Iowa forever has changed the Soviet agriculture – upon his return home he insisted that corn is the answer to all of the problems which resulted in corn being planted everywhere from the Arctic Circle to the desert, sometimes when it couldn’t possibly survive. Khrushchev’s name is forever associated with corn in the Russian people’s memory.

 

 

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