Thanksgiving in Kansas City - November 2012

For Thanksgiving this year I went with Nancy to Kansas City where her daughter lives.  I had never been to that part of the world before and I admit I didn't know much about it.   When I asked people what to do they everyone said Eat Barbecue and Listen to Music.   I did experience the barbecue, but alas no music this time.

Flying at Thanksgiving is always a difficult procedure - the busiest travel season of the year.   Nevertheless, the outbound journey was quite relaxed and I even managed to arrive earlier than expected on Wednesday evening.  

Thanksgiving morning, we all did a 5K run - Nancy, daughters Erica and Arden and Joey Erica’s fiance.  It was a small race compared to Sacramento’s mighty Run To Feed the Hungry (3rd largest in the nation) but it was fun and just what we needed to make us feel good about all the excessive eating.

For Thanksgiving Dinner we prepared the usual fare - turkey, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, the works.  In Arden’s apartment, we were a little deficient in cooking utensils, but we managed to pull it off and I made a good job of massacring the turkey with a small and not very sharp knife.

That evening we walked around a nearby section of town. This area known as the Country Club Plaza is the home of one of the first suburban shopping centers in the US.  It is quite the work of art with lots of beautiful Spanish style ornate buildings - lots of hand painted tile, lots of towers.  That night the streets were thronged for the ceremonial “lighting of the lights”.   All a bit anticlimactic really - thousands of people waiting for a few lights to be turned on.   Those mid-westerners are easily impressed.

Country Club Plaza

Country Club Plaza - all lit up!

Friday came with a blast of cold air - it was in the 60’s on Thursday and then on Friday it was down in the 30’s - that is quite the steep cooling trend.  We made a quick visit to the Kemper Museum of Modern Art.   A nice museum, not very large, and free entry to all.   Then it was off to sample the famed Kansas City Barbecue.  One of the best places in town apparently is Oklahoma Joe’s - it was listed by Anthony Bourdain’s as one of the top 13 places to eat before you die, albeit at number 13 in that list. The place is in a strip mall in a converted gas station and, of course, we weren’t the only ones wanting to eat there - there was a line out of the door.  Our patience paid off with a wonderful selection of barbecue meats. Not something that I would want to eat all the time, but on this occasion, it was mouth-wateringly wonderful.

We then took a tour of the downtown area and wandered around in the older parts of town.  There are some remarkable buildings in KC.  Lots of great architecture - most of it old from the early 1900’s I would imagine, but then some great modern buildings too like the concert hall (the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts).  It looks like the older parts of downtown are being gentrified as they are in a lot of cities now and loft conversions were everywhere.   Everyone wants to live in a “loft” these days.

In the late afternoon we took a quick tour around the Nelson Atkins museum.   This is a larger museum/art gallery and, like the Kemper, totally free.   It stands in a large park and it has an old section and a more modern wing.   The modern wing is clad in this translucent skin and as night falls it looks quite amazing with the glowing light from the interior illuminating the building.

The Nelson Atkins Museum at dusk

The next morning Nancy wanted a photograph of the family for her Christmas Card so we were again off to the Nelson Atkins museum area to capture the perfect shot.  I must have taken 300 or so photographs of everyone in various poses and positions around the museum.  It was cold and it was windy so as the day progressed people’s patience was running short and their noses were getting redder.   I learned how difficult it was to get four people looking good for a photograph at the same time.  Particularly when three of them were women.  The guy Joey was just fine in every shot, but it was rare to get all the women happy with their faces or hair or posture at the same time.

One of the many photos

Later that day we toured the Union Station - like all the old railway stations this was an impressive structure.  It must have been a wonderful place when people traveled by train in large numbers.   Now of course there aren’t many travelers and it houses a few restaurants and shops.  There is a sad little waiting room off to the side for what remains of train travel in the US today.    

The Union Station was the site of the infamous Kansas City Massacre where 5 people were killed in an attempt to free a criminal in custody.  There is a memorial plaque outside the station and the scars on the entrance wall are allegedly bullet holes from the event.  If you read the details here you see it was a bit of a botched job by the FBI.

Union Station and Downtown Kansas City

On Sunday we did a couple more museums.   The first was the World War 1 Museum.  A monument and unexpectedly good museum telling the story more from the American viewpoint.  A great guided tour too and I even felt I learned a lot (e.g. I didn’t know that Germany approached Mexico to join in and attack the USA.   Pretty bold move on Germany’s part).

The second museum was the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, just 10 miles up the road from Kansas City.  That was my first visit to a Presidential Library and I was suitably impressed.   The whole span of Truman’s life was laid out.   He made some tough decisions during his presidency and he set the ball rolling for a more interventionist USA.   It was fascinating to imagine Truman returning from Washington to live in little old Independence Missouri.  It is not a very impressive town - bit of a dump really.

Nancy, Harry Truman, Arden

I left Nancy on Sunday evening to return home.  Alas it was not a smooth trip - delayed flight out of Kansas City, late arrival in SFO, missed connection to Sacramento, night in the airport, fog delayed departure from SFO to Sacramento the next day.   I haven’t had a bad travel experience like that for some time.

Again, there are more photos here.