I’m leading off with a couple random pictures taken near our house, just because the sky was so beautiful.

This is our across-the-street neighbor. He had some pretty awesome clouds over his house!

Saturday morning we had quite a storm! Rain, lightning, thunder and 90 mph winds! Our neighborhood wasn’t affected too much, because the few trees we have in the area are small and bend easily. But on the way to church, we saw a tremendous amount of damage. Trees down, huge limbs being cleared off roadways, and electrical workers dealing with branches in power lines. We got to church to find no electricity there… some rooms pretty dark! We had a sound system for the church service, thanks to a couple of generators running out back. Still a great morning!

Steve and Jeanne had a tree down in their yard. The big pieces were taken out to the street, but grandkids found a lot of the smaller stuff and built a fort with it!

Good news was that, in spite of the violent weather, our baby birds seemed to be doing well. They are getting really big!

NEWS FLASH: Just before publishing time for this blog, I saw what looked like a baby bird fly out of the nest, hit the window, and fly to the front door. When I approached the door, it flew up and away. I checked the nest – it was EMPTY! We are empty-nesters once again! Amazing.

Sunday was another great concert in the park. The Lincoln Municipal Band performed well, and one of their numbers was a compilation of music from the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

We had a pretty large group of friends at the concert. One of them, Malcolm, mentioned that the official Wizard of Oz museum was in Wamego, Kansas. Just a little over two hours south of here. Hmmm…

After the concert, some of the gang relocated to a nearby Dairy Queen, for sustenance.

The idea of a short road trip to Wamego sounded like fun… so Thursday we packed a few things in the car and headed south. The road to the “Yellow Brick Road” passes through many very tiny, old towns in Kansas. One such town is Frankfurt. Nothing special here, as far as I know, but I like the old buildings.

Unbeknownst to our GPS mapping systems, the road south from Frankfurt was closed for repairs. As in totally closed. Sigh. We drove west quite a ways, then turned south at Waterville. There were signs for the Weaver Hotel, and it sparked my curiosity. We found this gorgeous old home…

Some train station memorabilia…

And the old Weaver Hotel. After the Civil War, the rush was on to civilize the West. In 1865 the government issued bonds to build a railroad west from Atchison, Kansas. The rails reached Waterville by late 1867. The name was now the Central Branch of the Union Pacific, and it now reached farther west than most other railroads. Stockyards were built to receive cattle driven up the Chisolm Trail, but that didn’t last long. Homesteaders, fences and government quarantine against tick-infested Longhorns ended the cattle drives by the late 1870’s. Here’s the part you’ve probably never heard of… Turkey drives! Yep. In the days before refrigeration, getting meat to market wasn’t easy. So every year, 5,000 turkeys raised 90 miles south of here were driven to the Birdyards (?) and onto trains, headed east. (Is Birdyard a thing?)

The Weaver Hotel was built in 1905, right across the street from the railroad station. It was known as the “Pride of the Central Line,” and was (and still is?) the only three story building in the town. Folks would wait for their trains in the lobby, dine in the restaurant, maybe catch a show in the opera house across the street. It looks like times were rough on the old hotel for a while, but now it’s been restored inside and you can stay in pretty rooms while you wait (a LONG time) for your train.

Next door to the Oz museum is a cute little place we were planning on enjoying lunch before checking out the museum. Called Toto’s Tacoz, it has a cute website and even vegetarian friendly fare! We were dismayed to find a note on the door, that after 20 years of good fun and great food, the shop would close forever the end of this month! Just not enough traffic. The proprietor is a very nice lady, making great food and being very generous with extras. The place is full of Oz Icons, and we had a fun lunch. Sad to think it’s not going to last! Better hurry to Toto’s Tacoz before it’s too late!

So, finally, the Oz Museum:

There is a little shop (who’d have thought?) where you can pick up all sorts of Oz books, shirts, toys, etc. And you get stared at by a huge Tin Man!

Inside the self guided tour, you find lots of full sized models of people or scenes in the movie, and tons of memorabilia with notes on the significance of each thing.

In 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, opened in Chicago. It was to celebrate 400 years since Columbus arrived in the New World. There were over 200 neoclassical buildings, canals and waterways, and large lake representing the Atlantic. The buildings were painted white, and shone in the sun like a gleaming glimpse of the future. L. Frank Baum attended, and seems to be the inspiration for the “Emerald City” in the Oz book. Frank hated his first name, so I won’t mention it here. (Besides the fact that I’ve forgotten it.)

Frank Baum wrote the Wizard of Oz book in 1900. It was so popular, Baum wrote a sequel. Actually, several sequels. A total of 13 Oz books. And when he passed away, the publishers found other authors to continue the series, so there are a total of 40 official Oz books! I’m told the last of the Oz books was written by Baum’s great grandson!

Buddy Ebsen was originally cast as the Tin Man. They covered his face with white clown’s makeup, then to add a shiny metallic look, they dusted the makeup with aluminum powder. He did well at first, but pretty quickly had difficulty breathing, until one day he couldn’t breathe and was taken to the hospital and placed in an iron lung. It seems he’d been inhaling the metal dust, coating his lungs with it, and it took a while to heal. When Jack Haley took his place, they switched to an aluminum paste.

A model of the farmhouse was a hung from wires for some shots. One interesting technique was filming it upside down, falling onto a floor painted to look like the sky. When the film was printed in reverse, it looked like the tornado was picking the house up. The house was pulled up and away from the camera, rotating through heavy smoke. Playing the film backwards made it look like it was landing in Munchkinland.

At the museum, they say that the film originally didn’t make much money. It was the most expensive film MGM had ever done. It wasn’t till it was re-released in 1949 that it made significant money. In those days, movies were never considered as something that would last through time… they were expected to have one run and be done. The re-release was a new concept, and it went over extremely well. In 1956 CBS showed the movie on television… again, an unusual event. Folks loved it, and it became an annual tradition. The U. S. Library of Congress claims it is the most watched movie in history. (If that’s hard to believe, think of the decades of head start it had before Star Wars.)

A little board was at the exit, so if you cared you could document your visit, however fleetingly. What a shock to see ournexthorizon.com mentioned there!

So as cool as all this was, I’m guessing you’ve had enough Oz for one sitting. So it was time to depart, Oz style, in a terrifying hot air balloon ride!