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Cousin Larry and I were talking after having watched "The Avengers" on TV. We got the idea of driving to Chicago. We took off in the night. In Chicago, we drove along Lake Shore Drive and saw State Street. We went to a burlesque show. We ran out of ideas quicky and headed home. I learned one must have a mission if he is to travel. Chicago sits on Lake Michigan.

November, 1974 - Chicago

I drove to Chicago to see Burton Cummings & The Guess Who. I saw the group 3 times, 1974-75. Their music inspired me in my efforts to get my degrees and get into the work force.

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MSU

MSU is the prominent university in Memphis, and I was able to spend some time on the campus. Undoubtedly, it draws heavily on the Memphis school system but a school the size of MSU must be influential statewide.

Overton Park Zoo

These are observations made of the various animals:

The giraffe's neck whirls as if it were made of wire. The spots are large on its body. Those on its legs and neck taper and grow smaller. The entrance to its quarters is conveniently high to allow for its height.

The Kodiac bears are interesting. Their rounded, little ears, big snouts and thick necks make them look like real teddy bears. They stand on their hind legs and catch the food people throw them.

It is remarkable how much hippopotamuses resemble pigs. They are related. Hippos are aquatic and may remain submerged in water for lengthy periods.

The most impressive and hideous of all snakes are the python and the anaconda. The king cobra is long but rather trim.

Gorillas are not as large as the media have portrayed them.

I was struck by the awareness of the baboons. Their eyes dart to and fro and look as if they are studying you. They are reserved and bored.

The orangutans are the most bizarre of the anthropoids. Their arms are longer than their legs.

The tiger is easily the most intimidating of the big cats. The lion is smaller and more passive by comparison. There are two species of tigers: Siberian and Bengal.

The kangeroo uses his tail to form a tripod when he sits.

Llamas are found in the Andes of South America.

Timber wolves are lean, nervous creatures.

Zebras look like plump ponies with stripes.

Peacocks wander leisurely. Their variety of colors makes them the most beautiful of birds, blue necks and green tails. The noise they make will cause anyone to jump.

Brooks Memorial Art Gallery

The paintings here are of an international variety. The most striking are those from northern Europe. There are works by English, French and Flemish artists. One work by Peter Paul Reubens is called "Portrait of a Lady." To me, these old paintings are unrivalled. They seem to embody life itself just as great music is more than simply a mechanical arrangement of notes and chords. Their colors are rich and beautiful.

Pink Palace Museum

Museums reflect the areas in which they are located more so than libraries. Objects can not be duplicated or run off a press. The basic unit of a museum is the exhibit. The Pink Palace has two kinds of exhibits: those of natural history and those of cultural history. The agricultural and economic background of Memphians is emphasized. An early American drugstore is reproduced.

Memphis Queen

I went for a ride on the Memphis Queen. Hernando de Soto the Mississippi River. The Mississippi is to Memphis as the Ohio is to Louisville. Memphis has 3 riverboats offering rides to the public.

The Mississippi literally divides the country into east and west. It was romanticized by Mark Twain in his books. I briefly crossed the river by car to Arkansas. Later, I rode up Beale Street. This hot spot from another era was virtually abandoned.

Jim Colyer
Originally written, June, 1977

Karen and I went to Memphis, November 12 & 13, 1982. The Elvis legend is the one thing which had assumed a whole new dimension since I was there in June, 1977. Little did I know then that he only had two more months to live.

Graceland is open to tourists now, and for 5 bucks apiece we were escourted through several rooms. Karen liked the gold piano. We saw the TV room with the 3 sets, one for each channel, and the trophy room full of mementos. Dozens of gold and platinum records lined the walls. Outside were several cars Elvis had owned. Over by the pool is where he is buried along with his parents and grandmother. We walked to the gravesite before the tour began. Karen bought post cards of the inside of the house because no pictures were allowed. Souvenir shops were plentiful across Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Leaving Graceland, we went to the zoo. The Memphis zoo is my favorite perhaps because it was the first one I ever saw. It is well-planned. I like the way the primates, carnivores and reptiles are housed.

We took in the same things I did in 1977: the Brooks Art Gallery, Pink Palace and Memphis Queen. We got to the Pink Palace at dusk and could just make out that it was pink. It was cool aboard the riverboat, but the experience deepened my understanding of our nation's river system.

We drove by Sun Records.

We finished our trip the way it started, with Elvis. We drove to Beale Street looking for a statue of Elvis recently erected in an attempt to renovate the area. "There it is!" Karen shouted. It was night, but we lept from our car and ran to it.

Jim Colyer
Originally written,
November, 1982
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com

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Ruby Falls was discovered by a man named Lambert and named for his wife, Ruby. It is located within a cave inside Lookout Mountain, nearly 1/4 mile directly below Point Park. An elevator lowers people to the cave. The falls originates underground and flows into the Tennessee River.

Point Park, perched at the northern tip of Lookout Mountain, is part of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Our time at Chickamauga Battlefield must forever cause us to associate the area with the Civil War. The battlefield is a succession of monuments and cannons. The view from Point Park is the best on Lookout Mountain.

No trip to Chattanooga would be complete without seeing the Chattanooga Choo Choo. This is a complex of old train cars and shops as they may have looked a hundred years ago. The train called the Chattanooga Choo Choo came down from Cincinnati and was the first transportation system between north and south following the Civil War.

July, 1977 - Chattanooga

I saw Ruby Falls inside Lookout Mountain. It presents a stunning spectacle, a waterfall actually within the mountain. Point Park sits atop Lookout Mountain. I drove down between school years while working at Castle Heights Military Academy. Chattanooga is about 100 miles south of Nashville.
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Leaving the Arch, we sought out Forest Park and the zoo. We made a hurried tour through the zoo because of the weather and because Karen was pregnant. The highlight was the penguins. They were the first I had ever seen. We got a picture of a two-humped camel, the Bactrian. This was the 6th zoo Karen and I had seen.

July, 1977 - On truck with Chester. We saw the Arch, the symbolic gateway to the west.

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1961,1962,1963 - Florida

We made family trips to Florida. I became acquainted with the white sands of Daytona Beach. We saw Saint Augustine, America's oldest city and the old Spanish fort, Castillo de San Marcos.

In 1962, we went all the way to Miami and Lake Okeechobee.

In 1963, Jean Adair, my first girl friend, went with us. John Kennedy was president, and I was naive to a fault. Little did I know the coming years would see the assassination of Kennedy, The Beatles, long hair, the Vietnam War, race riots, women's liberation, police brutality, drugs, Woodstock, men on the moon, hippies, Jesus Freaks, homosexuals, Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon. I survived by God's will.

December, 1968 - Daytona Beach, Florida

The 4th trip with my parents and sister. Nothing new.

March, 1969 - Miami, Florida

I went to Miami with Kerry Goodall. I drove his Firebird a piece even though it was not an automatic. We stayed with Kerry's sister and went fishing in a small boat off the coast with her husband.

Summer, 1973 - Deland, Florida

I flew to Florida to get a record cut at a studio in Deland. I had "You'd Better Go." recorded. What a waste! At least, I was doing something.
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JIM COLYER

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Next, we went to the Georgia State Capitol Building. The dome is done is gold leaf. The State Museum inside is strong in natural history

Karen said she knew I would like Stone Mountain. It is a State Park. The carving in the granite makes it a southern Mt. Rushmore. The figures from left to right are: Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. We rode the incline to the top. Sun-bathers were strewn on the rock as if it were a beach. We could see the Atlanta skyline in the distance.

Our second day began with the Atlanta Zoo. As soon as we started along the walk, I felt an urge to take animal notes. Karen got some interesting photos along the way.

We saw Major League Baseball with the Braves and Cubs. It was then back to Nashville.

Jim Colyer
Originally written
May, 1983

December, 1977 - Atlanta

Peachtree Street is the main thoroughfare in Atlanta. Here, I visited the Omni, Emory University and the Hartsfield International Airport. The buildings at Emory are gray and forbidding. The Atlanta Airport is the second largest in the country. Nearly everyone changes planes there when flying to or from southern cities. Atlanta is much more cosmopolitan than either Louisville or Nashville. I visited Atlanta Underground, a subterranean row of bars and boutiques, very early in the morning. Everything was closed.
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My first stop was the Capitol, the center of the country's legislative process. Presidents are inaugurated on the steps of the Capitol Building. 24 men have lain in state on the little white circle in the middle of the rotunda. The public has 24 hours in which to pass by and pay its last respect. I touched the white circle with my foot. Paintings in the rotunda glorify George Washington.

The front of the Capitol faces away from the Mall. The house wing is on the left. The Senate wing is on the right. I viewed both chambers from the visitors' gallery above. The House chamber contains seats. There are 435 representatives. This is about one for every 500,000 people. Representatives are elected by Congressional districts within the states. Population is the factor. One reason they have less power than Senators is that they represent less people. Senators are elected by the states themselves. Each state is allowed two. The Senate chamber has 100 mahogony desks. The Vice President presides over the Senate.

When a Congressman gets an idea, he presents it in the form of a bill. He is said to be the author. The President may later sign the bill into law or veto it. If he vetos it, it requires 2/3 of Congress to pass.

Standing on the back of the Capitol, one can look down the Mall to the Washington Monument. The Congressmen have their offices adjacent to their appropriate wings. Directly across the street are the Supreme Court Building and the Library of Congress.

Cases are tried by the Supreme Court from the first Monday in October through the last of June. The public is free to watch. The 9 justices take their places in the seats at the front at the front of the courtroom. Supreme Court decisions are important ones. About 5000 cases are submitted to the court each year. It chooses the ones that seem fit. The court deals only with cases of national importance or Constitutional relevance. Justices are appointed by the President.

Next to the Court Building is the Library of Congress. Out front is the statue of Neptune with Nymphs on horses. In the lobby is displayed the Gutenburg Bible. It is their most valuable item. It is printed in Latin. About 200 were printed. Only three complete ones and some fragments are extant. The other two are in London and Paris. The guide noted that Gutenburg did not invent printing. but printing by movable type.

We were taken to the upper gallery to look down on the reading room. The card catalong was only partially visible. Later, I went down to examine it. It occupies what might be called 3 rooms. There are about 72 million things in the library, of which 18 million are books. Congressmen get to take the books out. The public must use them in the library.

The Folger Shakespeare Library sits next to the LC Annex. It exhibits Shakespeariana. One must be at the dissertation level before he or she can use the collection. There is an Elizabethan theater where plays are sometimes staged. Outside the building sits a statue of Puck. His hands are held high. The inscription reads, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

I think the Lincoln Memorial is larger than the Parthenon in Nashville. The statue of Lincoln is enormous. Lincoln and Washington are almost portrayed as gods in all representations. Inside the Memorial, the Gettysburg Address is on one of the walls. The significance of this speech is that it provided for a reconciliation after the Civil War.

From the Lincoln Memorial, one may walk beside the Reflecting Pool toward the Washington Monument. The Reflecting Pool seems more like a lake than a pool. Distances and descriptions are deceptive. The things which the pool reflects are these two monuments, one at each end.

The utility of the Washington Monument is apparent. One may rise 555 feet above ground and observe the entire city through small glass windows on each side. The Capitol, the Pentagon and the White House resemble scale models. The height is only fully realized when people are seen crawling directly below like ants. This obelisk is the highest thing in the city, and the law prevents anything from being built higher. It can be seen nearly everywhere and is much bigger than it appears. A circle of American flags surrounds it.

Pennsylvania Avenue is remarkably like any other street in any large city. The White House almost appears incongruous. Our line formed, and we entered by the east wing. We were conducted through several rooms: the blue room, red room and the State dining room. The tour went quickly, and we exited through the front door. I pondered that there are many similarities between presidents and kings. I sensed that the middle class stream flowing through the palace was in some ways an invasion.

The National Archives is where we go to see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. These 3 items are shown along with other famous historical documents. There is a letter confirming the Louisiana Purchase signed by Napoleon himself. There are also the Monroe Doctrine and the Treaty of Versailles. These documents give us a material sense of history. We feel that the people of the past were striving on the same plane we are. Their documents were ones of expediency. They were real, containing their own relevance and their own inconsistencies.

The Constitution displayed here is the foundation of the existing government. Its principles are those which no laws or court decisions can contradict. Most Americans allude to it, however, as a cliche, having little more than a vague feeling for its guarantees.

The Declaration of Independence reposes in a glass case above the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, and it was primarily this which gave him status with Washington and Lincoln.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is a section of the Treasury Department. This is where they print the paper money. Workers handle sheets of one dollar bills resembling newspapers. 32 bills are printed on each sheet. I saw a stack of these sheets about 4 feet high. It contained $640,000. The workers are nonchalant about their work. To them, the bills are only notes. It made me reflect on the value of money. Money is a symbol. People must labor if it is to have any significance, else there will be nothing to buy.

I walked from the Bureau to the Jefferson Memorial. The Memorial is a rounded structure with a dome. It is open on 4 sides. Jefferson's brown statue stands erect. The Declaration of Independence is on the walls. I thought the atmosphere here to be more relaxed, more classical than that of the Lincoln Memorial.

The Smithsonian Institute is a complex of national museums and art galleries. The Castle, the original sandstone building, is now used for offices only. The entire system comprises more than a dozen units.

1 Museum of Natural History - This is where the dinosaurs are. Bones of many kinds have been reassembled. There is a complete skeleton of a triceratops. These animals roamed the western United States as did the later buffalo. Seeing their remains makes them seem more probable, less fantastic. Also on exhibition is the skeleton of a wooly mammoth destroyed about 20,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. His tusks are curved and enormous. I felt the teeth of a mastadon.

Restorations of all animals are available. A model of a blue whale hangs from the ceiling and is as long as two semis. Cultural and anthropological exhibits are plentiful. The Egyptian mummies are badly decayed but still exude the aura of mystery to that culture. Winged bulls from Mesopotamia are displayed in the same room. They are carved into a square-shaped slab of stone. These bulls and the statue from Easter Island demonstrate the variety and range of artistic expression.

The collection of gems is impressive. Gems are minerals. I touched a meteorite.

2 Air and Space Museum - There are a lot of planes and space modules hanging from the ceiling. The Wright Flyer, the first plane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, is there. So is Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. I filed by to touch the lunar rock which was a flat, triangular piece about an inch wide and mounted in a case. Moon rocks are igneous rocks.

3 Museum of History and Technology - Machines and science! The layout of early astronomical instruments is interesting enough. I saw an apparatus used in ancient Alexandria for determining the equinoxes. Tycho Brahe's instrument for measuring declination is there.

One scientific experiment is intriguing. This is the pendulum used to show the rotation of the earth. It is known as Foucault's (fu-co) pendulum and hangs through two floors. The Museum of History and Technology is the one containing the gowns of the first ladies.

4 National Gallery of Art - There are 93 galleries here, and I traversed them all. The collections are arranged by nationality and chronology . The Florentine Renaissance precedes the Venetian. Dutch paintings are followed by the work of the French, British and Americans. There was a thrill in recognizing the originals whose prints I had become familiar with through books. I recognized the juniper tree in the background of Leonardo's "Ginevra de' Benci." Some others I noted were David's "Napoleon in His Study," Renoir's "Girl with a Watering Can" and Whistler's "White Girl."

5 National Portrait Gallery - The Hall of Presidents is notable. Nixon's portrait is done by Norman Rockwell. Literary figures are represented. My overall impression is that anyone can be portracized, anyone can be historicized and anyone can be literacized.

Everyone knows there are 3 branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial. We generally think of the executive in terms of the President, but it is the executive departments which function as the truly active components of government. They put into effect the Acts of Congress. The departmental heads are appointed by the President and are answerable to him. The Department buildings contain only offices. They are not tourist oriented. I walked through the HEW building and the building housing the Department of Labor. HEW is now called Health and Human Services but it still contains the Social Security Administration. Those numbers they give us are account numbers.

Each Department is involved in programs stemming from its own philosophy, and the Department of Agriculture is no exception. It contends that everything springs from the land. Thus, it is busy developing rural affairs and farming.

The Department of Defense is housed in the Pentagon. Military command originates here. The joint chiefs of staff are subordinate to the Secretary of Defense who answers to the President. The Pentagon consists of a series of corridors, or rings within rings. It is a world unto itself. There are all kinds of commercial shops. My tour was conducted by a female marine.

The FBI is in the Justice Department, and I was able to take the tour in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. It consisted largely in viewing laboratories geared to the detection of criminals.

I climbed the steps of the Treasury Department, but the entrance was closed. I paused on the steps long enough to look at a statue of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton is on the $10 bill.

I found the Veterans Administration a rather dry place. Surely, the push continually for more benefits.

I took the tour through Arlington National Cemetary. The tomb of the unknown soldier and the Kennedy graves are what everyone sees. I arrived at Arlington from the Pentagon via the subway. I returned to the Mall the same way. The city of Arlington is in Virginia.

I reached the Botanical Gardens by cab. I had imagined endless rows of gigantic, colorful flowers. Instead, I only found out how little I knew about plants in general.

My 5th day in Washington, I spent looking at more art. In the Cocoran Gallery, I came across the portrait of Washington which appears on the $1 bill. The portrait was done by Gilbert Stuart. I took out a bill and conspicuously compared the two. Before the day ended, I returned to the National Gallery. I ended up listening to a lecture about how the Impressionists tried to show the variation of light upon objects. Monet's Cathedrals provided the examples.

Jim Colyer
Originally written
August, 1977
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com

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I met a masseuse from San Francisco. We saw the Tutankhamen stuff together. We sat on the floor like two hippies. We left the park on a city bus. When we got to the stop where I had to get off, I kissed her and jumped off the bus. It was like a movie.

Canal Street is the main thoroughfare in New Orleans. Old street cars run along it. Creoles stroll down its sidewalks. Creoles are a blend of Spanish and French heritage with dark eyes and olive complexions. On the far side of Canal Street lies the Vieux Carre, the French Quarter. Within its confines runs the renowned Bourbon Street. Strip joints abound. Dixieland jazz pours from the barrooms. Tourists and local artists loiter at Jackson Square. The French Quarter makes one feel like he is living in the days of Napoleon. It runs for several blocks.

Leaving New Orleans, I crossed Lake Pontchartrain.

December, 1976 - Houston

I crossed the Mississippi River for the first time at Baton Rouge. Chester and I travelled through Mississippi. The truck broke down outside of Houston, and we flew back to Louisville on New Year's Eve. I sensed the difficulty of Chester's work and what it took to do his job. It is his work ethic and committment I need to draw from in my later years.

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My third trip here was my first enjoyable one. Karen and I absorbed the mountain beauty. The town sits on the northern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The road to the park's highest point, Clingman's Dome, was closed. We hiked to Abrams Falls in Cades Cove. The Smokies are part of the larger Appalachian range.

May, 1981 - Gatlinburg

Karen and I made our second trip to Gatlinburg, This time, we saw Clingman's Dome, the highest place in Tennessee. From the observation tower, the panorama of green trees is impressive. We hiked again to Cade's Cove, a five mile walk round trip.

We went to Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge was built during Word War II for the purpose of working on the atomic bomb, the so-called Manhattan Project. In this respect, the city is like Los Alamos, New Mexico. We saw the world's first nuclear reactor, operated between 1943 and 1963.

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Goint west on I-40, the real change takes place in New Mexico. The town of Tucumcari looks as much like Mexico as the United States. But when you think that the southwest belonged to Mexico until 1848, it is easy to understnd Spanish influence there. A few weeks in the southwest will make one see U.S. history from a whole new perspective.

There are some marvelous sights in Arizona. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest lie side by side. From several vantage point, we gazed out at the colored streaks of sand. We saw Newspaper Rock, a rock covered with Indian Petroglyphs.

Inside the Petrified Forest is a spot called the Crystal Forest. There can not be a more peaceful place on earth. We saw it at sunset. Bits and pieces of petrified wood lay scattered about, and Karen and I felt the sensation of being at the dawn of creation. There were no people for miles on either side of us. The orange sunset, turquoise sky and quiet blended in perfect bliss.

Near Winslow lies the fabulous Meteor Crater. It is a circular hole three miles in circumference. It was created by the impact of a prehistoric meteor. Pictures can not portray its enormity. Astronauts have used the spot as a training ground. Off in the distance stands Mt. Humphreys, the highest point in Arizona.

The Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is the greatest single phenomenon on the face of the planet! It seems to stand totally out of time. It makes the great literary and musical achievements of mankind seem quite insignificant. During my first visit, I wondered at the amazement of those who first ventured upon it having seen no previous pictures or post cards. They must have doubted their eyes. Indeed, from the rim the Canyon hardly seems real. All sense of distance is defied. The Canyon is a mile deep. It averages 9 miles across, rim to rim, and runs for 217 miles. It is Arizona's pride, and tour buses leave regularly from Flagstaff. The Colorado River cuts through it but looks like a tiny ribbon from above. Geologists speculate that cutting action from the Colorado is what created the Canyon. This was hard to accept at first but after seeing other wonders, I realized that geologists see with different eyes. They are attuned much the way astronomers are. It took 10 million years for the Colorado River to carve the Canyon.

My first visit, I looked over the rim to see a mule train crossing the Canyon floor. The mules looked the size of ants. There are trails leading to the bottom of which Bright Angel Trail is the most famous. People were ascending on foot. They were exhausted.

The second trip, Karen and I saw both the north and souths rims. The north rim is less dramatic, but we caught it at dusk and during a thunderstorm which made it particularly austere. We walked out to a point where the wind was up. The chasm was dark and ominous. We were virtually suspended over the Canyon. The austerity of the scene was enhanced by the lightning in the distance.

We circled the Canyon that night so as to see the south rim in the morning. We slept in the car in Cameron, Utah. We beelined to the south rim at daybreak and caught the sun rising. We were able to take a series of photographs that showed the sun's rays slowly filling the Canyon with light. The great river below seemed to be without movement.

Nevada Highlights

There are many interesting sights surrounding Las Vegas. Old Nevada, a replica of a western mining town, sits at the foot of some very tall and scenic bluffs. There is a petting zoo there and some beautiful peacocks. On the way to Old Nevada is Red Rock Canyon. The blue sky, red sandstone cliffs and green desert landscape merge in silent beauty. Yucca plants prosper. The peacefulness of the scene matches that of the Valley of Fire State Park. In the Valley of Fire, we stopped to look at a petrified log. Again, we were totally alone. I yelled, and my voice echoed off the distant hills. This kind of environment was a contrast and a pleasant change from the turmoil of the city. But it was hot in the valley. At the tourist center, the thermometer read 118 degrees. The twisted rock formations in the Valley of Fire have taken some extraordinary shapes. There are several so-called elephant rocks. One grouping is known as the seven sisters.

When my Greyhound crossed the Hoover Dam in 1978, it was at night, and I could not see anything. I was barely aware of where I was. When Karen and I returned to the spot, we were amazed. The dam captured the imaginations of us both. It was built between 1921 and 1935.

Hoover Dam blocks the Colorado River in its journey from The Grand Canyon to southern California. The lake which formed behind the dam is Lake Mead. It is right in the middle of the desert and complete with beaches. Lake Mead is a beautiful shade of blue.

Las Vegas

Sprinting from Kingman, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada, you can feel the thrill and enchantment of the city drawing you on. There is an anticipation of something great ahead. Most of the action in Las Vegas can be found in two places, Fremont Street downtown and the newer and sprawling Las Vegas Boulevard. It is a city of lights. It never sleeps. At first, it is hard to believe that such a place could exist, that little old ladies can be seen gambling their hearts out at 6 o'clock in the morning. But there are rows and rows of slot machines, and the gambling is not just limited to casinos and hotels. There are slot machines strategically placed in restaurants and supermarkets as well. I theorized that Las Vegas is essentially a spinoff from southern California and that only the desert could make such liberties possible.

The basic unit on The Strip is the hotel. Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard, one is amazed at the marquees and the famous names. The hotels are like gigantic malls. Inside, there are shops and boutiques of all kinds. Most of the hotels have names that are consistent with the desert atmosphere. There are the Sands, the Desert Inn, the Sahara and the Aladdin. We spent time in all of these.

The most distinctive and appealing of the hotels are Caesar's Palace and Circus Circus. Caesar's Palace at night is a gorgeous shade of green. An escalator carries patrons from the sidewalk to the front entrance as a recorded message provides the welcome, "I, Caesar, welcome you to my Caesar's Palace..." Replicas of famous statues exploit the Roman theme. When we arrived, Ann-Margret was at Caesar's.

Circus Circus is like a never-ending carnival. It features circus acts at intervals through most of the day. There are games and stuffed animal prizes to lure the young and unsuspecting. While we were there, artists worked on a statue of a gorilla in front of the hotel.

All the big hotels have shows, and no one should go to Las Vegas without seeing a couple. They run the gamut from comedy to music to animal acts to burlesque. They are Broadway in their style and are generally for the sexually liberated. We saw two major shows. They were Folies Bergere at The Tropicana and Razzle Dazzle at The Flamingo Hilton. Razzle Dazzle was on ice. It occurred to me that girls in their mid-twenties must flock to Vegas from all around to try to sell their legs.

We lived for a month on Deckow Lane, just down the street from The Tropicana. We were in the Ali Baba Apartments. We both worked a couple of days. I worked for an office equipment place, and Karen worked at The Golden Goose Casino and at the phone company. Actually, you can take away the hotels and casinos and Las Vegas would be like any place else.

The Desert

The desert is so eerie and yet so compelling. Trees become remembered as eastern vegetation. Brown landscapes become normal. We were most aware of the desert during our journey from Las Vegas to Yosemite. We felt our isolation most keenly when viewing some white sands from a high elevation and thinking it was a body of water. Our car ran short of gas at this point, and we just made it to Big Pine, California. These were perhaps our most apprehensive moments. We were awfully glad when we espied the Sierra Nevada.

The Mojave Desert lies between Las Vegas and southern California. For the most part, it is flat and featureless. Joshua trees are abundant as they are in all southwest states.

Around Barstow, the power of the desert is strong. The presence of Death Valley can be felt. We did not cross the Valley but passing a few miles from it, the heat that hit my face was like a blast from a furnace. The thought of Death Valley instills wariness in the tourist. A temperature of 134 degrees was once recorded there. Death Valley is the lowest place in the United States, 282 feet below sea level.

The mountains of the west present a striking contrast to those of the east. They appear to be sculpted, or chiselled. They are flat on top and treeless. The buttes and mesa are formed from rock, whereas the eastern hills are primarily earth. Paradoxically, there are a lot of flash floods in the desert because water runs off these ridges as off walls and stands on the desert floor.

Yosemite National Park

Yosemite lies across the Sierras in California. This is where we spent the night of July 4, 1979. The stars were beautiful as they shone through the Ponderosa pines overhead. We slept that night in a tent.

The mountains of Yosemite are breath-taking. They still had snow on them in July. Karen made a snowball. From above, we satisfied ourselves with the explanation that the valley was carved by glaciers. The scale is a grand one. The one thing all National Parks have in common is a quality of magic. Natural beauty is their offering. They are raw, primeval.

We took several pictures of Yosemite Falls. It is the highest falls in North America. It is divided into upper and lower. We crossed the bridge leading around the lower section.

The second conspicuous attraction is El Capitan. El Capitan is the world's largest exposed mass of granite. It stands 3,000 feet above the valley floor. The park is full of domes owing their shapes to glacial action during the Ice Age.

The Sequoias

San Francisco seemed pleasant for such a big city. I stormed the bay area but never saw the Golden Gate Bridge. That was in 1978. I headed for Reno. There I learned the devastating power of gambling. A guy at a street corner told me he had just lost $7000, his life's savings. From Reno, I was going to the Sequoias. I got as far as Carson City and turned back. I played the slots all night in Carson City waiting for a bus. Even then the big trees were exerting their pull.

The following summer, Karen and I saw the Sequoias. We toured three adjacent parks while on an excursion from our base in Las Vegas. We saw our first Sequoia while still in Yosemite. My reaction must have been comical as I lept from the car and ran toward it. Karen said I looked like a little boy. The Mariposa Grove lies inside Yosemite Park. The Wawona Tunnel Tree is in the Mariposa Grove. This is the one they used to drive cars through. It fell in 1969 but still lies there.

Sequoia National Park lies just south of Kings Canyon National Park. We got plenty of exposure to the big trees. There are about 70 groves of Sequoias strung out on the western slopes of the Sierras. The epic proportions and otherworldliness of the trees put them in the same category as The Grand Canyon. Some are as much as 3500 years old. They were living when man's civilization was in its infancy, when King Tut reigned in Egypt. Their age is attributed to a chemical in their sap which resists bacteria. Their bark is soft and spongy an may be from 6 inches to a foot thick. Their crowns are small compared to the rest of the tree. Before the Ice Age, much of North America was covered with Sequoias. Certainly, there is a prehistoric quality about them. Many have been ravaged by lightning and fire, but the older ones are being replaced by younger ones even today. The largest Sequoia is the General Sherman Tree, located in the Giant Forest of Sequoia Park.

Southern California.

My experiences in southern California in both 1978 and 1979 were limited. In 1978, I took a city bus to Hollywood and Vine. I entered the Capitol Records Building and saw gold Beatle records hanging on the walls. On the sidewalk, I saw the Walk of Fame, various celebrities' names inscribed in a series of star patterns.

In July, 1979, Karen and I left Las Vegas for Anaheim and Disneyland. Karen had been to the park in Florida, so she conducted the tour. The rides were thematic. There were Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. Disney's secret was in making the most of his knowledge of children's literature. To this, he added his own characters.

Yellowstone National Park

After spending 6 days and nights dozing only on the Greyhound, I finally took a room in Salt Lake City. The next morning, I observed the Mormon Temple, or the temple of The Latter Day Saints. Only Mormons are permitted inside. Salt Lake City is a clean town. It has no slums.

From Salt Lake City, I rode the bus north to Yellowstone, Through the window, I caught a glimpse of The Great Salt Lake. A lady next to me was telling me about the Mormons.

After a few nighttime hours awaiting the bus in Idaho Falls, crossing and recrossing the Snake River, I arrived at Yellowstone ready for the tour. The brightest and most scintillating thing about Yellowstone is its waterfalls. The geysers and hot springs are interesting too. I saw the famous geyser, Old Faithful. It spouts water once every hour, thus its name. The hot springs are bubbly and sulphurous. I spent the night in the tourist town of West Yellowstone, Montana. Yellowstone National Park is in the northwest corner of Wyoming.

Southern Utah and Colorado

The canyons and grotesque bluffs of Zion National Park made the ride through it an exciting one. We were not able to linger longer enough to appreciate it as we would have liked. We hurried to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. They were 11 miles off the main road. We came close to getting the car stuck in the sand. We kept moving. Our next stop was Kanab, Utah, the town known as Little Hollywood. Many of the old westerns were filmed there.

Southern Utah sports some wierd terrain. The traveller almost expects to be confronted with dinosaurs. It is never dull. We stopped at Four Corners to look at the monument. This is the spot where 4 states touch: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. It is the only such place in the nation. People like to say they were in 4 states at once.

Mesa Verde National Park is in southern Colorado. It is in a mountainous area about 20 miles off the highway. There are sites within the park on which ruins of the Cliff Dwellers are found. The best known and the one we investigated is Cliff Palace. It rests on the side of a hill, nestled beneath a rock ledge. The descent is a precipitous one, and the Indians who lived there must have been in good physical condition. It was inhabited between the 7th and 13th centuries. Europe was in its Middle Ages. The circular structures are called kivas and were used for religious purposes. Mesa Verde is Spanish for green table.

From Colorado, the west disappears rapidly. We saw Pike's Peak from a distance and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Pike's Peak is a mountain 14,110 feet high. It is not unlike the mountains of the east.

Jim Colyer
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JIM COLYER GOES WEST remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We visited Twickenham, Huntsville's historical district.

Before leaving Alabama, we went to Muscle Shoals. There is a music industry there, but I could only locate a couple of studios. There was nothing to compete with Nashville's Music Row.

JIM COLYER AT THE MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We ate lunch in the National Gallery, and Karen was taken with many of the same paintings I was. She seemed to prefer the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson, however, as she recalled the way the states were engraved around the top of the building.

The National Archives building was still open when we got there, and we saw the Constitution. Karen wanted to see Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot. We chanced upon it as we were leaving. Lincoln was taken from the theater and died in the house across the street.

Leaving D.C., we headed for New York City. At daybreak, we took a subway to Battery Park and ferried to the Statue of Libery.

The Statue is a green Colossus located on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. Its green color is attributed to the rusting process of copper. The Statue is operated by the National Park Service. We climbed to the very crown and looked out the small openings. It was a strenuous test in the heat. From the ferry, the Manhattan skyline was well defined. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building were prominent. I looked back and forth from the skyline to the Statue. The city seemed harmless.

New York City is composed of 5 boroughs. The island of Manhattan is the big one. The others are Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. Brooklyn and Queens are located on Long Island. Only the Bronx is on the mainland.

Karen was surprised at the amount of farmland in upstate New York as we continued toward Niagara Falls. We got a room in Rochester and had pizza. We crossed the border into Canada, and Karen was out of the U.S. for the first time.

The town of Niagara Falls lies in the province of Ontario. The falls is a natural barrier between the two countries. It is separated in the middle by Goat Island. The American Falls is to the left. The Canadian Horseshoe Falls is to the right. It gets its name from its horseshoe shape. It is the most spectacular of the two. We rode a boat, Maid of the Mist, right into the curve of the horseshoe. We wore raincoats but got wet from the spray.

We left Niagara Falls for Toronto where we satisfied ourselves with the CN Tower. It is currently the world's tallest structure. From its height, we saw what an enormous city Toronto is. We peered across the expanse of Lake Ontario. The Niagara River flows between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Water from 4 Great Lakes flows over Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. Our travels gave us a geographical sense of North America.

Karen and I spent the night in Toronto. A false alarm drove us from our hotel room. The next morning we enjoyed a streetcar ride. Street signs reminded me that French is a second language in Canada. Canadian money is in the same denominations as U.S. currency. A 10-15% premium is paid on American money.

We left Ontario at Windsor and entered the U.S. at Detroit. The eastern swing of The Grand Tour had ended.

The western swing began. On the journey to Tucson, we spent a few morning hours in Dallas. We saw the book depository from whose 6th floor John Kennedy was assassinated.

Arriving in Tucson, we rented a car and drove to the Saguaro National Monument. There are 3 sections of the desert: the Great Basin of Nevada, the Mojave of California, and the Sonoran of southern Arizona. The Saguaro cactus is found in the Sonoran. We drove through mile after mile of these cacti. Some of them reminded me of people. The forest was peaceful indeed. Karen and I were amazed that the Saguaro is so localized.

We became familiar with 4 species of cacti: 1) Saguaro. It can live as long as 200 years and grow to be 50 feet tall. Arms do not even appear until the Saguaro is 75 years old. 2) Organ Pipe, the arms of which grow right out of the ground. 3) Prickly Pear. Its leaves are flat like Mickey Mouse ears. 4) Fishhook Barrel, named for its shape and fishhook-like spines.

We went to Tucson's San Xavier Mission, opened in 1798. We caught a glimpse of old Spain. The Spaniards were unaffected by the Protestant Reformation and came to the southwest to spread Catholicism. The mission is known as the White Dove of the Desert and can be seen perched and shining from a considerable distance. There are a cat and mouse above the doorway. Legend says when the cat catches the mouse, the world will end.

I suppose it was inevitable that we end up in Las Vegas even though we had not planned it. Vegas attracted us like a magnet. We returned there from Tiajuana, Mexico via San Diego and Hollywood. In Hollywood, we took the Universal City tour. The tour consisted mainly of a drive through old movie sets.

Back in Vegas, the memories flowed. We again tried the hot corner of Caesar's, MGM, the Dunes and the Flamingo Hilton. We spent 8 days and nights in Vegas and stayed at the Granada Inn, right up the street from last year's spot. We saw a show at The Treasury.

We made two trips while still in Vegas, one to The Grand Canyon and one to Reno, Virginia City and Lake Tahoe.

Virginia City is a mining town from the 1870s. It is the home of the Bonanza series and the Comstock Lode, the silver strike responsible for its existence. The town's population has dwindled from 40,000 to 700, Renovated saloons survive off tourists.

Lake Tahoe resembled other places we had seen. There were the Ponderosa pines of Yosemite, the blue waters of Lake Mead and a touch of Reno. The place seemed a composite! When we finally left Las Vegas, Ann-Margret was once more at Caesar's. She was there in June, 1979, and I felt we had come full circle.

Reaching Salt Lake City, we assumed the same route I travelled in 1978. Salt Lake City remains clean and hospitable. The Mormons have not forgotten their past. The spirit of Brigham Young presides over Temple Square with unquestioned authority. Young was a character. He brought his people from Illinois to Salt Lake in 1847. He was a stud! He had 27 wives and 56 children. Karen and I visited his home, The Beehive.

We had a full day in this town. We took in the Natural History Museum at The University of Utah. It was strong in the area of geology and on the subject of dinosaurs. I was reminded how the geographical location of a university affects its curriculum.

We had lunch at the Shakespeare Dinner House and toured the State Capitol Building. That night, we attended a presentation at the Hansen Planetarium. We gained admittance to the astronomy library. Returning to the bus terminal, I was reminded of the uniqueness of this city by the light reflecting from the top of the LDS Temple.

I recall looking at the front page of a newspaper for sale in a box. A picture of Ronald Reagan was on the front page. He would be elected in November. Times were changing as they always do.

It was on to Yellowstone. As the tour began, I wondered why the condensation from the hot springs was more abundant than in 1978.
Karen said it was due to the cold weather. It is like seeing your breath on a cold day. Hot springs are caused by molten lava.

During the tour, we sighted animals: elk, buffalo and moose. I became aware of the layout of the park. The river flows from Yellowstone Lake through the canyon into Montana. It eventually meets the Missouri River. We saw Old Faithful erupt as it does every 64 minutes. That was August 27th. We spent the night in West Yellowstone, Montana. We were told that during the winter it can go as low as -60 degrees. Ice remains on the lake until June, and we even saw sleet.

Coming back from Idaho Falls, we saw the Grand Tetons off in the distance. We ate lunch in Pocatello near the Union Pacific Railroad Building. In Cheyenne, we toured the Capitol and the Wyoming State Museum. The Grand Tour ended in Denver.

Jim Colyer

THE GRAND TOUR remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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The next morning, we headed up the islands. The deserted beaches were peaceful, and I helped Karen collect shells. Crabs would see us and scurry to their holes in the sand.

On Hatteras Island, we partially ascended the black and white striped lighthouse. We backed down. Karen was pregnant. There had been a miscarriage in March, and I was taking no chances.

On Bodie Island, we passed through towns whose fame had preceded them, Nag's Head and Kitty Hawk. At Kitty Hawk, we saw the spot where the Wright Brothers made the first flight in 1903. We saw a replica of their Flyer.

We crossed over to Roanoke Island. This was the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, England's first attempt to settle in America. Our trip maintained a colonial flavor. In Virginia, we visited Williamsburg, that colony's capital in the 18th century.

We passed through Virginia Beach and Richmond to complete our loop back to Interstate 40.

JIM COLYER AT CAPE HATTERAS remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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My second day began at the top of The World Trade Center (the one without the tower). I looked down at The Statue of Libery snug within its scaffold. It was being rennovated. Since 9/11, I have imagined what it might have been like standing on the observation deck as a hijacked plane flew into you. 9/11 happened 17 years after I stood there. It showed the perpetrators hated all Americans, not white or back, Republicans or Democrats. Any of us could have been in those buildings on that day.

From the Towers, I hoofed it to Wall Street. The street was short. It was nearly deserted, but it was Sunday. I learned George Washington was inaugurated here in 1789.

The bus took me back up the Avenue of the Americas to Midtown. I saw the gold leaf statue of Prometheus against the backdrop of the RCA Building. In Greek mythology, Titan Prometheus taught man how to use fire. The statue depicts him descending from Mount Olympus encirled by the Zodiac. I wanted to see The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall but they were not performing. I watched a Presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale.

The morning before I left, I rode a bus out 42nd Street to the United Nations. I entered the building but did not take the tour. There was a protest against Ronald Reagan which rubbed me the wrong way. I glimpsed the N.Y.P.L. (library) and Madison Square Garden before heading back to Nashville.

April, August, 1974 - New York state

On truck with Chester. We went to Erie, Pennsylvania and across upstate New York, Rochester and Syracuse. We spent a night in Binghamton.

December, 1970 - Philadelphia & New York City

In Philadelphia, I gazed through the windows of Independence Hall at The Liberty Bell. In New York, I ascended the Empire State Building and blitzed through Greenwich Village and Times Square by night. I was in the Army and made these trips with two guys from Valley Forge Hospital in Phoenixville, PA. It was cold and windy in New York. My saucer hat blew off at the top of The Empire State Building. I chased it down before it blew over the edge.

JIM COLYER http://www.jimcolyer.com
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com

NEW YORK CITY 1984 remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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From Nashua, the ride down to Boston is a short one. We wasted no time getting to the suburbs of Lexinton and Concord. This is where the American Revolution began in 1775. We drove by Lexington Green and proceeded along the battle route to the Minute Man statue and the North Bridge, famous for "the shot heard 'round the world." The resistance here caused the inevitable break with England.

"We are standing at the heart of American history," I thought. Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond was nearby.

In Boston, we took in the Old North Church and Paul Revere's home. It was two lanterns that were hung in the church's steeple, indicating the enemy was approaching by sea. The British planned to confuscate some ammunition stored at Concord. A friend of Paul Revere's flashed the signal. Revere was a goldsmith.

We took in the New England Aquarium by Boston Harbor

JIM COLYER http://www.jimcolyer.com

JIM COLYER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE & BOSTON remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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1919 Sir Barton - Sir Barton was the first Triple Crown winner. This was before the races were called the Triple Crown. It was recognized as a great feat. Sir Barton was upstaged by Man o' War. Man o' War beat Sir Barton by 7 lengths in a match race. Man o' War won the Preakness and the Belmont in 1920. He missed the Kentucky Derby because his owner, Samuel Riddle, thought Churchill Downs was too far west. Man o' War won 20 of 21 races. He was beaten by a horse called Upset by 1/2 length. He beat Upset 6 times. Man o' War was known as Big Red. He was a big horse with a voracious appetite. He was popular, the Babe Ruth of horses. He once went off at 1-100. He did well at stud. War Admiral was one of his progeny. Man o' War lived to be 30. He is the greatest thoroughbred of all time even if he did not win the Triple Crown.

1930 Gallant Fox - Gallant Fox was the second Triple Crown winner. He sired a Triple Crown winner, Omaha.

1935 Omaha - "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons trained Omaha. His horses won 2,275 races.

1937 War Admiral - War Admiral won 21 of 26 races. Like Sir Barton, he is remembered for losing a match race to a more popular horse. Seabiscuit beat him by 4 lengths. Samuel Riddle owned War Admiral. He ran him in the Kentucky Derby to avoid the mistake he made with Man o' War.

1941 Whirlaway - Whirlaway was owned by Calumet Farm and was the first of Calumet's 8 Kentucky Derby and 2 Triple Crown winners. Whirlaway was ridden by Eddie Arcaro. He became the third Triple Crown winner to lose a match race. He lost to Alsab by a nose.

1943 Count Fleet - Count Fleet won 16 of 21. The Belmont Stakes was his last race. An ankle injury ended his career.

1946 Assault - Assault stepped on a stake as a foal. His right fore hoof was malformed. He was called the Clubfooted Comet. He was sterile. He raced til he was 7.

1948 Citation - Citation was Calumet Farm's second Triple Crown winner. Eddie Acaro was his jockey. Citation won 32 of 45 races and became horse racing's first millionaire. He was one of the 3 greatest horses and the last Triple Crown winner for 25 years.

1973 Secretariat - Secretariat was a phenomenon, one of the 3 greatest with Man o' War and Citation. I was at Churchill Downs when he won the Kentucky Derby. I bet $75 on him to show. I was cautious because of the way horses had burned me. You can not trust them. Secretariat was owned by Penny Tweedy. Ron Turcott was the jockey. Secretariat set a record for the Derby. He ran the 1 1/4 miles in 1:59-2/5. That record stands. Secretariat is the only horse to run the Derby in under 2 minutes. It was in the Belmont Stakes that he attained immortality. He won by 31 lengths, destroying Sham. Secretariat set a record for the Belmont, running the 1 1/2 miles in 2:24. He was explosive. On a good day, he would have beaten Man o' War. Both ran 21 races. Man o' War won 20 to Secretariat's 16. Secretariat was a beautiful horse and the darling of Baby Boomers. That Onion beat him proved no horse is infallible. Ron Turcott later fell from a horse and was paralysed.

1977 Seattle Slew - By 1977, I was living in Tennessee where there is no horse racing. I was lucky. Still, I knew Seattle Slew was a strong horse. He went off 1-to-2 in the Derby. He was Horse of the Year in 1977. He raced as a 4-year-old and beat Affirmed twice. Seattle slew sired Swale, the 1984 Derby winner. A man I worked with saw the humor when Swale dropped dead of a heart attack.

1978 Affirmed - Affirmed can not be mentioned without Alydar. Theirs was the greatest rivalry in racing history. They met 10 times. Affirmed won 7. He was disqualified in their last meeting. Affirmed beat Alydar by 1-1/2 lengths in the Kentucky Derby and by a neck in the Preakness. In the Belmont, the rivals ran side by side through the stretch. At the wire, it was Affirmed by a head. I was at Churchill Downs when Affirmed won the Derby. I drove up from Tennessee. I knew nothing about the two horses. Someone told be to bet Alydar because of Calumet Farm. I lost $280 that day, hard earned money. It would be 15 years before I returned to the track and when I did, it was with my father and son. I let Michael bet $2 a race for 4 races to show him no one beats the horses. Affirmed went on to become the first $2 million winner. Alydar did better at stud and got the last laugh.

Michael and I went to the 2005 Kentucky Derby. We were in the infield. He did not care for the mob and wants to sit in the stands next time.

The 3-year-old classics:

The Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs in Lousville, Kentucky, the first Saturday in May. It is the Run for the Roses. Churchill Downs opened in 1875. It was named after two brothers who owned the land. The Twin Spires became its symbol. Lists of Derby contenders appear each year in February.

The Preakness Stakes is run at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. The flowers are Black-Eyed Susans.

The Belmont Stakes is run at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York. It is located on Long Island. The flowers are white carnations.
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Thoroughbred horses descended from 3 Arab stallions brought to England over 300 years ago. Thoroughbreds can run 40 miles an hour.

Kentucky Derby 1 1/4 mile
Preakness 1 3/16 mile
Belmont 1 1/2 mile. Belmont Park has the only 1 1/2 mile dirt track in the world.
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JIM COLYER

JIM COLYER AT THE KENTUCKY DERBY remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 in the Bronx. It is a wonder of the modern world. The short porch in right field was designed for Babe Ruth and the Yankees' lefthanded hitters. Ruth homered in the first game played at the Stadium. The mythical Curse of the Bambino began when Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to Jacob Ruppert's Yankees before the 1920 season for $100,000. It was 86 years before Boston won another World Series. In that span, the Yankees won 26 championships. The Curse ended in 2004.

The New York Yankees dominated baseball for 40 years. Yankee history can be divided into 5 eras, those of (1) Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig, (2) Joe DiMaggio, (3) Mickey Mantle, (4) George Steinbrenner and (5) Joe Torre.

Babe Ruth was a god. He won 96 games as a pitcher with a 2.28 Earned Run Average before moving to the outfield. He hit more home runs in a season than other teams. For the steroids generation to match that, a player would have to hit 200 home runs in one year. Ruth did not look like an athlete. He loved to party. His 60 home runs in 1927 and 714 total were records that stood through baseball's golden age. Ruth's home runs to at bats ratio stands to this day.

Lou Gehrig, for all his greatness, played in the shadow of Ruth. Gehrig fell short of the 500 home run club with 493. He finished with 1,995 RBIs. Had he not become ill, his numbers would have been greater. Gehrig played in 2,130 consecutive games, a record which stood until Cal Ripken. Lou Gehrig demonstrated his courage when he called himself the luckiest man alive.

The Yankees won the World Series 5 years in a row between 1949 and 1953 under manager Casey Stengel. I have no memory of it. It was my dad's era. My dad named Lou Gehrig as his favorite player but spoke more of Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941, the same year Ted Williams batted .406. Williams missed 3 years of his prime because of World War II, then served in Korea. He was the third greatest hitter of all time after Ruth and Gehrig. Guys like Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, who landed at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and Hank Bauer, who was on Okinawa, saved our country. They saved the world.

Chester Colyer was my dad. He became a Yankee fan during the 1936 World Series. He picked the Yankees. His brother, Leo, picked the New York Giants. The Yankees won the Series 4 games to 2. My dad followed them the rest of his life.

The first World Series I remember was 1954. It was the Cleveland Indians versus the Giants. My dad was for the Indians because they were in the American League. For no apparent reason, I was for the Giants. The Giants swept the Series.

By 1956, I was firmly with the Yankees. 1956 was the year of Mickey Mantle. Mantle was born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, October 20, 1931. His father, Mutt Mantle, taught him to switch hit and groomed him for a major league career. Mickey grew up working in the mines. He was gifted with exceptional speed and athletic prowess. He sustained an injury playing high school football, then stepped on a drain in centerfield in the 1951 World Series. Injuries sapped his talents by age 36. Mantle replaced the beloved DiMaggio in centerfield, no easy task. He was booed incessantly through the 1950s, even in Yankee Stadium. It made no sense. I was 10 years old. The boos were indicative of the coming generation gap of the 1960s. Mantle was the hero of baby boomers. The boos came from fans who remembered Gehrig and DiMaggio and resented Mantle's advance publicity and perhaps his humble beginnings. They insisted he hit a home run everytime.

Mickey Mantle broke through in 1956. He won the Triple Crown, leading the American League with 52 home runs, 130 runs batted in and a batting average of .353. His home runs were Gargantuan. It seemed like everyday that summer, the sports page showed his latest tape-measure shot. I was collecting baseball cards. My prize was my 1956 Mickey Mantle, the only one I ever saw. When my black sheep cousin stole it from my room, I cried unconsolably. Mantle went on to hit .365 in 1957.

I started playing baseball in 1956. I played second base and wore Mantle's number 7. My dad and his brother, Buck, sponsered a team made up of Colyer cousins. Our team was called C&R Colyer after the trucking business my dad and uncle owned. Cousin Larry was on first. I was on second. Duke (Jerry) played third. Bobby caught. Ronnie was in the outfield. We played behind Middletown Elementary school east of Louisville. We won, and the league resented us. We were champions in 1958 and 1959. I was small and liked to bunt. Being on the family team, I played to win.

I took the Yankees' loss to Pittsburgh in the 1960 World Series hard. I was in the 9th grade and in health class. I laid my head on the desk to hide the tears. I would rather lose with the Yankees than win with anyone else. Once you root for the Yankees, you can never root for another team. Like Billy Martin said, "I am a Yankee!" It is not the city. It is the great tradition of the only team in sports that matters.

The New York Yankees came back with a vengeance in 1961. The 1961 Yankees rank with 1927's Murderer's Row and the 1998 team as the 3 greatest. The 1961 team beat the Cinncinati Reds in the World Series four games to one. Bill Skowron was at first, Bobby Richardson at second, Tony Kubek at shortstop. Elston Howard caught as Berra moved to left field. Whitey Ford went 25-4 with an E.R.A. of 3.21 and got the Cy Young Award. Ford had a great curve ball and was one of the coolest pitchers to play the game.

All pitchers are measured against Cy Young. Cy won 511 games between 1890 and 1911. In those years, a team had only 2 or 3 starting pitchers, and they were expected to complete games. Relief pitching is a modern specialty.

1961 featured the home run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle and their attempt to break Babe Ruth's record of 60. By then, Mantle was accepted in New York. Maris was the outsider. Mantle was sidelined and in the hospital as the season drew to a close. He finished with 54 homers. Maris kept hitting them. The commissioner of baseball issued a statement that if Maris broke Ruth's record after 154 games, the new record would have an asterisk beside it. This was the year of expansion, and 8 games had been added to the schedule. It happened. Maris finished 154 games with 59 homers, one shy of the Babe. He hit numbers 60 and 61 in the extra games. His record of 61 was tarnished by an asterisk. Maris grew sullen. He was a introvert who hated being harassed by the press. Nonetheless, Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs stood until Mark McGuire hit 70 in 1998.

Baseball records are subject to scrutiny, certainly home run records. Over the decades, fences have been moved in. Balls have gotten livelier. Pitchers mounds have been lowered. Baseball does what it has to, to keep the game interesting. After Barry Bonds hit 73, it came out that he was using steroids, a performance-enhancing drug. The criticism was, "The balls are juiced, the bats are juiced and the players are juiced." Congress, led by Senator John McCain of Arizona, cracked down on baseball's illegal use of steroids.

Mickey Mantle's abilities eroded in the mid-1960s. Injuries took their toll. He played in pain, taping his legs before every game. He retired after 1968 as the Yankees collapsed. With Mantle, it will always be what might have been. He hit 536 home runs but could have hit 700. He and Ford went into the Hall of Fame together. In recent years, 500 home runs is the standard for power hitters as 3,000 hits is the goal of players who hit for average. Longevity is a must. Mantle had a drinking problem and died in 1995 after a failed liver transplant. He was courageous to the end.

George Steinbrenner, a wealthy ship-builder from Cleveland, bought the Yankees from CBS in 1973 and set out to rebuild them. The Steinbrenner era has been turbulent. He speaks his mind and attracts players who do the same. He has made 21 managerial changes. He hired and fired Billy Martin 5 times. Money is not an issue when it comes to "The Boss" and his Yankees. Free agency changed the game. Players go on the market when their contracts expire. Steinbrenner's money allows him to sign the top free agents. Modern players play for themselves, money and their current teams in that order.

Graig Nettles made breath-taking plays at third base for The Yankees in the 1970s. He was known for his wit as much as his glove. Nettles coined the phrase, "Bronx Zoo." Sparky Lyle used it as the title of his book. Nettles wrote one called, "Balls." When Cy Young winner Lyle was traded, Nettles said it was "Cy Young and Sayonara."

Cajun Ron Guidry was the Yankee pitcher of his generation. in 1978, Guidry went 25-3 with an ERA of 1.74. He was known for his slider.

Goose Gossage came to the Yankees as their closer. He intimidated with his Fu Manchu and blazing fastball.

Bucky Dent fueled The Yankees/Red Sox rivalry with his 1978 home run that put the Bronx Bombers in their second consecutive World Series with the Dodgers.

The Dodgers have been the Yankees' great National League rival. They have met in the World Series 11 times. The Yankees are 8-3.

Thurman Munson named Reggie Jackson, "Mr. October," after Reggie hit 3 home runs in game 6 of the 1977 World Series against the Dodgers. Broadcaster Howard Cosell called Munson, "Old Scrapiron." Munson was the most reliable catcher since Berra. He died when his private plane crashed in 1979. The Yankees were not the same after his death.

Baseball is not as simple as it was in the 1950s. There were 16 teams, 8 in each league. After 154 games, the team with the best record in the American League played the team with the best record in the National League in the World Series.

Today, there are 30 teams, one winner and 29 losers. It is harder to win a World Series. There are the American League Division Series (ALDS) and the American League Championship Series (ALCS). There are the NLDS and NLCS. The playoffs took something away from the World Series. Theoretically, a team could go 162-0 and not go to the World Series while a team playing under .500 could win it. The Series became a tournament.

The 30 teams are affected equally. It is harder for everyone. The wild cards give lesser teams a chance. Over time, any team will be helped and hurt by the wild card. Baseball is complicated and no longer our national past time. Salaries are unreasonable. Derek Jeter signed a 10-year deal with the Yankees in 2001 for $189 million. Rediculous! People are working for minimum wage. Working men struggle to feed their families and make ends meet. Sports figures are paid millions for playing a game. A game is a game. Something is wrong.

I noticed a change while in Las Vegas in 1993. The Yankees were again rising from the ashes. I watched them on big screens in the Vegas hotels. They had Wade Boggs who would spend 5 years at third base. Someone told me they got Jimmy Key. I had not heard of Key, but he was a good pitcher. Paul O'Neill and Bernie Williams were the backbone of this new dynasty. O'Neill won the batting title in the strike-shortened season of 1994. He played with an intensity that bordered on rage. He loved to win and hated to lose, the kind of guy you want on your team. Williams became The Yankees' best centerfielder since Mantle.

Don Mattingly was replaced at first base by Tino Martinez. Ironically, Mattingly never appeared in a World Series, coming in 1982 and leaving after 1995.

Derek Jeter came in 1995. He is the best shortstop in Yankee history, a fan favorite and headed for the Hall of Fame.

Steinbrenner hired Joe Torre as his manager for 1996. Torre was born to manage the Yankees. He is a New Yorker with the patience of Job. He understands baseball and its players. He can talk to the press, explain things in calm detail. Torre brought a stability to the Yankees which had been absent for years.

The Yankees went to their first World Series in 15 years under Joe Torre. They went up against the Atlanta Braves, the self-proclaimed "team of the '90s." David Cone, now a Yankee, came on television and made the statement, "We're not afraid of the Atlanta Braves!" I felt a rush! That is what I wanted to hear. I hated the Braves although not as much as the Cubs. Both Braves and Cubs were overexposed by cable TV in the 1980s. The tomahawk chop from Atlanta fans was annoying. I wanted the Yankees to kick their butts, and they did.

The Yankees had a catcher named Jim Leyritz. He had a wierd stance and a cocky attitude. He could play any position. He was used sparingly but when he was on the field, there was an aura. Leyritz' home run in game 4 against Atlanta in the 1996 World Series not only turned the Series around but started the Yankees on the road to 4 Championships in 5 years, 1996-2000. Leyritz was Andy Pettitte's regular catcher.

Andy Pettitte was a true Yankee. He came to the team in 1995. In 9 years with the club, he posted 149 regular season victories. He was the stopper, especially effective in October. Pettitte was a left-hander with a great pick-off move to first base. At 6"5', he was an imposing figure. I never understood why they let him go to Houston.

Roger Clemens pitched with the Yankees 5 years and picked up 2 World Series rings. Clemens, like Wade Boggs, spent his young days with the Boston Red Sox. He built a reputation as a fierce competitor, emotional and willing to throw inside. The beaning of Mike Piazza caused bad blood between the Yankees and New York Mets. The situation was made worse when Clemens later threw the top half of Piazza's broken bat at him. It was in 2001 that Roger Clemens endeared himself to Yankee fans. He went 20-3 and got the Cy Young Award. Clemens won his 300th game as a Yankee. He got his 4000th strikeout in the same game. He retired after the 2003 season only to sign with the Astros when Pettitte went to Houston. Houston is Clemens' home town. Amazingly, he won his 7th Cy Young at age 42. Clemens finished the 2005 season with 341 career wins and 4,502 strikeouts, second to Nolan Ryan. Clemens may pitch in 2006.

Somewhere in middle age, I became a connaisseur of pitching. They say good pitching beats good hitting, and it is certainly difficult to win without a strong starting rotation. Baseball today has a 5-man rotation. In the days of Whitey Ford, it was a 4-man rotation. Mel Stottlemeyer has been the Yankee pitching coach under Joe Torre. Through the late 1990s and into the 21st century, Torre, Stottlemeyer and Don Zimmer (bench coach) sat next to one another in the dugout like peas in a pod. Zimmer will be remembered for his run-in with Boston pitcher, Pedro Martinez. The 70-something Zimmer charged Pedro after Pedro threatened a bean ball. The incident was played and replayed. Zimmer left the Yankees at the end of the year.

David Wells brought excitement to the pitching staff. A hulk of a man, Wells spoke his mind and seemed a throwback to the "Bronx Zoo." His teammates called him Boomer. Wells had his moment when he pitched a perfect game on May 17, 1998. I caught the tail end of it at a tacho place in Nashville. It was the first perfect game by a Yankee since Don Larsen in 1956. Wells and Larsen went to the same high school in San Diego, although years apart. Larsen was in attendance when Wells pitched his perfect game. He had come to Yankee Stadium because it was "Yogi Berra day." The 1998 New York Yankees were a magical team. They won 125 games while losing only 50. There were no superstars but there were no weak spots.

The following year, 1999, David Cone pitched a perfect game. From that game, his career went into a tailspin. I felt it had something to do with giving out gold watches after the game. Gold watches are associated with retirement.

I thought third baseman, Scott Brosius, looked like my sister's husband. My dad and I watched Yankee games on TV in the late 1990s. "There's Steve!" I would say when Brosius came to the plate. My dad passed away, September 6, 2002 in Louisville. He and my mother watched a Yankee game the night he had a stroke. Pettitte pitched. I was watching the game in Nashville.

The Yankees beat the Atlanta Braves 4-2 in the 1996 World Series. They swept The San Diego Padres in the 1998 Series and swept Atlanta in 1999. 2000 saw the Subway Series between the Yankees and the New York Mets. The Yankees bested the Mets 4-1 to win their 26th World Series.

Since blowing the 2001 World Series, the Yankees have wilted in postseason. What good is it to win 100 games and lose the World Series? Joe Torre remains a rock. He has taken the Yankees to the playoffs 10 straight years.

There are not many players from the 1990s. Things change quickly. Bernie, Jeter, catcher Jorge Pasada, and Rivera and are it. Tino Martinez returned to finish his career in pinstripes. There is something about putting on a Yankee uniform. Over-the-hill players reach back to find something extra when joining the Yankees. It has always been that way. George Steinbrenner is a generous man despite his critics. He helps veterans.

Joe Torre has returned to manage the Yankees in 2006. His contract is good through 2007. Torre should be voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee at the end of his tenure. Getting into the Hall of Fame is hard to do. There are 260 members, about 1% of all who have played Major League Baseball. Players are eligible 5 years after retirement. Their names may remain on the ballot for 15 years. They must receive 75% of the votes. Votes are cast by the Baseball Writers' Association. There are players in the Hall who are unfamiliar to modern fans. There are plyers who may deserve to be in who are not. The Hall of Fame sets its own guidelines. It exists for its own sake and the players enshrined. Wade Boggs was chosen on the first ballot. Boggs achieved baseball immortality after the 1996 Series when he rode around Yankee Stadium on a horse behind a mounted policeman. He went on to kiss home plate when he became the only player to hit a home run for his 3,000th hit. The Baseball Hall Of Fame is located in Cooperstown, New York, the place where the game was invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday.

Michael and I flew to New York and saw a game at Yankee Stadium. It was a day game with the Chicago White Sox, Wednesday, August 10, 2005. We were in the third tier down the third base line. The Yankees lost 2-1 in 10 innings, but we got to see some leftovers from the great team of the 1990s. It was my first and only time at Yankee Stadium. It was like I had to wait to take my son. We made our way to the Bronx and back to Manhattan by subway.

The 2006 Yankees feature high-profile players. Johnny Damon is in center field. Damon's father was an American soldier in southeast Asia. His mother was from Thailand. Randy Johnson is pitching another year. Mike Mussina is back. Alex Rodriguez is at third. Hideki Matsui is in left, Gary Sheffield in right. Giambi is on first. The line-up is being called the new Murderer's Row. With young pitchers like Shawn Chacon and Chien-Ming Wang, the Yankees might erase the humiliation of the previous 5 years.

Construction on the new Stadium begins in 2006. It will be ready for the 2009 season. It will be in the Bronx, close to the old stadium. It makes me wonder how long baseball will go on. Will baseball be around another hundred years? Will the Yankees still be the greatest team? What will a superstar's salary be in the 22nd century?

Bibliography

1 Anderson, Dave, Murray Chass, Robert Creamer and Harold Rosenthal. The Yankees: The Four Fabulous Eras of Baseball's Most Famous Team. New York. Random House, 1979

2 Frommer, Harvey. A Yankee Century. New York, Berkley Books, 2002

3 Hageman, William and Warren Wilbert. New York Yankees: Seasons of Glory. Middle Village, Jonathan David, 1999

4 Honig, Donald. The New York Yankees: An Illustrated History. New York, Crown, 1981

5 Mahoney, Jeff. Subway Series: Yankees vs. Mets. Middletown, CT, CheckerBee, 2000

6 Mantle, Mickey and Herb Gluck. The Mick. New York, Doubleday, 1985

7 Mantle, Mickey with Mickey Herskowitz. All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball. New York, HarperCollins, 1994

8 Robinson, Ray and Christopher Jennison. Yankee Stadium: 75 Years of Drama, Glamor and Glory. New York, Penguin, 1998

9 ________. Pennants and Pinstripes: The New York Yankees 1903-2002. New York, Viking, 2002

10 Stout, Glenn and Richard A. Johnson. Yankees Century: 100 Years of New York Yankee Baseball. New York, Houghton Mifflin, 2002

JIM COLYER
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Wednesday, August 10 (Day 2) - We made our way to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx by train. Yankee Stadium is located at 161st & River Ave. I got tickets by email, $52 total. We were in the upper deck down the third base line toward left field. The game took up a large part of the day. It began at 1:05pm. I wanted a day game so we would have light when we hit the street. The New York Yankees played the Chicago White Sox. This was traditional American League baseball. The Yankees lost, but the main thing was that we experienced a game at Yankee Stadium. There were some leftovers from the great team of the 1990s: Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Pasada, Mariano Rivera, Tino Martinez and manager Joe Torre. The Stadium itself was the star. I noticed the big NY behind home plate and the facade in the outfield. I remembered how Mickey Mantle came within inches of hitting one out. I gazed at the bullpen and could just see the edge of Monument Park from where we sat. The Yankees dugout was on the first base side. We roamed through shops which sold Yankees merchandise.

Thursday, August 11 (Day 3) -
This was the day we cracked New York. We rode the subway to Lower Manhattan and Ground Zero. Ground Zero was fenced in. We walked around the perimeter. It was a solemn site, not unlike Pearl Harbor. It was not so emotional at this point, but we wondered what it was like in the city on that day. Freedom Tower is being built. America comes first since 9/11. Michael pointed to a cross. From Ground Zero, we hoofed it to Wall Street as I had in 1984. Wall Street is the country's financial center, and Michael wanted to see the New York Stock Exchange where stocks are bought and sold. NYSE lists 2800 companies. It has the largest trading volume of any stock exchange except NASDAQ. This was an education for Michael. Federal Hall across the street is where George Washington was inaugurated. Michael got pictures of Washington's statue. He got one of Trinity Church. Wall Street got its name from the wall built by the Dutch to protect themselves from Indians. The British took New Amsterdam and named it New York in honor of the Duke of York. We moved toward Battery Park. A German girl took our picture as we ferried to the Statue of Liberty. She was from Hamburg. We talked about The Beatles and the Star Club. Michael and I spent an hour on Liberty Island looking up at the green Statue. His Liberty pictures are like post cards. I was doing this for Michael. He was seeing New York City for the first time. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French. It was done by sculptor Bartholdi and commemorated French support during the American Revolution. Lady Liberty holds a tablet reading July 4, 1776, in Roman numerals. Her right arm is straight. She holds a torch. There are 7 spikes in her crown representing 7 seas or 7 continents. Her official name is "Liberty Enlightening the World." Battery Park is so named because of guns which once defended Lower Manhattan. We returned to the room to rest. It was a hot August day. I could not drink enough. Water fountains were not to be found. I secured the tickets for All Shook Up which I got from Ticketmaster by email. The show was at the Palace Theatre, 1564 Broadway. I remembered the address because it was the year of Shakespeare's birth. Off we went. We were in the balcony. The theatre was ornate, and an usher told us it was about 100 years old. All Shook Up combined the music of Elvis Presley with the plot of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It was fun. We exited the theatre at 10:30PM and went to our room for our last night in the city.

Michael had to see Trump Tower, and we found it. It is residential. Its condominiums are for the rich. Donald Trump is a real estate developer and Michael's hero. I took a picture of Michael against the backdrop of Trump and his wife, Melania. Michael bought shirts at Brooks Brothers. The clerk told him Trump's assistant came in the day before. We passed Rockefeller Center and got pictures of Prometheus and Radio City Music Hall. We slipped into the NBC studios shop. We ate at ESPN Zone and saw a bad collision between two baseball players. ESPN stands for Entertainment Sports Programming Network.

Friday, August 12 (Day 4) - On our way out of town, we stopped by New York University. Washington Square Park sits on the edge of NYU, and we saw the famous arch. We entered a book store. Michael compared the business books to MTSU's. We got to Kennedy Airport with time to spare and ate at Chili's Too. It was a straight flight to Nashville. We arrived on Delta/Comair. Karen met us and dropped me off at Vanderbilt.

I had it in mind to take Michael to the main sections of the United States: south, up east and out west. Daytona Beach was the trip south. New York was up east. Las Vegas will be west. I now see the early trips to New York as preparation for this trip with Michael.
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The castle Excalibur was the big attraction. It exploits a medieval motif, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from the early middle ages, Robin Hood from the latter. I patronized restaurants in the Medieval Village on the second level. A belly dancer did her thing. The Excalibur, Luxor, Tropicana and the new MGM Grand are forming a second hot corner. Circus Circus owns the Excalibur and the Luxor. The trend is toward family orientation.

Downtown, the Golden Goose Casino is now a topless joint but the sign is still there, an historic fixture on the Glitter Gulch landscape. The sign faces both directions. Above it, revolves the goose figure on its nest of golden eggs. Cowboy Vegas Vic and cowgirl Sassy Sally patrol adjacent sides of the street. On down, Union Plaza sits next to the Greyhound Bus station.

Caesar's Palace is still hard to top. The Forum Shops at Caesar's price themselves into the luxury class. The 18 foot replica of Michelangelo's David (of David and Goliath) presides over Appian Way as the Italian Renasiiance imposes itself on the Roman Empire. I ventured into the pool area behind Caesar's for the first time, beautiful under a moonlit sky. Next door, the Mirage shows off its erupting volcano and its white tigers. I have to say the casinos are awful. Men at the tables, women on the machines. Expressionless. Zombies. One must refrain from drinking and gambling if he is to enjoy Las Vegas. I did. The Fashion Show Mall offers the best shopping on the Strip.

I realized it was the production shows which interested me, most specifically the leggy, statuesque dancers and showgirls. Bally's Jubilee! was the hot ticket. It was the biggest show on the Strip and had the best showgirls. I took Jubilee's backstage tour but was disappointed to have a male dancer as a guide instead of a sexy showgirl. Still, I gained insight. One thing which impressed me was the size of the stage. From the stage, the seating area appeared small. Jubilee! is a dinosaur, a glamorous throwback to musicals of yesterday. It is a composite of Vaudeville, Broadway and classic Hollywood. It boasts of its nightly sinking of the Titanic, but the thrill is seeing all those long, shapely legs assembled in one place at one time. 100 people make up the cast with 100 more behind the scenes. The show is so lavish it leaves you dazed. I got my revenge for the backstage tour when that same male dancer took a picture of me with one of the girls. Free photo sessions are between shows. Some of the girls are 6'2" and 6'3"

I saw Folies Bergere (Ber-share) at the Tropicana even though I did not plan to. Karen and I saw the show in 1979. This time, I took the backstage tour which was led by a former showgirl of 20 years. She may have been part of the show we saw 14 years before. It was interesting to get behind the scenes, especially into the dressing rooms to see and handle the costumes. Some of them are heavy, so the girls have to be pretty sturdy. I lingered a few moments to talk to the showgirl. I asked if there were a pension plan for those who stayed 20 years. She said no, but they were nice and had given her a job. Folies Bergere was the oldest show in Vegas, going back to 1959.

Bare Essence at the Sands was comparable in longevity. Bare Essence was unemcumbered by European tradition and lived up to its billing as a "sexy, sizzling revue."

The Stardust had Enter the Night. It was emblematic of the darkness which pervaded my entire trip.

Melinda, First Lady of Magic, was a native Las Vegan. Using animals, she performd feats of illusion between spicy dance numbers. Her show was at the Lady Luck, downtown. All the shows give a sense of euphoria.

For Crazy Girls, the showroom at the Riviera provided an intimacy some of the others did not. I suppose my feeling of being hustled in and out derived from wanting to take some splendid calves and thighs home with me.

I made it to Arizona Charlie's for the Naughty Ladies review. It was good, old timey fun, high button shoes. For the finale, we paraded to "When The Saints Go Marching In."

Seduction and Viva Las Vegas were afternoon shows. Seduction was in Sahara's Casbar Lounge. It was back to the Sands for Viva Las Vegas.

The Elvis impersonator at Vegas World put on a complimentary show. He called himself E.P. King. I looked down on the city from the top of Vegas World.

Beatle tribute bands were at the Rio and the Four Queens. A promo ticket gave me access to Imperial Palace's antique cars.

I was scared of Death Valley in 1979. This time, I took the Silver Star Line tour. I rode shotgun in the van as we made stops at Dante's View and the Devil's Golf Course. The "golf course" is a dried lake where salt is from 3 to 5 feet deep. I tasted it. Death Valley sits on the Nevada-California line but is mostly in California.

Borax mined from Death Valley is a mineral used in soap. The 105 elements of chemistry make up the 3000 minerals of geology. Minerals form 3 kinds of rocks: igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary.

Fossils are found in sedimentary rocks, laid down by water.

I took a taxi ride on the Colorado River in Laughlin, 90 miles southeast of Vegas.

Returning to Louisville in order to rendevous with Michael, I came east on I-40, old Route 66: Kingman, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville.

I realized the strip is a short-lived thing, like the Mall in D.C. The only reason to see it again will be to show it to Michael as part of a western trip.
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I returned to Minnesota in August, 1994. Michael and I saw The New York Yankees play The Minnesota Twins at The Metrodome in Minneapolis. We moved from the third baseline to behind home plate around to center field. It was blue seats and green artificial turf. The Twins won. We saw Yankees Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Paul O'Neill and Jim Leyritz. I bought Michael a Yankees cap.

In Red Wing, we climbed Barn Bluff to looked down on the town. Red Wing was celebrating River City Days.

There is a Scandinavian, Viking influence out through here because it is where the Swedish emigrants ended up in the 1850s. The farms are immaculate.

Michael showed me his school, Jefferson Elementary.

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The trip reminded me of other excursions we had made. The Land Between the Lakes is run by TVA. The road beween them is also called The Trace. The two lakes are Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. They are formed by the damming of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. Both rivers dump into the Ohio.

Cairo, Illinois is where the Ohio meets the Mississippi. Down around this area, we saw the archeological site of the so-called Mississippi Man. This burial ground is 1,000 years old.

Karen and I took in the Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park, Stones River Battlefield in Murfreesboro and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River near Clarksville. Even Fort Campbell on the state line. We went to Mammoth Cave in 1980, to Jonesboro in 1981 and '82.

In 1982, we went to the World's Fair in Knoxville but left early in favor of the zoo.

The late 1970s and early 1980s was a time of travel for me. In retrospect, I seemed to roam the country at will seeing places I only dreamed of until my 30s. There were long trips west and short ones in and around Tennessee. I started alone. Then it was me and Karen. After Michael was born, things changed. We had a baby to raise. Nor did it make sense to return to places we had seen at lower prices. To this day, Karen says we had good times.

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Coming back 42, I again viewed the Ohio from Butler State Park in Carrollton. This was the third time I had been there in 10 years. The second time was with Karen.

Charlotte and I made a trip to My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown to see the Stephen Foster Story.

January, 1986 - Texas

Chester and I made a Grand Tour of Texas during the state's Sesquicentennial. We unloaded the truck near Graceland in Memphis. It was cold. It was night, and Graceland was lit up.

The Space Shuttle Challenger was the major news story. Following the Red River Valley, we first heard of the Shuttle explosion in Burkburnette. I was sitting in the truck. As soon as it came on the radio, I sensed something was wrong.

It was on to Fort Worth, down I-35 to Waco, Austin and San Antonio. We took I-10 over to Houston, a very tall town. In Houston, there was great sympathy for the Shuttle crew.

Summer, 1985 - On truck with Chester

We circled Chicago and came within 5 miles of Wisconsin. We crossed Michigan to Detroit.

A second trip took us through Harrisburg and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, then across lower state New York, my 6th time in that state.

I was going through a divorce in what I later referred to as the "summer of hell." I was out gallivanting across the country when I should have been taking care of my son. But I had lost control. It would be awhile before I regained it and when I did, things would be different.
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A city bus took me from Arlanda to the heart of town. Late in the day, I found a room in a private home for 120 crowns a night. My address was: c/o Alice Macksey, Sibyllegatan 7, 11451 Stockholm, Sweden. Gatan means street. I was lucky to find this place.

I brought $5000, $4000 of which were in traveller's checks. There was an American Express Travel Service on the other side of King's Theater where Hamngatan began.

I came light: passport, traveller's checks and plane tickets in my coat pocket. Everything else was in one shoulder bag. Necessities could be gotten there. But Stockholm is expensive. It was important to control my money, getting the best deals.

The main thing was to enjoy the trip. Coming in with a sketch helped. I needed an idea of why I was there and what I meant to do. When you think of going to Europe, you want to feel like you have some purpose and are in control. You don't want to be swallowed up by history and culture. ABBA was my reason for being there. The original plan was to wait for Benny & Bjorn's Kristina! musical, but I decided to go on.

Stockholm is difficult, being broken up into islands. Streets twist and turn. Maps and street signs are of no use if you do not speak Swedish. You feel your way along. The archipelago reaches 40 miles into the Baltic Sea. The white sightseeing boats can be seen at the harbor. Out on the streets, the blonde hair of the Swedes is more golden than blonde. It shines. You realize humanity itself is shaped by environment. Svenska flickor are sturdy and robust, bicyclers. The Swedes are friendly and will meet you halfway.

I mingled, picked up Swedish and talked about ABBA. I ate Swedish food. Sill herring. The smorgasbord is traditionally around Christmas. Food is expensive, and MacDonalds are common.

My first morning, the sun was rising at 3AM. The long daylight is soft but darkness is as precious in summer as daylight is in winter. Days and nights get stretched out.

In the Old Town (Gamla Stan), I met a girl named Marie Halldin. The following week, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. She was 24. I was 48. She would have gone with me again. I let it slide. I did not need to get hung up on a Swedish girl despite my fantasies.

Gamla Stan is block after block of narrow street and sidewalks. The buildings go back to the 1200s. The Royal Palace sits on the edge of Gamla Stan. It is a square, brown building with many windows.

On Saturday around noon, the changing of the guard began at the Army Museum below my window. I marched beside two columns in their dark berets to the sounds of brass and drums. We paraded down Hamngatan and past the Sverige Riksdag (Parliament Building). The ceremony took place in the palace courtyard.

Next door to the Royal Palace is the Stockholm Cathedral where kings and queens are crowned.

The Royal Family consists of Carl Gustav, Silvia and their three children. They actually live at Drottningholm Palace, and I went there on a boat from City Hall. The water, I noticed, had a steely, metallic quality.

City Hall is where te Nobel Prizes are given out. This brick building with its distinctive tower sits peacefully beside the water. The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo.

Scandinavia dominated Europe in the Middle Ages, and much of Sweden's history centers around the Viking period. I laid off museums and art galleries. Stockholm itself is a museum.

I did meander through Skansen, an open-air museum. It was free because the king and queen were there. There were buildings from The Emigrants period.

I searched record shops and book stores for ABBA material. Even with the ABBA revival, the John Tobler book was the only thing in print. I talked to Swedish author Carl Magnus Palm by phone. He interviewed Benny and Bjorn, Frida and Michael Tretow for his book. It is a chronological overview of the recording sessions.

In the old days, Polar Music was at Hamngatan 11. Benny and Bjorn now have their own company called Mono Music. The address is: Mono Music, Sodrabrobanken 41-A, Skeppsholmen 111-49.

I went to Mono Music and met Gorel Hanser, the lady who handles ABBA's business. It was wierd. It was pouring down rain. I was fighting my umbrella and trying to get in the building. I met Gorel head on coming through the door. She was in a hurry. I asked for five minutes. She said she did not have 5 minutes. I started talking. I told her I had come from the United States and had written a book called "ABBA and Their Music." I got her interest. We went inside and sat down. We talked about ABBA. Gorel was on her way to work on the box set which was due out. I showed her my song, "Save The Planet," inspired by Frida. Gorel was the most angelic, ethereal person I ever talked to. She was a spirit. She said the Kristina! musical would open in Malmo in October, 1995.

Docked off the island of Skeppholmen is the old ship, Af Chapman. It is a youth hostel. I walked to the prow and stood where Mike Chapman (Agnetha's producer) stood at the start of Agnetha's "The Heat is On" video.

Agnetha lives on Ekero. She values her privacy, and I let her be. Ekero is actually not in the archapelago. It is in Lake Malaren west of the city. It is a large area consisting of a number of islands.

I contemplated a train ride to Jonkoping but called it off. Jonkoping is Agnetha's hometown. It is in the province of Smaland where the Swedish emigrants originated. I was told that the stereotypical Swedes are found there.

There was a free show at Norrmalmstorg on Hamngatan. Tommy Korberg performed and sang "Anthem." Korberg was the Russian in the Chess musical. He lived in my building.

Stockholm newspapers are Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Afton Bladet. The big department store is NK.

It is very Nordic. On May 22, sunshine could be seen for 21 hours, from 2AM to 11PM. It felt like it was always daylight. You get used to it. Kiruna inside the Arctic Circle is the best place to see the Midnight Sun.

Whatever success I had in Stockholm I owed to Alice Macksey, her sons Dennis and Paul, and her friend Jan. Alice told me where to go and what to do. She translated for me. We watched TV together. Without her, I would have been lost.

Alice, Jan and I ate on The Patricia, a boat once owned by Alice's ex-husband. We danced to ABBA's Dancing Queen at a disco.

My last night, I attended Alice's birthday party on the roof. From the roof, I could see that the sky stayed light all night.

I was amazed at how well the Swedes speak English. They watch American movies with Swedish subtitles. They know American music and politics.

I returned June 29 by the same route. 47 days later. It took 8 1/2 hours to travel 4000 miles, Stockholm to New York. JFK Airport is on Long Island in Queens.

I did what I set out to do. I had an experience with the Swedes.

LONDON, ENGLAND

While in Stockholm, I made two trips out of the country. The first was to London. I went with Swedes and returned with Swedes, 3 days and nights through Spies travel agency. Our airline was Premair. The airport in London was Stanstead. A bus took us to the hotel. I got British currency at the foreign exchange (Forex). British pounds are written "L," an L with a line through it.

Driving to the hotel on the left (wrong) side of the road, we passed St. Paul's Cathedral. The hotel was virtually on top of the two centers of activity, Piccadilly Circus (circle) and Trafalgar Square.

I began with Trafalgar Square. Nelson's column juts high into the air, surrounded by 4 crouching lions. Red double-decker buses and black cabs. People and pidgeons. Big Ben could be seen in the distance, but I decided to avoid Britian's center of government.

Behind Trafalgar Square is the National Gallery. History unfolded. Titian and Tintoretto. Renoir. The French are your painters.

I knew what to see in the British Museum, antiquities. The Elgin marbles from the Greek Parthenon! These are the fragments reproduced in Nashville. The Rosetta Stone! The Rosetta Stone is that chunk of basalt used by the Frenchman Champollion to decipher hieroglyphics.

I sought exhibits dealing with the Viking era, 750-1050.

The only thing left was the Tower of London. I got there before it opened and walked around the perimeter. The best view was from the Tower Bridge over the Thames. "Shakespeare stood by this river," I mused.

The Tower was built by William the Conqueror following the Norman invasion of 1066. The Normans or Norsemen or Northmen were descended from Vikings.

I rode a double-decker bus back to Piccadilly Circus.

HELSINKI, FINLAND

My second trip was to Helsinki, Finland. Jan alerted me to the economy of this trip.

I sailed on the Viking Line. We sailed through the Swedish Archipelago and crossed the Baltic Sea to Helsinki. The trip was short, one day and two nights.

The ship Mariella was like a floating hotel, decks for floors, cabins for rooms. I stood on top as we left Stockhom.

I was the last person to come down from the top of the ship. We were in the archipelago and our speed was up. It was windy. Alice had warned me about passengers falling off the ship and drowning. Suddenly, I was confused and disoriented. I could not find the stairs leading to the decks below. Out of nowhere, I heard Agnetha's voice. It was ABBA singing "The Day Before You Came." It was not my imagination. The sound was coming from the ship's speakers. Hearing Agnetha composed me. I found the stairs and got to safety below. I felt my guardian angel had come to me in my moment of need.

The Archipelago is strange, 24,000 islands reaching 40 miles into the Baltic. They come in all sizes. Some are tiny. Some have houses on them. Others are covered with woods.

In Helsinki, I went inside the Lutheran Cathedral. There is a statue of Martin Luther there. I walked down Alexandersgatan and Mannerheim Street. One senses a Russian influence.

The currency is the Finnish Mark. No passport is needed to travel in Scandinavia.

Back at the terminal, I thought of what I had seen. Three world capitals: Stockholm, London and Helsinki.

I had opened an international side.
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com
JIM COLYER

JIM COLYER IN STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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Las Vegas has changed since I was there in 1993. There are a number of new hotels: New York New York, Mandalay Bay, Bellagio, the Venetian, Paris Las Vegas and the Luxor. These exist for the purpose of making money for the people who own and operate them as do the older hotels. We will spend conservatively and have an experience consistent with what we need and want. My return to Las Vegas may coincide with leaving Vanderbilt. I may rent an apartment for a month in Vegas in August, 2007.

Got to manage money in Vegas, can not gamble. Everybody wants money and everybody will take it if you are damn fool enough to give it to them. Be honest. Be yourself. Know what you are going to do and why. Have experiences consistent with your personality.

Las Vegas has a monorail. It travels the length of the strip, stopping at the hotels.

The Stratosphere is an observation deck.

Larry will be with me and Michael part of the time. We will work things out. I will take Michael to the Grand Canyon and to Sequoia National Park in California. The Tucson Astronomical Society meets at the Grand Canyon for a star party each June. I am hoping the Las Vegas astronomy group gets together in the Valley of Fire for the Perseid meteor shower. I have not been through the Valley since 1979. I will show Michael Hoover Dam.

Michael wants to go on to Hollywood and Rodeo Drive. He wants to see the Hollywood sign on the side of that hill. We will see Grauman's Chinese Theatre and the Beverly Hills Hotel. Michael likes Jay Leno, so we will get tickets in advance for the Tonight Show at the NBC studios in Burbank.
Contact: jim@jimcolyer.com
JIM COLYER

GOING WEST 2007-08-09 remains copyright of the author Jim Colyer, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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