Moving on

On our way from Kentucky to Missouri we stopped in Indiana at Lincoln’s boyhood home. Faith didn’t earn a Jr. Ranger badge when we were in Indiana last summer so this was a perfect time to make up for that. When Lincoln was seven, his family left Kentucky and moved to Indiana. He spent fourteen years in Indiana before moving to Illinois.

His mother died from milk sickness; the cow ate a poisonous weed and she drank milk from the cow. Lincoln attended just two years of school, but he loved to read. His father remarried and his step mom brought three books with her. Two books that made an impression on him were the biographies of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, with whom he could relate.

How do you measure up to Lincoln?

Lincoln was a hard worker and a good story-teller. One day, two business men asked him for a ride in the small boat he’d made to get to the steam boat in the middle of the river. He couldn’t believe that he earned a dollar in such a short amount of time. He did that a few more times and a ferry company took him to court. They claimed he was ferrying people across the river, but he argued he was only ferrying them half way. Lincoln won. This may have been the beginning of his desire to work in the legal system.

Just down the road from Lincoln’s place was Santa Claus, Indiana, so we had to go there. There were roads with names like Christmas Blvd, shopping centers named Kringle Place, Holiday foods, and several ornament stores.

We spent the night in Paducah, KY so we could visit Metropolis, IL, home of Superman, just a few miles away. It was great fun to pose with the giant statue, see “kryptonite” and walk into a phone booth (in case you needed to change).