One of our many happy memories was a day
trip from Kansas City south about 150 miles, to see the Precious Moments Chapel,
and the national monument to George Washington Carver. These two destinations
are about twelve miles — and twelve planets — away from each other.
Our visit to Precious Moments Chapel
was always and entirely intended as a laugh. When Stephanie proposed the
excursion, she had to explain to me what Precious Moments are, so I'll explain
it to you: It's a brand name, Precious Moments™, for a huge assortment of porcelain
dolls with big eyes and dopey expressions.
You could plausibly argue that each
doll, pondered individually, is borderline cute, but the factory churns out countless
copies of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of big-eyed designs. When you're
looking at a collection of Precious Moments figurines it's the exact opposite
of art; it's the mass manufacture of big-eyed knickknacks.
Of course, there's nothing wrong
with knickknacks. Who doesn't love a silly knickknack? But the Precious Moments
Chapel, located outside Carthage, Missouri, is a knickknack overdose. It is gorgeously
landscaped, and consists of several large buildings which add up to a shopping
mall filled with big-eyed porcelain figurines. Everything, of course, is for
sale. There are big-eyed paintings and big-eyed plates and big-eyed sweaters
and big-eyed soup ladles . . . and thousands upon thousands of big-eyed
porcelain figurines.
Most astounding is the chapel, a full-sized
church dedicated to, near as we could figure, the worship of big-eyed porcelain
figurines. The chapel has pews and a pulpit and stained-glass windows and enormous
murals depicting big-eyed flying angels and huge crowds of big-eyed children looking,
presumably, for big-eyed Jesus. And yes, Jesus Christ is actually depicted in
one of the murals in the chapel, but his is the only face among all the alleged
artwork that doesn't have oversized eyeballs.
The general motif of the Precious Moments
Mall is Christian, but it's so over-the-top kitschy that it can't be taken
seriously. Steph and I toured the grounds and couldn't stop snickering, and even
years later either of us could make the other laugh by opening our eyes
extra-wide and saying, "Pwecious Moments."
But what we found honestly disturbing
was that the Precious Moments Mall was jam-packed with people, and it seemed
that everyone but Stephanie and I was treating it as a very serious visit to an
art museum or a religious space. By the time we wandered out in a daze and
returned to our car, our opinion of the average American's intelligence had diminished
by twenty or thirty IQ points.
And then we had lunch and proceeded
to the second part of our day trip — a quiet, sparsely-attended memorial to
George Washington Carver, outside the town of Diamond, Missouri. I wonder what
you know about George Washington Carver, and I'll tell you what I knew going in:
he invented peanut butter. That's it. That's all that either Steph or I had
been taught in school.
So I'm not sure what we expected
from the George Washington Carver National Monument, but we came away
astounded. The rest of this entry might be a bit textbooky, sorry, but Steph
and I were both seriously amazed by Carver.
Born the son of slaves and orphaned
in the Civil War, he was raised by his family's former "owners." He became
fascinated by botany when he was a child, but he was 29 years old before he
found a college that accepted black students. He earned two degrees in agriculture,
then worked on the faculty at Booker T Washington's Tuskegee University, where
he studied, advocated, and popularized crop rotation.
And that's what ought to be
the headline about Carver — crop rotation. The Southern economy had been in a
tailspin because of many decades of single-crop cotton cultivation, which left the
soil depleted of nitrogen. Carver proved that the soil could be revitalized by
planting peanuts and soybeans, and that crop rotation (growing peanuts one
year, cotton the next, etc.) helped refresh the soil. Wherever it was practiced,
crop rotation dramatically increased the cotton yield, but it left farmers with
a surplus of peanuts and/or soybeans in alternate years, which sold at a poor
price.
To solve this new problem, Carver
experimented with soybeans and peanuts, and developed more than 300 new uses
for the little legumes, from cooking oil to cosmetics, wood stain to printers'
ink, and yes, peanut butter. Within a few years, thanks to Carver, the demand
for peanuts and soybeans had grown so much that crop rotation was no longer a
financial sacrifice for farmers.
It's not an exaggeration to say that
Carver's advocacy for crop rotation saved the Southern agricultural economy. But
wait, there's more. He also developed a technique for fighting fungus disease
in cherry trees, discovered dozens of new uses for pecans, invented methods to
make paints and stains from soybeans, and to make sweet potatoes into flour,
starch, synthetic rubber, and more than a hundred other products. He made rope
from cornstalk fibers, artificial marble from sawdust, and carpets from weed
fibers. And a whole lot more.
I've tried but failed to convey the
sense of wonder we felt, strolling the grounds and learning all the above. During
our drive home Stephanie and I couldn't stop talking about George Washington
Carver. Steph immediately ordered a book from the library about Carver and by
Carver, George Washington Carver: In His Own Words, and we each read it.
Jeepers, talk about overcoming adversity? He was a very impressive guy, and yet
somehow, when his name is briefly mentioned in history class, it's only about
peanut butter.