Per Mom, Great Grandpa Hollis's father had the foresight to build a hotel when the then "new" railroad was coming through. It would seem that operating hotels runs in the family gene pool. (You may recall from a very brief mention in another previous blog, that my grandparents ran a hotel in Golconda Illinois during my mother's formative years.) Fortunately I missed out on that gene, as I don't generally like people.
After looking at what we think was the old train depot and a rather old rail car (see pics above) in Bollinger County, we drove back to Jackson to potty down, buy some snackage, and catch our train!
As I mentioned, it had rained on us that morning, as we drove to Missouri. Unfortunately, it also rained there in Jackson and when we got to the train, we discovered that the "soldiers," both Union and Confederate, that were supposed to be riding on the train with us, decided that what with the rain, they were going home. 
I overheard someone commenting that that similar things happened back during the Civil War, where soldiers would just up and go home when it was time to plant crops, etc. There were a few soldiers on board and they shared info with us about the train, and guns, and stuff. So the entertainment portion of our trip wasn't all we anticipated, but the ride itself was enjoyable.
Also, due to the rain, we learned that, since the train had to go up a slight incline to get started on its way, they had to get the rain water off the tracks and sort of back the train up some to get a running start, as it were, to get up the hill. Fun fact! 
It was a motley crew of passengers on the train. The un-motleyest being us, of course. Some kid, whose name may or may not have been Abraham Lincoln, I was vague on that, read a report that he'd done on Abraham Lincoln. And there were some Asians, one of whom not-on-purpose photo-bombed my pic of the twins.
As we pulled back into the station, those passengers who were stupid enough to incorrectly answer the question, "Can you sing?" were dragged up and serenaded us with folk songs.
The other event during which Mom and I got to co-mingle with family was the last weekend in May. Haley, her daughter Brynn, and her son Eddie, were performing with the Athenaeum Pops Orchestra in the Arts Garden in Indy. It turned out that Holly, who'd just joined the group two weeks prior, would be playing as well. Now the Arts Garden is this all glass windowed room sitting directly over an intersection in downtown Indy between Circle Center Mall and some hotel. That was nice enough, but the heavens chose to pour down a lot of rain on us during the performance, with a wee bit of thunder thrown in, and that made it cool!
In addition to hotel-running genes, our family has string-instrument-playing genes. My grandfather played the violin, and there's someone who played and there's a recording of his playing in the Library of Congress. My mother could give me the details, but if she wants facts out there, she can get her own blog! I'm shallow and I like my blog to skim my depths as well. Where was I? Oh, so in the picture above, you see Holly with her viola; my nephew Eddie, with his baritone sax - he plays a lot of different instruments, but I don't think there's a string instrument in the bunch; Haley and her violin; and a niece, Brynn with her violin. Missing from the picture is another niece, Natalie, who plays the cello. She doesn't play with this orchestra although I'm told they would love to have her cello join them.
I realize my hardcore fans are desperately wondering what instrument does Rose play? Well the answer there is that Rose did not get any of those genes. I played the clarinet for 3 years, in the 6th through 8th grades, and I've taken piano lessons a couple of times, including a semester at DePauw. In both cases, I want to be able to play the instrument, I do not want to have to learn how to play. My talents lie more toward the genre of writing, thus, this blog. And aren't we all happy about that!?
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