June 11, 2012

We drove to Topeka, Kansas today.  I wanted to go to Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Site.  The park headquarters is in the 1928 Monroe school.  This was an all black school that children all over the city were bused to.  They wanted to go to schools closer to their homes but those schools were for white children.  The previous Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson made it legal for separate but equal public schools.  The Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education declared that this was unconstitutional, and their unanimous decision led to desegregation in public schools.

We then went to Bobo’s Drive In that was on an episode of Diners Drive Ins and Dives.  (From now on I will abbreviate this to  “Triple D”.)   We had great homemade cheeseburgers, shared an order of onion rings and shared a chocolate malt.  We actually had one of those metal trays that attach to the window of your vehicle. Jim found one brewpub named Blind Tiger and we went there.  I had Java Stout and it really had a coffee taste.  This was a good brewpub – they have won eleven Great American Beer Festival Medals.

We found two geocaches today.  And then went to the First Presbyterian Church.  This church is one of only eleven churches in the United States that has Tiffany stained glass windows.  The windows were installed in 1911.  They are made out of Favrile glass that was the invention of Louis Tiffany.  It is a glass made without paint, enamels or stains.  Colors were produced by the development of formulas using additives such a cobalt, gold, copper etc.  These formulas were destroyed on order from Tiffany after his death.  People have come from all over the world to see these windows.

Jim took us by a house that had about 50 fire hydrants in their yard.  No lack of places here for their dogs to do their business!