Well, after all that hooking up, comes the unhooking. We've arrived at Gas City IN and if I can figure all these things out, we'll take a look around. Isn't this exciting!
Its a beautiful time of year. The air is cool and sweet, the colours are magnificent and the roar of traffic 100' away reminds us of the commerce that makes this nation great. A little quieter overnite would have been great but it just makes us more eager to go visit somewhere else.
10 miles from our cacophonous respite is the town of Fairmount. Have you ever heard of it? Neither had we. Fairmount is the birthplace and final resting place of James Dean, or as we locals call him, Jimmie. If you've never heard of James Dean, shame on you, look him up. He was the quintessential rebellious teenager in the early 1950's. In one year he made 3 movies, Giant, Rebel Without A Cause, and East of Eden. He was nominated for an Oscar in East of Eden and voted best actor in 1955. He died in a car crash on Sept 30, 1955. His burial site in Fairmount is a shrine with thousands of people visiting each year. And we're among them.
White stones are used to mark the side of the road. The one in front of his burial site has signatures and comments from people around the world. The "SINDELAR" is from India. I think I talked to him about a computer problem.
In town is a great museum about his life. He was a top athlete and a great artist at his school. A case featuring his award ribbons shows how athletic he was. His uncle bought him a motor cycle to ride to school and he had many over the years. This was the one he rode around Hollywood on.
This is his original script for Giant which was his last movie. He starred with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. The day after filming ended, he was on his way to race his Porsche Spyder at a local race when he was killed. He was 24.
On a much lighter note, the creator of Garfield, Jim Davis was born and raised in Fairmount as well. Now I know everyone's heard of Garfield so I won't go into details except to say he's got to have one huge litter box. We used to celebrate Garfields birthday, the end of June, by Grammie making a lasagna with candles, and all of us singing happy birthday to Garfield. Those were the days.
We spent a lot of time in the Fairmount museum which features artifacts from James Deans life as well as Garfield memorabilia. I have said in the past, the cool thing about what we do is you never know what you'll stumble upon in your travels. I've been proven right again.
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