turn off the light when they exited the bathroom.
The museum is very much the way it might’ve looked in 1950, when merchandise stacked the shelves. In fact, much of the room looks like it hasn’t been changed since 1950. That’s not an indictment of the good people of Hamilton, who operate on a budget that’s, well, pennies. They make do with what they have. A life-size wax figure of Penney is held stationary by a wire around its neck that gives the unfortunate impression of a garrotte. The Penney Museum could benefit from the creative touch of a cadre of J.C. Penney corporate display designers and marketers. The company could install some interactive displays, online stuff that would attract youngsters, challenge them, maybe even create brand awareness and loyal customers. Old James Cash Penney would approve, I suspect. But neither of us are holding our breath.
Erifnus and I motored north, systematically driving blacktops and marking them off the map, when we drove into a line of thunderstorms. Ahead, a bridge was closed for repairs. Backtracking to pick a detour, I smacked into a torrential downpour. Driving too fast for conditions, I forced Erifnus through a curve her tires couldn’t hold. We did a 360-degree spinout in the middle of the road, but we stayed on the pavement. It wasn’t my car’s fault. This spin was totally self-inflicted. We regrouped, took a deep breath, and motored into the storm.
In the confusion and the downpour, I spent an hour compensating for two wrong turns, and by the time we rejoined the intended route, daylight yielded to dusk, and then to darkness. I could only catch strobe-like glimpses of our surroundings through constant flashes of lightning.
It was a rough day driving the back roads of Missouri.
Driving through one downpour after another, losing count of the lightning flashes, we pressed toward our destination, and with every passing neon diner sign, I knew my chances dwindled for a sit-down dinner.
Just before midnight we reached St. Jo, originally called Black Snake Landing, and rolled into the perfect setting for a horror movie. The city looks as old as Dracula’s coffin, as ornate as a Victorian mansion.
Thunder punched us as Erifnus pointed up a steep hill, the kind of incline that’s unavoidable in river towns. Ahead, backlit by theatrical lightning flashes, sat my destination, the mansion atop Museum Hill.
Beth Courter loves her old mansion. And it shows in every corner, every comfort of the Museum Hill B&B. She and husband John pour heart and soul into this house. He’s a retired navy chef with a nickname right out of Hollywood: Cookie Courter. Late as it was, Beth showed me the house, and fed me leftovers. Quiche and fruit salad. No gravy.
“Tomorrow, you’ll see scores of wonderful old homes in these surrounding neighborhoods,” she promised.
She wasn’t exaggerating. The whole town is a museum, a bridge to a Golden Age when St. Jo capitalized on the insatiable hunger of westward expansion. But after that golden age, the town’s robust economy slowed. Commerce rolled out of town like wagon trains, and townspeople found it impossible to save all the old stately mansions. Oh, some lucky houses revel in their restoration. Others await the capital punishment that comes from years of neglect. In these old neighborhoods, the houses stand together like teeth, some strong, some gone. And the tweeners beg for salvation.
Mawmaw’s Boy
Almost every St. Joseph museum tells some part of the town’s most sensational story, the killing of Mawmaw’s boy.
Mawmaw raised some ornery children. Hellraisers. But she knew it wasn’t their fault. Other folks made ’em mean. Other folks caused young Jesse to take up swearing. Some folks even think he invented the term “Dingus,” a nickname brother Frank started calling him. Nobody else did, to his face anyway.
Mawmaw was a nickname, too, of course, and by that name or any other name, Zerelda James was the family’s matriarch. To the children she was Mawmaw. To adults she was a force to be reckoned with. She must’ve been a role model of toughness for the boys. She must’ve earned some respect from the girls, too, or at least their parents, because Zerelda’s son Jesse married his first cousin Zerelda, who was named for his mother. When the feds swept through and put a noose around Mawmaw’s husband’s neck and strung him up, she cut him down, saved his life. The Union later threw her in prison, accusing her of being a spy. And years after that, because of transgressions committed by two of her grown boys, the Pinkertons firebombed her house, blowing off her hand and killing her youngest son.
In downtown St. Joseph I parked right in front of the little house where Dingus died. The house used to be on the edge of town, but promoters moved it next to the Patee House museum downtown. I walked around back and entered through the back door. Jesse probably felt more comfortable going in that back door, too, even though around St. Jo he used an alias. Back when he and Zerelda lived there, most neighbors called him Mr. Howard.
The back door opened into the kitchen, where I stuck my fee in a jar and walked into the killer’s living room. It was ugly, Victorian, dated. The ugliest decoration was on the wall, a frame around a bullet hole. I knew the significance of the bullet hole, the one made after the bullet exited Jesse’s head. The existing wallpaper shouted like bad drapes, but within the frame the old wallpaper looked like Vincent Price picked it out. It was hideous, in a way that could highlight a 130-year-old bullet hole.
Jesse’s bed still sits in his bedroom, along with other personal items. The walls are covered with family photos. But among all that history, that tiny square of the living room’s original wallpaper with the bullet hole may be the single most scary background since the movie, “The Pit and the Pendulum.”
On my way out of town, I passed one more museum. It also does business as the Heaton-Bowman-Smith & Sidenfaden Funeral Home. Back in 1882, the Sidenfaden Funeral Home was on 4th Street, near the spot of Jesse’s murder. When the victim’s family notified the undertaker to pick up the body, Sidenfaden brought a wicker corpse basket to carry Jesse’s remains. That basket is on display at the modern funeral home, along with a ledger showing an entry for the Jesse James funeral, and a few other relics from the past, like an icebox casket for long-distance transport.
Jesse’s body didn’t need an icebox casket, since he was buried nearby. Some folks think Jesse’s body was stolen by grave robbers. Others believe that Jesse faked his death. All this modern brouhaha about the whereabouts of Jesse James’ body is silly, if you know anything about Mawmaw. For the 30 years she lived after Jesse died, Zee James made sure that nobody stole Missouri’s most infamous dead body. That’s because she had him interred next to her rural Kearney, Missouri, house, so she could chase off any body snatchers.
Her house still stands today off the back roads of Clay County. It’s a rough-hewn cabin in the middle of the woods. Hard to sneak up on. For years, local folks presented a stage play in the front yard of the house, recreating the Pinkerton attack on the homestead, and visitors sat in a portable grandstand rigged right in the front yard. Jesse would have been skeptical of the spectacle, but Zee would have taken the money, I suspect. Indeed, decades before the reenactments began, Zee James charged a quarter apiece for tourists to view Jesse’s grave, and she’d give each visitor a stone, supposedly chipped from his headstone, but just as likely retrieved from a nearby creek.
When Zee died, Jesse’s body was moved to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, where he rests next to his wife, Zee James the younger. The original tombstone on Jesse’s first grave has been chipped away by grave stone robbers, sometimes also called tourists.
So far, nobody has succeeded in stealing Jesse’s body from its new resting place. A few years ago some scientists dug Jesse up, just to lay the rumors to rest. Turns out they are his bones, all right. And within minutes, people started chipping pieces off his new headstone. With such
