Fort Scott and Big Brutus

I left Kansas City Missouri and crossed the border toKansasCity Kansas. Do you think they ever get their mail  mixed up? I drove down Highway 69 to Fort Scott. This was a real Fort started in 1842. This was a fort built to protect the pioneers that were. Traveling to the West. I tried one of the officers beds. Did your Mom orDad ever tuck you in and say sleep tight? Beds used to be made with rope instead of a box spring under the mattress. After someone slept  on the bed for awhile, the ropes would start to stretch and had to be tightened or you would have a saggy bed. If you slept tight your bed was not saggy like a hammock. Some of the soldiers would sleep mo wooden platforms with 6 or 7 of them all sleeping together. I bet it was very crowded. I saw a jail for the bad guys. Sometimes they had a ball and chain put around their ankle so they could not run away. I went upstairs to see the army hospital. The flag did not have 50 flags like we do now. How many states were there in the 1840's? I saw the Powder magazine. That was a little building away from the other buildings. Inside they had gunpowder and bullets stored. I saw the stables where they kept 80 horses and supplies. I sat at the. Long tables where the soldiers ate and saw their kitchen. I sat on a little cannon. Then I went inside the powder magazine and saw the empty ammunition containers. The town that grew around the fort looked a lot like the street in Disneyland.
After that I drove down highway 69 again and turned near the Town of New Mineral to see Big Brutus. I could see him way before I actually got there. Big Brutus is the Largest electric shovel in the world. He is 16 stories tall. His job was to dig up the overburden. That is what they call the dirt that is over a coal mine. One of his scoops of dirt could fill 3 railroad cars. Each scoop of dirt was as big as a house. I got to climb up inside of him and sitatunga the controls for the scoop. Each cable or wire that worked the scoop was bigger around than me. Brutus was so big he had to move very slowly. Any of you could walk faster than Big Brutus could move. If there was a race, all of you would win.Brutus would dig all the dirt out and pile it up. When all the coal was dug out of that part of the mine, Brutus would spin around slowly and put the same dirt back in the hole. He was a very tidy shovel. Can you find me inside the giant scoop? Aloha from Junior.