June 6: Day off in Muscatine
MUSCATINE MADE buttons. It made them from mussel shells scooped from the river by long-handled spoons.
"Still make buttons here," said a rotund gent who said he rode a bike and wore a cycling T-shirt, "but they're plastic these days." It's a long way from when the area made four of every ten pearl buttons in the world.
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Like Mark Twain and his sunset, buttons are what Muscatine clings to. It has little else. It has factories - furniture, drink - but nothing of the romance of pearl. There is a button display at the tourist office but Sunday is when tourists might be in town and so that's the day the tourist office shuts. There is a giant sculpture of a pearl-fisher on the river bank, standing with his back to the water in accidental symbolism.
We liked Muscatine. There's not a lot there but what there is better than the impression you get when you ride, as we did, out of Illinois, over the bridge and into Iowa under a sky as dark as a well-used chamois. But of not just the sunrises but the sunsets, I too can tell you nothing. We spent the afternoon sleeping and then went to bed early as well. This was our first do-nothing rest day since we started and we made the most of it.
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