Weekend adventures #1 the Neosho Historical Society

About once every three months, my husband and I, travel to Missouri to see our doctor.  You see Missouri has better laws when it comes to doctors being able to care for their patients.  Dr. Sheppard is in Neosho, Mo and is a direct care doctor.  He does a fantastic job of caring for us.  In addition to the price being a level $60 a month per adult and $25 a month per child, he has a limit of $200 a month that any family will pay per month.  This means a family consisting of a mother, father, and four children will get the fourth child almost free.  Any additional children over 4 children are completely free.  It also means that no family will have to pay more than $2400 a year just to have access to a doctor.  We love supporting this kind of thing, especially when health care costs are out of control.

Another unique quirk is that, because he practices in Missouri, he is allowed to dispense medicine.  Being the good doctor he is, he dispenses at cost.  He is quick to tell you if Walmart is cheaper too!  I have to say, I do love our doctor.  He is a great man that does great things for people without putting too heavy a burden on our wallets.  This is the main reason we travel so far.  He has saved us so much money on medication, emergency room trips, and blood tests we can afford to travel.

Also he saved us money on health insurance...now we have CHMinistries which fits nicely with our worldview and our pocketbook.  He has opened up our eyes to an entirely different way of getting our health care.

This weekend was meant to visit our doctor.  On Friday, we all woke up early to get to Neosho, Mo.  We did have other business to attend to when there on Friday, such as my officiating a wedding, however the vast majority of Friday was spent going to the doctor, getting our medicines, and getting into our hotel room.  Our doctor kindly gifted us some chili supper tickets he was not going to use, so we did get a very nice chili dinner thanks to him just before we went back to the hotel and zonked out.

On our way home, we usually meander and site see.  We are headed home anyway, might as well enjoy the trip.  We had the kids with us this time, so we decided some nice, free, educational sites might be a good idea.

Our first stop was the Neosho Historical Society.  They have a free museum on site, but also two complete buildings.  They do accept and run on donations, so we did donate a bit for the honor of going through.  One being a small cabin that was the standard home in the 1880's and the other being a one room school house.  I would personally recommend this stop to anyone.

Inside the museum we had a lot to discover...

Here you can see Lucy and Illyan posing in the museum

Here were some medical items from the last century.

More medical items from the past century.

Here is a lovely collection of plates and dinnerware.

Almost immediately after the museum, we were kindly given a tour by one of the volunteers there.  He took the time to tell us about each individual building, starting with the building that housed the Historical Society.  It apparently used to be a jail and the sheriff had to live there.  

Next we toured the one room school house.

This was the outside of the one room school house.

This was the inside.  The gentlemen said they had the desks pushed aside for the fall festival.

Here were all the desks.  Illyan decided to play on a few and really enjoyed being in a "real" school.

Next we went to a small cabin from the 1880's.  This was especially instructive to my children as we live in a small home.  Our home is a grand total of 900 square feet.  The cabin, including both floors might have been 400 square feet.  The gentleman doing the tour told my children how two parents and 6 to 12 children would live in the cabin like this.  Instantly my children appreciated their modern, bigger home.

This is the outside of the 1880's cabin on the Neosho Historical Society's grounds.

This was the family's cook stove and heat.  A bit smaller than my own woodstove.

Here is the family's organ where they would worship in song and praise.

In the same room was this queen sized bed.  

This chair was in the living room surrounded by harvested pumpkins.  Notice the newspaper on the walls.  When they took this cabin apart piece by piece, they found newspapers from the civil war on the beams.  Unfortunately they all disintegrated immediately.  

Here is one surviving newspaper from the civil war.  Literally just laid out on the table.

This was upstairs in the loft.  You would find a butter churn and another queen sized bed.  

I found the whole trip enlightening.  After going to the Neosho Historical Society, we went to the Neosho Fish Hatchery.  Alas, that is for another post.