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Here Say is a project in community storytelling. We travel to a new place each week and ask people to share true stories about things we all experience: love, family, learning, etc.Click here for a full-screen or mobile-ready map.00000178-cc7d-da8b-a77d-ec7d2fad0000

Here Say: Your Stories about Travel, Told at the Jefferson City Amtrak Station

Claire Banderas
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KBIA

Here Say is a project in community storytelling. We travel to a new place each week and ask people to share true stories about things we all experience: love, family, learning and more. To see where we've been, check out our interactive map. And to hear your favorite stories from last season, you can find our free podcast on iTunes.

 

  We talked to Rian Stallints, a high school student who was traveling with friends to St. Louis.  She told us about seeing Niagara Falls during her trip to Canada with her family.

“It was beautiful, I had never seen anything like it before. It was really nice…You could maybe be a mile away and still feel the mist coming off, just from the waterfall. It was just, a nice time with my family, just to get to spend time and just see that beautiful place."

"Did you all drive to Canada?"

"We did actually, yeah"

"So how did you guys pass the time in the car? What’d you do?"

"We would sing songs or just play different games. One of them was something that I remember singing in preschool and it was umm ‘Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow. Back to my home, I dare not go. For if I do, my mother would say’ and you’d just make something up like if you ever see a whale with a polka dot tail, and we went on with that for like two hours.”

Credit Claire Banderas / KBIA
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KBIA
Floyd Harris

  Floyd Harris used his business trips as a way to expand his collections.

“I enjoyed being in the position to take my family along also, and I was a collector at the time and so I would use public transportation to get to various antique shops and flea markets. I collect American Red Cross root beer, black memorabilia, laundry room collectibles. My major collection is on African American hair products, beauty care and finding those was a real challenge and most of the time I traveled in the south, the southeast part of the country to find those. Those items came about, were manufactured back in the 20s and 30s and it’s hard to find ‘em."

Credit Claire Banderas / KBIA
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KBIA
Deborah Austin

  St. Louis attorney Deborah Austin told us about a memorable trek in a Puerto Rican rainforest.

“So we go through, and we’re walking quite a ways and we get to a point, and there was the landslide, blocking like the entire thing. We actually climbed up and over the mud and it was like, along this cliff and so there were some guys that were like from New York that were like helping everybody across, and I just remember walking across this cliff and you get to the end of the mudslide and you had to like jump down five feet. And then we get down to where the bus driver was taking us back and everybody was just covered in mud and he was not very happy and had to hose everybody down before we got back on the bus.”

Credit Claire Banderas / KBIA
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KBIA
Bill Graham

  We talked to Bill Graham, who is the Amtrak volunteer in Jefferson City on Wednesday mornings. He told us why he believes everyone should travel.

"You learn how the rest of the world actually lives, you know. You can read it in a book, but you don’t really appreciate and, it’s different but it’s all good, it’s just different from what you’re used to. That’s the biggest thing. The only way you’re going to learn about other countries and other people is to go visit them and you know I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about how the people in different parts of the world live, but they live that way because it’s most convenient for them, where they are and their status in life and wealth, and all that sort of thing.”