Return to Butler
It was my own stupid fault, of course. Always do proper research and always listen to your wise woman.
What was really galling was that we had been on the right street. Fulton Street in Butler is indeed where Heinlein was born, but the house was a few blocks farther along. Follow the arrow! It was so obvious in retrospect. I felt immensely stupid and more than a little embarrassed.
But Gwyneth, bless her, promised we’d go back, and indeed we did – on Christmas Eve 2021. It was the perfect Christmas gift for me.
Friday, 24th December 2021 was another beautiful blue-sky day, the kind I love and don’t see enough of in Scotland. Scotland is a stunningly beautiful country, and I love it, but it gets a lot of rain and cloudy days. This summer, the summer of 2023, has been particularly disappointing. But Christmas Eve in Butler was lovely and warm, with a temperature of around 72 Fahrenheit. I’m writing this in August in Scotland and we had a high of 71 today.
We stopped off at Butler Public Library again but discovered that, not surprisingly, it was closed. Christmas Eve, after all. I took a few photos of the outside of the building and was very glad that we’d been able to see inside two weeks earlier.
One place I didn’t know about at the time and would want to visit if I ever go back to Butler is Bates County Museum at 802 Elks Drive. Apparently it has a Heinlein exhibit.
This time we found the correct house. I recognised it as we drove by when I caught sight of a sign leaning against a house, which said:
Birthplace of Robert A. Heinlein Dean of Science Fiction Writers.
I believe the sign had once been on a post in the yard, but it now lies rather forlornly against the side of the house. Gwyneth pulled in a little farther down the street, and I got out, relieved and excited that we’d finally found the place.
The address of Heinlein’s birthplace is 805 N Fulton Street, Butler, Missouri 64730, United States.
I was very conscious that this was a private residence, not a museum. But the sign against the wall indicates that the owners are aware of the significance of their house, and so, while I was discreet and unintrusive, I felt they wouldn’t mind or be surprised at someone taking photos of the place. I didn’t actually see any of the residents so I might not have been noticed anyway.
So this is the house where Robert Anson Heinlein was born shortly after 3 pm on July 7th 1907:
Born to Rex Ivar Heinlein and Bam Lyle Heinlein, Robert was the third of seven children. His parents grew up in Butler and were married in November 1899. Once married, they immediately moved into this house, where Bam’s parents lived. This was a common practice at the time as purchasing a new house often wasn’t within the means of newlyweds. Extended families were common and houses were built to accommodate them.
By the time Robert was born, nearly eight years into the Heinleins’ marriage, his father Rex Ivar felt prospects in Butler were no longer very good and so he and his family moved to Kansas City to stay with Rex’s father. Heinlein spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Kansas City and it features in two of his later novels, Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, where it’s described with immense affection. Butler itself gets a number of mentions in the latter.
Heinlein’s mother, Bam, continued to take her children back to Butler during summers and holidays until 1914. Heinlein was a favourite of Dr Lyle’s, his grandfather, whose house he had been born in. Sadly, Dr Lyle died in August 1914, and the Heinleins’ visits to Butler came to an end.
So finally I got to see the house where Robert Heinlein was born in the early years of the 20th Century. He was someone who spent much of his life writing about distant worlds and far-off times, but who nonetheless returned to the world of his childhood in scenes in Time Enough for Love and his final novel To Sail Beyond the Sunset. As I mentioned earlier, my favourite novels are his early ones and I have issues with his later fiction, but it was genuinely fascinating to read those scenes set in Kansas City and Butler.
Before leaving Butler for home, we returned to Koehn’s Bakery. This time we didn’t have the horseradish sauce …
Heinlein lived in Kansas City with his parents and siblings from the age of 5 months until he left for the Naval Academy at Annapolis on June 8th 1925, when he was just short of 18 years old. His experience in the U.S. Navy had a profound and lasting impact on his character and his writing. In 1934 he was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. Following a series of other jobs, including silver mining (as Mark Twain had once done!), he decided to try his hand at writing science fiction stories for the pulp magazines.
It turned out to be a pretty good decision.
The Literary Tourist 