I’m glad for a lot of reasons that I lived in Japan in the early ’90s and not later. One reason: pre-Google and (more importantly) pre-Google Maps, you navigated by your own wits, aided by not-always-detailed paper maps, wayfaring signs in Japanese and sometimes English, directions from other foreigners – part of the mass of gaijin lore we all tapped into – and helpful Osakans.
It was doable. One time I bought a used bicycle from a colleague who lived in a fairly far corner of metro Osaka, far from me anyway, on the condition that I come take it away. Meaning about a 20-mile ride through the heart of greater Osaka, a ride I broke into two segments by locking the bike after the first day’s pedaling at a subway station and going home that way. Good thing Japanese streets are more or less suitable for bicycling, but less so for wayfinding, since the urban texture tended to be a rinse-and-repeat cycle of narrows streets, concrete apartment blocks, and small shops shoehorned into even narrower lanes.
Six- or eight-lane boulevards crisscrossed the region, and so did small and larger rivers. One time a helpful Osakan directed me to an elevator door tucked away in a grey wall of odd shapes and angles – a door that had been accidentally camouflaged by its utilitarian surroundings. The unmarked elevator took pedestrians and bicyclists down to the entrance of a spare, well-lit underground tunnel under a major river at a spot that had no bridge.
But I need to say that the rinse-and-repeat was only superficial. Like other places, most other places I’d say, with a little time and observation, details come into focus. In the case of Osaka, a shrine tucked into wall or a weedy embankment near a canalized creek that was home to a couple of gnarled, flowering trees, or sometime as incongruous as a speedboat parked in a spot for a car. Or an unusual handmade retail sign, clearly made by pop for the front of a mom-and-pop (or maybe by mom, who wouldn’t be accorded credit for it, and maybe not inclined to take credit).
There’s a Flickr collection, or even a coffee table book, in the unlimited variety of limited-edition retail signs, handmade or made by advertisers. A worldwide selection. They’re more sporadic in the Chicago suburbs, generally clustering on main shopping streets – of which there are a fair number, tucked away and locally focused. So far this summer we’ve made our way to a handful of suburban shopping streets.
Starting with the imprimatur of Tito, Alamo Heights High School Class of ’79.
Straightforward, gets the signing job done.
For those who aren’t into that whole neurotoxin thing.
“We need something out there now, we’re about to open.”
How could this not be a favorite?
True, not brown and soggy. Brown and crumbly, with enough time.
Among the the wide galaxy of public policy, infrastructure maintenance is famously unsexy, at least here in North America. Probably most other places, too, though I can imagine Cultural Revolution China intensely focusing on the Seven Paths to Glorious Infrastructure or some such, with college professors and students hustled out for months at a time to pave roads and lay pipe for projects that never quite got finished.
So most infrastructure projects proceed unnoticed, unless they happen to impede one’s routines. Early in the road construction season this year here in northern Illinois, that is, after the last of the dirty snow piles had melted, work started on a nearby road that’s more than a side street but less than a major arterial – and one that I use a lot.
Took a stroll along the street late one afternoon recently.
Near the rubble and the dislocation.
Idle heavy equipment.
Major digging is under way. From the looks of it, the project involves not so much the surface of the street – though I suspect that will be repaved as well – as replacing major underground structures.
Ones that, I hope, continue to direct surges of water away from certain places. Such as my house.
It occurred to me over the Independence Day weekend that I’ve experienced roughly a quarter – 25% – of the entire history of the United States, accepting the commonly held age for the nation of 250 years. Anyone my age or older has, that is. One-quarter of a 250-year span is 62.5 years. At the age of 65, I can’t really claim to remember those first two and a half years, but the furthest reaches of my memory run back to the mid-1960s, so close enough.
And I have to add that if you’re Mel Brooks, you’ve lived 40% of the nation’s history.
Fifty years ago, on the much ballyhooed Bicentennial, it rained in San Antonio, where I was. We stayed home. On Saturday, on the much less ballyhooed 250th, it rained in metro Chicago, where I was. We stayed home. Coincidence? Well, yes.
Been home for a few months now, witnessing a wet and cool spring edge into a wet and warm summer in northern Illinois, and temps finally popped up into the 90s ahead of July 3. The heat was ended by rain and more rain. A pretty typical Northern summertime pattern.
Fireflies have made their appearance, though a meager number, and just today, this afternoon, I heard cicadas bleating ahead of dusk, though no cricketsong came afterward. Could be the Brotherhood of Orthopteran Insects is still negotiating a new contract for this year, and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look up orthopteran. Mosquitoes are out looking for mammal blood, though considering the temporary wetlands that are our suburban lawns, not as many as you’d expect. Lit up the mosquito coils on my deck table this evening, and it seemed to work.
Old friends Neal and Michele visited from Chicago for the Fourth – a smaller version of the Gabfest, and indoors because of the rain. A delight all the same. They left before dark, after the rain had stopped. A little wet ground wasn’t going to keep the suburban populace from flouting Illinois’ nanny-state fireworks ban, one of the two nights of the year when the pop-pop-BOOM-pop-boom-fssst goes on for a few hours (the other is New Year’s Eve). In recent years I’ve repaired to the garage to listen to the July 4 explosions. The explosion acoustics are good in that cluttered enclosure.
I’ll be home for a few more months. 2026: Summer of Here. People pay money – I’ve paid money – to enjoy warm weather like this, but we’re getting it no extra charge. Also, even I’ve gotten a little tired of the pace of my driving lately.
No long drives this summer. But that doesn’t mean no drives. Back during the pandemic, my thinking was, if you can’t go far, go near, and that kind of thinking took us to new parts of Wisconsin and Illinois. No pandemic this year, fortunately, but the idea is a good one anyway.
The run of days from Juneteenth to July 4 at least, and even better to Nunavut Day (July 9), would be a fine time to slow down, like between Christmas and New Year’s Day, only warmer and without the mad runup to December 25. Back to posting around July 6.
Thousands of impressions flitter by on the road, most instantly forgotten when literally on the road – driving, you need to be in the moment, or else – or quickly forgotten, when “on the road” means you’re out and about somewhere that isn’t home. Still, a handful of details stick, even without photos. But photos help.
Maine
I call it “Self-portrait with Goth Prom.” Poster spotted in downtown Bangor.
In the Maine Statehouse, a flat-ish object of a different kind.
Lincolnville, on the coast of not far from Belfast.
Carnivorous whelks. I was frankly ignorant about carnivorous whelks, and glad to learn a little about them. Because what a great name for a snail.
Too bad I wasn’t hungry in Belfast. I’d have had tacos.
The Penobscot River and the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. A literal and scenic highpoint on that part of US 1 as it winds through near-coastal Maine. The bridge includes an observatory, unfortunately not open in April. Driving over the bridge itself was another pleasure of coastal Maine.
Helen’s Restaurant in Ellsworth. Tasty fish and chips. Haddock, specifically. What do you take for a haddock? “Well, sometimes I take-a aspirin, sometimes I take-a calomel.” It was some years before I learned that calomel was something I’d never take in a million years.
Massachusetts
Our Lady of Czestochowa Parish, Turners Falls.
The church was closed. So was Poet’s Seat Tower.
As the tower appeared more than 100 years ago.
Shelburne.
Massachusetts 112 (Route 112) in Hamilton County. Car commercial driving.
Goshen Cemetery, just off Route 112.
Ohio
A solid bank building in Niles, across the street from where William McKinley was born. The Dollar Savings Bank Co. sounds like the kind of place that George Babbitt would mention, but distain in favor of a bank with longstanding ties to the best business men in Zenith.
An Admiral Dewey clock at the McKinley Birthplace Museum. A textbook case, that Dewey, of how fleeting fame usually is.
Passing through northeast Ohio intrigued me greatly about that part of the state. Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Austintown — all places I can imagine going, and enjoying the visits. See ’em before the reverse migration really gets underway.
Further west, the drive on the Lincoln Highway (US 30) was a pleasure: mostly four lanes, rarely crowded. The flat farmlands don’t qualify as conventionally scenic, but the budding springtime fecundity has a lot to recommend it, even as a strictly visual pleasure: the bright greens of new leaves, the brown and grays of the fields recently plowed, small roads heading off usually at right angles to the main road, a run between Upper Sandusky and I-75 near Lima with few buildings of any kind, except distant farm structures.
Downtown Lima: the Allen County courthouse, seen from North St.
Looks like my kind of breakfast place. Closed on Sunday anyway.
Another North St. detail. Spiderman sitting on — something. A large scoop of strawberry ice cream?
Saint Rose Church in the hamlet of Saint Rose, not far east of the Ohio-Indiana line. A Cross-Tipped Church.
Pennsylvania
The hills at the edge of Punxsutanwney.
The drive west across Pennsylvania began across the Delaware River from Port Jervis, NY, taking US 209 southwest through part of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Bet the straight-ish, two-lane road is busier in peak recreation season in the Recreation Area, but in April, I booked along without encountering much in the way of traffic. Trees were still budding, but it wouldn’t be long before some stretches of the highway would pass through green tunnels. The sunlight was already casting green leaf shadows on the road.
Watch Groundhog Day, and the impression is that the festivities are held in the center of town — which they are, in the Punxsutanwney stand-in of Woodstock, Illinois. Go to Punxsutanwney itself and learn that the February 2 fest is a few miles from town in a place called Gobbler’s Knob.
One more Phil. Iron Phil.
The clerk at the Gobbler’s Knob gift shop took pains to let me know that the site, and the festivities, were overseen by a nonprofit, not the commonwealth. Outside is the nonprofit’s bus, or at least I assume that, probably used to ferry people from town to GK and vice-versa, to help deal with the popularity of the event.
I like a good local festival as much as anyone, but February 2 is a deal-breaker. Can’t Phil come out again on August 2 to predict how much longer summer is going to last?
One More (Indiana)
Miami Chief Francois Godfroy stands at the corner of Main Street and Huntington Street/Indiana 18 in Montpelier. Well, maybe it’s supposed to remind passersby of the chief more than actually depict him.
A Daughters of the American Revolution historical marker says: Reserved by U.S. to Chief Francois Godfroy of the Miami Nation of Indians by treaty at St. Mary’s, Ohio, 6 October 1818. 3,849 acres on Salamonie River at La Petite Prairie, Harrison Township, Blackford County: reserve lands sold 1827, 1836.
Waymarking says: “The statue was made in Venice, CA in 1960 for the Tom Wood Pontiac dealership in Indianapolis. Later it was in front of the Indian Museum at Eagle Creek Park In Indianapolis. After the museum closed, the statue (of more a plains Indian than a NE Indiana tribe) was obtained by Chief Larry Godfroy — a descendant who presented it to the City of Montpelier and they erected it as a monument in 1984.”
It’s always good to see that visitors are welcome.
To be a visitor at the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics, however, you have to make your way to Maria Stein, Ohio, a census-designated place in Mercer County whose population is just over 1,000. As for Mercer County, its western edge is the border with Indiana and the nearest city of any size is Lima, to the northeast. The region isn’t precisely remote – this is the Midwest, after all – but it isn’t overrun with visitors.
The shrine rates a point-of-interest on my Rand McNally Road Atlas (Maria Stein Shrine, it says), and I find that kind of thing intriguing, especially when I’m going to be nearby anyway. So I visited the shrine on the last day of my trip, on the way home.
The relic shrine is adjacent to the chapel. It’s all about the relics. As it should be.
“The Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics houses over 1,200 relics of the Saints and the True Cross,” says the shrine’s web site. “95% of the relics in the Maria Stein collection are First Class. The first relics were brought to the area by Fr. Francis de Sales Brunner, who founded most of the local churches and convents, bringing priests, brothers, and sisters of the Precious Blood communities to America.
“After his death, the significant collection of his relics, including a Calendar of Relics, and the bodily remains of St. Victoria, were under the care of the Sisters. In 1872, Fr. J. M. Gartner, a priest from Milwaukee, acquired 175 relics for safekeeping in the New World. When he brought them to America, his original intent was to have a kind of traveling exhibit. But the faithful wanted them kept together and suggested finding a permanent place for the collection.
“When he heard about the many relics under the care of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, he approached the Sisters, and together they gathered all of the relics into one collection, and we became the Shrine of the Holy Relics in 1875.”
Besides reliquaries large and small, the shrine also includes some fine woodwork and stained glass.
A minute’s drive from the shrine, on the two-lane highway Ohio 119, is the site of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. Site because it is a ruin. Or was the day in April when I visited, as it’s probably gone by now. From the looks of things, demolition was in progress.
How is it that a late 19th-century brick church was being razed? I was aghast for a little while, but a posted notice told me that the church had been severely damaged by fire in May 2025.
A damn shame, but it turns out — something I didn’t know buzzing down Ohio 119, seeing church after church in otherwise tiny towns — that this part of Ohio is home to many immigrant Catholic churches, mostly tall and brick and over 100 years old. The cluster of churches even has a name: Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches. Dang, now this is another place I want to re-visit. This happens to me fairly often.
I’d never had any Moon Cheeze. Or even heard of it.
But I did eat Space Food Sticks from time to time in the days of Apollo and maybe a little after. As the ad says, Moon Cheeze was made in Wapakoneta, Ohio, hometown of Neil Armstrong.
“It seems to have been just regular American cheddar cheese,” Weird Universe says. “Only the packaging was special. It came in a container shaped like the state of Ohio.” In the ad above, it looks like an astronaut is drifting away from the safety of the Command and Service modules, like the (dead) astronaut did in 2001.
On the last day of my recent trip, I diverted a bit to Wapakoneta to visit the Armstrong Air & Space Museum, which I’d bypassed a decade earlier, and was rewarded for my effort when I saw the Moon Cheeze ad and a lot more.
It’s conveniently located near a Waffle House.
Worth the price of admission by itself: the Gemini 8 capsule, in which Neil Armstrong and David Scott nearly bought the space farm due to a malfunctioning thruster.
They survived, of course, and in fact Scott is still alive at 94. Besides Gemini 8, he flew on Apollo 9 and Apollo 15. Being seventh man to walk on the Moon doesn’t get you a museum, however; that’s reserved for being first. Fame is funny that way.
Neil Armstrong and David Scott. NASA public domain photo.
The museum isn’t large, but it does feature a number of good artifacts. The Smithsonian and the Kansas Cosmosphere shouldn’t have everything.
An H1 engine, which were used on Saturn 1 and Saturn 1B rockets.
Newspapers from around the world covering the Apollo 11 landing.
Some artwork. Looks like a spacesuit, but it’s a statue depicting Armstrong’s suit.
A painting from 1969.
It seems that the Armstrong and Aldrin didn’t report the alarming apparition of President Kennedy hovering over the lunar surface. Conspiracy theorists, take note.
Every year since 2014 (except for 2020) old Chicago-area friends have come to my house on the second Saturday of June for conversation and grilled meat, and so it was yesterday. The Gabfest, we call it. Twice over the years the weather has driven us inside for the event, but usually it’s on my deck, and so it was yesterday. Always a delight. This year two out-of-town old friends were able to join us for the first time, for an extra measure of delight.
A few years ago, I started decorating the yard with flags for the Gabfest, and so it was yesterday. As it happens, Flag Day, “the runty stepchild among American national holidays,” is around this time of year, and of course happens to be today. So I left the flags up after the event. Also, just after we finished last night, it rained pretty hard, and I left the flags out to dry today.
These four represent places I’ve lived, left to right: Texas, Tennessee, Chicago (and its suburbs) and Osaka.
Also a few years ago, I acquired small flags from each country I’ve visited, including the U.S. and the DDR, which was most certainly a country in 1983, but not such subnational entities as Hong Kong and Macao. The small flags go in the pot plants lining the edge of the deck.
At first 31, but adding others as necessary to make the current total of 36. So 40 flags in all. Guess you could call it Flags Day around here.
An example of nonlinear tourism, a term I just made up, is my visit to Warren, Ohio. Linear tourism, another term I just (logically) made up, is picking a destination and sticking to it. That isn’t a bad approach, some of the time. But at other times, one follows an urge to go that next place on the map, to see what you can see. Nonlinear tourism has an element of spontaneity, obviously, and it probably isn’t the best way to plan a long trip.
Sometimes the rewards are worth the slight meander. There I was in Niles, done with my visit to McKinley sites, and I thought: Warren’s just up the road. So I went. Warren is the seat of Trumbull County, and a prosperous place 100-plus years ago – Packard got its start there, for one thing – and so the county could afford a grand courthouse in 1895. That was worth the side trip right there.
Front and back.
The buildings ringing the courthouse were also worth a look. Warren might not be the industrial hub it once was (though Ohio is making a comeback in that regard), but it isn’t in bad shape, from the looks of things.
That’s what commercial buildings need more of: onion domes.
One more place in Warren before I headed west: a replica lunar module on a mock lunar surface.
It’s called “First Flight Lunar Module.” Its web site says: “Neil Armstrong and his family made their home in Warren, Ohio, for a time when he was a young boy. An interest in flying developed at an early age and on July 26, 1936, at the age of 6, young Neil and his father, Stephen, embarked on his first flight in a Ford Tri-Motor airplane – a Tin Goose – from Warren Airways on Parkman Road, now the site of the Apollo 11 First Flight Lunar Module…”
Replicas of Gemini 8 and the Apollo 11 Command/Service Module are also at hand. (And the Escape Tower and part of the third stage, too.)
“Neil’s achievements and ties to the local community inspired retired area photographer Pete Perich’s dream to create a memorial honoring Armstrong. Through the vision of Pete’s daughter, Linda Carpenter, and the technical assistance of Lisa Goetsch, the long-time dream began to become a reality in the summer of 2001.”
Cool. Another benefit of nonlinear tourism for me.
Recently in Niles, Ohio, I had an encounter with one of the four assassinated presidents. If you go to the right place in that town (pop. 18,400), you can’t miss him.
Not just him either. Note the busts surrounding President McKinley, who are men associated with him in one way or another. Hay I knew; Bliss I had to look up.
The most direct route between Punxsutawney, Pa. and Lima, Ohio, passes pretty close to Niles. I had a little extra time, by design, on the second-to-last day of my recent trip. Niles happens to be the birthplace of William McKinley, and in our time, home of the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial and the McKinley Birthplace Home and Research Center – that’s two entities, a block apart.
The Birthplace Memorial is imposing and grand, another edifice designed by McKim, Mead & White.
The memorial has two wings, one a public library, the other an auditorium sporting McKinley artifacts, and a collection of flags.
William and Ida dressed, I believe, for his second inauguration in 1901.
As mentioned, the McKinley Birthplace Home and Research Center is a block from the memorial. It’s considerably more modest.
It’s also a replica, and apparently not a very close one, the original house having burned down almost 90 years ago. Still, looks are free (like at the memorial), so I had a look.
On display are a number of McKinley-adjacent artifacts. I liked the plates especially. One features the president himself.
Another features Admiral Dewey. How often do you hear about him any more? Even less than McKinley.
The president’s maternal grandmother’s gravestone is propped up against a wall. I suppose it was at risk of completely falling apart wherever it was, and (I hope) it was replaced in situ.
I liked this as well.
I looked up James Stevenson McKinley (d. 1847) on Find a Grave and that inspired me to look a little further into the McKinley ancestry. James’ father was David “The Patriot” McKinley (d. 1840). David’s father was John “The Wagonmaster” McKinley (d. 1779). John’s father was David “The Weaver” McKinley (d. 1760). That David’s father was James “The Trooper” MacKinlay (d. 1760), back in Ireland, at which point the nicknames peter out.
