Vestiges of Marshall Field’s

Posted on January 12, 2023 by admin

Back to posting on January 17, out of respect to the legacy of Dr. King, because a holiday’s a holiday, and also since it’s nice to have a little time off not long after a sizable stretch of holidays, which can be a bit tiring.

We’re just ahead the pit of winter, but for now anyway the weather isn’t that bad. “Pit” is an inexact term, of course, but I think of it as the last week of January and the first one of February, more or less. Since the Christmas freeze, temps have been more moderate, but I expect another gelid blast sometime soon.

The following is a reminder that, once upon a time, department stores were the disruptors.

“The development of the department store posed a serious threat to smaller retailers,” explains the Encyclopedia of Chicago. “Many small merchants tried to rally the public against the new behemoths, but they failed to gain much support. Rather than rally to the side of traditional merchants, Chicago shoppers embraced the new form of retail.

“The opening of the new Marshall Field’s State Street store in 1902, only a few years after anti–department store protests, signaled that this newer type of institution had won the admiration of consumers. The opening was a sensational event, and the store decided not to start selling items on its first day of business so that more of the eager public would be able to pass through.”

Ah, if only passing through the building were quite as awe-inspiring here in the fraught 21st century. Still, a visit has its moments of visual splendor. If you look up.

I need to spend more time looking this masterpiece. In person, I mean. Closer views are available on higher floors, but it’s a wow even from the ground floor. Worth the crick you might get putting your neck in just the right position to see it.

“The highlight of the Marshall Field store was the Tiffany Dome (1907), a glass mosaic covering six thousand square feet, six floors high,” EOC says.

Not just any glass, but a special kind of glass that Tiffany & Co. had just invented. State-of-the-Victorian-art amorphous solids in a glassy myriad of hues, in other words.

The Marshall Field Building’s other yawning space – a building that takes up a city block has ample room for yawning spaces – is worth the uplook too.

A building of this kind also has a practically limitless supply of engaging detail. Some of it is literally underfoot, and by literally, I mean literally.

Back on the seventh floor, not long after noon, we wandered through a not particularly busy clutch of quick-service restaurants. At some point, department store management erased the longstanding and high-quality casual food service in the basement, and reconfigured parts of the seventh floor for food service.

Near the restaurants is a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows. Hard to pass those up, so we didn’t. We took in the views from northwest corner of the building.

Looking north on State St.

Looking west on Washington St.

A few years ago, the ornate venue originally known as the Oriental Theatre, which started as a 1920s movie palace, took a new name, Nederlander. After theater impresario James M. Nederlander (d. 2016). Doesn’t he count as a New Yorker? Guess his company would argue that it is national, as indeed it is.

Elsewhere on the seventh floor is a pocket-sized, plain hallway with a small exhibit of figures from Marshall Field Christmas windows on State Street, which were as much holiday tradition at the store as decorating the Walnut Room or hiring a Santa Claus, with thousands of Chicagoans and tourists seeing the windows every year and developing fond memories of the place.

As recently as 2015, the windows were inventive expressions of the window designers’ art.

The items on display in the hall aren’t particularly old: most are from this century. Such as from 2004.

2006.

A luminous creation from 2005.

I could write more – say, 1000 words – contrasting these artifacts with the 2022 State Street Christmas windows, but I don’t need to. Here’s one of the storied windows this Christmastime.

One could take the current owners of the building to task for this diminished creativity, but it isn’t the cause of anything, only a symptom.

I can’t end on that sour note.

While taking pictures at an elegantly decorated part of the seventh floor, I caught an image of a passing lass, elegant as her surroundings.

The Ghost of Marshall Field

Posted on January 11, 2023 by admin

On the second to last day of 2022, we spent a while at Macy’s downtown Chicago store. The chain does business in the magnificent building originally occupied by Marshall Field & Co., the celebrated retailer on State Street, which takes up an entire city block.

On the seventh floor, Marshall Field looks out upon the modern operation. It hasn’t had his name since the early 21st century.

Does the mustachioed shade of Mr. Field (d. 1906) wander the building at night, collar taut, making no noise and visible to no one, because he’s a happy ghost? After all, his building, not quite complete when he died, is still there, and still retail. Or is he having trouble keeping quiet, considering the direction of the department store business?

For some modern context – business context, that is – I fed “Macy’s” into Google News today. Some headlines that emerged:

Macy’s Analyst Remains Bearish Following Disappointing Q4 Preannouncement: ‘Longer Term Structural Challenges’

Macy’s Cautious View on Consumers Hits Shares

Macy’s quietly lays an egg — and more may be coming for retail: Morning Brief

All those are actually relatively good news in the world of department stores, which cling to life but which further disappear with each passing year. I’m not saying that Macy’s is doomed, just operating as one of the last players standing on much smaller playing field.

The downtown Chicago location was fairly busy that day and still decked out for the holidays. Especially on the seventh floor, home to the Walnut Room, which still has a reasonably impressive Christmas tree.

The Walnut Room is a grand space even in our time, serving meals of one kind or another since 1907, and the site of large Christmas trees since that same year. Originally named the South Grill Room, this is how it looked in 1909, not in the holiday season.

Generations of Chicagoans came here to eat or, like me as long ago as the late 1980s, to see the grand tree. Looks like they are still coming for both purposes, so at least Macy’s has that going for it.

“The bold selection of grilled foods was meant to distinguish the South Grill Room from the daintier tearooms,” the Digital Research Library of Illinois History notes. “The restaurants’ role was not to make money (they usually operated at a loss) but rather to lure hungry visitors into the store and give those already inside a reason to stay. Their upper-floor location required diners to navigate past enticing impulse goods while making their way upstairs.

“Because so many customers spoke of this restaurant by referring to its Circassian walnut paneling, it was later renamed the ‘Walnut Tearoom,’ next as the ‘Walnut Grill,’ and finally as the ‘Walnut Room’ in 1937.”

Also on the seventh floor: the Narcissus Room. It used to be a tea room. One of those daintier rooms mentioned above. There were still signs pointing to it, so I decided to go take a look. For all I know, tea rooms are the latest thing among hipsters and Gen-Whatever social media posters.

The room as it once was. My source puts the card at 1920.

The entrance to the Narcissus Room much more recently. As in, about two weeks ago. Note that it isn’t locked, and there were no signs advising against entry by non-employees.

Nice detail on at the threshold.

I opened the door.

I did not, in fact, enter. This view was freely available from outside the door, which is in public hallway in the store. According to Macy’s, you can rent the room for an event. As of that day, anyway, no events seemed to be in the works.

The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass

Posted on January 10, 2023 by admin

If you board the El at the Cumberland station near O’Hare, you can ride to downtown Chicago without any further effort. If you get off at Washington station and head east — but not upstairs, since the El is a subway at that point — you will find yourself in the Chicago Pedway System, a network of underground walkways.

If, like me, you go downtown only sporadically, you won’t know the Pedway System in its entirety. Even regular downtown visitors and residents probably don’t know all of the five miles of tunnel or even the half of it. I didn’t know there was that much until I read it — can that be right?

Anyway, from Washington station, the Pedway goes around the northern edge of Macy’s, which occupies an entire city block. In the wall opposite the basement entrance to that department store, 22 pieces of stained glass from the golden age of American stained glass — installed behind protective clear glass and backlit — welcome curious passersby. Like us late on the morning of December 30.

By golden age, I mean the late 19th century. This one was fabricated by Belcher Mosaic Glass Co., Newark, NJ, 1885-87.

Unknown fabricator, originally in a Louisville mansion, late 19th century. I like to think the mansion belonging to Daisy Fay’s (later Daisy Buchanan’s) family, but I suppose not.

A night owl. Fabricator also a late 19th-century unknown; a lot of them in the exhibit are.

The formal name of the exhibit is The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass. I’m not a scholar on art glass, so I rely on someone else’s expertise, namely the curator of the exhibit, Rolf Achilles.

“We always think that America has been copying everything from Europe. But no,” Achilles said about the exhibit when it was installed in 2013 (which I somehow didn’t hear about). “Painting on glass is one of the things Americans did, but also they stained the glass, and used ornamentation on glass; they added jewels, they added large chunks of glass.

“We have a superb example of this type of work. Look at the jewels, the facet of jewels were cut by diamonds and then chunks of glass were cast. This is uniquely American in the 1880s and 1890s. It was only around late 1890s and 1900s when the European started doing this, and then it is called Art Nouveau and everyone gets excited.”

A detail illustrates his point.

The sign for this one was missing.

One more Belcher. All the stained glass is striking, but this one notches it up to stunning.

“While their era of production was short lived [1884 to 1897], Belcher windows were popular and many examples still survive today, both in situ but more likely in collections,” Wiki says.

Manufacturing came to a sudden end at Belcher. It’s possible the fabrication process, unique to the company and involving various heavy metals, poisoned some of the workers, though that isn’t clear. If so, that would well represent that 19th-century age of beauty and poison, wouldn’t it?

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Posted on January 9, 2023 by admin

Early in the morning of June 5, 1942, coincidentally as the fateful Battle of Midway was underway thousands of miles away, workers were loading anti-tank mines into railroad boxcars at the Elwood Ordnance Plant in rural Will County, Illinois. It was war work, and occasionally as dangerous as being on a front line.

An unknown event triggered a massive explosion that morning at Building 10 of the plant, killing at least 48 workers and injuring almost as many. More than 80 years later, at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, you can see a statue honoring those men.

Carved on the plinth is June 5, 1942 Explosion, along with lists of names, plus two more names under March 24, 1945 Explosion, which I assume is a later incident, though there isn’t any other information on hand to tell me. In fact, I wasn’t completely sure there was an accident in June 1942 until I looked it up later, so as memorials go, this one could use a little more exposition.

Still, its heart is in the right place. Those men died in the war every bit as much as the American flyers over the Pacific at the Battle of Midway, and deserve a memorial too. Apparently it took a while for them to get one; not too long ago, the Chicago Tribune published a story about it, though even now I’m not sure if the statue we saw used to be at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, or is a second one.

Elwood Ordnance Plant was part of a larger facility eventually known as the Joliet Arsenal, which once totaled 23,542 acres with nearly 1,400 structures. At its WWII peak, about 22,000 people worked there.

Now most of that acreage is the tallgrass prairie, devoid of many people but not without reminders of its past.

We arrived mid-afternoon on December 29. As large as it is, we only had time for a small section, starting at the Midewin Iron Bridge Trailhead. A short trail from there leads to a bridge across Illinois 53, but also to a set of tracks that go deeper into the tallgrass prairie.

We walked to the tracks.

Clearly they used to be roads.

Now these roads are called the Group 63 Trail, which is a 3.5-loop around the Group 63 bunker field. The road cutting through the middle, however, is the Group 63 Spur. The location of the worker memorial is at the added red dot (I also added the trail names, since Google maps isn’t quite that complete).

Along the spur, which we walked, are abandoned concrete bunkers, relics of long-ago munitions manufacturing. There were more along the southern branch of the Group 63 Trail, which we also walked.

That particular bunker is open, supposedly the only one on the trail. All that’s inside are a few benches. The acoustics are interesting, though. It would be a good place for a very small concert.

Other bunkers — most of them, and there were many — are overgrown. In the summer, they must be almost completely obscured.

On we went.

Near the Group 63 Trail, a large part of the tallgrass prairie is a range reserved for buffalo, fenced off and with signs telling casual visitors to stay out. But there also are a few small viewing platforms on your side of the fence to watch for buffalo. I’m sure they’re out there, but we didn’t see any that day.

We barely even saw any other people, despite the relative good weather. So we enjoyed an experience of remoteness, without actually being remote — you can faintly hear traffic along the highway, after all. This isn’t the first time I’ve found that off the beaten path isn’t really very far off.

The National Shrine of St. Thérèse

Posted on January 8, 2023 by admin

Well over a decade ago, during a summertime visit to San Antonio, I drove to the west side of the city to see the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, which I’d never seen or even heard of before, despite growing up in that city. It was very hot that day, as it tends to be that time of the year, so I didn’t linger outside to take many pictures, though I snapped a few marginal ones.

This is a better image. I’m not sure at what point I realized that the basilica in San Antonio and the National Shrine of St. Thérèse in Darien, Illinois, were dedicated to the same person, Thérèse de Lisieux, but I know now. And whatever else I know about St. Thérèse, I also have some sense of her immense popularity as a saint, inspiring edifices around the world in her honor.

We arrived at the Darien shrine just before noon on December 29, an overcast but not especially cold day. Above freezing, anyway. There it is, I told Yuriko.

So we went in. A few minutes passed before I realized that we not in the shrine, but in the nearby museum building, which I believe was the shrine before a new one was completed a few years ago. The sign on this building makes me think that. If so, there needs to be a signage update.

This is the current shrine.

In effect, this is the fourth shrine to her that has existed in the Chicago area. The first two were in the city, a larger one succeeding the original as her popularity grew in the 1920s.

The church that housed the second shrine burned down nearly 50 years ago, but by the 1980s the Carmelites were able to find the scratch the build a third shrine out in the suburbs. The demographics were going that way anyway.

The Carmelites tasked Charles Vincent George Architects, based in nearby Naperville, to design the fourth and latest shrine, which was completed in 2018.

Behind the altar is St. Thérèse in glass.

“The architectural solution pays homage to St. Therese throughout, from the main building’s shape, inspired by the unfolding petals of a flower, a nod to St. Therese’s nickname ‘Little Flower,’ to key structures, such as the plaza clock tower, reminding us of her clockmaker father, and the 24-column colonnade, serving as a symbol of St. Therese’s 24 years of life,” CVG notes.

“As St. Therese had humble beginnings, special attention was taken to provide simple building materials using stone, brick and the limited use of wood for construction materials. The entire building layout focuses on the center altar and image of St. Therese etched in the chancel glass wall, through which there are views of her statue built out into the lake behind the chapel.”

In December, St. Thérèse is the star of Christmas trees in the shrine.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tree decorated with prayers before, but there it was. All of them to the saint.

The museum included some seasonal features as well, such as a nativity under a more permanent woodwork depicting the saint.

Just in case anyone is uncertain, labels come with the nativity scene. Guess that’s helpful for kids who have just learned to read, but I as far as can remember as a kid, the figures were something that everyone knew. Essential Christmas lore, even for public school children. Maybe that’s not true anymore.

Modern stained glass. Some nice abstractions plus holy figures.

What would a saint’s shrine complex be without some relics?

I didn’t know dust could count as a relic, but I’m not up on what can and can not constitute a relic. The museum also has a few relics of Thérèse’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, who happen to be saints as well.

“Louis had tried to become a monk, but was rejected because he could not master Latin,” a sign in the museum says. “Zélie Guérin tried to become a Sister of Charity, but was rejected due to poor health.”

They couldn’t take vows, but apparently did the next best thing: produce five daughters (the survivors of nine children), all of whom became nuns.

Plan B Travels at the End of ’22

Posted on January 5, 2023 by admin

Since Tucson was a no go, we decided to spend the same three days, December 29 to 31, visiting new sights close enough to home to be at home, come bedtime. A suite of day trips, that is. If you can’t go far, go near.

On the first day, we drove southward to near our old west suburban haunts, stopping first in Darien, Illinois, which is home to the National Shrine of St. Thérèse. I’d visited the shrine by myself at some point ca. 1999, but took no notes and made no photos, so I didn’t remember much. Besides, I’d read that a new shrine building was completed only in 2018, so it counted as a new place for me.

I’d also forgotten that Thérèse of Lisieux is also known as the Little Flower of Jesus. The entrance of the new shrine announces that, silently, as you enter.

Later that day, we made our way further south to the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Strictly speaking, we’d been there before as well, all the way back in the summer of ’04. I told Yuriko we’d been there, but she didn’t remember. Maybe I remember because I spent a lot of time that day pushing Ann’s stroller along an uneven grass path under a hot sun. I seem to have left that part out of my posting about it, however.

On the other hand, Midewin is large, with about 13,000 acres and 30 miles of trails open to the public, so I’m sure we walked through an entirely different part this time – one with visible reminders of the area’s time as the site of an ammunition plant.

The sun wasn’t an issue this time.

On December 30, we made our way to a different sort of human environment: downtown Chicago, by way of driving to near O’Hare, parking the car, and riding the El into town. Without planning to, we found something downtown we’d never seen before, an art exhibit in the underground Pedway.

The Art of American Victorian Stained Glass, featuring well over a dozen windows from the late 19th century and early 20th. Wow. Well hidden and remarkable.

We also spent time in other parts of downtown, including a walkabout inside holiday- season Macy’s. I’ve been there any number of times, of course, but this time I appreciated the place with new eyes. One conclusion: it ain’t no Marshall Field.

Well, some things are the same. Macy’s still has the holiday horns hanging on State Street.

One of these days, I ought to give State Street the Wall Street or William Street treatment, but I’d have to be by myself to do so. State Street might not exactly be a great street, but it still has character.

By that, I mean skyscrapers from the early days of steel-reinforced buildings. Also, astonishingly intricate ironwork from a time when a department store (the vanished Carson Pirie Scott) could afford such things.

Actually, the Louis Sullivan building at State and Madison — the (0 0) of the street numbering system in Chicago — was built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger & Mayer; Carson Pirie Scott was a Johnny-come-lately when it bought Schlesinger in 1904. These days there’s a Target in the lower floor. Sic transit gloria tabernae, I guess.

On the last day of 2022, we headed away from metro Chicago again. We’d considered Starved Rock State Park as a destination, but I wanted something new, so we went to Buffalo Rock State Park, which is more-or-less across the Illinois River from Starved Rock. Nice little park.

Afterward, the weather was good enough, and the temps just warm enough, to allow us to eat Chinese takeout at a picnic table in Washington Park in Ottawa, Illinois, in our coats. The last time we were there, it was hot as blazes.

Didn’t look around too much this time, though someday I want a good look at the many churches along Lafayette St. in Ottawa. I did take a look at LaSalle County’s Civil War memorial.

A closer look at the base –

– reveals that even the names of the Honored Dead are no match for Time.

American Science & Surplus

Posted on December 21, 2022 by admin

Regards to all for Christmas and the New Year. Back to posting around January 3, when I will wonder, as usual, how we could possibly be so far into the 21st century. Which still seems like a new century to me.

On Sunday, I bought a rubber chicken from this plentiful stock, at a retailer I know. I got the regular one for $10.95, not the more expensive, fancy-pants glow-in-the-dark model. Bet a regular one cost $9.95 a year ago, but such is the retail economy in our time.

Why a chicken? (Why a no duck?) My old one must have worn out. Not because I used it for anything, just that rubber doesn’t last forever. Anyway, no household is complete without a rubber chicken. Words to live by.

Where? The truly wonderful American Science & Surplus, which has three stores, two in Illinois — Park Ridge and Geneva — and one in Milwaukee. None of them are particularly close to where we live, so we don’t go often. In fact, I think it’s been about 10 years. We ought to go more often.

This is the AS&S in far west suburban Geneva, which we patronized just around sunset.

As you can see, the store promises rubber chickens.

But that’s only the beginning. AS&S has a retail selection unlike any other in my experience. Toys and toy-like items, but also electronic parts, lab equipment, optical gear, craft items, camping equipment, tools and hardware, militaria, office goods, novelties and more. Much, much more.

The place was fairly busy, with people probably doing what we were doing. Looking for oddities for presents.

You can also buy Teslas there.

Affordable Teslas, that is, though at $20, I took a pass.

Daily Leader Mosaics, Pontiac

Posted on December 20, 2022 by admin

At the corner of West Howard and North Main Street in Pontiac, Illinois, is an unassuming building.

The building itself didn’t catch my attention on Saturday morning before I ducked out of the numbing cold into the Route 66 museum across the street, nor did the glad fact that Pontiac still appeared to have a newspaper.

Rather, there seemed to be small murals on the walls. I went to take a closer look. Turns out they aren’t murals, but mosaics. Five all together.

They are part of the Daily Leader building, to go by the name on the wall. Except I have reason to believe that the paper, which is a Gannett asset, moved a few blocks away recently and a furniture retailer bought the building. That is what this item published by the Illinois Press Association says.

“For the first time since 1968, the Daily Leader has a new home,” the association reports. “As of Wednesday morning, July 13, the Leader office moved approximately four blocks to the northeast, to 512 N. Locust St. The Leader building on North Main Street was put up for sale earlier this year and purchased by Wright’s Furniture on May 13.

“The Pontiac Sentinel was begun as a weekly newspaper in 1857 and the Pontiac Weekly Leader arrived on the scene in 1880. In 1896, the weekly became a daily and the Daily Leader was born.”

One nit to pick: there’s no date on the item. You’d think that would be an important thing for an organization like the association to include, so I’ll assume it’s just an oversight. Happens to everyone.

But I do know it’s from this year, since July 13 was a Wednesday this year, and the story mentions 2019 as being in the past. Still, you shouldn’t have to rely on internal evidence to date a news story.

The mosaics taken together have a theme, the history of the graphic arts. This is the first of the mosaics as they proceed chronologically around the building’s two street-facing walls, beginning with cave dwellers and their art.

Ceramic tiles (tesserae) were put in fully regular x-y grids form the images, though within many of the squares, irregular shapes are cut to fit each other, as long as it serves the purpose of creating the overall image. The more I look at the mosaics here in the warmth of my office, the more I like them.

Next, the scribes of ancient Egypt.

Each mosaic has a caption at the bottom. This one, for example, says:

Graphic Arts 2000 B.C.
Egyptian Hieroglyphics

Next, a medieval scribe.

Notice the detail. Seems simple, until you spend time looking at it. A lamp with candles hangs overhead; shadows lie more-or-less believably around the room; his hair is short but unkempt; the sandals are well depicted; the quill has a pleasing wave; the base of the desk and the bench are in matching dark colors; the top of the desk and paper, along with the contents of the box the right — scrolls? — are in matching light colors; the door is an oddly large part of the image, until you realize it leads the viewer past bushes and a tree to a building with a pointed window, like the room’s window. I can’t help but think that’s a church window.

Next, Gutenberg is making printing by hand obsolete.

The end mosaic, which is on the north face of the building, is longer than the others. This is a detail. It depicts the modern newspaper office. Modern, as in 1970.

I assume that date can stand in for the year the art was created. Let’s say ca. 1970, since I didn’t see a date or an artist’s name, though I didn’t inspect every inch of the mosaics as the wind blew the only direction it blows in winter — in my face.

I never worked for a newspaper professionally, but the characters remind me of the first jobs I had working for paper magazine publishers. To the right, a reporter making notes and another taking photos. Yet another reporter makes a phone call.

The news is thus gathered and then prepared for the press. I like to think the woman at the typewriter is a reporter too — women were entering the ranks of journalism in numbers by 1970, like in other professions — but she might have been intended as a typist.

From there, the text goes to a human typesetter. At my first writing job in Nashville in the mid-80s, we had two typesetters, youngish women back in their own room, though the editors consulted with them often enough about the text. They could be fun, smoking their cigarettes and accumulating coffee cups on nearby flat surfaces and bantering with the staff when they weren’t otherwise fixated on their jobs, which involved screen concentration and flying fingers.

At my next job, the typesetting job was automated by a typesetting program simple enough even for me to use, and I never again worked with human typesetters.

After the typesetter, who had created long strips of glossy paper with text — galleys — the layout man took over, waxing the backs of the galleys and placing them on thin cardboard sheets to create mocked-up pages, which in turn would be photographed for the presses. Man, I haven’t thought about the process in years.

At my second job, the layout man was old, opinionated, and sometimes prickly, having seen and (more likely) heard enough working with Chicago journalists to harden his character. There was a hint of cynicism in everything he said, and often enough much more than a hint. He was probably smarter than he let on. He didn’t smoke and had contempt for those who did. I suspect he drank and had contempt for those who didn’t. After my time, I understand he took retirement, and was replaced by computer programs.

All in all, the mosaics were quite a find on a casual walk. But that’s why I take them.

Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on December 19, 2022 by admin

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

Pirates Ahoy, Sydney

Posted on December 18, 2022 by admin

Another postcard from a time when that was a more common way to send a short message from afar. In this case, pretty far. I picked up this card in Sydney on Dec. 22, 1991, and mailed it from Canberra the next day.

I’d wandered into a department store in Sydney that day, which I spent walking around the city: Circular Quay, the Opera House, Sydney Tower, the Australian Museum, the Royal Botanic Garden and more, such as the (to my ears) amusing Woolloomoolo district, which I’ve read has gentrified since I was there.

I don’t remember going into a Sydney department store, or seeing the Lego exhibit. Yet the card documents the visit. Lego called it “Pirates Ahoy.”

Jim has a longstanding fascination with pirates — mostly the lore, though I’m certain he’s read some genuine histories. Apparently Lego was setting up pirate-theme displays at the time to promote its Lego Pirates set, which was fairly new at the time, launching in 1989.

The genius of Wikipedia is that there are entries like Lego Pirates. It’s an astonishingly long article, documenting in incredible detail the byzantine history of a children’s playset.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There