The Elmhurst History Museum

Posted on April 22, 2019 by admin

Lilly visited for Easter weekend this year. We were glad to see her.
Easter Saturday turned out to be brilliant and warm, much like the Saturday two weeks ago when we visited Elmhurst. So all of us, including Lilly this time, went back to Elmhurst to wander around in the park again, but also for something we didn’t do last time: visit the Elmhurst History Museum.

The museum, founded in 1957, is in the former home of Elmhurst’s first village president, Henry Glos, and his wife Lucy. The mansion dates from ca. 1892.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Gloses are interred across the street. I understand that street didn’t exist when they were alive — in fact, not until the 1970s — so their mausoleum and their house must have been on a single piece of land.

A few odds and ends dot the grounds. Such as the Elmhurst fire bell.

The plaque says (all caps, but I’ve regularized that):

The old Elmhurst fire bell
is here erected as a memorial
dedicated
in the Illinois sesquicentennial year 1968
to the brave men of the Elmhurst Volunteer Fire Department
who served with courage and devotion
from the days when fire fighting equipment
was crude and horse drawn
on behalf of a grateful community

The Elmhurst Historical Commission

It doesn’t look bad for a bell that’s been in the elements for more than 50 years now.

The museum has a modest but interesting collection of Elmhurst-specific artifacts.

Such as an Order of Odd Fellows sword. How often do you see one of those?
It goes along with a Shriner’s fez, a Jaycee’s collection box, some Knights of Columbus pins and other fraternal org items.

This calendar, produced by the local Rothmeyer Coal Co., belongs in the don’t-make-em-like-that-anymore file.

Notable birthdays on the calendar for January 1934 include Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and William McKinley.

A six pack of Baderbrau beer.
A short-lived Elmhurst brew (1989-1997). Never heard of it, even though Chicago’s well-known Goose Island brewery acquired the name and formula after 1997 and brewed it for a few more years. A mid-2010s revival didn’t work out either.

Better known are the Keebler elves. Keebler Foods Co. used to be located in Elmurst until its owner Kellogg Co. moved the snack operation to Michigan. I suspect not all of the elves relocated. There’s probably a neighborhood in Elmhurst where some of them still live.

You’d think the Village of Elmhurst would try to get permission from Kellogg to build an elf tree in one of the local parks. Do it right and people would come to see that.

Happy 11th Anniversary, Sam & Emily

Posted on March 31, 2019 by admin

Sam and Emily’s wedding was 11 years ago now. That gives me just a little pause. I think I was going to post some images for their 10th anniversary last year, but forgot. Then again, why the overemphasis on multiples of 5 or 10?

Eleven’s a nice prime number. According to people who make such lists, the 11th anniversary is “traditionally” the steel anniversary. Sure, why not?

Who decided that? I don’t feel like looking into the question, but I suspect the notion of various gifts for various anniversaries evolved over the years, and was put into modern form by Victorians (for sentimental reasons) and early 20th-century ad men (for commercial reasons). The usual suspects, in other words.

Be that as it may, here’s an image of many members of the family as we were then. And Jesus.

Also, all of the grandchildren of Sam and Jo Ann Stribling.

The first image has been on the wall in Lilly’s room, or at least the room she uses when she’s home, for some years. The second one’s been on our refrigerator for years.

Texas Winter ’19

Posted on February 24, 2019 by admin

My recent trip to wintertime Texas took me to Dallas and Fort Worth, San Antonio, and a few other burgs. February is winter in Texas, but it’s a pale moon of a winter compared with where I live. During the trip, temps varied but didn’t drop below freezing, and we experienced rain but no ice or snow.

I spent the weekdays working, but I also visited my brothers, one nephew and his family, one nephew by himself and a friend I’ve known for 45 years now.

I made it to a few new places and a few familiar old places. No matter how often you go somewhere, there are always new places, and no matter how familiar an old place is, there are always new aspects.

One new place was the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, which I’ve had a mind to see since we went to Wrightwood 659 in December. Tadao Ando designed both Wrightwood and the Modern, which is easy to visit from Dallas, as Jay and I did: just pop on over on I-30.

While gadding around in greater DFW, we also saw the Cao Dai Tay Ninh Temple and the Cambodian Buddhist Temple of Dallas, whose neighbors in the southwest of the city are the likes of Mission Foods, Standard Meat, Cartamundi USA and Old Dominion Freight Line.

In San Antonio, we had the benefit of a free evening admission to the McNay Art Museum — an example of a familiar place offering some new things to see. Later, while on the road between San Antonio and Dallas, we stopped by the Hays County Courthouse in San Marcos and the San Marcos City Cemetery, whose burials go back to the 1870s.

Had some good meals along the way too. In San Antonio, a dinner at one of the Paesanos locations, a local Italian restaurant with roots in the 1968 world’s fair. Good pork shank and gnocchi. In Waco, a lunch at a joint that goes even further back: the curiously named Health Camp, in business, as the exterior says, since 1949. Good burger and shake.

In Dallas, on the day I flew in, I enjoyed sausage and homemade sauerkraut and Texas beer and other good things at my nephew Sam’s house, on the occasion of his 36th birthday. Naturally there was birthday cake too.

Reminded me of the morning, late in my college career, when Jay called me to tell me that Sam had been born. Been an uncle ever since.

Ann at 16

Posted on February 10, 2019 by admin

After the deep freeze at the end of January, we had some warmer days — above freezing, quite a relief — and more recently just ordinary winter cold. The sort of persistent chill that makes February both the shortest and the longest month.

On Saturday, Ann had friends over for her 16th birthday.

She requested a birthday pie. Chocolate and peanut butter, made by a local grocery store that does fine pies.

Which reminds me of the question — something I’ve wondered about occasionally — why cake? Why not birthday pie? I suppose since cakes don’t need refrigeration, they trumped pies in pre-refrigeration days.

But why cakes at all? Know who I suspect of inventing the custom? Victorians, of course.

I’m not sure how reliable this source is, but it implies that while birthday cake had antecedents in German lands before the 19th century, the Victorian middle class made it the popular custom we know today. Like the Christmas tree.

In fact, birthday celebrations themselves, especially children’s birthdays, became popular in their modern form during the mid-19th century. Can’t say I’m surprised.

Cow Ride at the Mall

Posted on January 27, 2019 by admin

Australia Day has come and gone. Oz is reportedly suffering a viciously hot summer this year. Adelaide, a pleasant place in my recollection, seems to be getting hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, here in North America, or at least my part of it, after being a slacker for most of December and part of January, winter is hitting hard. Dead ahead, according to the NWS on Sunday evening:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM CST MONDAY… Heavy snow and blowing snow tonight with freezing drizzle and blowing snow likely at times Monday. Snow rates overnight into early morning are likely to reach up to an inch per hour at times. This will result in very low visibilities and rapid snow accumulations into the early morning commute. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches and ice accumulations of a light glaze expected.

This after subzero temps on Friday, and ahead of temps as low as minus 20 by Tuesday (Fahrenheit, the only scale that’s made for humans). Still, on Saturday things had warmed up to low double-digits, so we were out for a while. The three of us and a friend of Ann’s, on the occasion, not quite precisely, of Ann’s birthday. Nice to get out of the house.

We ate at Gabuttø Burger at Ann’s request. Since I discovered the place at the Mitsuwa food court, the Japanese burgerie has moved into a small strip center on a busy street in Rolling Meadows and seems to be doing well there. We visit a few times a year.

Then to a northwest suburban mall. Not the biggest one, the 2.1 million-square-foot Woodfield, but a smaller one. The one we visited isn’t a dying mall, but it has lost an anchor or two, along with some of its inline stores.

Still, the mall is doing what it can. It now sports a number of places to take children and entertain them, for instance. Not playplaces in the middle of the mall, but small entertainment venues that used to be more conventional retail.

Including a place where you can rent animal-ride scooters for a few minutes. She’s not in the main demographic, but according to Ann, it was a birthday thing to do, so she and her friend spent 10 minutes tooling around the mall.

She picked a cow. Looked like she had a jolly time of it.

Christmas &c

Posted on January 6, 2019 by admin

Only a few days after Christmas, I started seeing Christmas trees chucked out by the curb, as I do every year. And as I do every year, I think that’s too soon. Done right, the run up to the holidays should begin around December 21 and not peter out until after January 6. Our tree’s still up. So are the outdoor lights.

We opened our presents on the 21st this year. The next day, Yuriko and Lilly were off to Japan, returning on the 3rd.

For Ann and I, the holidays were mostly quiet and relaxing. Food, reading, electronic entertainment, as usual. One day Ann even persuaded me to watch Elf with her, which I’d never seen, but which she’s seen a number of times with her sister. It was a lot better than I thought it was going to be.

The weather even cooperated for the most part. Some recent days have been cold, a handful warmish for this time of the year, but no polar vortex events have struck. Some rain, making back yard mud for the dog to investigate. A little snow, but it all melted after a few days.

Made it into the city a few times, including on Boxing Day. Wandered around looking at downtown decorations. The holiday windows at the former Marshall Field’s were again uninspired (unlike a few years ago), but I’m glad to report that Union Station’s Grand Hall was done up well this year.

At the Chicago Cultural Center, we spent some time at an exhibit about South Side nightclubs of the Jazz Age, and a little later. Included was a telephone you could dial to listen to songs of the period.

It’s important somehow, I don’t know why, that she appreciate the operation of a rotary dial.

Lilly at 21

Posted on November 20, 2018 by admin

Good Thanksgiving to all. Back to posting on Sunday the 25th, probably.

Lilly has turned 21. To mark the occasion, recently we went to the same restaurant as last year at her request, and by chance sat at the very same table.

No pics of the food this year. A similar array of sushi. The place, called Sushi Para, does wonderful sushi. One difference this year was that Lilly ordered hot sake to go with the meal, expressing surprise that there was such a thing. Heated in winter, chilled in summer, I told her.

At home we had a cake made by Yuriko. A big chocolate torte actually. Rich chocolate with a dash of edible gold leaf and chestnuts.

Lilly had a good time with it.

At one point, before she blew the candles out, the 2 fell over still lit, releasing rivulets of wax onto the chocolate. Ann sneezed at about the same time.

Once the wax had hardened, however, it was easy to remove.

Big Lou’s Really Big Pizza

Posted on November 8, 2018 by admin

The evening after the funeral all of the family members in town got together for dinner at a place in east San Antonio, way down on W. W. White Road, Big Lou’s Pizza. My nephew Sam had heard about it and took care of the logistics.

The logistics involved ordering a 42-inch pizza ahead of time. Here is everyone at the table posing with a 42-inch pizza.

I’d never seen a pizza that large with my own eyes. I’m certain that went for everyone else at the table. According to one source anyway, it’s the second-largest restaurant pizza in Texas: bested only by a larger one that Big Lou’s makes.

I’m glad to report that it was a good New York-style thin pie. For my part, I ate about a piece and a half. I don’t think anyone else at the table ate any more than that, so there was pizza enough for two boxes of leftovers.

My Mother In Pictures, Part 2

Posted on November 7, 2018 by admin

At the end of the last posting, there was a picture from 1964, shortly after my mother had been widowed. It was hardly the end for her. A few years later, she returned to school to get a masters in nutrition, the better to support her family.

I took this picture in the summer of 1972, when I was 11.

I took this one was well, in 1976. She’s with our cousin Jean, whom she was close with.

A laughing shot with an old friend of hers at her friend’s daughter’s wedding in 1980. I never saw this image until last month.

With her first grandchildren, Sam and Dees.

At our cousin Ralph’s wedding in 1987, with Jim and me.

She enjoyed attending American Dietetic Association national conventions in such places as Denver and Philadelphia in the ’80s.

During her visit to Japan in 1994.

The picture of her for the St. Paul’s church directory in 1997.

With Lilly, also 1997.

She told me once she wanted to live long enough to see the 21st century. In the fullness of time, she did. I found this picture recently, another one I’d never seen before. Doing volunteer church work on Christmas.

During our 2013 visit: Ann posing with her grandmother.

And on her 90th birthday, only three years ago now.

My Mother In Pictures, Part 1

Posted on November 6, 2018 by admin

To go with the obituary posted by the undertakers who arranged my mother’s funeral were pictures we collected. I scanned some of them in September in anticipation of a posting, while the funeral home scanned others from physical prints that we provided.

Since then, I’ve scanned a few more. Such as this one, taken soon after New Year 1926, when she was two and a half months old.

A month later:

Ca. 1929 in what must be a special-occasion dress.

Around the same time. I’ve posted this one before, of her with her father’s mother.

The mid-1930s, when she was about 10, pictured with her little sister Sue.

With her father in San Antonio, ca. 1938. According to the back of the picture, they were going, or had just been, to a baseball game. Presumably the minor league Missions, which have had a long history, with some interruptions, in San Antonio.