A Sunday Drive + Phishin’

The last day of August? Even this pandemic summer has sped by like an ordinary summer. I’ll post again on September 8.

We were out and about on Sunday, including a drive on I-90 between metro Chicago and Rockford. Here’s the highway as seen from the Belvidere Oasis, looking west.
tollway oasis BelvedereThat is, at a large rest stop on the toll road. They seem to be unique to Illinois.

On the whole, we did a classic Sunday drive — a trip just for the sake of driving, except that it was also driving practice for Ann, who has a learner’s permit these days, and not much experience on highways. We made it as far as Rock Cut State Park near Rockford, then headed back.

As part of our return, we stopped at Gabuttø Burger. Formerly located in Rolling Meadows, the Japanese-style hamburgerie is now in Elgin, near the Randall Road exit on I-90. Not very convenient for us most of the time, but we were in the area.

Eating in was an option, but instead we found a small nearby park with a picnic shelter. Good eating. We are fortunate indeed.
Gabutto BurgerFor some reason while we were out on Sunday, a number of phishers came calling. Our voice mail captured 13 messages. Actually all from the same source saying the same thing: Your X account has been breached…

How thoughtful of them. They provided a phone number to call, and I’m sure for a small fee — what’s that credit card number again? — they’ll be happy to fix a problem with something I don’t even use.

Also, an email (all sic) pretending to be from a major financial services company came on Sunday:

Your account security is our priority.
To validate your account, click here or the validation button below.
The link will expire in 24 hours, so be sure to use it right away.
failure to confirm your record will result in account disabled. Please confirm your records.

Such is life among the digital wonders of the 21st century.

Thursday Bits & Bobs

Some unusually cool days this week. I’m not sure whether that had anything to do with what happened at about 7:45 pm on Wednesday out on our deck. I was sitting out there, decompressing from a day of work and other tasks, when I saw a dark blob hit one of our deck loungers. Twack!
Two cicadas. Noiseless, though the cicadas have been doing their twilight bleating for a few weeks now. Crickets are also singing after dark, though maybe not as strongly as they will closer to their seasonal demise. By Thursday morning, when I next checked, the cicadas were gone.

Happy to report there’s a thin mosquito population this year, at least around here. Flies have taken up the slack. Seems like one gets in the house every day through the back door, including some of the metallic-colored ones that used to fascinate me as a kid.

Also in the back yard: blooming hibiscus. Could be Hibiscus syriacus. I can also call it rose of Sharon, though I understand that’s applied to other flowers as well.
At Starved Rock State Park recently, I spotted his plaque near the lodge. Looking its century-plus age, including countless touches of Lincoln’s nose.
GAR Ladies plaque Starved Rock State Park“Commemorating the deeds of the Union veterans of the Civil War,” it says. The Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic erected it in 1914. Looks like the Ladies, who are still around, were trying to keep up with the Daughters.

Chronicling a lot of violence, but also a thing of great beauty.

Our most recent episode of Star Trek: “A Piece of the Action.” I suggested it as one of three options — an action/adventure story, or one of the show’s tendentious eps, or comedy. Ann picked comedy. I’d forgotten how much of a hoot “Action” is, with the high jinks gearing up especially after Kirk and Spock got into pseudo-gangster duds and Shatner hammed it up.

Oh, my, listen to that. My my my.

Two Illinois Points of Interest

For years, I’ve seen the following two points of interest routinely included on road maps of Illinois. At least, on Rand McNally and Michelin: the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial and the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial.

When it comes to points of interest on commonly available road maps, there must be just a touch of the arbitrary in their selection. Just a touch, because certainly mapmakers have their editorial standards. Still, I see those (typically) red dots and wonder not only what it is, but also why is that on the map and not something else?
Guess being a state memorial or monument helps land a place on maps. (That link is part of a larger list.)

One goal of our recent trip was to avoid large highways, which we mostly did until we headed for home, when we wanted a more speedy return. When heading out, we kept to smaller roads. One of these was Illinois 71, which passes through the unincorporated community of Norway.

Not far from Norway is the the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial. It’s an example of the plaques-on-rocks school of memorial design, along with a wooden structure, and U.S. and Norwegian flags.
Norwegian Settlers State Memorial “This Memorial commemorates the 1834 settlement at Norway, Illinois — the first permanent Norwegian settlement in the Midwest,” says the State Historic Preservation Office. “A departure point for many Norwegians who settled other parts of the Midwest, Norway became known as the ‘mother settlement.’ The monument, dedicated in 1934, honors the community and its founder, Cleng Peerson (1783-1865).”

Peerson got around. Though he led immigrants to the New World, he didn’t seem to be interested in settling for more than a few years at a time himself. According to Wiki, he even spent time in Bishop Hill among its Swedish settlers. I guess he had no hard feelings against those oppressors of the Norwegian people. He ended up in Texas in the mid-19th century, as a lot of people did.

Why three stones? One from 1934 memorializes the 100th anniversary of the settlement of Norway, Illinois. Another from 1975 memorializes the 150th anniversary of Norwegians first coming to America en masse. The King of Norway came for that occasion. And yet another (also 1975) notes that part of Illinois 71 is the Cleng Peerson Memorial Highway.

That’s not all. The wooden structure — which I assume is an homage to Norwegian design — has text front and back. Three separate plaques on the front, dated 1980, tell the “Norsk Story,” that is, Norwegians coming to America.

Two more plaques on back (from 1982, bicentennial of Peerson’s birth) offer more detail about the memorial, including lines about Lester Severskie (1918-82) who was “dedicated to the preservation of the Norwegian heritage of Norway, Ill.”, a list of the Norwegian heritage organizations in the U.S. as of 1982 (I had no idea there were so many), and a few lines to thank Olav V, members of the Norwegian government, and so on and so forth.

This has to be the wordiest memorial I’ve ever encountered. It’s the memorial equivalent of a logorrheic movie star upon winning an Oscar. I usually enjoy reading obscure plaques, but these tried my patience, especially in the high heat of July. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)

Even so, I’m glad I stopped. Especially because I noticed that behind the memorial is a small cemetery. The Cleng Peerson Memorial Cemetery, according to one source (who spells cemetery wrong), though I didn’t see any signs or plaques at all about it, just the headstones. According to another source, it’s the Nelson Cemetery.

Norwegian Settlers State Memorial cemetery

Norwegian Settlers State Memorial cemeteryWhatever the name, it must be an active local cemetery. At least one burial was fairly recent.
Norwegian Settlers State Memorial cemeteryPeerson himself isn’t there. He’s buried near Clifton, Texas.

In a different context, you might call Peerson an empresario, along the lines of Stephen F. Austin in Texas, except that he was merely a leader of immigrants, not someone who was granted land by an existing government. Except that in the end, he was granted land by Texas, but for services rendered in populating the state with hardy Norwegians, not as an incentive to bring them.

Returning from the Illinois River Valley on Sunday, I made a point of stopping at the Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial in Troy Grove, Illinois. Wild Bill isn’t buried there either. He died in Deadwood, after all, and he rests there in Boot Hill.

Rather, the memorial marks the birthplace of James Butler Hickok, scout, spy, lawman, soldier, marksman, gambler, showman, folk hero, and dime novel and movie and TV character. It’s at the center of an open patch of land where the Hickok family home once stood, and includes one plaque and one bust.
Wild Bill Hickok State MemorialThe state of Illinois erected the plaque in 1929, and it wasn’t shy about lionizing Wild Bill. It needed a proofreader, too.
Wild Bill Hickok State Memorial“He contributed largely in making the West a safe place for woman [sic] and children,” the plaque says in part. “His sterling courage was aways [sic] at the service of right and justice.”

The bust is more recent. I had to look it up, because I couldn’t find anything on site — not a word — to say who created it or when.
Wild Bill Hickok State MemorialThe state of Illinois says a “log-carved bust” of Hickok was added in 1999, but that’s no wooden bust. It took a little looking, but I found out that “in 2009, an attractive bronze bust of Hickok by artist William Piller was placed in the park. It replaced a carved wooden bust that had been in place 10 years but had severe weather damage,” according to the Danville, Illinois, Commercial-News.

Though it was a hot day, I wasn’t quite done with Troy Grove, pop. 230. A building near the memorial caught my eye. (The rest of my family was sitting in air-conditioned comfort in the car.)
Former Bank, Troy Grove IllinoisBank, eh? Well, not any more. Still, it’s a handsome little building. A detail toward the top further got my attention.

Bankers Electrical Protection Co. of Minneapolis

A logo marker apparently left by the Bankers Electrical Protection Co. of Minneapolis: a guard dog close to a money bag. The company seems to have specialized in bank vaults and other security features for banks of yore. You know, the sort of banks at risk from unauthorized withdrawals by the likes of the Cream Can Gang.

Besides a few images, I haven’t found out much else about BEPCo. (as it surely would be called now), mostly since I don’t feel like it. Enough to assume that it went out of business or was acquired by another security company long ago. Yet traces remain, in stone no less.

Oglesby Sights

Sizable towns cluster around the Illinois River in north-central Illinois like so many stones on a necklace: Morris, Ottawa, LaSalle, Peru, Spring Valley, Princeton. Then there’s Oglesby, which isn’t so sizable, at about 3,500 people. The place is named after the long-ago Illinois governor, whom I’ve encountered before in Decatur and Chicago.

We became acquainted with Oglesby last weekend because we stayed overnight in a motel in the town, to take advantage of its proximity to Starved Rock SP and Matthiessen SP, though we decided not to visit the latter.

To become acquainted with the town, you can drive down the east-west Walnut St. for about two miles. On Sunday morning, I went out for gas early, which also meant looking around. Lilly joined me.

The town post office on Walnut looked about as WPA as can be. Being Sunday, we couldn’t go in and look at the 1942 mural, “The Illini and Pottawatomies Struggle at Starved Rock” by Fay E. Davis, which is said to be quite something.

Soon we arrived at this structure, which would loom over Walnut St., except that it’s set back a few hundred feet and behind a fence. The fence is pretty new.
Lehigh Portland Cement Co Oglesby IllinoisAn old enough ruin to sport fully grown trees in its midst. An interesting enough ruin to be fenced, though I figure local teens have no problem getting in when the mood strikes.

The blackened sign is just barely legible.

LEHIGH PORTLAND CEMENT COMPANY OGLESBY

That’s all I needed to find out more about this industrial ruin. For decades, Oglesby lived by the extraction and processing of minerals, especially the manufacture of cement and concrete.

The Chicago Cement Co. started operations on the site in 1898. Lehigh, a Pennsylvania company, acquired Chicago in 1916 and ran the plant until 1963. Apparently Lehigh decided at that time that modernization of the plant wouldn’t be worth the expense, and so closed it.

I have to report that cement and concrete production in the area isn’t dead yet. Illinois Cement Co., which is across the river in LaSalle, still seems to be in that business, and related hard-stone entities dot the map: the Mertel Gravel Co., Ladzinski Concrete Finishing Co., Lafarge Aggregates, Wenzel Concrete Works and Ruppert Concrete, to name a few (and those last two are in Oglesby).

The above image is only a part of the ruin.
Lehigh Portland Cement Co Oglesby IllinoisEven that doesn’t depict the whole of it. Note how far it goes back when you look on Google Maps. We were looking at the property from about where I’ve put a blue dot.
Lehigh Portland Cement Co Oglesby Illinois“This looks like the most interesting thing in Oglesby,” I told Lilly. Too expensive to tear down, I figure, so there it stands, letting the decades take their toll.

Down Walnut to the east was something almost as interesting, and cement related, too.Safety Follows Wisdom Oglesby IllinoisAn intriguing bit of work in a small public park — Lehigh Park — donated by the company to the town in 1945 (the side plaque says that). Turns out the work is one of a genre of memorials, awarded by the Portland Cement Association, with examples wherever cement is or was made. They’re made of cement, of course.

“Cement ‘Safety Follows Wisdom’ monuments, first presented in 1924, for perfect safety records at cement plants,” says the Historical Marker Database. “The winning design came from an Art Institute of Chicago team directed by sculptor Albin Polasek.” (I’ve happened across his work before.)

Safety Follows Wisdom Oglesby illinoisDo a casual search and you’ll find Safety Follows Wisdom stones all over the country. It’s something I had no inkling of until I drove down a main street in a small town and — more importantly — got out of the car and looked around. The devil might be in the details, but I find that the joy of traveling is in the details.

Ottawa Sights (Not the One in Canada)

We arrived in Ottawa, Illinois, on Saturday in time for lunch. We decided on carry-out from Thai Cafe on Columbus St., which seems to be the only Thai joint in town. At a population of 18,000 or so, maybe that’s all Ottawa can support.

We took our food to Allen Park, a municipal park on the south bank of the Illinois, and found a picnic shelter. The river’s large and on a weekend in July, home to a lot of pleasure craft.
Ottawa Illinois 2020Sometimes, the river must be angry, such as on April 19, 2013. Got a lot of rain in northern Illinois about then, so I believe it.

Ottawa Illinois High Water MarkDownstream a bit is the Ottawa Rail Bridge, which rates a page in Wikipedia. The current bridge dates from 1898, though it was modified in 1932.

Ottawa Illinois Rail Bridge

Two large metal sculptures rise in the park, both by Mary Meinz Fanning. The red one is “Bending.”
Ottawa Illinois BendingThe yellow one is “Reclining.”
Ottawa Illinois Reclining“Fanning was the driving force behind the creation of the red and yellow steel sculptures at Allen Park by the Illinois River in Ottawa,” says a 2010 article in The Times, which seems to be a local paper.

“The 40-foot-tall sculptures, which weigh 17 tons each, were erected in 1982 and 1983 from parts of the 1933-built steel girder Hilliard Bridge that was demolished in 1982 to make way for the present-day Veterans Memorial Bridge. Fanning died of illness Nov. 4, 1995, in Ottawa at age 48.”

Just as you enter the park, you also see a wooden sculpture: one of artist Peter Toth’s “Whispering Giants,” which I’d forgotten I’d heard of till I looked him up again. The one in Allen Park is Ho-Ma-Sjah-Nah-Zhee-Ga or, more ordinarily, No. 61.

Looked familiar. I realized I’ve seen one before —
Nee-Gaw-Nee-Gaw-Bow That one is Nee-Gaw-Nee-Gaw-Bow or No. 59, and we saw it by chance in Wakefield, Mich. about three years ago. Apparently the artist has put up at least one in each state.

Ottawa has a place in U.S. history mainly for two things. One that the town is happy to celebrate: the first Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858. The other is the awful story of the Radium Girls, poisoned by luminous paint at a clock factory in Ottawa in the early 20th century. For a long time, there was no public acknowledgment of that incident. Now there is. But I didn’t know the Radium Girls have a statue in town (since 2011), so we missed that.

We didn’t miss the site of the Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is in the shady, square-block Washington Park.
Ottawa Illinois Washington ParkLincoln and Douglas are there as part of a fountain to memorialize the event. They were cast in bronze in 2002 by Rebecca Childers Caleel.
Ottawa Illinois Washington ParkOttawa Illinois Washington ParkIt would have been more pleasant if the fountain were on, but maybe it was dry for public health reasons in our time. The noontime heat was oppressive, so we didn’t have a leisurely look-around the area as much as we might have otherwise. There are other memorials in the park, and plenty of historic structures nearby, forming the Washington Park Historic District.

Those buildings include the Third District Appellate Court Building (1850s), the Reddick Mansion (1850s), the Ottawa First Congregational Church (1870), Christ Episcopal Church (1871), and a Masonic Temple (1910). A few blocks away, the LaSalle County Courthouse looked interesting, too, but we only drove by.

I managed to take a close look only at the former Congregational Church building.
Ottawa Illinois Washington Park Open Table Church

Ottawa Illinois Open Table Church of Christ

Gothic Revival in brick. These days, the church is part of the Open Table United Church of Christ.

Starved Rock State Park ’20

Hot-and-sweaty weekend until a steady warm wind came on Sunday afternoon, a baby sirocco you might call it, and blew away the humidity. That left the golden glow of dusk warm but dry.

All of us, dog included, took an in-state overnight (30-hour) trip over the weekend, with Starved Rock State Park as the prime destination. Been a while since we’d all been there together, but each of the girls had visited with friends in more recent years.

That isn’t a postcard of mine, though if the state sold it at the park, I’d buy one.

The 2,630-acre Starved Rock SP hews close to the south banks of the Illinois River in LaSalle County, its distinctive topography a creation of long-ago floods and glacial movement. The state acquired the land in 1911 and (of course) the CCC did park infrastructure work during that agency’s short existence. It’s a popular place, more so now than ever. Guess that’s because driving destinations are the thing at our moment in history.

We waited until after the highest early afternoon heat had passed on Saturday to take our hikes. Late afternoon was still steamy, but tolerable, especially under trees. When we came to this fork, we took the path to French Canyon.
Starved Rock State ParkIt isn’t long before the French Canyon walls rise around you.
Starved Rock State ParkStarved Rock State ParkBefore long, you reach a waterfall. Just a trickle in late July.
Starved Rock State ParkDoubling back to the fork, we then followed a trail that’s mostly boardwalk, plus a lot of stairs that I didn’t document.
Starved Rock State ParkTo the view from Lover’s Leap.
Starved Rock State Park Lovers LeapThe nearby Eagles Cliff vista, looking upriver.
Starved Rock State Park Eagle CliffLook a little downriver and you see why the Illinois is so wide just below Eagle Cliff.
Starved Rock State Park Eagle CliffThe Starved Rock Lock and Dam, also known as Lock and Dam No. 6, completed in 1933 and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers.

We might have walked further into other canyons after that, or up to the Starved Rock feature, but the heat and stair climbing spent our energy. Mine, anyway. We ought to go back some cooler day in the fall. I’ve been visiting the place since the late ’80s and still haven’t seen some of the other canyons.

Dundee Township East Cemetery

At the intersection of Dundee Ave. and Higgins Road (Illinois 25 and 72) is the 48-acre Dundee Township East Cemetery, owned by the township of that name, but also entirely within the village of West Dundee in Kane County. There’s no fencing or anything else to separate it from those fairly busy roads.
Dundee Township East Cemetery

We — that is, Ann and I — visited briefly on Saturday when we were out that way, which is northwest from where we live.

The cemetery dates from the 1890s, no doubt long before those adjacent roads were paved, though it’s possible that part of the future Illinois 72 had planks, since I understand much of its route follows the old Galena-Chicago Stagecoach Trail. These enthusiasts drove the trail’s modern-equivalent roads on a motorcycle. Not for me, but I’d consider using a car.

It’s a pleasant cemetery in the summer.Dundee Township East Cemetery
Dundee Township East Cemetery
Dundee Township East CemeteryIn an older section, there were a fair number of German names, and some German-language script on the stones. Here’s a fine German name: Schneidewendt, whose stone memorializes burials in the early 20th century.
Dundee Township East Cemetery
Not many mausoleums that I noticed, but there were a few. I expect a lot of the population in Dundee Township a century and some years ago were prosperous farmers, but not that prosperous.
Dundee Township East CemeteryWhoever The Family of Theodore Kunke were — that’s the text over the door — they had the scratch for a simple edifice.

Thursday Bits

I’ve heard of other large models of the Solar System, but not about the one in Sweden. There’s one much closer at hand, whose Sun and inner planets are in Peoria, but I’ve never gotten around to seeing it.

A recommended YouTube series: Lessons from the Screenplay. Ann introduced me to it by suggesting one comparing the character arcs of Parasite and Sunset Boulevard, something I would never have thought of. The narrator, who introduces himself as Michael, makes a novel and compelling case for the comparison.

I watched a couple more over the last few days, one about The Shinning — which I haven’t seen in about 30 years, and probably should again, same as Sunset Boulevard — and another about No Country for Old Men. Both videos were thoughtful and interesting, and not too long, which all I ask from YouTube movie criticism.

Looks like SOB lowlifes have co-opted a perfectly good nonsense word that’s been around for years and years. That’s the vagaries of language for you.

It’s time. I’m a little surprised it’s going to happen so soon, but not sorry to see it go. With any luck, the striking Belle Époque pedestal will be repurposed, rather than torn down.

Illinois Primary 2020

Restaurants and bars and a lot else in Illinois might be closed today, but the primary election went on as scheduled. I walked to my polling place and voted fairly early in the morning.
There were three election judges on hand, and two other voters. Two of the judges, youngish women, wore rubber gloves. One of the judges, a male retiree from the looks of him, did not.

Twelve Pictures ’19

I always take many more pictures than I post in any given year. Here are some from this year to close out the decade. Back to posting around January 5, 2020. That year sounds so far in the future, at least for those of us who vaguely remember Sealab 2020 — and yet here it is.

Near North Side Chicago, January 2019

San Antonio, February 2019

Downtown Chicago, March 2019

Elmhurst, Illinois, April 2019

New Orleans, May 2019

Arcola, Illinois, June 2019

Pittsburgh, July 2019

Oak Park, Illinois, August 2019

Midland, Michigan, September 2019

Charlottesville, Virginia, October 2019

Schaumburg, Illinois, November 2019

Millennium Park, Chicago, December 2019Good Christmas and New Year to all.