Category Archives: Suburban Chicago

Pardon Me Boy, Is That The Des Plaines Choo-Choo?

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I’m glad to report that The Choo-Choo, a novelty restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, still seems to be open and serving burgers and fries by way of a model train.

I’m not sure the exact year I picked up its card, which isn’t shaped like a conventional business card but is square. I do remember taking Ann there when she was old enough to appreciate the place, but probably not old enough to remember it. So sometime in the mid- to late 2000s.

“The Choo Choo opened its doors nearly 70 years ago, with diners looking for creative ways of creating different dine-in experiences,” according to Classic Chicago Magazine.

“In 1951 original owner James Ballowe and his wife Marilyn wanted to open a business that would be an enjoyable experience for all ages. Ballowe had hoped that The Choo Choo would quickly become popular for both kids and adults.”

Apparently it did. They ran the place until 2000. The current owner is the third, taking over in 2022 after a period of pandemic closure. His name is Dale Eisenberg, who with partner Mike Ventre, runs a similar restaurant – one featuring model train delivery – in Bartlett, Illinois, the 2Toots Train Whistle Grill.

That restaurant was once in Downers Grove, and we took Ann there as well, and probably Lilly, sometime around 2010. I don’t think I have a card from it, which is too bad. These are not, of course, the only such joints anywhere, as this Reddit page illustrates.

Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

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I call it “Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps.”Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

Garage deaccession continues, if I can borrow such a tony word for the process of sorting and disposing and squirrel damage cleanup in the unheated structure toward the back of our lot. The other day I found a bag of Lincoln Logs. A bag of sad, battered logs. Many are cracked and chipped or even partly missing. Also, there are no roof slates. That’s an important thing to go missing.

I’m pretty sure they aren’t my childhood Lincoln Logs, since they were in better shape – I think — and anyway, this feels like a yard-sale acquisition that our daughters never took to, and was quickly forgotten.

Someone glued together two two-notch logs.Still Life With Lincoln Logs and Bottle Caps

If they were trying to get a four-notch log equivalent, they didn’t get it.

I built a simple structure (see above), for old time’s sake. The rest of the logs are now in the trash. Maybe I’ll add the structure to the broken mug and plate midden in one corner of the yard, and let the elements do their work.

Backyard Bunnies

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In hopes of keeping the backyard rabbits from eating our budding tomatoes and other summertime plants, Yuriko has been leaving lettuce and carrots out for them. I’m not sure that will work. For one thing, they don’t seem interested. Bugs Bunny might eat carrots, but actual rabbits not so much.

Was Bugs ever seen eating anything else? I’m hardly the only person to ask that important question, and the answer is yes. I remember some of those listed cartoons, especially “Baseball Bugs” and “Hare We Go,” from which I might have learned the term mess, as in a place to eat. As for why carrots were the nosh of choice for Bugs, that was reportedly inspired by Clark Gable eating a raw carrot in It Happened One Night, a detail I’d forgotten.

A family of rabbits now occupy the backyard, including a large adult and two or maybe three juveniles, who are often spotted eating grass. They might live under the deck.

It’s hard to get close enough to them to capture an image. Even at a young age, rabbits are wary critters and fleet of foot. I figure they’ve taken to the yard this year, much more than previously, because there is no dog on patrol any more, and somehow they know it.

Squirrels vs. Garage Bottles

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The squirrels have been evicted from our garage. Or so it seems. As part of obtaining a new roof for that structure this spring, holes that had allowed squirrels access were plugged. But that wasn’t quite enough, since I spotted one clambering around the shelves before we left town last month. So I bought one of those electronic boxes that emits ultrasonic annoyances for rodent ears, and it has been running ever since. The creatures have made themselves scarce as a result.

They made their own special messes in the garage, of course, including tearing up paper and cardboard — a lot of it — as part of their nesting efforts. Even more annoying to me is that they acted as agents of chaos out in the garage after I spent time last summer cleaning the place up and arraying my bottle collection.

Maybe not “collection,” but the bottles that have accumulated over the years, partly from successive gabfests.

The squirrels broke a few of my bottles by knocking them down to the hard floor, but I’m glad that Monty Python’s Holy Ale and Leninade survived. And my Woop Woop ’04 verdelho, an Australian wine I bought when it was fairly new.

Oakton College

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We’re in that rarefied period when neither the heater nor the cooler kicks in much. You could say God is my HVAC. It won’t last.

How many community college campuses have enough outdoor sculpture to qualify as a sculpture garden? Say, a dozen pieces or more. It’s an odd question, but it occurred to me at Oakton College in Des Plaines as we walked around recently, taking in the fine spring day and an assortment of outdoor sculptures on that campus.

That online search didn’t take long. If you wanted to figure out which community colleges have sculpture gardens, looks like the International Directory of Sculpture Parks & Gardens would be your go-to source. For all its insanity, the Internet continues to amaze.

Copses of trees and bushes ring the college’s wide parking lots, giving its small cluster of buildings a semi-suburban feel. A small creek runs through campus, and signs next to a small bridge over it say Turtle Xing, with turtle silhouettes on the yellow traffic signs to remind us to watch out for shelled reptiles in easy-to-smash spots. Not sure I’d ever seen one of those kind of warnings before.

The sculpture isn’t off in some field. A representative is right there in your face at the edge of a parking lot.Oakton College

A little more subtle, but just as close to the parking lot.Oakton College

Closer to class buildings.Oakton College

“Pink Hydrant 15” by musician and sculptor Irwin Hepplewhite.Oakton College

Never mind, I made that up.

“Silver Oak” by Barry Tinsley (1983). A Chicago artist, still apparently active. Glad to hear it.http://dees2.blogspot.com/2009/05/irwin-hepplewhite-and-terrifying.html

I had to puzzle that for a moment. Chi-ca-guo. Oakton College

Of course, Chicago, “wild onion,” a version of an Algonquin word for the weedy onion marshes where the Chicago River met Lake Michigan, pre-Fort Dearborn.Oakton College

This was good to learn: a certified wildlife habitat.Oakton College Oakton College

I know there’s a nonprofit and good intentions behind that designation, but I can’t help but laugh a little. Where is this certificate posted, anyway? Can animals request a copy?

I know where it must be: in this building.Oakton College
Oakton College Oakton College

That’s a show-stopper: The Margaret Burke Lee Science and Health Careers Center, a 2010s addition to campus. Modernist glass blended with Prairie School (?) and I’m too dense to know what else, but there’s some exceptional design skill on display in the structure, which is perched next to the campus’ central pond. Maybe the other buildings, presentable enough but a little ordinary, envy Margaret for her green-tint good looks.

Design by Legat Architects, a regional practice. Nice work, Legat.

Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Des Plaines

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We happened to be in Des Plaines recently, so we dropped in on the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It occurred to me that it had been a long time since I’d been there, and that Yuriko never had been. The last time I visited was well before I went to the Guadalupe shrine in Mexico City or even the one in Wisconsin.Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

“Its origins date to 1987, when a group of Chicago-area Catholics decided to launch a mission to promote devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe using a special pilgrim statue from the shrine in Mexico City,” says the Catholic News Agency.

“In 1995, construction began on an outdoor shrine in Des Plaines modeled after Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City, where the Virgin Mary appeared to the indigenous Mexican St. Juan Diego in 1531. The Virgin Mary left her image on his cloak, known as a tilma, and asked him to build a church on a hilltop.”Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Their depiction is a replica of the sculpture at the basilica in Mexico, known as “The Offering,” by sculptor Aurelio G.D. Mendoza from Guadalajara (d. 1996), a man of considerable talents, known as El Mago de la Escenografia (The Magician of Scenography).

Nearby.Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

“The Apostles Cross,” an artistic representation of the vision received by the Mexican mystic, Concepción Cabrera de Armida, and the spirituality of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit.

Ollie Warhol

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Today was about as raw an April day as I can remember, with more cold rain and snappy winds to come tomorrow. This year it’s as if early February traded places with early April, though not quite. At least the snow melted.

With a digital camera, anyone can create Warhol-like images.

When Andy Warhol died in 1987, he was already playing with computerized images. What if he’d lived long enough to create web sites? What would he have done with social media?

All that occurred to me at the catch-as-catch-can retailer Ollie’s, though the thought could have been inspired by many retailers.

The last time I was there, more politically inspired dog toys had turned up.

I was tempted to acquire Slick Willie to go with Bernie. But no. Not because we don’t have a dog any more. She would have chewed such toys to bits, so it wouldn’t have been for her, but just a whimsy of mine. But I have enough useless items. Not, however, enough useless images, which take up a lot less physical space.

Ashes to Ashes, Paw Prints to Paw Prints

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Maundy Thursday has come around again, which seems like a good time to knock off posting until Easter Monday, which also happens this year to be April Fools’, known for its pranks and hoaxes. But really, isn’t every day a day for hoaxes in our time?

Or at least absurd assertions. From Wired yesterday: “A non-exhaustive list of things that are getting blamed for the bridge collapse on Telegram and X include President Biden, Hamas, ISIS, P. Diddy, Nickelodeon, India, former president Barack Obama, Islam, aliens, Sri Lanka, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, Wokeness, Ukraine, foreign aid, the CIA, Jewish people, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Covid vaccines, DEI, immigrants, Black people, and lockdowns.”

A pleasant Easter to all. Easter is the last day of March this year. Twenty-seven years ago, it was March 30, which put Maundy Thursday on March 27, 1997, which is a date with some resonance for us: we found out we were going to be parents.

Both daughters were in town at the same time for a few days earlier this month. It was unfortunately the same week that Payton died, though the visits were scheduled well before that happened.

Still, we could all enjoy dinner together two evenings (at home, and out the next day at a familiar Korean barbecue joint) and share our recollections of the dog, among other things.

We received the dog’s ashes this week, along with a paw print. I didn’t know memorial paw prints were a thing, but it seems they are.

Truth was, she could be prickly. But once you knew that, you could have fun with it. One way to get a rise was to slowly approach her food. In this video, about a month before her death, I told her, “I’m coming for your food,” but naturally no language other than body language was necessary.

She was already having trouble walking then – the hind legs were the first to fail her – and spent much of her time in our living room, among towels to catch her pee when she couldn’t quite get up to go to the door, and didn’t bother to tell us that by yapping, in which case we could help her go outside. Often enough, of course, she’d miss the towels. We didn’t care much. It was still good to have her around at all.

Deer Grove Ahead of the Greening

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Not long ago, on one of the warmish days we had before the more recent chilly run, we made our way back to Deer Grove Forest Preserve in Palatine, one of the many such green spaces in the northwest suburbs. Except it hadn’t greened yet. The last time we were there, during the pandemic spring of 2020, it was full spring and lush green.

Still, there’s a certain charm to the slumbering brown-gray earth, provided the air isn’t that cold and the paths are fairly dry. Had a good walk.Deer Grove Forest Preserve

Trees before budding. It won’t be long.Deer Grove Forest Preserve Deer Grove Forest Preserve

Grassland waiting to green up. That will come even sooner.Deer Grove Forest Preserve

Recent rains – including much of yesterday – are hastening things along. I cracked the window last night to listen to the micro-splash rhythm of the falling rain, but didn’t leave it open too long, as cold air snuck in along with the pleasurable sounds.

The Odds

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A random thought today: Do the Irish bookies take bets on when and which company will be indicted next for antitrust violations? One table of odds for the U.S. and a different one for the European Union?

Not sure why I thought of that. Just one of those passing notions.