Three More Walker’s Point Churches

Posted on July 21, 2022 by admin

Despite Sunday’s walking tour being exterior only, we were able to go inside three churches that day. One of them, Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, wasn’t actually on the tour.

It was, however, about a block from where we parked the car for lunch, and after eating we had a few extra minutes for a look. Mass was about to start.

One church I mentioned yesterday, Iglesia Apostolica, happened to be open when we passed by on the tour, because the service had just ended. We asked whether we could take a look, and one of the men at the door — he might have been the pastor, or not — told us we could come in, absolutely. So we did, about a dozen of us. Though a church building for many years, the interior was spare, almost wholly unadorned.

Then again, a church is its congregation, and in those terms the place was well adorned. The church was still full of people, all socializing, entirely in Spanish. All ages were represented. It was a living example of U.S. Hispanic Protestantism, which is in a growth mode — as were some other churches on the tour.

A little while later, as we passed St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which curiously placed in the middle of the block rather than on a corner, a woman at the door invited us in. I believe she was a friend of the guide.

It was originally a Lutheran church, and originally in a different location.

Note the scaffolding, buckets and fans. A few weeks earlier, as the roof was being replaced, wind blew off the tarp keeping the rain out — when no one was around, apparently. In came water, and much damage resulted.

Does insurance consider that an Act of God? I doubt the parishioners do — more like an act of carelessness on the part of the tarp hangers.

Walking By Walker’s Point Churches

Posted on July 20, 2022 by admin

The walking tour we took Sunday was to look at churches in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee. When I signed up for it, I imagined we’d walk around and go inside a handful of churches, as we’ve done on the tours we’ve taken in Chicago.

But no. As I looked at the list of churches handed out by our guide, I thought — we’re going into all of these? Nine churches were on the list. Then it dawned on me that we’d be walking past all of them and not seeing their interiors.

That was a little disappointing. Still, despite the steamy heat of the afternoon, our church walkabout had its charms, including Parroquia de San Patricio (St. Patrick’s Parish), completed in 1895.

St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, dating from 1885.

A structure that’s now Iglesia Apostolica, but when the church was built in 1894, it was Vorfreslsers Norski Evangelical Lutheran Kirke. The only surviving Norwegian-style church in the city, the guide said, and then offered some architectural details about what made that so. I can’t remember a single one.

The charming little St. Michail Ukrainian Catholic Church, built as a Lutheran church in 1894.

The former St. Wenceslas, first built in 1883. Now it’s St. Ann Chapel, and part of a Catholic school. The entrance dates from 1914 and, for all its age, still looks tacked on to me.

The Iglesia Evangelica Bautista, originally dating from 1900 as a Norwegian Evangelical Free Church.

All that only goes to show that even in matters of religious sites, time flies, things change.

Walker’s Point, Milwaukee

Posted on July 19, 2022 by admin

Over the weekend, we came across a sign for a really full-service vehicle repair shop.

Higley Motor Co. happens to be in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee, and we happened to wander by the sign, and I happened to read it. Read random things and sometimes you’ll be rewarded with a smile.

On Sunday, we popped off north at about 9 a.m., planning to take a Historic Milwaukee walking tour in the Walker’s Point neighborhood at 1 p.m. Extra time was built in, so we could visit the area on our own for a while, and have lunch.

Walker’s Point is south of downtown Milwaukee, and sliced in half by I-94. As Milwaukee neighborhoods go, it’s an old one. The oldest one in fact, according to the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. A 19th-century landowner, George Walker, lent the area his name. Immigrants have lived there pretty much since day one — one influx after (and upon) another. These days it’s heavily Hispanic.

Old the neighborhood may be, but there’s also evidence of redevelopment in our time, such as this (I assume) apartment building under way.

Other buildings have been subject to major modification.

Or may be soon.

Soon we dropped by Zócalo Food Truck Park.

“A range of diverse indoor and outdoor gathering places are woven throughout the project,” says The Kubala Washatko Architects, who designed the park, which was completed in 2019.

“The team repurposed an existing two-story structure into a tavern, serving as Zocalo’s social heart. Food trucks are positioned to create room-like spaces while a garage was converted to covered dining and private event space. Overhead lights, shading devices, game area, and vibrant mural walls create dynamic exterior social zones.”

A number of options awaited us.

We picked Anytime Arepa.

As the name says, you can get the northern South American cornmeal sandwich arepa at that truck. Empanadas, too. We had one of each. They both hit the spot. The same spot, namely that we were looking for a good lunch, which we ate under one of the “shading devices” mentioned by the architect (a tarp over some tables).

Amble in Lords Park, Elgin

Posted on July 18, 2022 by admin

Rain fell overnight on Friday and into the wee hours of Saturday, which re-greened the grass some. It’s been dry enough so that I haven’t mowed in a few weeks, but now it looks like my bourgeois householder impulses (as spotty as they can be) are going to kick in, and I’ll be out there some late afternoon soon, adjusting the height of the grass.

But not yet. After the rain, Saturday was warm and a little steamy, but that didn’t keep us from popping out to Elgin for a lunch from Gabuttø Burger, and then a visit to Lords Park in that same suburb. It’s been a few years since our last visit to the place, whose contour rolls slightly and that the city keeps manicured.

The 108 acres of the park are lush green in July, after recent rains and a rainy spring.

One of the park’s distinctions is a small zoo, which has existed in one form or another as long as the park — over 100 years. Once upon a time, that included a bear pit, but that kind of animal display has mostly disappeared. The zoo doesn’t have bears at all these days. Except for some large examples, it’s mostly farm animals these days.

No dogs allowed in the zoo — we brought ours on this particular trip — so we didn’t go in. Still, you can see a number of the animals by walking around the perimeter, including some buffalo and elk, besides a few farm animals.

We took a stroll around the park’s large pond.

At one of the benches under some shade, we saw a family dressed in Sunday clothes, with perhaps another relative or a family friend taking portraits. A young man and woman, with what looked like twin girls, maybe three or four years old. For some of the pictures, the visibly pregnant woman held a set of sonograms in front of her.

At least two quinceañeras and a wedding seemed to be under way. That is, we saw more than one cluster of people dressed for those kinds of occasions, out and about with photographers.

The actual celebrations were probably in the Pavilion, a handsome structure erected in 1898 to replace a structure that had burned down after only a few months in existence. The earlier building had gone up shortly after local landowners (George and Mary Lord) gave the land for the park to the city.

We didn’t go inside — events were going on, after all, and we had a dog. The City of Elgin notes in its web site: “The elegant Pavilion features a Victorian banquet facility with hardwood floors, vaulted ceilings, picket doors, large windows with scenic park views, a covered wrap-around porch, and outdoor ceremony grounds with ponds, fountains and wooden bridge.”

Well, we did see the “ceremony grounds,” as pictured above. I don’t know that I’d call Lords Park a hidden treasure, exactly, but it is obscure (unless you live nearby) and a good spot to amble.

Light Years Ahead

Posted on July 17, 2022 by admin

Fifty-three years ago, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were on their way to the Moon, an occasion to recall each July, not only for those who remember, but also those who do not. Not long ago, I happened across this remarkable video about a very specific, and well known interval of only a few minutes in that mission: the Eagle’s final approach to the lunar surface.

More specifically, the video is a lecture about what the guidance computer was doing and why during those fraught minutes, including a lot of detail that isn’t that well known. Posted by the National Museum of Computing, I was skeptical I would make it all the way through. I was wrong.

One Robert Wills, a software engineer with a clear enthusiasm for the computing that made the Apollo missions possible, tells the tale in simple enough terms — but not too simple — that a non-specialist like me can understand much of it, if not everything. No mean feat, as attested by the non-trivial number of teachers and professors who cannot do so.

I knew a fair amount of the story, but hardly all of it, and the video filled in a lot that I didn’t know. That should be the goal of any video with any claims to being educational, I believe.

The Dixie

Posted on July 14, 2022 by admin

We arrived in North Webster, Indiana, not long after 11 a.m. on July 3. We stopped there because the night before, I read the Atlas Obscura item about the Dixie.

“Steamboats first began sailing on the Webster Lake as early as 1902,” the item explains. “In 1914, Captain Joseph Breeck began operating a 65-foot, wooden-hulled sternwheeler named the Dixie, which today is the oldest of its kind still in operation.

“The original Dixie was later replaced by Captain Breeck with the current 76-foot steel-hulled Dixie in 1929, and he continued to operate the ship until his retirement in 1939.”

Eventually, in the early 21st century, a nonprofit acquired the vessel, renovating and updating it, paid for in large part through local donations. Now it makes tourist runs on Webster Lake in the summer months. We caught the 1 p.m. sailing.

The day was clear and very warm, perfect for a lake outing. Dixie wasn’t packed, but a fair number of people rode on both lower and upper decks. Tickets were a bargain: $7 for adults. Good for the nonprofit — it isn’t out to gouge tourists.

Dixie is a sternwheeler, and here’s the wheel. At the stern.

A moment before I took that picture, a boy of about six was standing at the rail, looking down at the wheel. His mother encouraged him to leave, though I hadn’t said anything to her. I was ready to wait my turn.

“He’s fascinated by the wheel,” she said.

“I bet he is,” I said approvingly, but I don’t think she heard me. Managing a small child can be distracting. But if that was his first ride on a sternwheeler, I hope she made note of it on his ticket, and that the family is packratish enough so that he finds it sometime in the 2070s.

As tour boat patter went, Dixie’s taped program was well crafted — a voice talking about the ship, the lake and the surrounding land, with some interludes of peppy but not overwhelming banjo and guitar instrumentals. More actual history than you get on some tours, but not an overload. No intentionally bad jokes, either, but some good detail, especially describing the earlier days of the Dixie.

Capt. Breeck wasn’t a tour operator. He was master of a small working ship, crossing the lake in clement weather to deliver cargo and packages, as well as passengers, such as womenfolk visiting the stores in the town of North Webster. Dixie also carried groceries that it sold, and for a while the captain — clearly a jack of some trades, anyway — operated a small smithy at the back of the vessel.

His successors eventually evolved into tour operators as the surrounding farms gave way to postwar pockets of resort-like development. By now at least three generations have taken rides, including first dates of later married couples, and people taken by their grandparents who are now taking their grandchilden.

Got some views from both decks.

The presentation’s detail about the shoreline is a bit of a blur — the boat docked here or there sometimes, the captain had his house at this other place, that island in the middle of the lake is owned by some notable Indiana family. The names came and went: Fisherman Cove, Miller’s Landing, Stumpy Flats, Weimer’s Landing.

But my ears perked up during the talk about the two sizable hotels that used to be on the lake. One was the Yellow Banks Hotel.

“A very grand hotel, built in 1902,” says the Dixie web site. “The original hotel and its wooden rowboats were painted yellow… This was a scheduled stop for the Dixie until the early 1960s. In the late 1960s the hotel changed owners and fell into disrepair. It briefly became an Italian restaurant (Novelli’s) in the late 1970s, but was dismantled in 1980. Dillinger and his gang stayed at the Yellow Banks Hotel, probably in October 1933 or April 1934.”

The Epworth Forest Hotel (from the web site).

The Epworth had an outdoor amphitheater. “The Dixie would pickup passengers in this protected cove on windy days,” the web site continues. “In 1955 the Dixie began hosting Epworth Forest’s production of Showboat. Once per year the Dixie became the stage for this off-Broadway play.

“By 1964 the cast and production became too large for the boat. From 1964 through 1980, the Dixie would simply deliver the cast of Showboat to this amphitheater for their annual performance. By 1981 the new owners of the Dixie had cancelled this tradition.”

Both of these hotels were cancelled, too, in the way things are usually canceled, not as the result of some moral outrage, but rather by the course of business. By the late 20th century, the economics of even a small resort area like Webster Lake meant that single-family homes, short-term rentals and condos became the norm along the shore.

Plenty of other watercraft were in the lake on that second day of the Independence Day long weekend. We got a lot of waves from passersby, and most everyone on the Dixie waved back. Us too.

I was out and about throughout the hour and a half or so the tour lasted, though I spent most of my time on the lower deck. My deck companions across the way didn’t, as far as I noticed, get up and move about.

They did shift a few times, though.

In Indiana, You Take Vistas Where You Can Get Them

Posted on July 13, 2022 by admin

Our first back yard hibiscus of the summer. There will be many more for weeks to come, since the plants thrive with scarcely any effort on our part.

Before we went to Indiana this month, I got wind of the Hanson Ardmore Quarry Observation Tower in Fort Wayne. Turned out it wasn’t far from where we stayed, so after my jaunt to Lindenwood Cemetery, we took a look.

Tower might not quite be the word. It’s more of a fenced-in observation deck. But Hanson — a part of HeidelbergCement, a German building materials conglomerate no doubt controlled by shadowy billionaires — calls it a tower on the sign. The structure is at the end of a small parking lot that’s open to the public.

Regardless of the nomenclature, quite a view.

It was a Sunday, so the place was quiet. Still, Hanson has been digging limestone at this site for 80 years, and it is a big hole in the ground. Various sources, such as Roadside America, claim the quarry is 1,000 feet deep, but I don’t think so.

I’d say maybe 300 or 400 feet. Horseshoe Bend is 1,000 feet deep, and this is no Horseshoe Bend. Still, it isn’t something you see very often, a vista into a working quarry.

Lindenwood Cemetery & Johnny Appleseed Park

Posted on July 12, 2022 by admin

I didn’t see the grave of Art Smith in Fort Wayne early this month. I wasn’t looking for it, because I’d never heard of Art Smith. Only after reading about Lindenwood Cemetery a few days ago, and some time after I visited there, did I find out about him.

Along with a fun pic.

Art Smith, early aviator, Bird Boy of Fort Wayne. In 1915, he took Lincoln Beachey’s job as a exhibition pilot at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, after Beachey carked it in San Francisco Bay. Smith himself had a date with aerial death, but that was later, while flying the mail in 1926. He’s been at Lindenwood ever since.

An aside to that aside. According to Wiki at least, Smith was one of only two men trained to fly the de Bothezat helicopter, also known as the Jerome-de Bothezat Flying Octopus, which was an experimental quadrotor helicopter.

That tells me that among those magnificent young men and their flying machines — you know, early aviators — Smith must have been especially crazy even in that fearless bunch, whatever his other skills as a pilot or virtues as a human being.

Lindenwood Cemetery dates from 1859, and is the Fort Wayne’s Victorian cemetery. It looks the part. All together about 69,000 people rest there, and at 175 acres, it’s one of the larger cemeteries in Indiana. As usual, I arrived in the mid-morning, by myself.

I did see one noteworthy burial soon after arrival. That is, the memorial itself seemed to make that claim. He founded two churches, so the claim seems to have some merit.

It’s a forested area, as I’m sure was intended.

With open spots.

A scattering of funerary art.

A chapel.

An occasional mausoleum. I’ve never seen one quite like this one.

An apartment block necropolis? I hadn’t seen one quite like that, either. A more modestly priced option, probably, at least at one time.

Calvin Smith (1934-88) is remembered by someone. Someone who brings treats, including the North Carolina soda Cheerwine.

Which brings me to Johnny Appleseed, promoter of cheer cider. Hard cider, that is, something elided over in school stories about the career of John Chapman, or at least the ones I heard.

A contemporary image.

He too is buried in Fort Wayne but not, befitting his reclusive reputation, among the crowds at Lindenwood. This is Johnny Appleseed we’re talking about. He has his own park.

When I realized I was driving near his grave on Saturday evening before sunset, I took a detour to Johnny Appleseed Park, most of which features standard-issue municipal facilities, such as ballfields and picnic tables and sheltered event spaces. But one section includes Johnny’s grave.

That’s not actually the gravesite, but rather a sign about Johnny Appleseed. The nurseryman reposes on top of the hill behind the sign.

I read the sign and learned a thing or two. I didn’t know, for instance, that Chapman was also a missionary for the Swedenborgians.

“Johnny

Appleseed”

John Chapman

He lived for others

Holy Bible

1774-1845

It took me a moment to notice the apples scattered around the stone. Then I noticed the apple trees planted around it. Nice touch.

Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory

Posted on July 11, 2022 by admin

Some years ago, we passed through Fort Wayne on the way home from Dayton. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we had a choice between lunch and spending some time at the Foellinger–Freimann Botanical Conservatory, which is in downtown Fort Wayne. Lunch usually wins out in such situations, and it did then.

But I didn’t forget about Fort Wayne’s conservatory. I like a good conservatory or botanical garden, whether under glass or open air. Forty years ago, while on my first visit to D.C., I happened on my first botanical garden — the most impressive United States Botanic Garden — and that piqued my interest.

On July 2, we arrived in Fort Wayne an hour before the conservatory closed. Enough time this time. Not the most promising exterior. I’ve always been partial to domes when it comes to sheltering large numbers of plants.

Foellinger-Freimann itself is nearly 40 years old, the result of redevelopment of the site by city, with the support of the Foellinger Foundation and the Frank Freimann Charitable Trust, both local orgs.

The grounds include 24,500 square feet of indoor gardens under three structures with slanting glass roofs, plus four outside gardens. From across the street, it looks a little bland, but it works well as a green space once you’re inside.

The first roofed garden has changing displays. The theme when we went was the gardens of Paris.

Nice. I guess it could have been the gardens of Nice — that would be different. But no, Paris gets all the glory. Wonder if the Corn Palace ever does Paris as its theme.

Next, a tropical garden. Guaranteed to be lush in July or January.

Too many good-looking flowers to name. At least, I don’t want to bother with names.

And not just flowers.

But I will say this is a breadfruit plant.

In the desert habitat, the plants are sparser, as you’d expect, but no less interesting.

Various cacti, of course.

Including the fishhook barrel cactus, a painful-sounding name if there ever was one.

Outside, it was summer and the gardens weren’t short on blossoms.

Just before heading back inside, I caught this view.

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which is across the street, looks like it’s inspecting the glass of Foellinger-Freimann.

Thanks, Grandma

Posted on July 10, 2022 by admin

Fifty-five years ago, my grandmother — Grandma, always — took me on a train ride from San Antonio to Austin. I found evidence of it tucked away in an envelope at my mother’s house some time ago.

Grandma thoughtfully made a note of the fact that it was my first train ride, and the date: July 8, 1967. I was visiting Grandma for a while that summer, as I did in the years before we lived in San Antonio.

Come to think of it, the next summer while I visited her, my family moved from Denton to San Antonio. (Not the stuff of a sitcom; I knew perfectly well we were moving.) Grandma was the one who first took me to visit the house that my mother had bought, and would live in for nearly 50 years.

I find it amusing that a child counted as half a person for the purposes of train fare. Grandma thus paid fare $4.41 for one and a half riders. Adjust that for inflation, and she paid more than $38 in our current, beleaguered dollars.

Good old Missouri Pacific. Mopac.

We must have been visiting someone she knew in Austin, but I don’t remember anything about that. I do remember wisps from the ride itself, mostly the view out the window. I’m sure she knew a train ride would be a thrill for a six-year-old.

But there was more to it than that. I also remember that she told me that it might not be possible for me to ride a train when I was older, so she wanted to take me. Certainly Grandma knew, by 1967, that the writing was on the wall for U.S. passenger train service, or at least Mopac. Maybe she wanted a last ride herself, before passenger trains went the way of the buffalo.

(Outdated analogy. Like the buffalo, passenger trains came to a population bottleneck known as Amtrak, rather than total extinction.)

I imagine an older version of myself — not even now, but perhaps from mid-90s — appearing to her and saying, Grandma, I’ve ridden a lot of trains. In Europe and Asia — and once across Russia from Asia to Europe. I’ve taken the bullet train, and even Amtrak from San Antonio to San Francisco in 1990, though it was distinctly second rate.

And those are just the intercity trains. I’ve lost count of how many different subways and light rail lines I’ve taken, but it would be dozens.

She probably would have been a mite skeptical of those assertions.

It was a one-way ticket. We returned by bus the next day.

Go Greyhound. Grandma also noted that it was my first bus ride. She was being thrifty in not taking the train back, I think. The bus fare is recorded as $1.35 (just short of $12 now), though I don’t know whether that was for the two of us or just me. Even if she paid double that herself, that would have been less than the train.

She probably didn’t think buses would quit running. I don’t remember the bus ride at all.

Future me could pop up again: Grandma, I’ve been on a lot of buses, too, in lots of states and countries. I took one across Australia once. But even in America, I’ve gotten around — all the way from Boston to Los Angeles, once, and that was just part of the trip!

Isn’t that nice, she’d say, thinking at least that her grandson has a healthy imagination.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling