Lilacia Park, May 9, 2015
The Lombard park sports a wealth of lilacs, of course, such as this Hyacinthiflora lilac.
But also tulips, such as “Antoinnette.”
And “Mona Lisa.”
And “Burgundy Lace,” a fringed tulip.
Also, good old crabapple trees.
This character showed up to entertain. I think. Or maybe he just likes to dress up. Thing 1 and Thing 2 weren’t around.
I took some of the pictures and Ann took others.
How many Dairy Queens have metal plaques on their side? I couldn’t say, but I did notice that the Dairy Queen across the street from the Maple Street Chapel, there at Maple St. and Main St. in Lombard, Ill., has one.
A fairly new plaque, by the looks of it. Someone on the Lombard Historical Commission, or maybe a committee of someones, decided that the Dairy Queen sign, vintage 1955, was worthy of note. I wasn’t in the mood to find just the right angle at which to get a full picture of the sign, especially since it meant crossing and recrossing a fairly busy street, or maybe standing in the street. But I did stand under the sign and snap the neon cone.
Besides, the Internet can be counted on to provide pictures of original Dairy Queen signs in various parts of the North America, and sure enough here they are. Including the Lombard sign.
There’s a pair of benches next to the shop. We sat there and ate some ice cream.
We spent a little time in west suburban Lombard on Saturday, since it was a dry day among the many rainy ones lately, mainly to take in the pleasures of Lilacia Park in May, but also for a short walk nearby. I wanted to take another look at the Maple Street Chapel.
At the corner of Maple St. and Main St., which is about as Middle America nomenclature as you can get. Nearby streets are Willow, Ash, Elm and Hickory, and not far away are streets named for presidents.
It’s been 145 years since the chapel replaced an earlier structure, lost to fire. At one time a Congregationalist congregation met in the building, but later it became part of The First Church of Lombard, which is UCC. In its early days, the structure also had various community functions as well, such as a school and library.
These days, the church members meet for regular services nearby, with the chapel hosting various events, such as a folk concert on Saturday we were too early to see. In fact, the building was closed, so we didn’t see the inside. Apparently it’s nice.
I like the steeple.
Lightning hit it in 1994, knocking off the original cross. The replacement, I’ve read, also serves as a lightning rod.
I don’t have that many images of my maternal grandfather — most of them are at my mother’s house — but there are a few kicking around here.
The picture is dated “Mother’s Day 1963,” which was May 12, 1963, a Sunday. Grandpa — even at this late date, I can’t call him “James” or anything else — aged nearly 70, is sitting in his back yard in Alamo Heights with his dog Georgette. I remember Georgette better than Grandpa, since he died in 1966, when I was five; the dog lived until sometime in the late ’60s.
I remember the back yard pretty well from visits later than 1963. Behind him to the right is the detached office-laundry room-garage behind his house. The office even had a nickname: the Pout House, which seems to speak to some long-ago family joke. Even further back is a fence lined with bamboo, which I believe he planted.
As I mentioned before, he was Texas A&M Class of 1916 and member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during and after the Great War. He was a civil engineer by profession during the great age of 20th-century road building in Texas, and aspired to work on building the Alaska Highway, but that didn’t happen. He and Grandma (Edna, 1894-1971) currently have 13 living descendants, age 12 to age 89.
This is in McKinney, Texas. The pic manages to capture my mother on the left, me (the small face under hers), Jim (under me), Grandpa and Grandma (holding another camera?). Grandpa’s hearing aid is clearly visible. One thing I know: by this time, he was quite hard of hearing.
It’s dated Spring 1963, at some time when Grandpa and Grandma were up for a visit from San Antonio. I feel certain they would have driven up, and I hope used the parts of I-35 that were finished at the time, which would have been spanking new. As a civil engineer, I’m sure Grandpa would have appreciated it more than most (and it wouldn’t have been the crowded mess it is in the 21st century in some places).
Jay tells me, about that picture, that Grandpa grew the beard about the time Ralph was born (our cousin, born April 1963) with the idea that it would make him look more familiar to Ralph, whose father wore whiskers. “Dr. Colvin [a psychiatrist we knew] happened to see a picture of Grandpa with the beard and asked if he had been a psychiatrist. (There is, I suppose, something Viennese about it.)”
Lest we forget, today is the centennial of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. It’s getting some attention online. The latest book about the subject, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, came out recently, and I plan to read it in the near future. It’s by Erik Larson, who wrote The Devil in the White City, which is a strong recommendation, so I’m looking forward to it.
One more item from my May Day foray to downtown Chicago: “Batcolumn,” a very tall (101 feet) statue standing in front of the Harold Washington Social Security Administration building at 600 W. Madison St.
The sculpture was erected (and it must have been some job) in 1977, commissioned by the GSA. That reportedly annoyed people who objected to spending public money on making interesting things, but here it is, nearly 40 years later. I don’t know that it’s a favorite bit of public art among Chicagoans — not like the Picasso or the Bean — but everyone’s seen it, and no one seems to object to it any more. I think the government got its money’s worth.
The Swedish-born U.S. sculptor Claes Oldenburg did the work. His specialty: large versions of ordinary objects. While looking at some of his other items on line, one looked familiar right away.
It’s “Typewriter Eraser, Scale X,” which we saw at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden in Washington DC in 2011. Back in 1998, I think, I also saw “Spoonbridge and Cherry” at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
As far south as you can go in Grant Park, near the corner of Michigan Ave. and Roosevelt Rd., there’s a permanent sculpture installation called “Agora,” by the Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz.
“Agora” includes iron figures that look like this from one angle.
And like this from another.
They look alike at first glance, but actually the texture of the iron is different on each one. There are 106 of them.
They’re roughly in two groups, but some of them are at a distance from the rest. Abakanowicz cast them at the Srem Foundry in Poland from 2003 to ’06.
The work also seems to attract the attention of roving bands of Segwayers.
As I looked at the half-figures, I thought, they seem really familiar. Where have I seen them before, or at least something similar?
The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas in ’13, that’s where, which has another grouping of cast-iron figures by Abakanowicz. The headless halves were in long lines instead of milling around like at an agora.
The thing to do when walking to the southern reaches of Grant Park in downtown Chicago on a warm Friday afternoon is take a look at some of the less-famed artworks installed there. That’s what I’d do, anyway.
Such as “Hedgerow” by Chicago sculptor Lucy Slivinski, composed of vehicle exhaust pipes and reflectors and other auto oddments.
It was created in 2006, a nearby sign says, as part of an exhibit called Artists + Automobiles, for which the artists were “asked to use salvaged auto parts as the inspiration and primary material.” Yep.
Further south, and closer to Michigan Ave., is the more conventional equestrian statue of Gen. John A. Logan. He’s remembered by Civil War aficionados, but by not many others, I’d say, even in Illinois, despite the part he played in the war or in establishing Decoration Day.
There’s a John A. Logan Museum in Downstate Illinois. I didn’t know that. Its web site describes him this way: “Who was John A. Logan? General Grant’s favorite officer, one of Illinois’ most powerful Senators, Founder of Memorial Day as a national holiday, and among Mark Twain’s favorite public speakers.
“Or as historian Gary Ecelbarger has said, ‘John A. Logan may be the most noteworthy nineteenth century American to escape notice in the twenty-first century.’ What pushed him from becoming Abraham Lincoln’s bitter rival to campaigning for Lincoln’s reelection? How does an avid racist and author of Illinois’ Black Laws become an advocate for African American Civil Rights and education?
“Visit the General John A. Logan Museum and maybe you will better understand why Frederick Douglas [sic] said, if a man like Black Jack Logan can have a change of heart, then there is hope for everyone.”
His statue is on top of a (probably manmade) hillock. It’s no ordinary equestrian statue, though — it’s a Saint-Gaudens. Any statue by the creator of the Double Eagle is all right by me. Much more about the creation of the statue, which was supposed to be erected at the site of the ’93 World’s Fair but instead came to Grant Park, is at the informative Connecting the Windy City blog. When the statue was originally put there, the site wasn’t an obscure patch of a city park, but very near Central Station, an intercity passenger terminal for the Illinois Central RR, gone now for 40+ years.
Not far from Gen. Logan, I took a look at some of the concrete lampposts in the park, picking up on some details I’d never noticed before. A fair number of them look like this.
Atop the posts are globes, ringed by the zodiac.
Note the Municipal Device.
Once you learn what it is, you see it everywhere in Chicago.
May Day was a genuine spring day this year, clear and warm enough for the season. I spent some of it on a walkabout in downtown Chicago, starting west of the Loop and wandering more or less east and south until I reached Grant Park. At Congress Pkwy. and Dearborn St., I noticed barricades in front of the Auditorium Theater Building. A long line of people, many of them wearing football jerseys, stood behind them.
Then I remembered hearing on the radio that the NFL draft was being held in Chicago this year, and giving it no more thought. If I had, I’d have guessed it was in a major hotel ballroom somewhere, but it turns out it was in the Auditorium Theatre.
There, and at a large white temporary tent in Grant Park, across Michigan Ave. at Congress. As the NFL’s senior vice president of events, Peter O’Reilly, explains on league’s web site: “Every year we can’t really satisfy the demand for fans that want to be inside the theater, so now we’re creating this Draft Town in Grant Park, just across from the Auditorium Theatre, in order to allow more fans to experience the excitement of the draft.”
The line of people, a block long, was waiting to get into the tent, and I’d bet they paid hard gold coins for the thrill. A large electronic sign on the tent said, “Look, Another Profit Center for the NFL!”
Actually, it said “Chi-Town is Draft Town.”
The sidewalks along Michigan Ave. were lousy with fans wearing football jerseys and lanyards with plastic badges, which probably let them into the tent. Cops were everywhere, presumably to keep a lid on any sports riots later. (Which were probably no new thing even at the time of the Nika Riots.)
The NFL draft wasn’t on my mind when I started walking, and it didn’t remain top of mind very long. I pressed on toward the far southern end of Grant Park, away from crowds, cops and mass-market sports.
I don’t remember the last time I was in this part of Grant Park. It was a fine place to be on a warm Friday afternoon.
Last time I was in San Antonio, I dipped into my father’s collection of slides, mostly unexamined for at least 50 years, and pulled out a handful for scanning. The handwriting on the following slide said: “Jay Stribling sleeping, May 1956.” My brother that is, when he was four. No place is noted, but I suppose it was in Germany.
I looked up The Golden Geography. It’s by Elsa Jane Werner, illustrated by Cornelius De Witt, and originally published 1952. A lot of them must have been printed, since they seem easily available now online. I don’t remember it around the house in later years, which can mean only one thing. The only reason a book ever left our house is that it fell apart completely.
A casual Google search doesn’t uncover a scan of that Nancy & Sluggo comic, and it isn’t worth pursuing very far. The Eiffel Tower was a souvenir from my parents’ trip to Paris. I’m told they went without their small children, my brothers, which is what I would have done. They bought one for Jay and one for Jim, and the towers are still in my mother’s house, though not so shiny these days.
When I sent the image to Jay, he shared it with his sons. The eldest, my nephew Sam, sent us a picture of him at a similar age (in the 1980s) and in similar repose.
Time flies, things don’t change.