The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

Posted on June 1, 2016 by admin

Before we went, I was sure the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force would be packed with other visitors. After all, more than a million people visit every year, according to the Air Force; airplanes are popular. The museum is free. Or at least, no extra charge beyond taxation. And while Dayton isn’t the largest of places, it isn’t in the middle of nowhere either.

So I’ll bet attendance was high on Memorial Day weekend Saturday. But the place didn’t feel crowded, except maybe in the gift shop. The museum soaks up people like the best of sponges. Its current three buildings — enormous hangers — total about 750,000 square feet and house more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles.

The exhibits are organized chronologically, beginning with the first aeroplane that the Wrights sold to the U.S. Army, the Wright 1909 Flyer, and ending in a hall of ballistic missiles. Not all of the aircraft are American made or were even in the service of the United States. Among the early airplanes are those from all the nations that fielded warplanes in WWI, such as a Sopwith Camel, Nieuport 28, Curtiss Jenny, Caproni, and a Fokker Dr. I triplane, which the museum is careful to point out is associated with Rittmeister Manfred von Richthofen, though the one on display is a replica, since none survive.

I’d never seen most of those planes before. Or a Caquot observation balloon. The museum has the only one in existence. “The hydrogen-filled balloon could lift two passengers in its basket, along with charting and communications equipment, plus the weight of its mooring cable, to a height of about 4,000 feet in good weather,” notes the museum.

Hydrogen filled. The Western Front Association says of the balloons: “That the jobs of the balloon commander and observer were hazardous in the extreme is self-evident, and casualties were correspondingly high.” I believe it. The picture above doesn’t show the open gondola hanging from the balloon. The gondola of death, it was.

Not all of the artifacts are aircraft. Equipment associated with airplanes, and the wars they fought in, is also plentiful at the museum. One particularly amusing item in the early aircraft gallery was a Model T ambulance.

Not because ambulances are funny, but because of the “Gunga Din” parody about the vehicle, which is quoted on a sign near the artifact. The full poem is here.

Yes, Tin, Tin, Tin!
You exasperating puzzle, Hunka Tin!
I’ve abused you and I’ve flayed you
But by Henry Ford who made you,
You are better than a Packard, Hunka Tin!

The difference between the WWI-era (and interwar) aircraft and WWII-era aircraft is astounding. That isn’t a revelation, but when you walk from one display to the other, the difference strikes you. The 1909 Flyer evolved into the likes of a B-29 Superfortress in only about 35 years. Think of the ingenuity.

The WWII gallery includes all kinds of interesting planes. Nothing like a modern war to spur the creation of weapons. Such as a Curtiss P-40, this one painted to represent one of the Flying Tigers that fought in China.

A B17-G, the Shoo Shoo Baby, which I understand will eventually be moved to the Smithsonian. The famed Memphis Belle, currently under restoration, will take its place as the museum’s prime B-17.

A B-24D Liberator, the Strawberry Bitch. The same kind of plane as Lady Be Good, which vanished in 1943 only to be found as wreckage in 1958 in the Libyan Desert.
And of course, Bockscar. The Smithsonian got Enola Gay, the NMUSAF got Bockscar. Nearby were models of Little Boy and Fat Man, sitting beside each other. The nicknames were apt.
Those are only some of the larger WWII planes. Also on exhibit were plenty of others, such as more bombers and fighters, transports, trainers, and so on, including some enemy aircraft, notably a Zero and a Nazi jet fighter, built by Messerschmitt too late in the war to do the Germans much good. I’m pretty sure I saw a Zero at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, but the jet was a new one for me.

Ann was interested to learn about the artwork on the aircraft and the squadron patches. These were ways of individualizing something mass produced, I told her. Besides the Strawberry Bitch — which has a painting of a redheaded woman on one side — many of the other airplanes sported drawings for her to inspect. There was also a display case devoted to squadron patches, including many designed by the animators at Disney, who were doing their bit for the war effort, along with sending Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck et al. off in cartoons to flight the Axis.

Apparently the patches were quite popular among airmen. Then again, I suppose most of them had grown up during the heyday of Disney cartoon shorts. My own favorite patch shows Donald Duck hoisting a cartoon bomb, the round sort with a fuse that cartoon anarchists used to hoist.

The next hangers featured aircraft and other items from the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War. We went through these a little more quickly than WWI or WWII, since the vastness of it all was beginning to wear us down. Even so, these galleries had a lot to recommend them, such as in the Korean collection: a vast Douglas C-124 cargo plane; a B-29 (“Command Decision”) that you can walk through; and a MiG.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a MiG, so famed in air-combat lore. A North Korean pilot took this one out on a mission and used it as a handy way to defect.

One hallway featured an exhibit about the Berlin Airlift. I was amused to see this.
It’s the work of TS Jake Schuffert, who did cartooning for the Airlift Times. I didn’t know the airlift had its own paper, but apparently so. Noted as niche cartoonist, he died in 1998.

Dayton ’16

Posted on May 31, 2016 by admin

Not long before Memorial Day weekend this year, my professional duties took me to AAA’s web site, and a press release there told me that among American travelers, “the top destinations this Memorial Day weekend, based on AAA.com and AAA travel agency sales, are: Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Washington, DC, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Boston, Honolulu, Los Angeles and South Padre Island.”

We didn’t go to any of those destinations last weekend, as interesting as they all are. (I’ll bet Myrtle Beach has its charms; it’s the only one on the list I’ve never been to.) Instead, we went to Dayton as the primary destination, with shorter stops in Wapakoneta, also in Ohio, along with Indianapolis and Fort Wayne — the last two for meals. So it was a western Ohio trip.

Ohio, land of the curious swallowtail flag. The Ohio Burgee, it’s called.
Or maybe we took an aerospace-themed trip, since we spent the better part of Saturday at the sprawling, extraordinary National Museum of the U.S. Air Force just outside of Dayton, on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It has a reputation as one of the best aviation museums in the country, often mentioned in the company of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. Now that I’ve been there, I can see why.

The Wright brothers were from Dayton, and the Wright sister too. Four boys and a girl survived to adulthood, and all but the eldest brother were ultimately involved in the business of flying machines. These days, the city features the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park. Part of the park includes a museum dedicated to the Wrights — and, curiously enough, to Ohioan poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who did have a remarkable life. After lunch on Saturday, we took in the Wright-Dunbar exhibits, despite our tired feet.

On Sunday morning, as my family lolled in our room, I went to the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum in Dayton. Covering 200 hilly, wooded acres, Woodland is a fitting name and most aesthetic burying ground I’ve seen since Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

We came by way of I-65 to Indianapolis and then I-70 to Dayton. I didn’t want to return the same way, so we headed north on I-75 to Wapakoneta, boyhood home of Neil Armstrong, and current location of a spaceflight museum. From there, US 27/33 took us to Fort Wayne, a city I’d never visited, despite its relative proximity.

I also wanted to drive US 30 from Ft. Wayne across Indiana. It turned out to be a fairly fast way to traverse the state, something like the Trans-Canada Highway out in Saskatchewan or Manitoba; that is, as a divided highway, but not limited access one.

Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles in Indianapolis offered the best meal of the trip, so good and filling that we barely needed to eat the rest of the day after stopping there at about 4 EDT on Friday (but still 3 CDT according to our stomachs). Chicken and pancakes were on the menu, which I had this time around.

When we came out of Maxine’s, I saw something I’d only ever heard about: a Megabus.The bus on the Chicago-Indianapolis run. I suppose there on N. East St., toward the eastern edge of downtown, is where it picks up its budget-minded passengers. According to the web site, the price for Chicago-Indianapolis is “from $25.” I’m not sure how much that really would be, but at least the bus offers wifi. They know their market.

Lake Powell, 1997

Posted on May 22, 2016 by admin

In May 1997, we visited Arizona. First Phoenix, then up north to Flagstaff, Cameron and eventually Page, the town created to house workers who built the Glen Canyon Dam, which in turn created Lake Powell. It’s an impressive bit of work.

I understand that Glen Canyon, now flooded by the lake, was even more impressive, but it’s something I’m not ever likely to see.

The dam is 710 feet from bedrock and holds back more than 26.2 million acre-feet of water, or 9 trillion gallons, when Lake Powell is full. (Puny, though, when compared to Lake Superior’s 3 quadrillion gallons; but no dam holds it back.) It’s the last of the major North American dams, started in 1956 and completed in ’66. I suspect that had the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation delayed even a few years in starting, it would never have happened, so completely did public opinion change.

We took the tour, which goes inside the dam to see various features, such as one of the massive turbines. In the gift shop, I bought A Story That Stands Like a Dam by Russell Martin (1989), and read it during the rest of the trip, and at home. It too is an impressive piece of work. As an Amazon reviewer put it: “This book is absolutely loaded with information on Glen Canyon, Glen Canyon Dam, Lake Powell, and Page, Arizona — the nearby town of dambuilders. Its author has tried incredibly hard, and succeeded, at writing a book that is unbelievably fair, and that presents the controversial story of the building of Glen Canyon Dam in as truthful and as unbiased a light as possible.”

Maybe Lake Powell should be the Glen Canyon again. Some future decade, perhaps. You can make the case. But for now, Lake Powell is there, and one thing to do is take a boat ride.

The boat we took had a destination: Rainbow Bridge National Monument, which is just across the border in Utah.

The NPS says: “On May 30, 1910, President William Howard Taft created Rainbow Bridge National Monument to preserve this ‘extraordinary natural bridge, having an arch which is in form and appearance much like a rainbow, and which is of great scientific interest as an example of eccentric stream erosion.’

“After the initial publicity, a few more adventurous souls journeyed to Rainbow Bridge. Teddy Roosevelt and Zane Grey were among those early travelers who made the arduous trek from Oljeto or Navajo Mountain to the foot of the Rainbow. Visiting Rainbow Bridge was made easier with the availability of surplus rubber rafts after World War II, although the trip still required several days floating the Colorado River plus a seven-mile hike up-canyon.”

Since the creation of Lake Powell, it’s an easy trip by boat. Good to see while you can. One of these days, like the Old Man in the Mountain in New Hampshire, which we saw about eight years before its collapse, erosion or some fool is going to bring the natural bridge down.

Audubon Zoo, 1989

Posted on May 15, 2016 by admin

One of the places you can visit riding the St. Charles Streetcar Line in New Orleans, if you’ve a mind to, is Audubon Park. That’s what we did May 1989, even though it was (of course) hot and sticky that day. The park is home to the Audubon Zoo. Just the thing when you’ve had enough, for the moment, of the human-oriented diversions of the French Quarter.

These days there are about 2,000 animals in residence. It probably wasn’t much different then, spread out on 58 acres between St. Charles and the Mississippi, with a good many open-air exhibits. I don’t specifically remember Monkey Hill, but the story about that rise — built by the WPA — is that it was used to show local children what a hill looked like.

That wouldn’t have made much of an impression on me, considering that I came a place with hills. One time my friend Tom and I took a visitor from the East Coast to a substantial hill in Austin, and walked up it, just for the purpose of curing her of the notion that “Texas is flat.”

We took an amble through the zoo, seeing the likes of ostriches.

And rhinos. Or is that a hippo out of the water? I can’t quite tell just looking at the picture. Not visible here, but I’m pretty sure we saw a number of gators lurking around these waters.

Then there was this fellow.

As far as I can tell, that’s not Casey the gorilla, who seems to be locally known but who didn’t arrive at the zoo until long after we’d been there.

Greener and Greener

Posted on May 10, 2016 by admin

The greening of northern Illinois happens every spring, but I never get tired of it. Here are a few views on Saturday of the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve, a place we’ve been going for some years.

There are expanses of grass at the forest preserve.
Along with thickets.
The blooming dogwood.
And the eagerly exploring dog, mostly exploring with her nose.
Provided, of course, you take the dog out for a special-treat walk among the May greenery.

The DuPage Society of Model Engineers’ Labor of Love, in the Basement

Posted on May 4, 2016 by admin

In the basement of the DuPage County Historical Museum is something you don’t see in too many local museums. Or too many places, though the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago has an enormous one: a model railroad display. The DuPage County model railroad isn’t as large as Science and Industry’s, but it’s plenty big enough: over 2,000 feet of HO track and train cars, and seemingly countless model buildings and vehicles and trees and people and animals, all visible at closer and further range behind a series of windows.

The DuPage Society of Model Engineers created the display 50 years ago as a clear labor of love, and it was ready for the public to see when the museum opened in 1967. I read that a model of this size and complexity isn’t ever really complete, so I imagine there have been a lot of changes over the years as enthusiasts come and go. Members of the society are on hand on the 3rd and 5th Saturdays of the month to oversee its operation, so we got to see three middle-aged gentlemen operating the display, including replacing one of the trains on the track when it derailed.

Supposedly the display highlights some of DuPage County’s railroads and landmarks, but it’s really a blend of actual places (such as the Adams Library) and more fanciful re-creations of the American landscape between about 1900 and 1950. Three HO scale trains were running, one freight train and two interurbans. One of the interurbans featured a sleek art deco engine and cars, something like the Pioneer Zephyr, though not quite the same (the actual Pioneer Zephyr, long since retired, is at Science and Industry).

“That an Amtrak train?” Yuriko asked.

“No, Amtrak doesn’t have that much style,” I answered.

We also saw, in no particular order, train yards, train sheds, a roundabout, water tanks, depots, stations, small factories, storage sheds, bridges, stores, houses, churches, cars, trucks, signs, horses, dogs, cats and tiny figures of people doing innumerable things: walking, riding bikes and motorcycles, working, playing, lying around, even hang gliding. There was a biker gang and a haunted house in the style of 1313 Mockingbird Ln. If I’d looked longer, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were hobos.

The detail was incredible. Beside many of the tracks were extra ties or random pieces of lumber. The coal yards seemed to sport little lumps of coal. Inside a sewing machine shop were two customers and a sewing machine with the minuscule letters SINGER on it. As I mentioned, most of the display evokes the first half of the 20th century, so horse and buggies were in one place, and chrome-heavy cars another. The billboard and window ads were mostly period as well. My own favorite: a sign for Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

The DuPage County Historical Museum

Posted on May 3, 2016 by admin

The DuPage County Historical Museum is housed in the former Adams Memorial Library at the corner of Main St. and Wesley St. in Wheaton, Ill. It’s a handsome structure, done in what’s known as the Richardsonian Romanesque style, and easy to admire on a clear day, though we didn’t have that luxury on Saturday.

The library was named in honor of Marilla Phipps Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, a New Englander who prospered in 19th-century DuPage County. Apparently he was a somewhat distant cousin of the president of the same name, but in any case he gave the money to build the library.

Charles Sumner Frost (1856-1931) designed the building, which was completed in 1891. Frost is better known for designing Navy Pier in Chicago, but also did a lot of railroad stations and terminals and depots, including the old Chicago and North Western Terminal (1911), which didn’t survive the 20th century. More about his work on the Adams Library is here.

The library went to a new building in the mid-1960s, and its old building became a museum in 1967. It isn’t a particularly large museum, but it has a nice collection, with rooms for a permanent display and a temporary display on the first floor, plus more in the basement and two items on the second floor.

The first-floor rooms covered DuPage County history (in the permanent gallery) and a history of wedding gowns and other traditions (temporary gallery). I enjoy local history displays of this kind, with their photos and documents and household items and ephemera of various sorts. I was particularly taken by some of the photos in the permanent exhibit, such as members of the Wheaton High School basketball team posed for a portrait taken in 1907.

Though it’s not a favorite movie of mine, the faces in the photo reminded me of lines from Dead Poets Society, as the teacher ruminates to his class on a similarly old portrait picture.

“They’re not that different from you, are they? Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they’re destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you.

“Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you.”

The second floor of museum is a large, well-appointed room with a small stage. There are only two artifacts on that floor, but they’re good ones. Hanging high on the wall is the 36th Illinois Infantry Regiment National Colors, which was taken with the boys in blue to Pea Ridge, Perryville, Stone River, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville, among other places.

“Made of painted silk, this flag was brought back to Springfield after the war,” the museum’s web site says. “Recently professionally conserved with intensive cleaning and precise repair of the fabric, the restoration of the flag has ensured that it will be an educational tool for generations to come… The National Colors will remain at the DuPage County Historical Museum through July 2018, on loan from the Illinois State Military Museum.”

Also on loan from the Illinois State Military Museum is the 8th Illinois Cavalry Guidon. The museum notes that, “beginning in early 1862, the 8th Illinois was stationed in Washington D.C. and attached to the Army of the Potomac, fighting in their first battle at Williamsburg. The unit also fought in a number of engagements, including Mechanicsville (Seven Days Battle), Hanover Court House, Seven Pines, Brandy Station, Middleburg, Upperville, and Gettysburg.” More on the flags, along with pictures of them, is here.

A Short Visit to Wheaton

Posted on May 2, 2016 by admin

Rain again Sunday night, to add to the slosh on the ground left by Saturday’s downpours. No doubt about it, the weekend was wet. Here’s the view of the water from my car on Saturday, as I waited in a shopping center parking lot.

Wheaton’s a prosperous suburb and the county seat of DuPage County, Ill., and easily accessible from where we live by surface streets. We used to go there with some frequency to visit the small but pleasant Cosley Zoo, which is operated by the Wheaton Park District, especially before recessionary pressures (apparently) inspired a new admission fee for non-Wheatonites, ca. 2010. These days there’s less demand among the younger residents of the house, who aren’t so young any more, for zoo visits.

We’d mulled going further afield on Saturday, but the persistent rain and cool temps nixed the idea of any outdoor destinations, so we headed to Wheaton. Not to the zoo, but to see the DuPage County Historical Museum, which we’ve passed by but never visited.

But first things first: lunch. I’m happy to report that the diminutive Mai Thai Cafe at Main St. and Wesley St. is still in business, and still services good Thai food at popular prices. Spicier than some other North American Thai joints, too, enough that there’s a sign posted at the restaurant warning customers to think twice about ordering the spiciest versions of its dishes.

Not far to the west on Wesley St., in Wheaton’s pleasant shopping district, we spotted a post-accident scene of the kind that makes you wonder, how did that happen, exactly? (Like this one.)

The car on the sidewalk’s clearly been smacked from behind, but it doesn’t look like it plowed through any of the planters on the sidewalk to get there. Maybe it jumped onto the sidewalk just so, narrowly missing the planters. Or did it back up onto the sidewalk somehow? If so, why, after being rear-ended? I didn’t inspect the scene closely, so I’m certainly missing an essential piece of the puzzle.

I took the shot from about a half block away, under an awning, because it was raining. Three or four other people were taking pictures from there as well. That’s the early 21st century for you: an era of easy photography that often doesn’t clarify anything.

End of the Week Debris

Posted on April 28, 2016 by admin

Rain, I don’t mind. Miserable cold at the end of April, that doesn’t seem right. That’s what we have, with the promise of slightly less miserable cold during the early days of May.

Here’s a picture of my nephew Dees, taken (probably) by one of his bandmates while they were in Atlanta. I doubt that they’d mind me posting it.A fellow I don’t know, who seems to be an Englishman — or at least an English-speaker — living in Germany, left me a message at BTST, asking whether I knew the exact location of the Goethe Institut in Lüneburg. He’d attended classes there the same summer I did in 1983, though in August, and if you Google “Goethe Institut, Lüneburg,” I’m the first hit. He must have found me that way. Guess not many other people have posted about their fond memories of the place.

He had the chance to visit Lüneburg again and wanted to see the school. Sadly, I had to tell him I didn’t know the address after all this time. It isn’t on Google Maps, so my suspicion is that it’s long closed. I vaguely remember hearing about plans to close it, even when I was there, but wouldn’t swear to anything.

Apparently he made it to Lüneburg in late April and didn’t see the school. He did find that it was snowing.

If I remember correctly, that’s the handsome Lüneburg Rathaus. But I never saw it during a light snow.

The Rio Grande Rift

Posted on April 24, 2016 by admin

Our first trip after Y2K didn’t end civilization as we know it was to San Antonio and then Santa Fe, by way of some other places in New Mexico, in April 2000. Those other places included Albuquerque, Madrid, NM and Bandelier National Monument and Los Alamos.

Here’s a roadside view of the Rio Grande as it runs through New Mexico. It isn’t an international border at this point, but is an unusual land form nevertheless.

I didn’t realize until much more recently that I was looking down at a rift. Or that, to quote the various scientists who put together this page about the rift, “most rifts are found along mid-ocean ridges. Only a few are located on land, such as the Rio Grande Rift, East African Rift (sometimes referred to as the Great Rift) and Lake Baikal, a lake-filled rift in Russia.”

I’m not exactly sure where the overlook was, but my guess would be along New Mexico 4 just outside of the national monument, and looking over the river into another section of the monument. Note the haze in the distance. That’s probably one of the controlled burns occurring when we visited. Soon, as in the very next month, a controlled burn became uncontrolled.

This is New Mexico 4, probably looking the other way from the outlook.

This is Lilly. A lot of the pictures I took on that trip involved her. Call it the first-child photography syndrome, though she was two and a half by this time.

She’s at breakfast in the place we stayed in Santa Fe. The reason we documented that particular moment (I think) was that we weren’t entirely sure she’d behave during breakfast — that is, stay seated and eat her food without much fuss. But she did. I guess she was just then learning to appreciate the joys of breakfasts on the road.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There