Catskills ’25

Posted on October 29, 2025 by admin

The highway New York 30 winds along the northwestern edge of Catskill Park because it follows the winding East Branch of the Delaware River, which would picturesquely come in and out of view as I drove that highway on the crisp late morning of October 16. I stopped at a place called Downsville. Wiki calls it “census-designated place, and former village in the town of Colchester, Delaware County, New York.”

This raises some questions. How is a village part of a town? (Colchester is marked on maps as not far away, but not on NY 30.) How does a place become a “former” village? People still clearly live there. Maybe I’ll investigate these questions sometime. Maybe not.

Village or former village, it’s at a pleasant spot on the East Branch.

I stopped because a sign directed me to a covered wooden bridge, one that crosses the East Branch about a block away from NY 30.

“The Downsville Covered Bridge is one of six covered bridges still standing in Delaware County…” explains the New York State Covered Bridge Society. “Built by Robert Murray in 1854, this 174-foot-long, single span structure incorporates the Long truss design patented on March 6, 1830 by Lieutenant Colonel Stephen H. Long of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, with an added Queenpost truss. This truss design is rare to Northeastern covered bridges.”

Nice work, Mr. Murray, and the workers who have maintained it as a vehicular bridge down to the present day.

There’s a small park on the river next to the bridge, and a parking lot. Soon after I arrived for a look-see, a large van pulled up to the lot and about a half-dozen Plain People got out. They were there for a look-see too. So we were all on the bridge together.

I try not to do ethnic profiling, but I couldn’t help thinking that a top tourist sight for Plain People might well be a covered wooden bridge. Then I wondered, how is it they came in a van? As I was leaving, I noticed a non-Plain man waiting for them in the drivers seat. The Plain People equivalent of a Shabbos goy, I suppose. Except maybe that he can work any day except the Sabbath?

Not far away in Downsville is the Paige Cemetery. I had that to myself, as usual.

New York 30 continues a long way on the shores of the Pepacton Reservoir. Still car commercial driving.

The Pepacton Reservoir, seemingly so peaceful on a brilliant autumn day, has a hell of a back story.

“It is formed by the damming of the East Branch of the Delaware River, which continues west and joins the lower Delaware River,” says NYC Environmental Protection. “It consists of one basin, approximately 15 miles in length [that] holds 140.2 billion gallons at full capacity, making it the largest reservoir in the city system by volume. It was placed into service in 1955.

“Pepacton Reservoir is one of four reservoirs in the City’s Delaware Water Supply System. As the reservoir with the largest capacity, it normally contributes more than 25% of the total daily water flow into New York City.”

Italics added, because they needed adding.

Once I left NY 30 and headed east on NY 28, which put me on a path toward the Hudson River Valley and NYC and Long Island, traffic kicked up several notches. It was still mostly a pleasant drive.

Most of the traffic was headed west into the park, opposite of the way I was going; as only to be expected on a Thursday ahead of a colorful fall weekend. The Catskills are still a destination, if not quite the Catskills of yore. Some of the old story was told to the rest of the country through TV shows in previous decades, or even more recently: namely, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Metal spaceship and robot sculptures haven’t been part of the Catskills narrative that I know of. But there they were, right off NY 28.

As part of this place of business.

Some artful metal for sure.

More.

Fabulous work, Mr. Heller, but those Space Age artifacts are of a Space Age that never quite was. Too bad.

A Public Question Mark

Posted on October 13, 2025 by admin

Early October this year was much like summer here in northern Illinois. Cooler now, but not even close to freezing just yet. Even the leaves seemed to be cooperating, delaying their colors a little longer than usual. As recently as tonight, some of the hardier crickets were still singing, or whatever you can call it.

Back to posting around October 26. Until then, stay curious.

A little context. The question mark can be found in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

My question at that exact moment last month was: is there a public restroom on the grounds of the Manitou Springs C-of-C? I’m glad to say there was.

The Basilica of St. Fidelis, Cathedral of the Plains

Posted on October 12, 2025 by admin

Today I let Google finish “Cathedral of the…” and got the following responses, top to bottom (capitalization sic): Sea, deep, Holy Angels, holy angels photos, forsaken, immaculate conception, incarnation, Madeleine, deep ds3, pines.

Cathedral of the Sea is La catedral del mar, a “Spanish drama series” that I’d never heard of, though I have been to Santa Maria del Mar. The Cathedral of the Deep and of the Forsaken appear to be aspects of electronic games, and the others are churches in various places.

Not on the list is the Cathedral of the Plains. But it’s out there, in central Kansas.

That’s a nickname, since the church isn’t actually a cathedral, but the wording does appear on its point-of-interest spot on road maps – and naturally that got my attention. Formally, the church is the Basilica of St. Fidelis, said to be the largest church west of the Mississippi by seating capacity (1,100) upon completion in 1911 in Victoria, Kansas. Conveniently (for me), some decades later I-70 was built not far away.

John T. Comès (d. 1922), a Pittsburgh architect, designed the church for a congregation of Volga German immigrants. Who had come to greater Victoria starting in the 1870s. Why Victoria? Why not? No doubt they looking for flat farmland.

Comès, an incredibly prolific specialist in Catholic churches, did a fine job.

Nice.

The Volga Germans aren’t forgotten. No doubt their descendants are all around this part of Kansas. In 1976, the townspeople erected a memorial to their immigrant ancestors, across the street from St. Fidelis. A work by Pete Felton, a “Kansan limestone carver,” according to this posting, which also mentions limestone fenceposts as important in Kansas — something else to look into sometime.

After nearly 50 years, the statues are looking a little weatherworn, but they abide.

The woman and daughters caught the light at that time of day, the afternoon of September 23.

The man and sons did not. Would sunlight have made him less – Stalinesque?

Never mind. St. Fidelis Cemetery isn’t far to the north of the basilica, and I stopped by.

A good variety of memorials in a nice setting, even if the land lacks contour and there’s no flora beyond grass and cut flowers.

Then I started to notice iron crosses.

A lot of them. That called for further investigation, and it wasn’t long before I found out that Volga Germans were known for their wrought-iron crosses.

“German-Russian blacksmiths began making wrought-iron crosses in North Dakota as early as 1884,” says an article posted by North Dakota State University. “The hand-made crosses were most prevalent in central North Dakota from the late 1880s to about 1925, when marble and granite became more popular for grave marking. Most wrought-iron crosses appear in Catholic graveyards, although a few of these markers are also found in German-Russian Lutheran graveyards.”

The article talks of their crosses in North Dakota, but notes that they are also found in the “Northern Plains.” Such as Kansas, apparently.

The Wyoming State Capitol

Posted on October 9, 2025 by admin

No skeletons were to be found at the Wyoming State Capitol last month, but you can hardly expect too many bone collections on display at state houses. The state of Wyoming does, however, want to remind visitors that they are in Wyoming.

The work is called “Spirit of Wyoming,” and it stands on the capitol grounds, created by artist Edward J. Fraughton (d. 2024). The more I look at it, the more there is to think about. Which I suppose is at least one indication of a good work of art. So the Spirit of Wyoming involves the immediate risk of catastrophic injury by being thrown from a horse? Probably not what the legislature had in mind.

Rather, it might be the determination to hang on, no matter how much or madly the horse bucks. Especially in territorial and early statehood days, that sort of determination applied to a lot of Wyomingites, whether they were cowboys or not.

I had the opportunity to walk all the way around the capitol after arriving on the cloudy but warm afternoon of September 8.

Golf leaf on a copper dome. Gold probably because it’s gold, not because Wyoming has ever produced that much. As of 2025, the state isn’t even among the top 10 all-time U.S. state producers.

I think this was the front.

It faces a long avenue. It was a Monday. Cheyenne isn’t, just yet, cursed with heavy traffic.

Also, the Wyoming state seal was to be found on that side of the building, in the sidewalk. Like in Virginia, except that you can walk on that one, like the slain tyrant it depicts. No treading on Wyoming.

Adopted in 1893, not long after statehood, and revised in 1921, the seal lists four sources of wealth and livelihoods, unusually (I think) for a state seal. They go with the cowboy and miner figures: livestock, grain, mines and oil. In our time, farming and mineral extraction, at least in terms of employment, are declining industries in Wyoming. Maybe the seal will be revised someday to include data centers, as they sprout in the Equality State.

On the other hand, Wyoming is still a major energy producer among the several states, especially when it comes to coal: 41.1 percent of the total nationwide (EIA stats), though national coal output is a much smaller pie – a dirty pie, to be sure – than it used to be. Also worth mentioning: a quarter of net electricity generation in the state is by renewables, roughly the same percentage as nationally. There is no nuclear power generation in Wyoming. When those data centers eventually get small modular reactors, that would change.

Another distinction of the Wyoming capitol is that work started on it before statehood, with ground broken in 1886. David Gibbs – later mayor of Oklahoma City, of all things – and the prolific William DuBois (a Chicago trained architect) did the design, one of restrained elegance.

This is one of the four statues at the capitol known as the Four Sisters: Truth. The others are Justice, Courage and Hope.

Though they look vintage, their niches remained empty for 131 years “for reasons that remain unclear,” according to a sign in the capitol. In more recent times, the state tapped the mononymous sculptor Delissalde to fill the niches, and the works were unveiled only in 2019.

They’re way up there.

One more thing to note: a display in the capitol lauds the state – actually the territory – for its enfranchisement of women in 1869, the first place anywhere to do so. Why Wyoming? You could chalk it up to the toughness of frontier women, but certainly women in all the other 19th-century territories were plenty tough. The broader movement to expand the franchise was already underway, though early in the game – and from the sound of things in this article at least, the territory’s move was something of a retroactively happy result “for a large, strange mix of reasons.”

Carhenge

Posted on October 3, 2025 by admin

Just how many Stonehenges are there in North America? Or rather, Stonehenge-like structures, standing out in the open. For a question like that, consult the expertise of Roadside America. The answer turns out to be that there’s no definitive count – they keep “springing up,” as the web site says (and the article is worth reading in its entirety). A design borrowed from ancient Britain morphs into something distinctly American, again and again.

None is better known than Carhenge in western Nebraska, RA asserts, and I can go along with that. Its fame is international.

Though not a Stonehenge, I visited the Cadillac Ranch once upon a time, so it stands to reason that someday I’d have a strong hankering to see Carhenge. I arrived early in the afternoon of September 7, under partly cloudy and very warm skies.

All the cars were painted gray at one time, but that has clearly given way to some being used as metal canvases.

The colorful cars are curated works, from the looks of them, to use that word in a literal and correct way.

RA: “[Carhenge] was built [in 1987] in a farm field north of Alliance, Nebraska, under the supervision of farmer (and engineer) Jim Reinders [d. 2021], who meant it as a memorial to his dad.

“What makes Carhenge special is that it’s made of cars, 38 of them, rescued from nearby farms and dumps. Reinders noticed that the monolithic dimensions of cars from the 1950s and ’60s nearly equaled the stones at Stonehenge, and he built his monument with a 96-foot diameter to match the proportions of the original.”

One outlying car seems to be reserved for spray painting for anyone who wants to, in the style of all the cars at the Cadillac Ranch.

The undercarriage is particularly vivid.

The graffiti car is apart from the Stonehenge-like array, along with other sculptures that have been added to the grounds in more recent years.

Not just an upright old car, but apparently a time capsule, closed in 2003, with a slated opening in 2053.

Word is that Carhenge wasn’t especially popular locally in its early years, including grunts of “eyesore” and threats to have it condemned and the like. But after a few decades, the townspeople came around, and the town of Alliance acquired the site in 2013, so now it counts as a public park. You go through an open gate, no admission is charged, and you’re free to wander around. Next to the parking lot, a gift shop stands, but visiting is optional. I supported the preservation of Carhenge in the form of a magnet- and postcard-centered purchase at the shop.

Walworth County Tin Man

Posted on September 3, 2025 by admin

It may be September, but it’s still warm. Time to take advantage of the second shoulder season of the year in my own slightly demented way. Back to posting around September 28.

Last month I’d gotten a tip from one of the usual sources detailing roadside oddities, so there I was, tooling down a road in rural Walworth County, Wisconsin. The sun was hot and the corn was high. My tip was solid. I pulled off the road and walked a little ways for a good look at the oddity. It is larger than most.

It’s called “Tin Man,” according to published sources, rising 45 feet and weighing in at 20 tons. The creators were two local men entertaining themselves. Looks are free from the road. If that’s not an authentic roadside attraction, I don’t know what is. I was careful to stay off the property, however.

“That statue stands tall in Robert Stewart’s home near Lake Geneva. In fact, it can be seen from about a mile away. It took him and his friend Shane Pope two years to make it,” WTMJ-TV reported in early 2021.

“The statue was built primarily out of scrap metal that Robert was able to collect, which includes the legs, the arms, and body of the statue. The torso is an old water tank that was used in the Pabst Brewery. However, the most iconic piece of the statue might be its Officer Big Mac head.” (I can add that its legs are hay conveyors.)

I’d taken the head for Mayor McCheese – that would make sense in Wisconsin – but actually it’s the lesser-known Officer Big Mac, whom I suppose worked for McCheese until a falling out in the 1980s. Or actually did he answer to Ronald McDonald? Though Ronald had no official title, it was clear he was calling the shots in McDonaldland. Anyway, there the officer is, atop a scrap-metal creation.

Tin Man had been visible from a distance. That raised arm looks a little — odd. Let’s just say he’s waving at the occasional passersby on the road.

When I say rural, I mean rural.

Closer to Lake Geneva, in fact in Fontana, Wisconsin, is the Fontana Frog. I saw it the same warm summer day as the Tin Man.

Part of the long defunct Frog Hollow miniature golf course, according to Roadside America. Looks the part.

Not to be confused with another model frog to be seen in Fontana. Two giant frogs in one town. The world’s a peculiar place.

Elkhorn, Wisconsin

Posted on August 28, 2025 by admin

Labor Day weekend again? How does summer vanish so quickly? Back to posting on September 2.

Once upon a time, one of the many First National Banks of the world stood in downtown Elkhorn, Wisconsin, complete with a sturdy bank interior common at the time. As seen in a postcard from the early 20th century.

Go looking for the bank these days, and this is what you find.

Once a bank, now a pocket park. The view from the inside, looking back at the facade.

There were no signs to indicate how the park came to be. A less imaginative act would simply have been to raze the old building in its entirety and leave a weedy gap in the downtown streetscape, hoping for redevelopment that might never come.

Inside the park is a sundial, dedicated to the memory of one Eidola Renner (d. 1983) of the Elkhorn Garden Club. Ah, garden clubs. The term makes me think of Khigh Dhiegh.

This must be her. The sundial – whose gnomon is missing, so it can’t function for telling time – has been there since 1987, so I assume the park has been there at least that long, if not longer.

I arrived in Elkhorn on a warm day in early August, traveling by myself in southeastern Wisconsin. It wasn’t too hot for a stroll around the town’s municipal square, home to a “government center,” a mid-century box, but not the storied old courthouse that should be there.

There was a tank. How many tanks are loose in Wisconsin?

Well-tended buildings near the square.

Every town has one of these, it seems.

What is that?

Public notice of an antique alarm system, that’s what.

Not the first one I’ve seen. This one was made by the O.B. McClintock Co. of Minneapolis. “In 1901 O.B. McClintock came to Minneapolis and founded the American Bank Protection Company, which produced burglar alarm systems,” explains a site called Lavilo. “After his resignation in 1908, he opened the O.B. McClintock Company to ‘manufacture electrical chime and clock systems,’ which he sold to financial institutions all across the United States.”

Banks began telling the public the time quite a while ago (McClintock surely wasn’t the first). I’m of course old enough to remember dialing time and temperature, though I can’t remember which financial institution sponsored the service in ’70s San Antonio.

Elkhorn has a fine selection of downtown churches as well. Such as the First Congregational United Church of Christ.

St. Patrick’s Catholic Church.

St. John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church.

Founded in 1841, back in Wisconsin Territory days, so “wilderness” was probably apt at the time.

Kenosha Walkabout, Featuring Franks’ Diner & Simmons Memorial Library

Posted on August 27, 2025 by admin

Always good to see their beaming faces.

The poster is on a window at Franks’ Diner, formerly an exterior window, but with an expansion of the diner many years ago, now facing the added section, where Ann and I had lunch on a late July Friday. Kenosha, home of Franks’, was another stop in our recent rambles around southeastern Wisconsin.

Finding Franks’ Diner was no serendipity. We’d been there, back in 2012. The Stooges, back in 1946. I’ll bet they were playing the nearby Kenosha Theater, which is still standing, but in need of restoration.

Not only is the 99-year-old Franks’ still there, it’s still dishing up dandy diner fare at popular prices. Back then, I wrote:

The place had that diner smell: eggs and meats and hash browns and coffee. It also had that diner sound: the murmur of conversation, workers calling to each other, silverware scraping plates, metal clinking metal, the hiss of the griddle.

It was packed. A row of people sat at the counter, while others were at booths in the small room added to the counter room. A line of people waited for their seats in a long row behind the people at the counter.

That’s exactly the same as our July visit, except that people waited outside, since it was summer instead of winter and (of course) prices were higher. Once seated, I had the Garbage Plate. I’d skipped it last time, and I wasn’t about to miss it this time around.

2012: The star of the show is its Garbage Plate, a concoction of hash-brown potatoes, eggs, green peppers, onions, jalapeños (if you want them), and a choice of three or fewer meats (or including no meat). The thing is seriously large. The standard Garbage Plate has five eggs.

The restaurant also supplies some reading material.

After lunch, we went a few blocks away and parked the car in the shade of large trees in Library Park. Ann waited in the car with the windows down – it was very warm, but not too warm for a few minutes of that – while I wandered around the immediate area, including a couple of streets of storefront retail in vintage structures.

Houses across the street from where we parked.

The nearby St. Matthews Episcopal Church.

The inevitable welcome mural. The 1970 Gremlin is an unusual touch. But they were made in Kenosha, so not that unusual.

At the edge of the park, a seated Lincoln. Sculptor Charles Niehaus (d. 1935) did the work. Just one of many that he did all over the place. The president has been sitting there since 1909, centennial of his birth, with restoration work done in more recent decades.

Nearby in the park, Kenosha’s Civil War memorial, called “Winged Victory” on electronic maps, a name that gets right to the point.

It’s Library Park because of the Gilbert M. Simmons Memorial Library, a branch of the Kenosha Public Library system, dominating its side of the park. It has a little more heft than most municipal branch libraries.

When it opened in 1900, the building formed Kenosha’s main library. Daniel Burnham designed it.

The Civil War veterans have their memorial outside. Great War vets are honored inside the library.

We’d happened on the Library Park Historic District, surrounding Library Park. The park itself goes back to the early years of Kenosha, when the land was a New England–style town commons. Forty-two properties, built from 1843 to 1930, form the district. A diner and an historic district: just the thing for a warm summer day stroll.

More Waukesha

Posted on August 26, 2025 by admin

Something I didn’t know about Waukesha, Wisconsin, before we went there last month: that Les Paul (b. 1915) grew up around there. Waukesha certainly hasn’t forgotten.

A recent sign, since his birthday is in early June. Waukesha is a “GuitarTown,” because of its association with the famed musician and music technologist. Apparently there is more than one GuitarTown, since Gibson Guitars doles out the moniker, or at least used to.

“Waukesha was named a Gibson GuitarTown in 2012 and 2013, two years in a row, to honor the birth and resting place of electric guitar legend Les Paul,” The Freeman reports. “Other GuitarTowns include Austin, Nashville and London.”

As GuitarTown, Waukesha has 15 guitar statues in public places, each 10 feet tall and designed by local artists. Elsewhere in town, you can find Les Paul Middle School, Les Paul Parkway, the Les Paul Performance Center, and the Les Paul gravesite monument. Missed that, alas. Maybe some other time. But we did drive on his parkway. And see a few of the giant guitars.

Next to that particular guitar, a small garden is wedged between the sidewalk and a parking lot. The PEOPLE’S PARK Garden, says the sign.

The Wall Dogs also came to town and painted 13 murals. I assume this is one of them.

Across a parking lot from that mural rises Waukesha’s impressive stone clocktower.

On Main Street, a memorial.

Outrages by homicidal wankers are so common that I had to refresh my memory about that particular one, in late 2021. Then I remembered. The only good thing I can report is that the wanker, who went double wanker at his trial by asserting sovereign citizen nonsense, is now a permanent resident of a tightly locked state facility.

Upriver a half mile or so from downtown is the sizable riverside Frame Park.

Including the Frame Park Formal Gardens.

I hope the park and its garden weren’t damaged too much by the raging Fox, since it is flat most of the way from the garden to the river.

The Fox is large at this point. Not something you want to see described as “angry.”

Fox River, Waukesha

Posted on August 25, 2025 by admin

After being relatively wet, August in northern Illinois has turned relatively cool to end its days. A few days ago, we took a walk at the unusually green (for August) Spring Valley here in the northwest suburbs.

August flowers, Illinois edition.

Earlier this month, an enormous rainstorm blew through southern Wisconsin, doing damage in Milwaukee and elsewhere, including Waukesha County. Too much water too fast, and not nearly enough space in the Fox River channel that runs through the city and county of Waukesha. In the city, the river made a raging, dangerous rise not far from the picturesque downtown. If that area had flooded, that would have been in the news cycle for a little while anyway, but it looks like most of the damage was in more rural parts of the county. Regardless, it represents a lot of property damage.

“In Menomonee Falls, a crew was spotted pulling a car out of a massive sinkhole,” local TV News reported. “The once-raging waters this weekend washed away the road in an industrial area on Campbell Drive, leaving just a cliff. In the crater, the car had been trapped. The driver was fine. Inside the sinkhole, drainage pipes seemed to be tossed around like Lincoln Logs.”

About two weeks earlier, on a nearly hot, clear day, we took a walk along the Fox, accessed a block or so away from downtown’s main streets. The river was flowing vigorously, but without a hint of the rampage to come (and why would there be?). This is the same Fox River that runs west of metro Chicago and to the Illinois River, and not the one that runs into Green Bay. Just to keep things interesting, there are apparently two other Fox Rivers in Illinois as well.

Across the way, a gazebo.

Every town over 5,000 has to have a gazebo, according to Wisconsin law. Wisconsin is almost alone in its gazebo mandates, with most other states having repealed theirs in the 1960s and ’70s – though some counties in other states still mandate the structures.

An artful pedestrian bridge.

More river, and also bears. Bronze bears.

Hope the river didn’t take them away, but I’d think the figures would be anchored pretty well.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Public Art