Nebraska 2

Posted on November 16, 2025 by admin

Which of these two destinations aren’t like the others?

That’s a beginner’s-level question. Better question: where can you find this pole, with mileages and – what units measure the distance to Heaven or Hell? – other signs?

Answer: Cairo, Nebraska.

Maybe a palm tree was in the works, but the city decided not to spend any more money. Cairo (pop. 822) is one of the small chain of small towns on the eastern section of the highway Nebraska 2, which runs westward and north of Grand Island. Cairo is the first place I stopped on my way west on that highway in early September.

Eventually the highway reaches the Nebraska National Forest and Grassland, a patch of (partly) wooded land that inspires the question, there’s a national forest in Nebraska?

West from the forest, Nebraska 2 crosses the Sandhills, an unusual place here in North America, with the land morphing from cropland to ranch land on sandy steppes. The towns on the way are mere hamlets, and sometimes not even that. On the western edge of the Sandhills, one comes to the sizable town of Alliance, Nebraska, home of Carhenge and railroad staging area for coal trains headed east.

Before I did the drive, I was looking forward to it as much as any of the roads in Colorado. It lived up to expectations. Nice when that happens.

The Fence Post cites Charles Kuralt’s fondness for Nebraska 2: “Highway 2 is not just another highway that goes somewhere. Highway 2 is somewhere,” he’s known to have said. I’d say whatever else his failings, Kuralt had good taste in roads.

Just outside Broken Bow (pop. 3,491), seat of Custer County and pretty much the only town of any size in that county, the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway Visitor Center offers a building with bathrooms and pamphlets and displays and, for my visit at least, a grandmotherly and talkative volunteer. Old enough, she said, to remember when the highway was just a road through the countryside that attracted no attention from the outside world. Not a scenic byway, and sand hill cranes were just flocking birds. Now a trickle of tourists and bikers and RVers come this way. She had some solid recommendations, especially a good diner for lunch.

The visitor center grounds include a relocated (or was that reconstructed?) Sandhills cabin. The residences of the farmers trying to scratch out a living in the Sandhills, and finding out that no amount of scratching would make decent crops grow consistently from the land.

The Custer County Courthouse. Saturday, closed.

A block from the courthouse, some buildings around City Square Park.

City Square Park is a generic sort of name. Wonder whether there’s anyone from the town who can be honored by renaming the park? Looking at list of notables from Broken Bow, one instantly stands out.

This guy: Solomon Butcher.

Wiki: “Solomon D. Butcher (January 24, 1856 – March 18, 1927) was an itinerant photographer who spent most of his life in central Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States… he began in 1886 to produce a photographic record of the history of European settlement in the region. Over 3,000 of his negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod houses.”

*Frederic Schreyer and family, Custer County, 1880s, by Solomon Butcher.*

Definitely name the park after Butcher, Broken Bow.

One more in that town. I couldn’t be bothered to get out of the car.

West of Broken Bow is Anselmo (pop. 145), home of this church, St. Anselms Catholic Church, nicknamed Cathedral of the Sandhills. Saturday, closed.

A more common sort of building, not far from the church.

Not the most imposing that I saw, but representative of the many structures like it. The grist of a photo collection. Of course it has been done. I’m pretty sure I saw a room of Bernd Becher’s photos of water towers at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Nebraska National Forest and Grassland is in an unexpected place, slap in the middle of Nebraska, not due to a freak of nature, but the efforts of human beings. Specifically, mass plantings of trees by the federal government for more than 100 years, beginning (not a surprise) during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt.

Near the national forest entrance is the Middle Loup River, broad but shallow, and crossable on a foot bridge.

I camped in the national forest. The campgrounds weren’t completely full, but there were more people than I expected for a remote spot in Nebraska. Then again, it was a Saturday night, and soon enough I figured out what brought most of them: the ATV trails. Not long after dawn on Sunday, the campers across from me – a man and a small knot of teenage boys – roared away in a small caravan of ATVs crusted with dust from the day before.

I packed up and sought out a quieter place. A national forest hill with a fire tower and some views. The tower was closed.

But the views were still pretty good.

West from the national forest, Nebraska 2 heads into the rolling grassland of the Sandhills proper. In the village of Thedford (pop. 208), varied public interpretations of the Sandhills are available for reading.

The terrain along the highway Nebraska 2 might seem monotonous to some. Too bad for them. You’re driving across a kind of ocean, terrain all wavy, except that it’s solid ground, marked by occasional trees or manmade structures, and side roads — trails — wandering deeper into the hills.

The handful of towns are really just wide places in the road. Sometimes, not even that.

Nebraska 2 parallels the BNSF line, which came first.

Note: I was standing on a public side road to take that picture, as I do with all my RR shots.

Eventually, I took the road to Alliance. But that was merely incidental. Out this far, the road, as Kuralt said, is the destination.

Battle Green, Lexington

Posted on November 6, 2025 by admin

Too bad about iconic. If there ever were a time to use iconic to describe sometime distinctive and revered, John Parker in bronze would be it.

Icons are no accidents. The pose captures the Battle of Lexington as we, Americans, want to remember it: the resoluteness of an ordinary man in the face of the enemy. What the militiamen experienced that morning is partly enshrouded in mystery like a battlefield of the time might be with gun smoke. No one knows who fired the first shot, for instance, but that doesn’t keep the Shot Heard Around the World from having its own name during later generations — a remarkable thing for a simple firearm discharge to have.

Lore has encrusted the story. Even so, the Patriot soldiers in the Revolution, collectively, can’t be said to have lacked resoluteness over the long years of conflict.

The Parker bronze stands on the edge of Battle Green in Lexington, Massachusetts, and across the street from Buckman Tavern, where the militiamen of the town waited the night before the battle. Among their number on April 19, 1775, was a young man named Jonathan Harrington, a fifer in the militia. About 75 years later, he’s thought to have posed for a photograph, now on display at Buckman Tavern.

Said to be the last survivor of the battle, and the only one to be photographed. The American Battlefield Trust cites a Harrington family history: He said he was aroused early that morning by a cry from his mother, who said: ‘Jonathan, get up, the regulars are coming, and something must be done.’ Jonathan was a fifer. He arose, went to the place where the patriots were gathering, and was with the company on the approach of the British.

It had rained during the early hours of October 22, 2025 in Lexington, but by late morning the sun was out and only a scattering of puddles remained. Battle Green stretched out behind the bronze John Parker. For a time, I was the only person on the green, though a steady stream of car traffic was the be seen on the roads edging the grounds.

John Parker, originally “Minuteman Statue” by the prolific sculptor and public monument specialist Henry Hudson Kitson, is a latecomer to the green, erected in 1900.

The Battle Green flagpole is newest of all, erected only in 1962. Even so, the pole is on the National Register of Historic Places, and an act of Congress specifies that a flag will always be flown there.

Well within living memory of the battle itself (1799), the town – fully aware of its role as spark of the Revolution – erected a memorial, and relocated the bones of the militiamen killed in the battle to a spot in front of it.

Though not formally part of the green, First Parish Unitarian-Universalist is distinctly part of the place, and looks about as New England as a church can.

It might as well be part of the green, considering the history of the congregation. The present church is a 19th-century structure near the site of Lexington’s only church in 1775, which was a hotbed of Revolutionary sentiment at the time.

A Few Manhattan Churches

Posted on October 31, 2025 by admin

After the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen we headed for Park Ave., location of a famed Byzantine revival Episcopal church. Before we got there, we noticed a much smaller church, not actually part of the Open House New York event, at 5 E 48th Street.

Church of Sweden in New York

We’d come to the Svenska kyrkan i New York, where services are still held in Swedish. Not only was the church open, there was a cafe on its first floor. The sanctuary is on the second floor. Elegant little place, suitable for the small congregation that Swedish services might attract.

Under the Historik section of the church’s web site, you’ll find this helpful information: När svenskarna började flytta till USA och hur Svenska kyrkan på olika sätt velat vara närvarande i New York. A fuller history in English is on the Wiki page.

St. Bartholomew’s Church

St. Bartholomew’s Church, an Episcopal congregation on Park Ave., was participating in the Open House. That meant it was sure to be not only open, but lighted. The first time I went there, many years ago, I compared it to a cavern. Later I visited when more lights were on. Twenty years ago I wrote: “This time, it was better lighted, the better to show off the church’s superb Byzantine-style mosaics.”

During my 2025 visit, now joined by my nephew Robert, we were able not just to gaze at the lit sacred space, but we had the benefit of a knowledgeable docent, a woman of a certain vintage with a hobbled gait and a raspy voice. She knew the history of the congregation, and its slice of Manhattan. She had the artistic detail down cold. She knew her ecclesiastical styles. From the depth of detail about the many artists who worked on the church, it sounded like she knew some of the artists personally, though that couldn’t be literally true for most of them, since the church was built more than 100 years ago, with certain later design additions.

At the direction of the docent, Geof unveiled the altar for a moment.

It might have been interesting to know Hildreth Meière. Hers was an astounding career: “Working with leading architects of her day, Meière designed approximately 100 commissions, both secular and liturgical,” the International Hildreth Meière Association says. “Her best-known commissions include Radio City Music Hall, One Wall Street, St. Bartholomew’s Church, Temple Emanu-El, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. She also decorated the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., and the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis.”

The mosaics didn’t photograph well – that is, I’m too lazy to carry around a better camera – but good images are at the association web site.

Emerging from St. Bart, we agreed that heading back to the cafe at the Swedish church would be a good idea. It was.

Sated with Swedish-style open-faced sandwiches, our walk soon continued, up Fifth Ave. to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was its usual crowded splendor. I think I spotted some new, or newish murals, just inside the nave. A wedding was in progress. One must come after another every Saturday not in Lent, with ropes closing off a large part of the nave, making for extra crowding in the side aisles.

We didn’t stay. Not far away was a church far less crowded but with its own splendor.

St. Thomas Church

Namely, St. Thomas Church, another major Manhattan Episcopalian congregation. Inside, lights were low. The reredos stood out in the dark, a glowing presence above the altar populated by more than 60 stone carved figures, I’ve read. A Christian crowd: saints, prophets and reformers in an ivory colored stone from Wisconsin. I’d have needed a telephoto lens to have any hope of identifying any of them, but that didn’t make them any less striking.

Ralph Adams Cram and Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson designed the church, completing it in 1914. They were another of those prolific architects now out of living memory who seemed to design a long list of churches in a short time. The duo did St. Barts, too, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, just to name a few famed sacred spaces of near-palatial character.

Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

Just steps away from St. Thomas, as real estate press releases like to say about two close buildings, is Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. It was our last Open House church for that day.

With its auditorium style and balconies, it reminded me of the Moody Church in Chicago, though Fifth Avenue Pres is much older: 150 years this year, as it happens.

A hallway and some rooms extend beyond the front of the nave, including a columbarium.

Waiting for occupants. All it will take is time.

Erie, Pa.

Posted on October 27, 2025 by admin

This artwork needs a proper name, and I can suggest one: The Erie Christ, or Christ the Almighty of Erie, though that last one sounds like the Lord has taken up residence in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The striking Erie Christ can be found in Erie, Pennsylvania. More specifically at the Church of The Nativity, Russian Old Rite Orthodox in Erie. My brother Jay tipped me off about its presence, though I might have seen the church anyway, since it stands prominently on a rise facing the bayfront, its gilded onion domes easily catching the eye from a distance.

It is a handsome church, outside and inside. I arrived late on the morning of October 15.

Russian Old Believer immigrants came to the United States in numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, finding work in Eire on the ore and pulp docks. I’ll bet the climate suited them too. Just like home, with all the lake-effect snow a Russian might want. Their first church was completed in 1919. In the fullness of time (1983), the parish joined the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Bygones be bygones and all that.

In a twist that’s more late 19th century than late 20th, that structure burned down in 1986. Of course, buildings still burn, including churches. The parish rebuilt, with a local outfit called Building Systems Inc. doing the work.

The Church of the Nativity was my second stop that day. The city’s spot on the map has long intrigued me, so I’d come to Erie late in the morning on the second day of the recent trip.

Upon arrival in the city, after a brief stop at a Tim Horton’s, I first went to Erie’s bayfront, threading my way through the massive reconstruction project of the streets in the area. That was the first, but hardly the last major street construction briar patch that I’d encounter in the Northeast. My reward for the effort: a chance to stand under Erie’s Bicentennial Tower.

Built not for the U.S. bicentennial that we all remember so – fondly, but rather the 200th anniversary of the city of Erie, about 20 years later. Regardless, I was looking forward to the vista: the city, the bay and Presque Isle State Park. But no. Closed. Even so, I got a good look at the area, including the tower but also the U.S. Brig Niagara, which was instrumental in Oliver Hazard Perry winning immortal fame. Or would have been, if the Battle of Lake Erie were taught in schools any more.

The battle might have rated a mention in my high school history classes 50 years ago, but I don’t remember for sure. I expect it’s still taught in Pennsylvania high schools, just as the Battle of San Jacinto is in Texas. At least, that’s what I assume. That’s what I hope.

After my look-see down by Presque Isle Bay, I went to Holy Nativity, but that wasn’t quite enough. Always handy Google Maps directed me to St. Patrick’s Parish, not too many blocks away. Winter might be harsh in these parts, but that day was one of those brilliant warmish fall days we get in the North sometimes, and ideal for poking around a port city on the Great Lakes. (And eventually I left town by driving down State Street, a fairly active place of vintage buildings and newer shops.)

St. Patrick’s is on a not-so-busy neighborhood street.

While Russians were forming their immigrant community, Irish were doing the same not far away. One product of that immigrant ferment was St. Patrick’s, completed just after the turn of the 20th century. The history of the building is told with admirable clarity and detail in this recent video.

Among all the ornateness, a holy water spigot of Holy Grail simplicity, at least as depicted in certain tales.

Life-sized Stations of the Cross dwell in enormous niches in the nave.

I wasn’t eagle-eyed enough to notice the Roman soldier wearing a Bavarian cap. Or take a picture of it. No matter, I know about it now.

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.

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Salina, Kansas

Posted on October 11, 2025 by admin

The in-motel breakfast on September 24 in Salina, Kansas (pop. 46,800 or so) had been less than satisfactory, so Google Maps guided me to a doughnut shop on one of the wide, lightly traveled streets of downtown Salina. I ate in the car parked on just such a street, and soon started out for the highway (I-70) to head east.

Then I noticed Sacred Heart Cathedral.

I had to take a closer look.

If that structure doesn’t say midcentury, I don’t know what would. Indeed, the cathedral was built in the 1950s. But it isn’t quite like any other church building I’ve seen, even of that period. Also, it isn’t mid-century concrete, which it looked like from a distance, but limestone.

Note the Kansas elements.

The cathedral’s web site says: Sacred Heart Cathedral is a distinctive building that draws upon rural Kansas imagery and uses it in the service of Christian mythology. It is a noteworthy example of the work of Edward J. Schulte [d. 1975], a prolific designer of Catholic facilities across the Midwest through the greater part of the twentieth century.

Its most striking features are what appear to be a row of cylinders thirty feet in circumference extending the full height of the eastern and western facades, which resemble the grain elevators that dominate the skyline of most towns in western Kansas.

The allusion to grain elevators helps to link the church to its place in Kansas. It can also be seen as a symbol — the Cathedral is a place where the faithful come to receive the sustenance of the Eucharist.

It was open. That was unexpected, but I didn’t let the opportunity pass.

The baptismal font in the narthex.

The nave.

That part of downtown Salina was thick with churches. Another is First United Methodist, across the street from Sacred Heart.

About a half block away, Christ Cathedral Episcopal. The other churches weren’t open.

Later that day, at an exit just east of Abilene, I went looking for one more church — a kind of church I’d only ever driven by before.

Google Maps told me that this Cowboy Church was open for a few hours that day. I was skeptical, but went anyway, on the off chance that I’d get to see the inside of a Cowboy Church. As expected, it wasn’t open. Still, I got to look around in all directions.

Informality, I’ve read, is important to the nondenominational Cowboy Churches, whose number seems to be large, but without an exact count. (And some individual churches are pretty large.) I can only hope that at one or more of them, somewhere and at sometime, Yippee-Ki-Yay, Lord! is part of their prayer.

Mesa Verde National Park

Posted on October 1, 2025 by admin

In 800 years or so, will people come from significant distances to look at the ruins of my mid-century neighborhood? That doesn’t seem likely for any number of reasons. I’d be surprised if my own house survives until the next century, considering how good people are now at razing and rebuilding. But considering such a long span of time, there’s no way to know.

That’s the kind of thing I wonder about when facing structures of that age, especially those whose inhabitants are known mainly by the structures and other items they long ago cast off.

On September 17, we’d come to the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park. To get close, you sign up and pay for a ranger-guided tour, which goes down stone stairs, along the edge of the cliff near the dwellings, and then back up some stone stairs (built by the CCC; does that even need to be said?). The elevation is 7,500 feet or so, but that didn’t cool things down that day. It was hot and sweaty.

A shot like that took some effort. We were hardly alone at Cliff Palace.

The ruins, which are most certainly near a cliff, are probably not a palace in the grand sense of a royal residence. More of a neighborhood, one of many in the vicinity, though the largest. Also, not quite as much of a ruin as it used to be. This is an image of the Cliff Palace from 1891, taken by Gustaf Nordenskiöld.

Not as long ago as all that, considering the age of the structures, but before TR inked the bill creating the national park, and back when you could help yourself to whatever was lying around, as the explorer (and photographer) Nordenskiöld apparently did, taking many items back home to Sweden. Eventually, the items made their way to Finland. A few were returned recently.

The ruins aren’t quite as ruined these days. The 20th century was a period of stabilization. Not as many artifacts got nicked either.

A kiva. The largest one at the Cliff Palace, I think. A religious site similar to others in the Southwest, such as at Bandelier National Monument (and now I know that was a kiva).

The canyon below the Cliff Palace. Imagine having to scramble up and down the walls regularly, to tend to fields or fetch water or escape from marauders.

Mesa Verde is of course much more than the Cliff Palace, since the park protects an estimated 5,000 archaeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. The main road through the park (built by the CCC, naturally) takes visitors to other overlooks. The dwellings of Spruce Tree House are sizable and also off limits these days, until the overhead rocks are stabilized.

More cliff dwellings. They are a little hard to see, but they are there.

On top of the main mesa, the road also goes through areas burned by wildfire at one time or another.

Flora always bounces back.

I had the vague idea that the inhabitants of the cliff dwellings disappeared mysteriously after about 1300, but visiting the park schooled me on more current thinking. They left, but there was nothing mysterious about it. Drought hit them, and hit them hard, so they migrated to find water and other sustenance. Persistent violence was probably a factor, too, as tends to happen in periods of strained resources. So it’s pretty clear that Ancestral Puebloans’ descendants even now live among the tribes along the Rio Grande, not too far away.

I also didn’t realize that the well-known cliff dwellings were only occupied for a relatively short time, in the grand scheme of native inhabitation: only about a century. Before that, most of the inhabitants lived atop the mesas. One such ruin is called Far View, which isn’t far from the road.

I heeded this signs and didn’t enter. But you can walk around the perimeter and imagine the passing centuries.

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.

Billie Creek Village

Posted on August 20, 2025 by admin

I don’t know whether it was a relic or a replica, but there it was, something we’ve all heard about, seen in drawings and as the stuff of metaphors: a dunce cap. I’d never actually seen one before that I remember, not as a physical object.

That is why you (I) visit such places as the open air museum Billie Creek Village in Parke County, Indiana. To be mildly surprised. Such as the time I encountered a can of White Star brand tomatoes with a hammer and sickle on it, or a Papua New Guinea battle shield sporting the Phantom, just to name two among many such little surprises.

The dunce cap was on one of the desks at Billie Creek’s one-room school house, used until the early 20th century, as usual for that kind of school.

Good old dunce caps. Sure, they go against the grain of modern thinking, antiquated as a one-room school, but we all can remember a few goofballs from our school days who deserved one, can’t we? As seen in a pic from the Library of Congress, dated ca. 1905, but with no information about where it might have been. Just a small school in the years before self-esteem was discovered.

The old school house at Billie Creek is one of 38 historic structures relocated from various parts of Parke County, Indiana, to about 70 acres west of Rockville on US 36. Originally opened in 1969, the place has had a series of owners and been through periods of abandonment, but since 2022 has been under management that seems to know what its doing.

That’s my thinking, anyway, since its refreshing informality perfectly suits the place. You go, you park your car, you wander in. No irritating timed tickets, no gouging entrance fee, no expensive yet mindless luxury goods and experiences that could be pretty much anywhere. Yet there is an economic model: Billie Village hosts events – one was going on when we visited around mid-day on a Sunday – and some of the buildings are also shops, and do sell luxury goods, in the sense that such handcrafts aren’t found in modern grocery or drug stores.

We supported the place by buying a few things, including (yes!) postcards. A few dozen other people were doing so by attending the event. I watched part of some sort of award ceremony as it happened at the village gazebo, and even asked one of the bystanders about what was going on, but couldn’t quite get the gist of it. The meeting seemed to be one of those Society of Creative Anachronism sorts of things, though not that specifically. Attendees wore fantasy- and history-adjacent costumes, mostly with that homemade vibe. One of those outings for adults who didn’t get enough playing pretend when they were kids, I guess. All well and good.

I hope that economic model keeps the place open, because one recipe for a good couple of hours on a hot weekend in July is visiting curious old buildings. Such as a couple of relocated churches.

One Catholic.

The other Baptist.

An early Parke County cabin.

The home of an Indiana governor, one Joseph A. Wright (d. 1867), in office 1849-57. A Rockville native son.

Here he is, just outside his house, in dour Hoosier mode.

As the Covered Bridge Capital of the Galaxy (or some slogan like that for Parke County), it’s no surprise that covered bridges can also been seen at Billie Creek.

A barn, weathered yet handsome.

Craft goods were for sale inside. So were books by a local author who was there, hawking them. He told me about the books, some sort of fantasy series, and I was curious enough about them to listen to him, but not enough to buy one, which I think left him a bit miffed. Such is the writer’s lot.

Behind the barn, goats.

I wasn’t able to test the notion that goats eat tin cans. But I already knew the answer: it’s a ridiculous myth, as this item in Goat Owner tells us.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Religious Sites