The B. Harley Bradley House

Posted on October 4, 2016 by admin

I wondered recently, when did I first hear about the small Illinois city — or maybe the large Illinois town — of Kankakee? (Pop. 27,000 or so.) Not a very urgent question, since there’s usually no reason to remember when you first heard of most places — and no way you can remember. With a few exceptions in my case, such as Stevens Point, Wis., which I never heard of till Mu Alpha Theta held its national meeting there in 1978, which I attended.

Even so, I’ll bet I heard of Kankakee because it was in the lyrics of “The City of New Orleans” in the early ’70s, so artfully written by Steve Goodman, so memorably sung by Arlo Guthrie. “Kankakee” makes a clever rhyme with “odyssey.”

All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passing trains that have no names
And freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobile.

A lot of people could probably say that’s where they heard about Kankakee. Even some Germans. Years ago, my friend Rich played a German-language version of the song for me. Apparently it too was popular. In our time, those lyrics are easy to look up.

Auf seiner Odyssee nach Süden passiert der Zug Kankakee,
rollt an Häusern, Farmen und Feldern vorbei,
passiert andere namenlosen Züge,
Abstellplätze voller alter farbiger Männer
und verrostete Autofriedhöfe.

More recently, the Bradley House in Kankakee came to our attention. In full, the B. Harley Bradley House, vintage 1900.
It doesn’t take too much looking to see that Frank Lloyd Wright did the house. One of the first ones — the docent claimed the first one, others claim differently — done in his distinctive Prairie School. I can’t comment authoritatively which was first, and I don’t really care, but even so the house was interesting enough for a day trip.
The house, and the one next to it — the Warren Hickox House (behind it in the pic above), another Wright design that’s still a private residence — are in the the western edge of the town’s Riverview Historic District. The neighborhood features large old houses in various states of repair, but no others like these two.

The Bradley House is also close to the Kankakee River.
During the tour, I asked the docent whether flooding had ever been an issue — as it has with the Farnsworth House — but apparently the Kankakee isn’t as testy as the Fox River, at least at that place.

The house has had a long string of owners over the last century-plus. Within living memory, for instance, it was a well-known local restaurant, The Yesteryear. For a considerable time in the early to mid-20th century, a wealthy man named Joseph H. Dodson owned the place. He was a bird lover and used the house’s stable, which is now the gift shop, as a bird house factory. It seems that Dodson bird houses were quite an item at one time.

Then there’s the sad story of Stephen B. Small. Another wealthy Kankakee resident, he acquired the property in the mid-80s and set about to restore it. That came to a halt in 1987 when he was kidnapped and buried in a box whose air tube wasn’t large enough to supply him enough air, and so he died (both kidnappers are still in the jug).

More recently, through various twists and turns, the house came to be owned by a nonprofit that’s aiming to pay down its mortgage. Our little part in that was paying for the tour, along with buying a postcard an a refrigerator magnet.

I did not, however, want to pay $5 to take interior pictures, which wouldn’t have turned out all that well anyway. The interior restoration, completed only in 2010, restored the place to its 1901 appearance. A nice bit of work: long halls, spacious rooms (except for the servants’ quarters), wooden floors, art glass in the windows, and the kind of alcoves and recesses and the like you associate with Wright, though few low ceilings. Guess this was before, as The Genius, he could insist on ceilings fit only for short people.

Kankakee Walkabout

Posted on October 3, 2016 by admin

For no charge, the Kankakee County Convention & Visitors Bureau will send you a 24-page booklet (six forms of four pages each) called “Historic Churches of the Kankakee Area Self-Guided Walking and Driving Tour.” It’s a high-quality, full-color bit of work, with some text, a few maps and a lot of interior and exterior pictures of Kankakee-area churches, such as Asbury United Methodist, Wildwood Church of the Nazarene, First Presbyterian, St. Paul’s Episcopal, and others.

There’s also a few interesting historical tidbits about some of the buildings. This is my favorite, about St. Paul’s: “Divine intervention spared the stained glass windows during two great hail storms in 1932 and 1982.”

The churches weren’t the only reason we went to Kankakee on Saturday, braving intermittent rain, but as long as we were going to be in the area, I wanted a look. Ideally, a look inside a few of the churches, including divinely protected stained glass, but I suspected that would be impossible. We went to four of them, all in walking distance of the Kankakee County Courthouse, and none were open.

I understand the reasons. Things would go missing if they didn’t lock up most of the time. Still, it was irritating. We did get a look at the outsides, some of which are impressive enough, such as Ashbury United Methodist, which dates from 1868.

I liked the bell tower of First Presbyterian, vintage 1855. According to the booklet, its 2000-lb. bell is rung by hand on Sundays.
Churches weren’t the only buildings of note. This is the Kankakee County Courthouse, standing on this site since 1912.
The architect who designed it, Zachary Taylor Davis, ought to be better known in Chicago, considering that he also did the original Comiskey Park (gone) and the still-beloved and still-standing Wrigley Field. It should also be remembered that lunch-counter baron Charlie Weeghman commissioned that ball park for his team, the Chicago Whales of the Federal League.

The courthouse statute, dated 1887. As you’d expect, “In memory of the soldiers of Kankakee County who fought for the Union.”
Kankakee County Courthouse statue 2016 One more Kankakee County structure, just south of the courthouse: the brutalist county “detention center.”
The jail, that is. Detention is what you get in school. Otherwise it’s just official euphemism.

Road Food, Summer ’16

Posted on July 20, 2016 by admin

Here’s a strategy for eating while on the road — longer trips especially, and one that I’ve employed on more than one occasion, including our most recent drive to Tennessee and Texas and back. Rise in the mid-morning if possible, eat breakfast at 10 or 11, then don’t eat again until at least 6.

Two meals are often enough. Less trouble, less expense. Three meals are a function of Protestant work ethic workdays, and might work reasonably well in that context, but you don’t need three squares all the time on the road.

Another variation: eat a small breakfast early, a larger lunch at 2 or 3, and then eat grocery story food in your room in the evening. Also less trouble, less expense.

In Nashville, Stephanie introduced us to Peg Leg Porker BBQ, a fairly new joint in a part of town called the Gulch, which isn’t a new part of town, but a fringe neighborhood of downtown that’s making — mostly made — the transition from industrial district to mixed-use hipster magnet. The Station Inn is in the Gluch, has been for years, and during all the times I heard bluegrass there from ca. 1981 to ’87, I don’t ever remember the area being called that.

Never mind, Peg Leg Porker, open since 2011, is everything it needs to be, with its cinderblock walls and crowded long tables and neon-signs behind the bar and the meaty barbecue smell that greets you at the door. The line to order is long — it should be — but fast-moving. I had a pulled pork sandwich with sauce and slaw, and tried some of Ann’s dry-rub wings. Pure delight. Steph said the fried pies were a delight too, but we didn’t feel like waiting in line again, this time on a stomach full of meat rather than empty, so we passed on it.

Another Nashville stop: the Elliston Place Soda Shop.
We went for the exceptional shakes, best had sitting at the counter. So we sat at the counter, the better to admire the chrome and the steel mixing machines and ads for Purity Dairy products, but not the non-working tableside jukeboxes, which are best seen from the booths. I understand Elliston Place almost joined the ranks of defunct Nashville favorites a few years ago, but did not. I’m glad it didn’t go the way of Mack’s Country Cooking, Candyland, Sylvan Park, or even the Fishery, where I used to eat oysters and drink kamikazes in the fantastic plastic summer of ’82.

We got rained on in Memphis. So we ducked into the Kooky Canuck on 2nd St., because it was close, and because how could you pass up a Canadian-themed place in Memphis? Besides the name, you know it’s Canadian because the kooky mascot looks like a demented Mountie, and the place looks like a hunting lodge, complete with stuffed heads mounted on the walls. All Canada pretty much looks like a hunting lodge, after all.

Had a regular burger with blue cheese. Tasty, not too expensive. I read on the menu about the restaurant’s Kookamonga burger. It’s one of those deals in which you get it on the house if you can eat it in a certain time, in this case less than an hour. I wasn’t tempted. The Kookamonga, as the Kooky Canuck says, is “4 lbs of fresh ground-chuck, two pounds of our custom made hamburger bun, and one and a half pounds of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, and cheese…SEVEN AND A HALF POUNDS TOTAL…but the fries are optional.”

There are also two-person and four-person versions of the big burger (two- and four-man, I should say, since it’s men who tend to be meshuga in this way). As we were finishing up our meals, there was a stir a few tables away. Four young men were determined to eat the 12 lb. Humonga Kookamongaa and not pay $99.99 for it.
For a moment, half the restaurant was taking pictures of them. It was a case of a hamburger having its own paparazzi. I don’t know if they succeeded. The restaurant’s web site doesn’t list anyone as ever having finished the Humonga Kookamongaa, but maybe the information hasn’t been updated.

On the wall near the entrance, there are photos of people who’s eaten the one-man Kookamonga, and one fellow called Matt “Megatoad” Stonie caught our attention for doing so in 4 minutes, 45 seconds in 2013. Some time later, as we idly watched TV at the Austin Motel, we noticed that the diminutive Stonie was a competitor in the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, as televised on ESPN. He came in second this year, after winning last year.

The Austin Convention Center is a failure when it comes to providing reasonably priced food to attendees. Near the facility are a number of expense-account restaurants, which have their place; and inside the center are a few high-priced snack bars, which are just damned annoying. That was it, as far as I could tell. A row of food trucks near the center would have been just the thing. There could have been a variety of them, from hip and high-priced to basic and low-priced. This is Austin, after all, an early adopter in the food truck world. But no.

Otherwise, Austin’s a good place for good eats. One morning for a 10-11 a.m. breakfast, we went to La Mexicana Bakery on 1st St. I saw its neon the night before driving by, and knew I wanted to go. We enjoyed unpretentious, good-tasting breakfast tacos and then bakery items afterward. The place also includes a number of other businesses in small rooms besides the restaurant and bakery, such as a jeweler and money-wiring service. Pay attention, Millennials. Looking for an authentic Mexican joint? This is one.

Shady Grove on Barton Springs Road, recommended by Tom, is an enormous place, indoors and even outdoors (aptly under groves of trees), that has a fine basic menu of sandwiches and Tex-Mex and plate specials. I had the Truckstop Meatloaf, an excellent meal that inspired a nonsensical discussion at our table about seeking out the best truck stop meatloaf in each of the states, later modified to only the lower 48.

Another winning inexpensive restaurant in Austin is the Magnolia Cafe on South Congress, a few blocks south of the Austin Motel, a small place that promises to be open 24 hours a day, 8 days a week. Even on a weekday during lunchtime — the day after July 4, a Tuesday — the joint was packed. For me, pancakes were the thing. It was a good choice.

Pancakes were also a good choice at the Blue Bonnet Cafe in Marble Falls, Texas, as we headed north some days later. The place is apparently known for its pies, and we saw waitresses bringing out many slices of pies as we had breakfasts as lunch that day. But pie doesn’t follow a large breakfast very well, so we didn’t order any (surprising our waitress a little, I think). One of these days, I might return to Marble Falls, which isn’t far from Austin and clearly does well by Austinites in town for the day, and try the pie. But that day (July 8) we had other pie-oriented plans.

Namely, to stop in Hico, Texas, which is much closer to Dallas than Austin, and eat pie at the Koffee Kup. Why there? Word is that’s what my pie-loving uncle Ken and aunt Sue did when passing through Hico over the decades. So we ate pie in their honor. The black forest pie was exquisite, though at $5 a slice, a bit overpriced. I seem to remember paying about that much for pie in a Manhattan diner a few years ago, and Hico shouldn’t have Manhattan prices. Ah, well.

One more: Etown Donuts, Elizabethtown, Ky. I got there the first morning of the trip, just before they ran out of doughnuts. Glad I did.

Five + Half Century = 55

Posted on June 12, 2016 by admin

One of the presents I got on my fifth birthday, just more than 50 years ago now, was a red toy helicopter. I’d probably remember that, even without the help of a photo. I was fond of that helicopter.

In fact it’s the only thing I really remember about that birthday, celebrated in Denton, Texas, except that a chocolate cake with blue trim was also part of it. Or I might remember that because there’s a different picture of me from that day, holding the cake in our front yard. The helicopter picture was taken along the side of the house, on the driveway that led back to some detached garages.

This year, I got a wallet. My old one is wearing out. Had key lime pie instead of a cake.

The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway & Lundy Lundgren

Posted on April 20, 2016 by admin

If you have time, US 20 is the best way between metro Chicago and Rockford. I-90 is faster but not as interesting, and a toll road besides. We went to Rockford on the Interstate for speed, but returned at our leisure on the US highway, which is sometimes four lanes, sometimes two, along that stretch.

US 20 is also known as the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Highway in Illinois, honoring Gen. Grant, who spent some time in western Illinois. In fact, the highway runs by his house in Galena. (US 20 itself runs cross-country, from Boston to Newport, Ore., or vice versa.)

The honorary designation has been in place since 1955, but most of the original signs were lost or fell apart. In 2007, the Illinois DOT started replacing them with brown-lettered signs that include a portrait of Grant. The route passes very close to where I live in the northwest suburbs, and I remember starting to see the signs appear nearly 10 years ago. I thought the designation was new as well, but now I know better.

One of the places on US 20 between Rockford and the northwestern suburbs is Marengo, a burg of about 7,500 in McHenry County. Oddly, it seems to be named after the battle of that name, which did so much to solidify Napoleon’s top-dog status, at least until Waterloo. Maybe some of the town founders included Bonapartist sympathizers, but well after the fact, since it was established in the 1840s.

For years, I’ve been driving by a sign that points to a historical marker just off US 20 in Marengo. High time I took a look, I thought this time. The marker is a few blocks north of US 20 on N. East St. This is what I saw.

Carl Leonard Lundgren (1880-1934) hailed from Marengo, and behind the sign is the very field where he perfected his pitching skills, at least according to the sign. As a young man, Lundy Lundgren pitched for the Cubs from 1902 to ’09, and in fact pitched for the team during its most recent appearances in the World Series — 1907 and ’08.

He’s buried in the Marengo City Cemetery across the street from the plaque.

I took a look at the place from the street, but didn’t venture in. Most of it’s modern-looking, or at least 20th century, but there’s a small section whose stones look very old, older even than Lundgren’s, wherever it is. That bears further investigation someday.

LBJ’s Boyhood Home

Posted on March 17, 2016 by admin

Some years ago, I visited the “Texas White House,” that part of the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park where President Johnson used to entertain politicos of various kinds, talk on the phone constantly, and perhaps watch all of the network news programs at the same time, though the picture I’ve seen of him doing that was at the regular White House. The Texas White House is on the LBJ Ranch near Stonewall, Texas, along with a number of other structures.

Not far away, in Johnson City, Texas, is another unit of the National Historic Park, which includes the Johnson’s boyhood home. En route from Austin to San Antonio on March 6 — I didn’t take the most direct way — I stopped at the boyhood home and caught the last tour of the day.
“Lyndon Johnson’s family moved from a farm near Stonewall, Texas, to Johnson City (a distance of about fourteen miles) two weeks after his fifth birthday, in September 1913,” the NPS says. “For most of the next twenty-four years, this was their home…

“In February 1937, Lyndon Johnson returned home from Austin to seek the advice of his father — should he run for Congress? It was the first week of March, 1937, when Lyndon Johnson stood on the porch of his boyhood home to announce his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Tenth District of the State of Texas.”

We too stood on the porch — me and the two other people on the tour. Our docent was knowledgeable, which is always good to find in out-of-the-way presidential sites. He was able to convey some sense of the Johnson family, and their Hill Country environs, during LBJ’s younger years.

Lyndon might have asked his father for advice, but Samuel Ealy Johnson Jr wasn’t entirely successful as a politician, or as a businessman. This might have been the source of some tension in the household, and perhaps spurred the younger Johnson to think bigger in terms of a political career, though plumbing the motives of historic figures involves speculation. In any case, it was probably important to the future cast of LBJ’s mind that his father entertained other local politicos on that same porch, within earshot of the boy.

The house itself is handsome and fairly spacious, which indicates that the elder Johnson had some financial success. A few of the items currently inside belonged to the Johnson family, but most of them are period pieces. During Johnson’s boyhood, none of the houses in Johnson City were electrified, including their house. That part of Texas was ultimately electrified through the efforts of Congressman Johnson via a Rural Electrification Administration loan.

According to the LBJ Library, he wrote in a 1959 letter, “I think of all the things I have ever done, nothing has ever given me as much satisfaction as bringing power to the Hill Country of Texas.”

The National Museum of the Pacific War

Posted on March 16, 2016 by admin

The National Museum of the Pacific War is a complex of structures at a short distance from each other in Fredericksburg, including the restored Nimitz Hotel, which now houses a museum about Adm. Nimitz; the George H.W. Bush Gallery, which focuses on the war in the Pacific; and more: the Veterans’ Memorial Walk, the Plaza of Presidents, the Japanese Garden of Peace, the Pacific War Combat Zone, and the Center for Pacific War Studies.

The Nimitz Hotel building used to include the war exhibits, but now they’re in the much larger (32,500 square feet) Bush Gallery, open since the 1990s, and expanded in 2009. Outside its entrance is the conning tower of the USS Pintado, a submarine that conducted a number of a patrols against the Japanese.
The museum, organized chronologically beginning before the war and ending at the USS Missouri, is incredibly detailed, and home to a large array of impressive artifacts. That includes some impressively large artifacts, such as a Ko-hyoteki-class midget submarine that participated on the attack on Pearl Harbor, which actually seems pretty large when you stand next to it.
The pilot of this particular vessel, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, survived its beaching and became the war’s first Japanese POW, having failed at suicide. According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 2002, “When the war ended, he returned to Japan deeply committed to pacifism. There, Sakamaki was not warmly received. He wrote an account of his experience, titled The First Prisoner in Japan and I Attacked Pearl Harbor in the United States, and thereafter refused to speak about the war.” (He died in 1999.)

Also on display were a B-25 — as part of a exhibit about the Doolittle Raid — a Japanese N1K “Rex” floatplane, an F4F Wildcat fighter, and a replica of Fat Man, just to name some of the larger items.
The exhibits also included a lot of smaller weapons, tools, posters, uniforms, model ships and airplanes, military equipment, and sundry gear and items associated with the fighting and the people who were behind the front. Plus a lot to read. Campaigns and incidents both well known and obscure were detailed, such as the effort to salvage the ships in Pearl Harbor in the months after the attack, which was often dangerous work. Other Allied efforts weren’t ignored, such as the Australian advance on Buna-Gona, a campaign that incurred a higher rate of casualties than for the Americans at Guadalcanal.

All in all, a splendid museum. But exhausting. If I’d had time on Sunday as I went from Austin to San Antonio, I would have gone back (the tickets are good for 48 hours). It’ll be worth a return someday.

Fredericksburg Stroll & Der Stadt Friedhof

Posted on March 15, 2016 by admin

March 4 was sunny and pleasant in Fredericksburg, a settlement dating back to the efforts of German immigrants to Central Texas before the Civil War. A good day for a small town walkabout. As I walked, looking into the Main Street boutiques and wine shops and jewelers (James Avery has a shop there) and bistros and art galleries, it occurred to me that there needs to be a term for a town that partly or mostly lives off of upper middle-class day-tripers, retirees many of them, from near but not-too-near major metros.

Not tourist traps exactly, though there’s an element of that. I’ve been to a few of these towns, such as Galveston and Galena, Ill., and Sturgeon Bay, Wis., and Portsmouth, NH, and now Fredericksburg. Its locational advantage is proximity to Austin and San Antonio, and the town has a pleasant Main Street, a.k.a. Hauptstrasse, sporting a lot of repurposed 19th-century structures, many of historic or architectural interest.

The building on the left below was once the White Elephant Saloon, dating from 1888, featuring a whitish elephant above the entrance for reasons probably lost to time.
This was once a hospital.
I didn’t try for an exhaustive photo record of the many fine buildings in Fredericksburg. These visitors did a much better job of it, including many things I missed.

According to one source at least, St. Mary’s Catholic Church — which is off Fredericksburg’s Main Street by a block — counts as one of Texas’ Painted Churches, most of which are east of San Antonio. Some kind of adoration was ongoing at St. Mary’s, so I was able to drop in to see the lovely interior. Painted, yes, but also featuring stained glass and other objects of beauty.

“Still known as ‘new’ St. Mary’s, the church provides a classic example of Gothic architecture and was consecrated on November 24, 1908,” KLRU tells us. “Its principal architect was Leo Dielmann of San Antonio, with the contractor and builder, Jacob Wagner of Fredericksburg. Built of native stone quarried near the city, the total cost of building and furnishing the church was around $40,000.

“Still fully functional is the original pipe organ built by George Kilgen & Son of St. Louis, Missouri. It was installed in 1906 as a pump organ and has been completely electrified. The beautiful stained glass windows were added around 1914 and 1915.”

Further away from Main Street — and with absolutely no day-trippers or anyone else (alive) around — was the Der Stadt Friedhof, a cemetery established in 1846.
It’s more interesting than picturesque. For one thing, there are no trees or other large plants to speak of on the grounds, except out at the periphery. There’s a little funerary art, but its presence is fairly muted.

Still, I enjoyed looking around. The further you get from the boundary roads, the newer the stones become. Among the older stones at the edge of the cemetery are a number of graves surrounded by iron fences.
Many of which are neglected.
Almost all of the oldest stones are German, with ethnically appropriate names, such as Durst, Kallenberg, Keidel, Kramer, Lochte, Schmidt, Schuchard, Stein, Weiss, Zincke, usw. Adm. Nimitz’s parents are somewhere in the cemetery, though I didn’t look for them, and the admiral himself is buried at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Fransisco.

South Texas Flora, Early March

Posted on March 14, 2016 by admin

While walking along in Fredricksburg, Texas, on March 4, 2016, I noticed bluebonnets beginning to bloom. Not a sweeping field of bluebonnets, as you see in Hill Country paintings, or occasionally in person, but those emerging from a small green patch ‘tween concrete and asphalt. It was a pleasure to see them all the same.

Up in Illinois, I did see a handful of croci beginning to push out of the earth before I left. But nothing like the early spring flowers of Texas. Such as those emerging from rocky ground.

Or on bushes.

And trees.

Plus the glories of irises, always a favorite, wherever they grow.

What’s the matter,
That this distemper’d messenger of wet,
The many-colour’d Iris, rounds thine eye?

GTT Spring ’16

Posted on March 13, 2016 by admin

I left for my first 2016 visit to Texas on March 3. It was a big wheel, little wheel trip: a few days in Austin and the Hill Country, a week in San Antonio. When I left Illinois, there were patches of snow on the ground; in South Texas in early March, the grass is green and a few trees and leafing, and there are a handful of flowers and other buds. Heavy rain is always a distinct likelihood in early spring down there, and sure enough we had a couple of thunderstorms.

I visited my mother, both brothers and a nephew and his girlfriend. I spent time with a few old friends — in one case, someone I’ve known since 1973, Tom, a longtime resident of Austin. Our friendship might make the 50-year mark with both of us still alive. I think the actuaries would be with us on that, but who knows?

Out in the Hill Country, which is hardly remote and the opposite of sparsely populated in our time, I wandered around a main street designed to please day trippers, took in one of the most detailed war museums I’ve ever seen, visited the boyhood home of a certain president from Texas, pondered a cemetery full of Germans, saw an elegant Gothic church, happened upon a hilltop vista, and ate beans and jalapeño-cheese cornbread at a storefront restaurant.

In Austin, I saw a city that isn’t what it used to be. The thing about Austin, though, is that it’s always been a city that isn’t what it used to be. That doesn’t bother me particularly. I mainly go to visit old friends, such as the aforementioned Tom, who aren’t who they used to be — and yet who are in some ways. Such is the paradox of knowing people for decades. I also saw Blue Healer at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q. My nephew’s in the band. They’re really talented.

Each time I visit San Antonio, I try to spend a few hours outside of the familiar grooves laid down decades ago. I was able to this time. When I started to do so consciously, back around 2009, I thought it would be hard to find interesting things outside those grooves. I was wrong. In a city this size, with a history this deep, it isn’t hard at all. Such places includes tumbledown cemeteries and new green spaces and milestones of another era and the Blue Hole and China Grove, Texas, and a big basilica.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Small Town USA