Church of the Holy Cross, Stateburg, SC

Posted on August 4, 2025 by admin

Before I take a long drive, I spend time with one or more of my highway atlases sketching a route – Rand McNally, National Geographic or Michelin. Sometimes I refer to highway department folding maps as well. Google Maps has its place, an important one, but it’s no substitute for the big-picture sweep of a paper map.

For the trip to the Carolinas earlier this summer, an atlas map made it easy to see the best way to cut across the state from Myrtle Beach to Columbia, where I planned to spend a night: US 378. As Wiki puts it, “the highway has a lengthy concurrency with US 76 between Columbia and Sumter and serves as a major route between the Midlands and the Myrtle Beach area.”

That is, from the flat damp lands along the coast through pines and the sites of long-ago rice plantations, on to modern crop lands, small sandy wooded rises, and into suburban Columbia. Small towns dot the route: Conway, Gresham, Hannah, Lake City, Turbeville, and Sumter, which is actually a small city (pop. about 43,800).

Not far west of Sumter on US 378, I noticed a point-of-interest sign suggesting a right turn. I don’t remember the exact wording, but the gist that I picked up instantly was historic church. My kind of sight, in other words. After only a few minutes on the side road (South Carolina 261, a.k.a. N. Kings Hwy.), a church and churchyard cemetery appeared.

This turned out to be the Wayman Chapel of the AME Church, which has its own graveyard.

A good many AME churches are named Wayman, after Bishop Alexander W. Wayman. Surely the place is historic in its own right, including as part of the wider history of the AME, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. I continued on, and without realizing it, had entered the High Hills of Santee, which sounds like an all around interesting place.

Had I realized that, I might have gone a little further down N. Kings Hwy., but serendipity on the road will only take you so far. In this case, not much further down the road, to the Church of the Holy Cross.

The church has a Stateburg address, but isn’t in town. For well over a century, it was an Episcopal church, but the current congregation wants one and all to know that it isn’t any more. A simple sign, but enough to carry a whiff of schism.

The design work was by Edward C. Jones, a busy architect, including designs at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston. Not brick or the like, but rammed earth. I can’t say that I’d seen a rammed earth church before. It was completed in 1852.

Extending some distance behind the church, which was closed, is a handsome cemetery.

Impressive ironwork and crumbling masonry. What’s not to like?

Another layer of serendipity: not only had I chanced across the church and the graveyard, but someone I’d heard of: Joel R. Poinsett, whose career was astonishingly varied, for good and ill, even for the freewheeling 19th century.

Almost everyone else has heard of him too, except they don’t know it, since of course the poinsettia is named for him. A casual search shows that were was a quixotic bubble of interest in the idea of re-naming the flower around the holidays in 2023, but not since, with such headlines as: “Poinsettia by any other name? Try ‘cuetlaxochitl’ or ‘Nochebuena’ “ (Jacksonville Journal-Courier).

Cuetlaxochitl? Names do shift over time, for unpredictable reasons, but I’m not betting on that one entering common usage anytime soon.

Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern

Posted on July 22, 2025 by admin

Back to the WPA North Carolina guide, vintage 1939 (p. 230): “Cedar Grove Cemetery… was opened in 1800 by the Episcopalians and turned over to the city in 1854… The Confederate Monument, a 15-foot marble shaft, identifies a mass Confederate grave. Tradition says that his law desk and chair were buried in this cemetery with the body of William Gaston. Interred here are William J. Williams, who pained the Masonic portrait of Washington owned by the Alexandria, Va., lodge, a photograph of which is in the New Bern Public Library, and Moses Griffin, benefactor of city schools.”

As the day’s heat began to wane, we made our way to Cedar Grove. The place has a good contour, created by the diversity of stones, ironwork and greenery.

All in all, Cedar Grove is a Southern cemetery along the lines of Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston or Bonaventure in Savannah, though not quite as watered as the former or wooded as the latter, or as large as either. But cut from the same sort of lush, low-lying coastal territory, with trees draped with Spanish moss and flat spots thick with stones of the Old South.

Good old Spanish moss. The Carolina coast, and even up into coastal Virginia, is within its range.

Didn’t see the painter William J. Williams or any of the other permanent residents mentioned by the WPA guide, but of course the Confederate Monument was easy enough to spot.

Many Confederate veterans had their own stones, of course.

Interesting that the guide didn’t mention Maj. Gen. Robert Ransom Jr., but there he was.

From the looks of it, these are wagon driveways that allowed hearses to traverse the cemetery.

Among those “streets,” plenty of other fine stones.

Some mausoleums, but none of the monumental ilk you see in places historically with more money.

The last one is a little unusual, though I think I’ve seen similar structures occasionally here and there. Going for that concrete Quonset hut look, though considering its age, I’d bet that reference would be anachronistic.

New Bern Ramble

Posted on July 21, 2025 by admin

While waiting to be seated for brunch on Middle Street in downtown New Bern on Juneteenth, Dan and I had time for a stroll. The day was warming up, but not quite to a scorcher, and the sidewalks along Middle and Pollack Sts. are often in shade. That part of New Bern, shady and old, is quite the charmer.

“New Bern, one of North Carolina’s oldest towns, retains the flavor of past centuries,” North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State (1939), p. 221, tells us. Information from the WPA Guide series is of course a little old, but mostly stands the test of time.

“The community, which processes a domestic architecture of charm and distinction, is spread across a bluff at the confluence of the Neuse and Trent rivers, 35 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Massive brick townhouses, stately Georgian residences and wisteria-curtained clapboard cottages line narrow streets shadowed by oaks, poplars, elms and pecan trees. Many of the old streets retain their original brick pavements.”

All that would be downtown New Bern these days, as the town’s population – given as 11,981 by the WPA in 1939 – had expanded to 31,291 by 2020, according to the Census Bureau. So much of the town is actually late 20th-early 21st-century sprawl punctuated by parking lots and familiar retail.

Still, at the historic core, there is “domestic architecture of charm and distinction,” even now, with the older buildings mostly occupied by the likes of The Black Cat Shoppe, Faulkenberry Auctions, Anchored in New Bern (gift shop), Carolina Creations, Bear City Fudge Co., Curls & Lace Bridal Hair, and such restaurants as Cypress Hall, MJ’s Raw Bar and Grille, and Baker’s Kitchen, where we eventually brunchified (and it was delicious).

We visited a few shops and strolled by other spots, such as the former corner drug store credited as the invention-place of Pepsi-Cola.

A pleasant alley off Middle St. is known as Bear Plaza. Good thing living bears aren’t found there, but you are reminded of bears.

Bears are front and center as pawed, powerful symbols of the Bern towns, old and new, Swiss and American. As posted previously, the New Bern flag –

— looks a lot like the old Bern flag, with certain small but important modifications. Old Bern:

The WPA guide points out that the very first European settlers in the area were not in fact Swiss, though led by a Swiss. The colonists were German and had a harrowing experience getting here.

“The first settlers were survivors of an expedition of 650 German Palatines, Protestants expelled from Baden and Bavaria. Under the leadership of Swiss Baron Christopher de Graffenried, and aided by a gift of £4000 from Queen Anne of England, this group planned a colony in America. De Graffenried placed Christopher Gale and John Lawson in charge of the expedition.

“In January 1710, two ships sailed from Gravesend, England. Storms impeded the vessels and disease ravaged the voyagers, more than half of whom succumbed. A French vessel captured one of the transports as it entered Chesapeake Bay in April, and plundered the colonists. Fever further reduced the number and only a sickly remnant reached the Chowan River, where Thomas Pollock, a wealthy planner, provided them with transport to the Neuse and Trent rivers.”

De Graffenreid himself came a little later with some Swiss colonists, buying land from the Lords Proprietors of Carolina and paying off the local Tuscarora Indian chief as well. The natives were not mollified, however.

“In September 1711, the settlement was almost wiped out by a Tuscarora uprising. In the first attack, 80 settlers were slain. Lawson and de Graffenreid were taken to the Indian fort, Nohoroco, where Lawson was tortured to death, and de Graffenreid was held prisoner for six months. The war raged intermittently for two years, and the colonists were reduced such desperation that in 1713 many of them returned with de Graffenreid to Switzerland. The settlement made a new start on the leadership of Colonel Thomas Pollock, proprietary governor…”

Just one damn thing after another in early America. But the town survived, eventually becoming important enough to be the capital of North Carolina, as detailed yesterday.

Christ Church Episcopal rises above Pollock St.

Other churches clustered in the area, but Christ Church had the advantage of being open that weekday and holiday morning.

Back to the WPA guide, p. 228, on Christ Church: “[At the] NE corner Pollock and Middle streets, a weathered red brick edifice whose lofty, gold-crowned spire rises above great trees shading an old graveyard, was erected in 1873 upon the site of two earlier churches. The parish was organized in 1715 the first church was built in 1750. A Bible, Book of Common Prayer and silver communion service given by George II are retained, though royal Governor Martin attempted to take them with him when he fled town in 1775.

“When Parson Reed, the royalist rector, prayed for the king, lads prompted by patriot parents drummed at the door and shouted ‘Off with his head!’ This church was razed during the Revolution, reputedly because the brick had been brought from England. [Sounds like a likely story.] The second church was erected in 1825. Its outer walls were used for construction of the present building. In a corner of the churchyard fence, with its muzzle embedded in the ground, is the the Lady Blessington Cannon taken from the British ship Lady Blessington, captured in the Revolution.”

We didn’t see any embedded cannon, but on church land outside the Christ Church building were a cemetery and a playground. Not a combination you see much, but maybe there should be more places like that to remind us that the the arc of a lifespan is all too brief.

It’s a handsome Southern church burial yard, complete with magnolias and Spanish moss.

Included are stones reflecting older language usage, as you sometimes find in older cemeteries. “Relict,” as in widow, isn’t one you see much these days.

A wordy memorial. I hope the stone carver was paid by the letter.

But he’s notable enough: James Davis, quite a busy fellow in colonial North Carolina and later the state.

Tryon Palace

Posted on July 20, 2025 by admin

Talk much about colonial North Carolina and Blackbeard is going to come up – at least when talking with my old friend Dan, who had a fascination with the buccaneer even back in college. An artful storyteller, which surely helped him in his former career as an ad man, Dan can regale you with Blackbeard stories, detailing his short but colorful pirate career, including the fiery display he made of his person to scare onlookers witless. A pirate needs to be known for more than mere thievery on the high seas.

“In battle [Edward] Teach would have a sling over his shoulders that held at least three flintlock pistols and would often stick lit matches under his hat to give a smokey and fearsome appearance,” the Golden Age of Pirates explains, though without the Dan’s storytelling gusto, illustrating Blackbeard’s pyrotechnical flair with gestures all his own.

Dan and his wife Pam recently moved to New Bern, NC, very near Blackbeard’s haunts, including the site of his swashbuckler’s death in action off Okracoke Island. I don’t believe their retirement move from Alabama was to be near Blackbeard, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt during site selection. On the first evening of my visit to New Bern, Dan and I spent had a fine time out on his deck, perched near a small inlet ultimately connected to the wider ocean, watching the stars slowly emerge and talking of old times and newer things but not, at that moment, about Blackbeard.

That was the next day, as we toured Tryon Palace, even though the original structure was built many decades after Blackbeard’s newly severed head wound up tied to the bowsprit of the sloop Jane, put there by pirate hunter Robert Maynard. One colonial subject leads to another.

Tryon Palace is crown jewel of historic sites in New Bern, except that it’s actually a recreation of the 20th century. Somehow that doesn’t take away from its historic appeal.

When you stand in front of it, you’re peering not only back to 1770, when the colonial government of North Carolina completed, at great expense, a structure that looked like this one. You’re also looking at a building completed within living memory, in 1959, which is considered a faithful restoration of the one that NC Gov. William Tryon had erected.

“When the colonial Assembly convened in [New Bern] on 8 Nov. 1766, Tryon presented a request for an appropriation with which to construct a grand building that would serve as the house of colonial government as well as the governor’s residence,” says the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

“Less than a month later, the Assembly acceded to the governor’s wishes by earmarking £5,000 for the purchase of land and the commencement of construction. The appropriated sum was borrowed from a fund that had been established for the construction of public schools. To replenish the depleted school fund, a poll tax and a levy on alcoholic beverages were imposed.”

Just about the worst kind of taxes when it came to irritating the non-coastal non-elites of the colony, a discontent that eventually erupted as the Regulator Rebellion. Ultimately Gov. Tryon, in personal command of the colony’s militia, crushed the Regulators – untrained men who seem to have been foolish enough to meet Tryon’s trained men in an open field at the Battle of Alamance in 1771. (Which isn’t entirely forgotten.)

We took an early afternoon tour of Tryon Palace, guided by a woman in period costume. She told us about Tryon – no mention of Alamance, however – and his successor, Josiah Martin, the only other royal governor to use the palace. Gov. Martin spent more on furnishing the place, only to be obliged to skedaddle come the Revolution. We also heard about architect and master builder John Hawks (d. 1790), who came to North Carolina from England to build the palace which, of course, is only a palace by canebrake standards of the colony. It is a stately manor house, however.

The colonial legislature and the new state legislature both used the palace for a while, so it counts as the first capitol of North Carolina. That meant I was visiting yet another state capitol, without realizing it at first. A former capitol, that is, including ones I’ve seen in Illinois, Texas (counting Washington-on-the-Brazos as such), Virginia, Florida and Iowa. Abandoned as a government building after the NC capital left New Bern, fire consumed most of Tryon Palace just before the end of the 18th century. Its west wing survived for other uses over the next century-plus.

In the 20th century, along came Maude Moore Latham, a wealthy local woman with a taste for historic restoration. If much of colonial Williamsburg up in Virginia could be restored, so could colonial New Bern in North Carolina. Despite the fact that a road and houses had been built on the site of old Tryon Palace, she eventually facilitated the restoration, made possible (or at least more accurate) by the fact that John Hawks’ plans for the building had survived.

Also restored: The gardens of Tryon Palace, flower and vegetable. Despite the heat, we couldn’t miss that.

After our sweaty visit to the palace and gardens, Dan and I repaired to the restaurant in the nearby North Carolina History Center, called Lawson’s On The Creek, for refreshing beverages and more talk of Blackbeard and many other things. We closed the joint down over beer, at 4 p.m.

Downing a beer was just the thing. That was our homage to those days of yore. In colonial America, beer was no mere refreshing beverage, but an essential one.

North Carolina, South Carolina

Posted on July 17, 2025 by admin

Maybe I should have looked at something like this before driving between Knoxville and Charlotte last month.

Note the array of Construction Zone markers along I-40. Turns out travelers are lucky to be able to drive the road at all, considering that Hurricane Helene last year did so much damage that the highway – an Interstate of considerable importance regionally – was closed for five months, only reopening on March 1.

Reopening as a two-lane road, with each lane bounded on the outside by those concrete barriers you never want to see when driving. Separating the lanes is what amounts to a curb, painted yellow. This goes on for about 12 miles, as reconstruction work goes on. That isn’t a long stretch of road under normal conditions, but when you’re between barriers, behind a truck and in front of a truck, with traffic (many trucks) coming the other way just on the other side of a yellow curb, and little margin for error on anyone’s part, your reaction as a driver is going to be: when will this end?

That was my reaction, anyway. Had some nice drives on this trip. Western North Carolina I-40 wasn’t one of them.

“The hurricane washed away about 3 million cubic yards of dirt, rock and material from the side of I-40,” NCDOT reported. I’m having trouble visualizing a million cubic yards, much less three, but I’m sure it was a staggering amount.

“The stabilization process involved driving steel rods into the bedrock, filling the rods with grout, applying a metal screen then sprayable concrete to the face of the walls. There were four different rigs operating at the same time.

“Crews installed 90,000 square feet of soil-nail walls across the 10 different damage locations in less than 130 days. They also drilled nearly 2,100 feet of nails and fortified 4 miles of the shoulder for truck traffic.”

My goal for the afternoon had been to take I-40 from Knoxville to Asheville and then I-26 south to its junction with South Carolina 11, which is Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway, and take that road east. I’d been advised that the town of Saluda, NC, on US 167, was a pleasant place to stop, and it was, though most of the shops were closed by the time I got there.

I had the idea that I would drive US 176 to the next town, Tryon, NC. Oops, no. Road closed. Maybe the hurricane did that as well.

So I got back on I-26 and went to the Tryon exit. I didn’t have any idea what to expect in Tryon, certainly not the Tryon Horse, which is a large toy horse on wheels. It stands on US 176, known as South Trade St. at that point. This is the fifth iteration of the horse in nearly 100 years.

“[The first Tryon Horse] was originally designed as an advertisement for the first horse show held in Tryon at Harmon Field in 1928,” says the Tryon History Museum. “It came from a drawing done by Eleanor Vance, based on an idea from Romaine Stone, who was active in the Tryon Riding and Hunt Club, and from then seventeen-year-old master builder Meredith Lankford.

“The Tryon Horse was built in the basement of Miss Vance and Miss Yale’s house by Meredith Lankford and Odell Peeler and was assembled in the driveway… The Tryon Horse… was brought out for future horse shows and parades, and was stored in the Paper Box Factory located on Depot Street. Unfortunately, the first horse was destroyed when the factory burned in the 1930s.”

It was no accident that the talent was available locally in the 1920s to build such a thing. At the time, Tryon was noted for a company that made toys, especially high-end wooden toys.

South Trade St. is a handsome thoroughfare, populated by older buildings developed to support trade.

Something else I didn’t expect on the street: Nina Simone Plaza.

Complete with a bronze of the musician and activist, who grew up in Tryon, and who no doubt got out as soon as her talents allowed. She died in 2003; the statue was dedicated in 2017.

A remarkable detail (so I’m remarking on it): “The sculptor, Zenos Frudakis, included a bronze heart containing Simone’s ashes welded to the interior of the figure’s chest,” says the University of North Carolina. For his part, Frudakis has had quite a career.

Later in the day, I eventually made it to South Carolina 11 at Campobello, SC, and drove east to its end for 50 miles or so to Gaffney, SC. I’d intended to visit Cowpens National Battlefield along the way.

No dice. The main entrance to Cowpens was closed by the time I arrived. I understand closing the visitors center at the end of the day, but the entire place? A mile or so east on SC 11 was an alternate entrance, so I stopped there.

I walked down the path toward the battlefield, but thought better of it after about 10 minutes.

I wanted to get to Charlotte before the end of the day. Summer days are long, but not endless. Also, mosquitoes.

Pigeon Roost State Historic Site

Posted on July 15, 2025 by admin

My stop in Scottsburg, Indiana, wasn’t entirely random. If you have a mind to visit Pigeon Roost State Historic Site, which is just south of town, you need to get off the Interstate and proceed to the site on US 31, and Scottsburg is a good place to do that.

As a point of interest red spot on highway maps, Pigeon Roost had intrigued me for years, but not enough to stop there. Unless I did sometime in the 1980s. Or maybe the ’90s. I’ve arrived at that point in life at which I can’t quite remember all the things I’ve seen, especially obscure memorials in obscure places. In a related trick of an aging memory, I sometimes have fairly distinct memories of places, but no memory of exactly where I was.

There are at least two layers of history at work at a place like Pigeon Roost. One is the massacre itself, whose longstanding interpretation sees it as a bloody incident in the War of 1812, with the Indians taking the opportunity – and British weapons – to fight the tide of settlement in the Northwest Territory, though they were already doing that, ultimately in vain. There also seems to be a revisionist idea that the Indians were out to settle a score with a particular group of whites and didn’t give a fig about the geopolitics of the situation, which certainly sounds plausible.

The other layer is the fact that it wasn’t until 1904 that the state of Indiana dedicated a memorial to the victims of the massacre, including what must have been a tidy sum to pay for an obelisk. Somewhere in the minutes of the legislature, and maybe in letters or newspaper reports, or maybe in a local history archive, is some inkling of why that might be: why then and not some other time. But it seems unlikely that anyone will ever take such a granular interest in the subject. Certainly not me, so I’ll have to leave it at that.

These days, Pigeon Roost is quiet and, I suspect, rarely visited. I had the place all to myself.

At some other point in the past, locals started burying their dead near the site.

Google Maps calls it Pigeon Roost Cemetery, aka Sodom Cemetery. The latter seems like an odd choice, but a quick look reveals a few others of that name, in Georgia, Ohio and Minnesota.

Google Local Guide Gary Collins has this to say about the place: This pioneer cemetery holds the remains of some of Southern Indiana’s earliest settlers, including some of the survivors of the infamous Pigeon Roost Massacre. At the time of the massacre, this cemetery had yet to be established, and some of the victim’s [sic] final resting places are unknown. It is generally well kept, and interments still occasionally take place.

What, no ghost stories about Pigeon Roost? Seems like perfect fodder for such tales: not only violent death, but the violent death of children and indeed entire families. There’s an opportunity here for making stuff up — I mean, paranormal investigations. What does Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery have that Pigeon Roost doesn’t?

Rosehill Cemetery: For Union and Liberty

Posted on June 11, 2025 by admin

Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago opened in 1859, just in time to receive war dead in the days before dog tags.

Still, most of the stones had names and, for now, flags that must have been placed for Memorial Day, which was the weekend before I took my stroll at Rosehill.

The first hospital steward I’ve ever seen among stones of this kind. That couldn’t have been an easy or pleasant job.

The stones looked fairly new. Turns out they are replacements for the originals.

Often pointed-top stones designate Confederates, but not in this case. Died for the Union at Shiloh, but not buried in Chicago.

A draped obelisk marking the grave of Gen. Thomas E.G. Ransom (d. 1864).

The Civil War was a hands-on conflict even for high-ranking officers, who thus died or were wounded in some numbers. They also shared the risk of disease, and in fact dysentery felled Gen. Ransom, though he had been wounded more than once in combat.

The war dead are clustered near the cemetery’s grand entrance. This memorial says Our Heroes and was dedicated on Decoration Day 1870, with the bronze atop and the bas-relief panels on the sides by noted sculptor Leonard W. Volk (d. 1895). He also did the tomb of Stephen Douglas.

“An immense train, composed of twenty-three cars, was found necessary to transport the people who desired to attend the ceremonies,” the Chicago Tribune reported the next day. “These, added to the number which had taken the forenoon train, as well as those who had proceeded to the spot in carriages, swelled the attendance to over five thousand persons, there being about an equal number of ladies and gentlemen. Arrived at Rosehill the crowds formed into a procession and, headed by Nevans & Dean’s full band, marched to the music of a dirge to the vicinity of the monuments, where a few moments were occupied in the inspection of the structures.”

The report mentioned monuments, plural, and besides Our Heroes, also dedicated that day was a memorial to the Chicago Board of Trade Battery, an artillery battery, noting the many battles it participated in.

More artillery.

Bridges’ Battery, Illinois Light Artillery, is ringed by what look to be captured — and repurposed — cannons.

The cemetery office had photocopied map-guides to the grounds, and that inspired me to go look for the Rock of Chickamauga, which isn’t that close to most of the rest of the Union war dead. Along the way is a memorial to Chicago volunteer firemen. While not directly related to the war, it’s from the same time, 1864.

Gen. George Thomas (d. 1870), the Rock of Chickamauga, isn’t buried at Rosehill, but rather in upstate New York. Still, he’s honored in Chicago.

A Chicago post of the GAR took his name and in 1894, honored him by erecting a 12-ton boulder taken from the cliffs at Chickamauga National Battlefield. As marked on the boulder, it was rededicated in 1994.

So while the metaphorical Rock of Chickamauga isn’t at Rosehill, a literal rock of Chickamauga is.

The USS Lexington Museum

Posted on January 27, 2025 by admin

It was a nicely structured day trip to Corpus Christi earlier this month, if I say so myself. We left not ridiculously early from SA, but early enough to catch a few easy sights in Corpus before lunch. After lunch: a single main attraction and then a drive home in time for dinner.

It was a Texas dinner: drive-through Whataburger.

The main attraction that day: The USS Lexington, CV-16, nickname, the Blue Ghost. That is to say, the 16th aircraft carrier belonging to the U.S. Navy, commissioned in early 1943 in the thick of the war in the Pacific, where it kicked ass. The ship survived the war with close calls and Japanese propaganda broadcasts asserting more than once that she had been destroyed. After a period of decommissioning beginning in the late ’40s, Lexington returned to serve throughout most of the Cold War.

Note the rising sun flag. That is where a kamikaze struck the ship off Luzon in November 1944, killing 50 men and wounding many more. RIP, sailormen.

That afternoon my brothers and I were entering what is now called the USS Lexington Museum, which is permanently moored across the ship channel from downtown Corpus Christi, where it has been since 1992, within sight of the Texas State Aquarium, the scattered buildings of North Beach, and the old highway bridge and the new one.

The Blue Ghost is one of five aircraft carrier museums nationwide, with two others in California, and one each in New York and South Carolina. These days, tourists enter the Lexington via the Hanger Deck. This deck and all the other lower decks are thick with exhibits, on many of the available surfaces, about the ship and its active service.

I’ve seen a similar bronze before.

George H.W. Bush as a young naval aviator. A sign is careful to point out that the future president was never assigned to the Lexington, but spent a few days recuperating here (“sack time,” he later called it) in June 1944 after being rescued from the ocean when mechanical issues forced him to ditch. Also, he trained as a naval aviator at Air Station Corpus Christi, so there is that connection.

We climbed a number of staircases to higher decks, through the Foc’sle and ultimately to the Flight Deck. Slow going at our age, but we went.

Some of the exhibits were very specific, such as the rat guards used by the vessel. I remember seeing those depicted in a Carl Barks comic, maybe a Scrooge McDuck adventure.

Others were more generalized, such as entire room in the Foc’sle about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Eventually we made our way to the Flight Deck, towered over by the island (the towering section including the bridge). Mostly, the Flight Deck is an open-air aircraft museum.

Sage advice.

Restoration in progress on a Phantom II.

An A-6 Intruder. Like a number of the other airplanes at the Lexington, on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

An AH-1 Cobra. There’s a warrior slogan for you, on the nose.

A T-2 Buckeye, developed in the late ’50s as a trainer. The marvel, when it comes to naval aviation, is how anyone learns it without getting killed.

How indeed. The sign mentions an incident on the Lexington in 1989, when a T-2 Buckeye flown by a trainee crashed into the aft section of the island, killing five and injuring others. Among the dead: Airman Lisa L. Mayo, 25, of Oklahoma City, the first woman killed aboard a U.S. carrier in the line of duty. Again RIP, those who died.

More.

Onward to the Bridge.

There’s the captain.

Spare and utilitarian, the Bridge is. Except for that wig.

Kokomo Opalescent Glass Co.

Posted on January 2, 2025 by admin

Sounds of the northwest suburbs in the seconds after midnight, New Year’s Day 2025.

A little way down our block, a knot of school-aged kids were in a front yard just after midnight, yelping and whooping and tooting horns as the fireworks popped all around the neighborhood; you can hear them on the third recording. The father of the house stood in the front door, up a few steps. Soon the kids headed up the steps to go inside, and I noticed gold-colored crowns on all of their heads, including the dad.

On the Monday before Christmas, we found our way to Kokomo Opalescent Glass Co., which is housed in an unpretentious complex in an unpretentious neighborhood in that town.

It’s another legacy of the Kokomo Gas Boom. A French glass chemist named Charles Henry found his way to Kokomo in the late 1880s, taking advantage of free natural gas to set up a glassmaking factory. That arrangement didn’t last, since Henry was more a technical man than a manager, and a heavy drinker besides, so he lost the factory and thus didn’t become the glass baron of Kokomo. But under other management the company has endured. KOG abides, you could say.

Three of the maw-of-hell furnaces for melting glass. There were others.

“Founded in 1888, KOG is the oldest producer of hand cast, cathedral and opalescent glass in the United States… known worldwide for our high-quality, hand-mixed sheet glass. KOG… has hundreds of color recipes, documented color combinations and numerous textures and densities,” the company web site says, with an illustration of handling molten glass better than I could photograph.

Not that I didn’t try.

Out it comes.

After the molten load has been dropped off at a suitable table-like surface to cool and be shaped, other glass experts do what they do.

Such as this fellow.

Our knowledgeable guide told us about the chemistry and the process and the history of the place.

I didn’t understand a lot of it, especially the finer points of the process, but remained fascinated. As a glass artist herself, she also conveyed a sense of artistic wonder at the multitudes of glass, the colors and textures, which are both hard and fragile. All that came through a device to boost her voice, since a glass factory can be a noisy place.

Note the glass at her feet. Among other stipulations that we agreed to before taking the tour was no open-toed shoes. In fact, that was stressed the most. When moving globs of molten glass around, a little is naturally going to drop and harden on the floor. Then break. In the fullness of time, the factory workers remove the glass, perhaps to be remelted, or sold as random pieces by weight to artists who use it. But there’s always going to be some glass underfoot. Fortunately this wasn’t a problem with standard footwear.

Another thing the company tells you is that the factory has no climate control. So while it was just above freezing outside, the factory was warmed by the furnaces. In summer, of course, the effect would be additive, and so devilish hot on the factory floor. Away from the furnaces, in the spaces used for processing and storing and packing all that glass, temps were low in December.

Such as in the cullet barrel room.

Cullet. How did I get this far and not know there is a word for shards of glass, thought of collectively and probably destined to be remelted?

Most of the company’s product isn’t broken, and so is stored in an impressive array of racks and shelving.

Hues galore.

Toward the end of the tour, we passed through a studio where artists employed by KOG work on custom projects. It being just before Christmas, only one was around, though I’m sure it’s a livelier place most of the time. And it is climate controlled.

Most of the complex is newer than 1888, but even so glass has been made on this site for nearly 140 years, using fuel unknown to the ancients. By ancient I mean really ancient: man-made glass from about 3500 BC has turned up in Egypt and eastern Mesopotamia, and it has been made ever since. So we visited a modern gas-power glass factory last month, but also experienced a vivid link to the heat and work of millennia.

Graceland Cemetery: The Stones

Posted on November 19, 2024 by admin

No point in burying the lead (haw, haw): among all the memorials at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Dexter Graves’ stone surely gets the most attention. For one thing, it stands out at a distance.

Safe to say that the memorial, especially a haunting bronze figure called “Eternal Silence,” is better known than Dexter Graves himself. Graves was a Chicago pioneer, settling in the area in 1833, when the place was little more than a marshy spot near the Chicago River. He died in 1845, with reinternment and the memorial coming much later at the behest of an elderly son of his, who is buried there too – in 1909, by which time Chicago was a vast metropolis that probably would have astonished Graves.

Lorado Taft created the sculpture, and while I made images of it standing alone, soon a small group of French tourists came by for a look, including posing with it for pictures. Since the work is near the cemetery’s only entrance, I came back again before I left for another look, and that time an American couple, about my age, were there. The woman asked me whether I’d also seen “Fountain of Time” down in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Happily, I was able to tell her I had, including the quote that goes with it, “Time stays, we go.”

I also recommended “The Eternal Indian,” out in Ogle County, which she said she hadn’t seen. I forgot to mention – it would have been showing off anyway – seeing his “Alma Mater” in Champaign, the memorial he worked on in Mount Carroll, Illinois, his sculptures in the Fern Room of the Garfield Park Conservatory or the Fountain of the Great Lakes at the Art Institute. That’s just a scattering. To see more of Taft’s work, you have to pay attention elsewhere in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky (in Paducah, I wasn’t paying attention), Washington, DC, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Kansas and probably other places.

Also, you can see “The Crusader,” which is Graceland, marking the grave of Victor Lawson (d. 1925), one-time publisher of the Chicago Daily News. Lorado Taft did that too, though later in his career, 1931.

When was the last time a newspaper crusaded about anything? Not recently, private equity owners don’t like it.

Assorted business tycoons, moguls and robber barons repose in Graceland, without a cent to their names these days. But in their day, they or their immediate heirs had big bucks to spend on big memorials. None is bigger than retailer and hotelier Potter Palmer (d. 1902).

That kind of dough will also buy you a picturesque waterfront location.

I have to say the Palmer tomb is quite a presence, standing out even among many other large tombs, of which there are many. Such as that for George Pullman.

The pyramid of 19th-century beermaker Peter Schoenhofen.

Others.

The cemetery’s stone- and metalwork curls and is otherwise shaped in ways remarkable to see. How can these hard materials be persuaded to take those shapes? By the rare skill of the artisans, as long gone as the captains of industry inside the tombs.

A small building stands near the entrance of Graceland, including a patio with iron tables and chairs, a few of which were occupied when I visited, since the day was just warm enough for that. Inside the building, heated this time of year, visitors can rest on a bench, go to the bathroom, watch a video about the cemetery and, just as important, pick up a free paper map that guides you to the graves of some (but hardly all) of the well-known permanent residents.

Not every grand cemetery has that amenity, but when you find one, that ups the visit into a kind of treasure hunt, if you want. A look for the famed stones, like at Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles with its movie stars or Forest Home in Milwaukee with its brewers. My idea of a good time, but I’m eccentric that way. Besides some of the stones mentioned above, the map takes you to lumber baron and Goodman Theatre patron William Goodman.

And Mr. Whipple.

He’s not actually on the map, probably because the memorial isn’t for the person obsessed with toilet paper, since he was fictional. Even so, I understand he received treatment for his OCD, retired from the grocery business and lived with his daughter in Florida until his death in 2007.

MLB star Ernie Banks, “Mr. Cub,” and the first black player for the Cubs. Nearby is dancer Ruth Page.

Minnie Miñoso, a fairly recent stone. In fact, I read that it was erected only this summer. Graceland is still an active cemetery, with more open land than I would have thought.

I had to look him up; among other things, he was the first black player for the White Sox. The Cuban Comet, he was called, which sounds like something invented by a sports reporter pounding print on his old typewriter.

Heavyweight prizefighter Jack Johnson, the Galveston Giant, famed for upsetting racists in the early 20th century.

The small pyramid of architectural photographer and preservationist Richard Nickel, a favorite of mine in Chicago history.

Gov. John Peter Altgeld, another favorite but from Illinois history, who knew that pardoning the surviving men convicted in the Haymarket bombing would probably cost him the governorship, as indeed it likely did. It was that or preside over a miscarriage of justice, he believed.

Chicago is a city of architects; Graceland is a necropolis of architects. I didn’t see them all – missed Burnham on his island, for example – but I got a good sample.

Including Mies van der Rohe. For him, a flat black spare Miesian sort of memorial.

But he has a splendid view.

William LeBaron Jenny.

Bruce Goff.

Louis Sullivan.

Talk about teasing a rarefied shape out of base metal. In this case, the work’s designer at least is known: Thomas Tallmadge (d. 1940), who is also at Graceland.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History