Allen J. Benson Park. Or, the Illinois-Indiana Border Obelisk.

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I have a certain fascination with borders, probably dating back as long as I’ve been looking at maps just for fun, which is a long time now. I seem to have written about them a lot as well, something I didn’t realize until I checked.

Such as the posting about the meeting of British Columbia and Alberta; of Banff National Park and Kootenay National Park; and on the Continental Divide. Or the U.S. Canadian border just south of Vancouver. Or the borders we crossed in 2005 and 2006 and another posting about them again. Or the Tennessee-North Carolina border. Or Missouri-Kansas. Or Texas-Louisiana.

Not long ago, I had an encounter with a closer border: Illinois-Indiana. But not just any point on that long line — as far northwest as you can go in Indiana and still be on land, because the NW corner of the state is actually a point in Lake Michigan.

This is what you see at the Illinois-Indiana line just a few feet from Lake Michigan, while you are standing in Indiana.
A weatherworn, graffiti-scarred limestone obelisk. This is a closer view.
“In 1833, as Chicago and the Midwest were starting to grow, Congress ordered a new survey of the boundary between Illinois and Indiana,” says Chicago History Today, which asserts that the obelisk is the oldest public monument in Chicago. “When the survey was completed, a 15-foot high limestone obelisk was put in place on the shore of Lake Michigan, straddling the state line.

“By the 1980s the marker was isolated and neglected among the rail yards. Allen J. Benson, a ComEd executive, convinced the company to sponsor its restoration, in conjunction with the East Side Historical Society and other interested groups. In 1988 the marker was moved 190 feet north to its present location, just outside the [ComEd coal-fired power plant] gate. A new base was added at that time.”

Though moved into an area created by landfill, I understand that the obelisk still straddles the north-south Illinois-Indiana border, which a few feet further north heads out into Lake Michigan. It’s also the border between the city of Chicago and the city of Hammond. (Chicago extended out this far in massive 1889 annexation, which is yellow on the map.)

There’s a plaque near the obelisk that says the small area (maybe inside the fence) is Allen J. Benson Park to honor the exec, who has since died. The power plant closed in 2012, and its former site, a brownfield on the Indiana side of the line, is being redeveloped to be home to a data center.

When the plant was up and running, the marker didn’t look quite so forlorn: in the 2011, according to a Wikimedia image, three flagpoles and some trees were in the vicinity — but no metal fence — and there were plaques on the side of the obelisk with the state names. Guess they were stolen. Such is life in the big city, but I’m glad this curiosity from the 19th century still stands.

The Schaumburg Labor Day Parade

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This year I decided to watch the Schaumburg Labor Day Parade, whose name pretty much sums up the time and place (no one else in my family was interested). Luck was with the parade and parade-goers this year. The parade was held in the morning, under partly cloudy skies and in only somewhat hot and humid conditions. A few hours later, intense thunderstorms rolled through.

The parade featured a thin selection of local politicos — I expect state reps and senators and such had union picnics or rallies to go to — public service equipment, local businesses, veterans, nonprofits, clubs and two high school marching bands. None of the floats were that elaborate and sometimes there were minutes-long gaps in the movement of the parade. Ah, well. The bar’s a little lower on free entertainment.

The mayor of Schaumburg (actually village president) and some trustees came by first in golf cards, and a while later came the fire equipment.
Both the Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates FDs were represented.

An organization I knew nothing about.
Instead of forays into the wilderness, Sea Scouts take forays onto the water. A different kind of wilderness, I suppose. These days, co-ed.

The odd float of the Volkening Heritage Farm at Spring Valley. Complete with plants and an oom-pah band to celebrate Schaumburg’s German past.

Flag girls. They heralded the approach of the Schaumburg High School marching band.

A different sort of band.
The Memories Entertainment float. According to their sign, the band features Buck-A-Roo & the Fabulous Memories. For this parade, they were dressed as clowns and playing ’70s rock standards.

More flag girls.
This time, ahead of the Conant High School marching band.
When the band paused for a moment near me, I noticed a number of adults moving up and down the lines with squirt bottles, squirting liquid into the mouths of the band members. Water, I assume. I also saw one fellow squirt water on the back of the neck of a band member.
That struck me as odd. Forty years ago, I was in a marching band and we marched in a parade every year in April in San Antonio. Not terrifically hot, but always warm enough, and no one gave us water. I feel a curmudgeonly moment coming on. We marched in the heat and we got dehydrated and we liked it.

Labor Day Hiatus

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Back to posting on September 4, after Labor Day. You’d think a holiday of that name would be time for “Joe Hill” or the like, though May Day’s really the time. Time to lounge around on the deck out back, provided it isn’t raining, which it has been a lot lately.

Actually, it’s the dog who uses the deck for its fullest lounging potential.

Use the deck while you can. Soon enough it’s just going to be a snow and ice collector.

More Riverside

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Hanging in the metra station in Riverside, Illinois, is a reproduction of the plan of the town as originally envisioned in the late 1860s, except the spot that says “land not belonging to the company” (that is, the Riverside Improvement Co.) is part of the town in our time.

The streets and the green spaces are still pretty much still the way they were originally laid out. Note the bend in the Des Plaines River that forms a tongue of land, marked by me by a red circle. Also, the red star is roughly where the train station, tower, library, etc. are located.

With a Riverside Museum walking tour pamphlet in hand, we decided to take a walk in the tongue of land after seeing the sights near the train station. The air was a little steamy, but with the sun hiding behind clouds, we put up with it.

One of the streets along the river is Bloomingbank Road. The river, hidden by foliage, is to the right in this image.

The road is populated mostly by large vintage houses. Such as the Clarence Cross Cottage, 1887 Shingle & Queen Anne.

The Thomas W. Blayney Residence, 1869 Italianate.

The John C. Smith House, 1907 American Four Square. That’s a nice porch.

Most people probably come this way for the Frank Lloyd Wright works, which are a cluster of residences on 10 acres near the tip of the tongue. Originally they were built as a single residence for the Coonley family.

Per Wiki: “Avery Coonley, a Chicago industrialist and his wife, Queene Ferry of the Detroit-based Ferry Seed Company, were both heirs to industrial fortunes and had an unlimited budget to commission a new residence.” Just the kind of clients FLW liked, no doubt.

Formerly the stables and coach house.

Formerly the gardener’s residence.

Formerly the main house.

Not the best view of the house. That would be the other side, but there’s no access to ordinary gawkers since the house is privately owned. That source says the house is up for sale, listed this spring for $1.6 million. Might be a reasonable price for a FLW work, if you remember it’s an artwork more than a residence, and don’t mind the invisible hole somewhere in the place where your money seems to go.

Riverside

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I’ve known about Riverside, Illinois, for years, and used to pass through it every weekday in the late ’90s and early ’00s when I took the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Metra line to work downtown. One thing I could see from the train window was the fine brick station.

As well as the town’s former water tower, not far from the station. The building underneath the tower is now the town’s park and recreation department.
Riverside is a special place beyond what you can see from the train. But I never got around to a longer visit than a train stop, so on Saturday morning, inspired by the fact that some of its buildings were part of Doors Open Illinois — not to be confused with Open House Chicago, or Doors Open Milwaukee — we drove to Riverside for a look around.

“Starting [in 1869] with a blank canvas of 1,600 acres of purchased farmland, the Riverside Improvement Company arranged for a complete utility infrastructure — water, sewer, and gas for lighting,” WTTW says. “They called their brand-new community ‘Riverside’ for the Des Plaines River that flows through the site.

“To design and plan the village, they hired Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux, whose Central Park success a decade before had made them superstars of design.

“Olmsted’s signature approach was to create a picturesque, landscaped topography. Inspired by the winding Des Plaines River, he eschewed a standard city grid, instead creating a series of curvilinear streets that wound across each other — a pattern that resulted in dozens of tiny triangular mini-parks.”

These days, Riverside is still a prosperous suburb, as it was intended to be from day one. We parked near the station and first got a better look at the station’s handsome interior.

As well as a closer look at the former water tower.
Unfortunately, it isn’t open to the public for a climb. Too bad. Even local vistas are usually worth the effort. A view of Riverside from that perch would probably be a fine thing.

A nearby former pumping station is now a small museum devoted to Riverside. Mostly it sports photographs on the wall of earlier times in the town.
The three volunteers inside, local ladies all, seemed really glad to see us. I expect that word never really got out about Open Door Illinois, and the little museum doesn’t get that many visitors anyway.

They told us a bit about the town and the structures we’d been looking at. For example: parking is usually possible near the train station, even on weekdays, which is unusual among suburban Metra stations. Most commuters walk or ride bicycles to the station, one of the volunteers said. Probably just as Olmstead wanted it.

More from WTTW about Riverside: “In 1871, when the Great Fire decimated Chicago and before Olmsted’s plan was fully executed, the developers went bankrupt. But before long, Riverside picked up momentum again, with community resident and notable architect William LeBaron Jenney stepping in to complete the town plan, and other notable architects of the day such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan designing homes.”

One of the aforementioned mini-parks is next to the train station: Guthrie Park.
Named after a local luminary, not the folk singer. There are an assortment of commemorative plaques attached to rocks ringing the flag pole in Guthrie Park. Some of them honor men, presumably locals, who were killed in the Great War.

Rev. Hedley Heber Cooper, d. May 26, 1918. War was dangerous for chaplains, too.

Private Albert Edward Moore, d. July 19, 1918.

There’s also a plaque for a soldier who died not long after the Armistice, but here at home. A little late for the flu, but still possible. Accident, maybe.

Sgt. James P. Quinn, d. February 4, 1919, Camp Logan.

Near Guthrie Park is the Riverside Public Library, completed in 1931, which looks like a church. The architect is given as Connor & O’Connor, or simply “Mr. Connor” in this timeline.
On the inside it looks even more like a church. A certain kind of church, anyway.

The library is the only one I’ve ever seen with an Olmsted collection.

The collection takes up a number of shelves in its own special niche.

Yellowstone, Badlands, Albert Lea, Etc. 2005

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Part of a letter I wrote to Ed about 13 years ago, with a few relevant pictures and hindsight notes in brackets.

Aug 22, 2005

Time to start another letter, which I might as well subhead “Things About My Recent Travels That Didn’t Make It Into the Blog.” If letters had subheads, that is.

In some ways, I hope this is a pattern for future travels [mostly it wasn’t]. Of the nine nights we spent on the road, six were in a tent, three in a motel. Better still, of the six nights in a tent, four cost nothing. Call me a cheapskate, but it did me good to return every night to Yankee Jim Canyon about 15 miles north of Yellowstone, in Gallatin Nat’l Forest land, and crawl into the tent knowing that I paid nothing. Well, no extra charge, no insidious “user’s fee,” because some small bit of my taxes must go to support the Gallatin Nat’l Forest.

Some of the most striking things about the many striking things in Yellowstone were the places — whole mountainsides, in some cases — that had clearly burned down in 1988. Hundreds of grey-dead trunks, stripped of anything remotely alive, still stand, lording — if such be possible among trees — over forests of mid-sized pines, very much alive, the spawn of the great fire. In other places, hundreds of tree corpses have tumbled into random piles, also interlarded with young living trees. You can drive for miles and miles and see scene after scene like these. They say it was a hell of a fire, a complex of hell-fires, really, and I believe it.

[A post-fire landscape in Yellowstone in 2005, 17 years later.]Yellowstone 2005

I saw something in South Dakota that the rest of the nation can emulate: two kinds of X signs, marking traffic deaths I think. One says: “WHY DIE? Drive carefully.” And the other: “THINK: X marks the spot. Drive carefully.” For such a sparse population, South Dakotans seem to kill themselves often enough on the roads. Long winters, cheap booze, almost empty roads.

I recommend the drive along the Missouri River from I-90 to Pierre, SD — along state roads 50, 10, and mostly 1806, all of which also form a National Scenic Byway. Hilly, bleak territory largely given over to Indian reservations, though not quite as bleak-looking as Badlands NP.

[Badlands NP, 2005]

In places, except for the road, it couldn’t have been that much different than what Lewis and Clark saw. I never can remember, without looking it up, which one probably blew his brains out a few years after co-leading the Corps of Discovery. [Lewis] Clinically depressed, before there were clinics worth visiting, and before melancholia became depression. Anyway, if I remember right, there’s a monument to him near where he died, on the Natchez Trace. I saw it years ago. A lonely place to die.

We spent the first night out at a campground near Albert Lea, Minnesota. According to me (and only me), Albert Lea is important for two things. One I just noticed: it’s the closest town to the junction of I-35, the U.S. branch of the Pan-American Highway, and I-90, the Boston-Seattle transcontinental epic of a highway. [I’ve since learned that no U.S. road is officially called the Pan-American; it’s just custom that attaches the name to I-35.]

The other thing is that I was visiting Albert Lea for the second time, after a span of 27 years. What was I, a south Texas lad of 17, doing in south Minnesota en route to Wisconsin one August day in 1978? Am I repeating myself here? Maybe I mentioned that epic bus trip before. It was an important one for me. No family, distant states — Wisconsin seemed wildly exotic. Christmas trees grew in people’s yards.

Anyway, in 1978 we stopped for lunch in Albert Lea. I went with the bus driver and some other kids to Godfather’s Pizza, a place I’d never heard of. After that, I walked around a little, relishing the remoteness of the place.

In 2005, we encountered wildlife at the campground near Albert Lea, namely mosquitoes in great numbers. The place was fairly green and lush, so I guess southern Minnesota hasn’t had the drought that Illinois has had this year. When we were leaving the next morning, we drove down the town’s main drag and there it was: Godfather’s Pizza, looking like not much maintenance had been done since the late 1970s, though of course I had no memory of how it looked then, just that I was there. [In Eau Claire this year, we ordered a pizza from a Godfather’s and ate it in our room. I ordered from there because of my experience 40 years earlier. And it was close.]

One other note, for now: Hot Springs, SD, is a lovely town. Near much of the main street flows a river, and alongside most of the main street across from the river are picturesque sandstone buildings, vintage pre-WWI. Evidently, it was locally inexpensive building material.

I left the family at a spring-fed swimming complex while I looked for a pay phone, since my cell phone refused to transcend the hilly surroundings. Argh, what an odyssey that was – “Yeah, we used to have a phone…” I’d foolishly agreed to do an interview that day, figuring I could use my cell. Anyway, after much to-do, I found a phone, did the interview, and then relaxed by the riverside, which has a sidewalk and a hot spring (Kidney Spring) under a gazebo. Free for all to drink, with a metal plaque describing its properties. Not bad. A little salty, but not bad, even on a hot day in South Dakota.

RIP, Amando Chavez

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I didn’t know Amando Chavez. I only heard about him after he died a week ago Wednesday in a traffic accident on a road near where I live. A road I drive on frequently.

A small, informal memorial is at the site. I stopped by there this afternoon.

To give a little more context to that image, here’s a wider shot.
An ordinary suburban road. “Accident” isn’t quite the word, though, since by all appearances, a DUI driver was completely at fault. That road isn’t particularly busy at that time of the evening, so there’s even less excuse for what happened.

Looks like the driver at fault was one of those young fools who darts around other cars as fast as his engine will take him. Everyone’s seen that kind of ass, in a hurry to get to the next red light, as he weaves around you or around the cars ahead, with scant room for error — and error’s all too likely when DUI.

It’s the kind of accident that sets my teeth on edge. It didn’t have to be Mr. Chavez. It could have been me or anyone in my family. All the same, I’m not going to avoid that road.

Graue Mill & Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve

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Not long ago I was passing through the western suburbs, not too far from where I lived — and it feels a little strange to put it this way — around the turn of the century. Since I had a little extra time, I decided on a whim to visit the Graue Mill and Museum.

Re-visit it. The last time I was there, I remember pushing one of my daughters in a stroller. I don’t remember which one. In either case, that was a while ago. Around the turn of the century.

Graue Mill is a water-powered grist mill on Salt Creek in DuPage County, dating from the 1850s. The machinery inside is elaborate, restored to operation, and still grinding small quantities of grain that the museum sells. I didn’t go inside this time, but pondered the handsome exterior of the mill.

As well as its large water wheel.
“Frederick Graue was born in Germany, came to the United States and settled in Fullersburg, Illinois, in 1842,” the museum’s web site says. In 1849, he purchased the site of a sawmill that had burned down, along with his partner William Asche, and constructed a gristmill there. Asche later sold his share to Graue.

“Limestone for the basement walls was quarried near Lemont; bricks for the rest of the walls were made from clay from the Graue farm and fired in kilns near the mill site; flooring, beams, and posts were from white oak timbers cut along the I&M canal. The four one-ton buhrstones used for grinding were imported from France. After the gristmill opened in April 1852, it ground wheat, corn and other grains produced by local farmers.

“The mill was a major center of economic life during the 19th century and was also used by Fred Graue to hide runaway slaves on their journey to freedom in Canada.”

In the 20th century, the now-obsolete mill fell into ruin, but it was restored in the 1930s by none other than the CCC. Specifically, Troop V-1668, made up of veterans. These days, the mill is part of the Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve, which is a unit of the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. The village of Fullersburg, for its part, was never incorporated and doesn’t exist as a modern entity.

This is Salt Creek next to the mill, which gives it its power.
Salt Creek, despite its name, is really more of a river in this part of DuPage County, but never mind. It joins the Des Plaines River in Cook County, which later joins the Illinois and then of course the Mississippi.

I had time enough to take a stroll on one of the paths through Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve, not too far from the mill.

Along the way, the path takes you past other views of Salt Creek, slightly upstream from the mill.
Past summer fields. The years do go by like so many summer fields.
And a handful of well-maintained CCC structures.
Though I didn’t capture any of the activity with my camera, the paths of Fullersburg Woods are very popular with dog walkers and their dogs.

Faces in the Grocery Aisle

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Besides helping Lilly move her stuff into her new apartment in Champaign, we also took her to a major grocery store. Management seemed eager for the population of UIUC students to swell, as it does every year at this time.
I got distracted among the product aisles. It’s hard not to. For instance, I wondered about the odd longevity of the Vlasic stork.
When the mascot was created (1974, according to Vlasic), the parody of Groucho Marx, including the pickle-as-cigar, would have been instantly recognizable to the audience. Nearly 45 years later? Not as much. I guess the Vlasic stork exists pretty much as its own thing now.

Why a stork? But better always to ask, why a duck?

Another familiar face, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. But it’s a younger Boy-Ar-Dee (or Boiardi, to be pedantic).
What gives? Boy-Ar-Dee has been an avuncular fellow, a gray presence, since Chef Boiardi was still alive and unafraid to attach his name (phonetically) to such a product.

Maybe the young Boy-Ar-Dee is part of the “throwback recipe” theme, designed to evoke what — the golden age of canned pasta?

Moving along, I was happy to see this phrase.
The bee’s knees is a phase that needs a new life. As for the product, it’s distinction seems to be honey mixed in.

Finally, what’s a grocery store without an array of Spam? More varieties than I remember.

Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

The Colonel Wolfe School

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I’ve gotten to know Champaign-Urbana better since 2016, and on Saturday was back again, helping facilitate Lilly’s return to UIUC for the 2018-19 academic year. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around, but one thing did catch my eye: the Colonel Wolfe School building.

Looks a little run down, but seems like it has good bones. The name, hard to see at a distance, is carved in stone over the main entrance.

Lilly will be seeing this building with some regularity, so I asked her whether she knew anything about it. She didn’t. Neither did I, so I did the next best thing: made something up.

“I’ll bet it was a private school run by this fellow Wolfe in the late 19th century,” I said. “One of those schools where the students were mistreated. You know, regular beatings for minor infractions. On quiet moonlit nights, maybe you can hear their ghosts moaning inside the old school.”

Lilly brushed off this suggestion, but I will say in my defense that I suspect that’s how places acquire their reputation as haunted: by people saying they are.

The facts of the Wolfe School are more prosaic. There isn’t a gush of information online about it, but I did find out it was a Champaign public elementary school built in 1905. That was a time of school building reform, so it probably had the latest amenities, such as light-admitting windows and toilets on each floor.

As a school, Colonel Wolfe lasted into the 1970s. Some time later, UIUC acquired the building and used — uses? — it for this and that (sources are a little vague). Doesn’t look like the university has put much money into spiffing up the exterior.

As for Colonel Wolfe — John Wolfe (1833-1904) — he was a civic leader, though not an office holder, in late 19th-century Champaign. As a young man, he fought for the Union as a member of the 20th Illinois Volunteer Infantry and then the 135th Illinois Infantry.
An obit is online. Wolfe never even saw the building, much less thrashed his charges there.