(Former) Dead Man’s Curve

Posted on May 11, 2023 by admin

Time for a genuine spring break, now that genuine spring has arrived. Back to posted content around May 24.

Returning from Normal on Sunday, I took another short detour fairly close by, in the wonderfully named town of Towanda, pop. 430 or so, originally a central Illinois project of the busy 19th-century businessman Jesse Fell. I’d seen signs for Towanda on the Interstate for years, but never stopped.

Towanda is the home of a massive grain elevator, owned by Evergreen FS of Bloomington.

For a more ordinary tourist, a stretch of the former U.S. 66 passes through town, and has a walking path next to the road. I took a stroll.

Also part of the former highway: Dead Man’s Curve.

The nickname isn’t too hard to figure out, but a sign offers details.

It doesn’t offer a death toll, which may not be known, but does say that from 1927 until a bypass was built in 1954, the curve was the site of “many disastrous accidents,” especially involving drivers from Chicago, “unfamiliar with the road and accustomed to higher speeds.” Oops. Once a hazard, now a minor tourist attraction.

Note the Burma Shave signs. They look fairly new, so I take them to be modern homages, in this case noting the dangers of Dead Man’s Curve.

There’s a rhyme for each direction of travel on the road.

Northbound: Car In Ditch/Driver In Tree/The Moon Was Full/And So Was He/Burma Shave.

Southbound: Around The Curve/Lickety-Split/Beautiful Car/Wasn’t It?/Burma Shave.

South Side Cemetery, Pontiac, Illinois

Posted on May 10, 2023 by admin

Across the Vermilion River from Chautauqua Park in Pontiac, Illinois, is South Side Cemetery, which predates the town’s Chautauqua activity by some decades, since its first burials were in 1856. At 24 acres, it’s still an active municipal burial ground. I saw at least two memorials with death dates in 2023.

Overall, a nice place for a stroll on a warm day in May, if you don’t mind being in a cemetery. I can’t say I ever have been.

Some older stones, including a scattering of Civil War veterans.

As usual with small towns, not many mausoleums or large monuments, but there are a few.

Lemuel G. Cairns fought for the Union, too, but has no ordinary soldier’s stone. According to Find a Grave, he achieved the rank of sergeant and after the war dealt in cattle in Texas, before moving to Illinois. I suspect he did well in that business in Texas, but maybe got tired of the heat.

The only sizable mausoleum I spotted.

A number of Gaylords reside there, including this fellow, it seems, a doctor and Union veteran.

This is a surname you don’t see much: Hercules. Also, an unusual design for a stone.

Rare, but not unknown.

“Early examples of the surname recording taken from surviving church registers include those of William Hercules (also recorded as Herculus) at the church of St Margaret’s Westminster, on January 16th 1603, and in the Shetlands, William Herculason who married Christian Harryson at Delting, on January 24th 1752,” says the Internet Surname Database.

A prominent Pontiac family, no doubt. With a name like that, they’d better be. One of them – J.W. Hercules – is mentioned as the designer of the Pontiac Chautauqua pavilion.

Chautauqua Park, Pontiac

Posted on May 9, 2023 by admin

A total of four hours behind the wheel there and back from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Normal, Illinois, could be considered a chore, but not if you have time to stop a handful of places along the way. That isn’t always possible – weather or scheduling might prevent it – but when it is, you might happen across things to see. Maybe even things you won’t see anywhere else.

Such as in Pontiac, Illinois, pop. 11,150. It’s been a surprisingly good source of stopover sights since I started driving to Normal on a regular basis, and so it was on Sunday, when I headed down to Normal to load up the car with some of Ann’s possessions. She’ll be done with school for the semester later this week, so the goal was to not be overloaded when she finally returns.

Plunge into the small streets of Pontiac – that might not be the right verb, since its grid is pretty small – and soon you’ll be at Chautauqua Park.

Spring green and on Sunday at least, warm enough to inspire a little sweat.

A good place to walk around, but also to read, with a good many signs like this.

I read at least a half-dozen. Most of them told me about the history of the park as the setting for the Pontiac Chautauqua, as the park name suggests.

A few quotes from the various signs:

A.C. Folsom

“Under the leadership of A.C. Folsom, a group of civic-minded citizens organized to bring a Chautauqua to Pontiac. Between the years 1898 and 1929, the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembles developed into one of the Midwest’s most popular and successful summer festivals.”

“As the Pontiac Chautauqua grew, dramatic presentations became particular favorites of the crowd. Shakespeare, melodramas, domestic comedies, mysteries, and tragedies graced the stage of the pavilion. Troupes of actors from New York, Chicago and elsewhere traveled the Chautauqua circuit, playing a repertory of four or five plays.”

The Chautauqua pavilion as it appears now.

Theatrical presentations still occur there. According to a non-historic sign, the next one will be the Broadway musical version of Beauty and the Beast, June 14-18, 2023, by the Vermillion Players.

More Chautauqua Park history-sign verbiage:

“Specialty acts from all over the world brought exotic sounds which floated over the park on warm summer evenings. Here are just a few of the individuals and groups which graced the Pontiac Chautauqua: Mme. Schumann-Heink, opera star; The Weber Male Quartette; Colangelos Band; The Honolulu Students; Mr. & Mrs. Tony Godetz, Alpine Singers & Yodelers.”

“Each year of the Pontiac Chautauqua Assembly, noted lecturers, politicians and educators came to edify the event’s patrons… some of the most notable speakers include: Booker T. Washington; William Jennings Bryan; Samuel Gompers; Rev. Dr. Thomas DeWitt Talmage; Carrie Nation.”

Yep, there’s Carrie Nation at the Pontiac Chautauqua.

No visible hatchet. It’s clear she didn’t wear a corset. She considered them harmful.

As fascinating as the park’s Chautauqua history is – and there’s the basis of another limited costume series on prestige streaming, namely the story of a plucky, slightly anachronistic woman entertainer on the Chautauqua circuit, ca. 1900 – that isn’t all the park has to offer.

Namely, it sports two of the town’s three swinging bridges. Dating roughly from the time of the Chautauqua. Original iron work, with wooden planks that have been replaced many times.

Naturally, I had to cross them. One of them:

And the other.

They don’t swing, exactly, at least when you walk normally, but they do wobble, and it takes a moment to get used to the motion. Nice views of the Vermilion River along with way.

Bigger than I would have thought. At this point, the waters are on their way to the Illinois River, then of course Old Man River.

One more item in the park: a plaque-on-rock memorial.

Not just any memorial, but a fairly unusual one.

But not unknown. Naturally, I had to look up Fred Bennitt. I’m cursed that way.

Nichols Bridgeway ’23

Posted on May 8, 2023 by admin

Saw this headline in the WSJ late last week: ‘I’m Not Excited For Him to Become King’: American Royal Watchers Draw the Line at King Charles Coronation

Do we as Americans need to be excited about the coronation of Charles? No, we do not. Interested, if that kind of thing interests you, but I’ll bet even a good many Britons don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. As one of those things that doesn’t happen very often and which harkens back to a long history, the event interested me, but not to the point of distraction.

Reporting on the event makes it seem as if there are only two modes of thinking about Charles, and the British monarchy for that matter: slavish adoration and awe at the pomp, or bitter republican convictions that see the royals as posh parasites. I can’t muster enough emotion to feel either of those, though I could probably sit down and come up with reasons on each side of the monarchy, pro- and anti-, like any former high school debater.

Still, I did a little reading about the sceptre and orb, because who doesn’t like a little reading about orbs especially? Of even more interest, though, is the Stone of Scone, which for years I thought was pronounced the same way that the British refer to their biscuits (but no, it’s “skoon,” which does sound more Scottish). I understand that all it takes to see the stone these days is a visit to Edinburgh Castle. Its presence there since 1996 must count as a physical reminder of UK devolution.

All in all, the coronation didn’t interest me enough to get up at 4 or 5 am on a Saturday for live coverage. Plenty of video was available soon after.

While we were in Chicago on Saturday, we found ourselves on the Nichols Bridgeway, which runs from Millennium Park to the third floor of the Art Institute.

I couldn’t remember the last time we were there. Might have been back in 2011, when we attended my nephew Robert’s graduation from the School of the Art Institute. That’s when I took this picture of him with a faux nimbus.

The bridge still stands, of course. Looking north.

South.

We went for the views from the bridge. One thing Chicago has for sure is an alpha-city skyline.

Looking west on Monroe St.

Looking east.

Note how few cars there are (none) compared with the number of pedestrians. Turns out the Polish Constitution Day Parade had just finished. We missed it. Maybe next year; looks like a spectacle.

Another New Flag

Posted on May 7, 2023 by admin

The last weekend of April: cold, wet and miserable. The first weekend of May: warm, dry and pleasant. Such is spring.

We were in Chicago for a while on Saturday taking advantage of the fine weather, and when walked by Daley Plaza, we saw these flags.

What’s that one in the middle? One reason — the main reason — I took a picture was to look it up later. It didn’t take long. That’s the new Cook County flag.

Since last year, so not quite brand new, but not anything I’d heard about. The county sought a new design in a time-tested manor, by asking high school students to submit them (which is how Alaska got its excellent flag nearly 100 years ago).

An improvement on the old flag, I think, though I will give that one points for depicting a map of Cook County and its townships, which is distinctive. In any case, it looks like —

— vexillologic critics are beginning to have some impact on official flag design.

Deck Duty

Posted on May 4, 2023 by admin

On a zoom call with a colleague today, I called (in passing) today’s weather here in northern Illinois the Platonic ideal of a spring day. I knew he’d understand the reference, a leftover from a liberal education that occasionally makes its way into movies. I suppose it counts as a kind of exaggeration since, by definition, I think, no actual spring day here on Earth could take the form of a Platonic form, but merely to aspire toward it.

Anyway, it was still warm late in the afternoon when I got the notion to clean my deck. Clear it of such things as broken pottery.

These metal grasshoppers have waited out the winter on an outdoor table. They were gifts, long ago, from Jay and Deb.

A new bird feeder, which I soon filled and hung on a thick tree branch. The brand name: Audubon. In the world of bird equipment, that’s like naming your product after Lincoln.

Our pink flamingo.

It’s cracked up top, so this might be its last summer. For a dollar store purchase, two years might be as long as you can expect.

We’ve Stringbeans and Onions, Cabbages and Scallions, and All Kinds of Fruits and Say —

Posted on May 3, 2023 by admin

I’ve been lax, letting the 100th anniversary of “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” go unmentioned until now. The song was published on March 23, 1923. The only popular song about Greek grocers that I know, except maybe for “I’ve Got The Yes! We Have No Bananas Blues.”

I found an article that promises the story behind the song, and offers some detail about the fruit trade in New York, past and present.

“The story of New York produce goes far back beyond Hunts Point,” says an article on the web site of a company specializing in credit rating and market information for the produce industry, referring to the Hunts Point produce market in the Bronx, an enormous operation.

“The city’s colorful history includes the Banana Docks of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were located at Old Slip in lower Manhattan,” it says.

Banana Docks, New York City

The article goes on to say that the songwriters took their inspiration from a Greek fruit stand owner who said the famous line to him, but the account published in Time magazine in the summer of 1923 is, I think, more believable. Especially since it quotes the songwriter himself only months after the monster hit song came out.

“I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son,” songwriter Frank Silver told Time. “About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with ‘Yess.’ The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn. Finally I wrote this verse and Gohn [sic] fitted it with a tune.”

It was the first song Silver ever sold. For a most harmonious recording of it, listen to the Mellomen version. With Thurl Ravenscroft. (!) For a sing-along version that also happens to be an early product of the remarkable and mostly unsung Fleischer Studios, and thus has a surreal edge to it, watch this video.

Here’s an series idea for a prestige streaming service: Banana Dock Empire. Criminals vying for control of the Banana Docks in 1890s New York. Too bad Daniel Day-Lewis is too old now to play the part of a rising young thug who murders his way into control of the city’s banana supply.

New Born

Posted on May 2, 2023 by admin

Still chilly, and a little windy, but that didn’t keep us from taking the dog for a walk around Volkening Lake, a pond really, just at dusk. As we have many times. Geese were taking their final approach to the pond, where many of the them apparently float the night away.

Congratulations to my nephew Dees and his wife Eden, whose second child, a second son, was just born. His first name, Leland. I can’t help feeling that a few more Striblings in the world is a good thing.

That makes 12 living descendants of my parents (so far, all of us, from newborn to near 71), four grandchildren for my brother Jay, and three grandnephews and one grandniece for me. Emissaries to a future we will not see, possibly a bit of the 22nd century. With any luck, one not as bad as current conventional wisdom would have it. Such wisdom tends to be a projection of the present more than anything else.

A New Flag

Posted on May 1, 2023 by admin

A cold May Day today, following a wet and chilly run of days to end April, which discouraged us from finding a new forest preserve – new to us, there are so many – for a springtime stroll. So we were home most of the time.

One thing I found out over the stay-at-home weekend is that Utah has a new flag. Or will, officially, on March 9, 2024.

It’s a good one. Keeps the beehive. How could it not? In fact, I’d say the golden beehive has been promoted to the centerpiece of the new flag.

Though Gov. Cox of Utah signed the bill authorizing the flag in March – and not quite everyone is happy about it, for some reason — I didn’t hear about it until this weekend, when I wondered whether the always entertaining-informative CGP Grey had posted anything new. He has, an amusing “grading” of U.S. state flags.

At nearly 19 minutes, it’s longer than most of his videos (including another recent one about a flag), but worth watching all the way through, even if you don’t quite agree with all of his opinions, though of course he’s spot-on about the Texas flag. Mention of the new Utah flag is very near the end, and the first I’d heard of it.

Big Bend Camera Failure

Posted on April 30, 2023 by admin

Though I grew up in Texas, I never got around to visiting Big Bend NP until five years ago in April. Didn’t give it much thought while I schemed to go other places. The distance to the park is more psychological than geographic, I think. From San Antonio, for example, it’s a full-ish day’s drive to the park (six hours), but since when have Texans ever said, That’s too far to drive?

I had two cameras with me on the trip. One, my sturdy Olympus, model number I can’t remember, a standard and not especially expensive digital camera I acquired in 2012 so I could take pictures at events for a new freelance job. It took good pictures, better than I expected. The other digital image-maker at Big Bend was my camera phone. It was newer than the Olympus, since I got it to go to Mexico City a few months earlier. Even so, it only intermittently produced good pictures.

I started capturing the Big Bend scenery with the Olympus, as usual. It started taking vastly overexposed images, often the second or third of the same scene.

A thing that made me go hm.

Still, I got some decent images with the Olympus. It’s hard to go wrong in Big Bend.

By the time I got to Santa Elena Canyon on the Rio Grande, the Olympus had quit taking anything but overexposures. So I resorted to using the camera phone, producing lower-quality pictures that were sometimes OK.

The Olympus revived to create some good images later in the trip, but was increasingly unreliable. That was its last trip. Later I checked its settings, tried different settings, tried different data storage cards, and poked around online for some reason for it taking overexposures, to inconclusive results.

Once upon a time, you’d have taken your broken camera to a shop for examination and possible repair, but now? I figured I’d gotten my money’s worth out of the Olympus, and soon acquired just as good camera — better in some ways — in the form of a used iPhone that was no longer a communication device.

The failure of my camera on a trip was a kind of inconvenience, though barely even that. Back when Ann went to Washington, D.C., with a junior high group, some camera error or other meant she returned with few images. This upset her. I told her I was sorry she lost the images. But as worthwhile as capturing images can be, or sharing them, seeing a place yourself is the important thing.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling