Get Your Kicks at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on December 19, 2022 by admin

Those three ships that come sailing in on Christmas Day in the morning will be trapped in ice this year, according to the National Weather Service.

That’s the forecast for 8 a.m. Central on December 25. Bitter temps, unless you happen to be on the West Coast or in Florida, and even those places will be relatively chilly. Bah, humbug.

On Saturday I drove down to Normal to pick up Ann, leaving a little early so that I could drop by the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in the handsome former city hall and main fire station of Pontiac, Illinois, a building that dates from 1900.

The building, now called a museum complex, is home to more than the Route 66 museum, which is on the first floor. Other floors feature a “Life on the Titanic” exhibit, the Waldmire Experience (more about its namesake later), a local war museum and a room devoted to the music of the Civil War. You might call it an eclectic mix.

You might also call the Route 66 museum itself that. It’s a large room full of a lot of stuff. Just what a local museum should be.

Regional, really, since it covers the road formerly designated U.S. 66 as it passed through Illinois, from Chicago to East St. Louis, with such towns as Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington-Normal, Lincoln, and Springfield along the way.

Display cases along the walls are devoted to each of those towns and others on the Illinois stretch, stuffed with pictures and photos and items, and arrayed in order from north to south (or the other way, if you start there). Plenty of other artifacts are placed freely on the floor or are on the walls.

Old gas pumps. Even during the golden age of Route 66, you needed gas.

A wall of Illinois license plates, one for each year from 1915 to 1984.

Trivia for the day — when did Illinois first put Land of Lincoln on its license plates? The wall tells us. 1954. The same words are on IL plates even now.

Something I didn’t know that the museum mentioned: from 1907 to 1917, Illinois issued aluminum disks to show registration, something like taxi medallions. Car owners affixed them to dashboards. The Illinois Motor Vehicle Act, which required motorists to register each vehicle with the Secretary of State’s office, became law in ’07, and specified the two-inch diameter disks.

The centerpiece of the room is Bob Waldmire’s custom-fitted ’72 VW microbus. Views outside and in:

Looks like he was a collector of bric-a-brac after my own heart. As a young artist, Waldmire (1945-2009) “determined that he would spend his life creating art that celebrated the history of Route 66,” according to a brochure I picked up. He apparently spent a lot of time driving the microbus along the historic route.

Until he upgraded to a modified school bus, that is.

The bus is parked behind the museum complex and is sometimes open for tours. Not when I wandered by. Just another reason to drop by Pontiac again, which will be easy enough during the back-and-forth to Normal over the next few years.

On the Ballot (Last Time)

Posted on November 14, 2022 by admin

While musing on political matters the other day, I found an image I’d made two years ago. I don’t remember why, except maybe I wanted to look up the minor parties in the presidential contest later, but forgot to do so. Until now.

For the record, the Greens got more than 407,000 votes nationwide and nearly 30,500 in Illinois, which was a few thousand less than in Texas. Go figure. But Texas is vast, and contains multitudes.

The Libertarians got a respectable 1.86 million or so votes nationwide, but only about 66,500 of those were from Illinois. The biggest state for Libertarians? California. It too is vast and multitudinous.

I had to look up the Party for Socialism and Liberation, so I didn’t confuse it with (say) the Party for Liberation and Socialism. It’s a 21st-century communist party, which split from the Workers World Party in 2004. The Workers World Party split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1958. The Socialist Workers Party split from the Socialist Party of America in 1938 (wonder what that was about) and I probably could go on, but at least the Party for Socialism and Liberation has a genuine red pedigree — redigree?

Moreover, the party platform is frankly revolutionary. That much is spelled out on its web site.

“In order to guarantee the interests of working and poor people who make up the vast majority of the United States, a new revolutionary government run by and for the workers and poor will be established. The present capitalist government — the role of which has been to defend the big-business system of exploitation by a web of hundreds of measures, legal and illegal, and has been accessible only to the super-rich elite — will be abolished.”

These particular reds garnered a little more than 85,000 votes nationwide, and about 8,000 in Illinois. The revolution won’t be televised, because the ratings would be just awful.

The American Solidarity Party, which says it is inspired by Christian democratic parties in Europe, got about 40,300 votes in 2020, some 9,500 or so from Illinois — more than any other state, so I guess we’re a ASP hotbed, for what that’s worth.

Not on the ballot for president in ’20 in Illinois: the Alliance Party (Rocky De La Fuente), the Constitution Party or the independent candidacy of Brock Pierce, known as a “cryptocurrency entrepreneur” and for being a child actor in the likes of The Mighty Ducks. Ye and his Birthday Party — I’m not making that up — weren’t on the ballot in Illinois either. Maybe next time.

The Natural Law Party, founded on “the principles of Transcendental Meditation,” was nowhere to be seen — because it seems to be defunct — nor were the New Whigs nor the Rent Is 2 Damn High Party.

All the News That Fits

Posted on November 13, 2022 by admin

Two passings to note.

RIP, Margot Paulos, whose son Dan has been Lilly’s boyfriend for more than two years now. I never met Ms. Paulos, who lived on Long Island, and I’m sorry I won’t have that opportunity.

RIP, Norris Hickerson, whom I knew in Nashville ca. 1983, because we had some friends in common (especially Mike). One weekend in particular, sometime in my post-graduation haze that fall, about a half dozen of us hung out with Norris at his family’s suburban townhouse.

Soon he would return to Hong Kong, where, owing to a career move on the part of his father, Norris had spend many of his formative years. We lost touch until linking nominally on Facebook some years ago. He seems to have made a life for himself in Hong Kong, until passing suddenly of heart disease at roughly my age.

As expected, chilly air blew our way late last week. Not fully winter, but definitely a prelude. A few snowflakes fell Saturday night, but never amounted to much accumulation. And as long as the wind is low, walking the dog is still pleasant.

Spent a few minutes today ridding our dining table of junk mail, including the last of the vote-for-me postcards. Plus a faux newspaper, one of the odder direct mail political efforts I’ve seen lately, and one of the funnier ones since Phil Crane got the boot, which involved a series of amusing anti-Crane postcards.

One difference: the Crane cards were supposed to be funny. I don’t think that’s the case for the faux newspaper.

It looks like a physical newspaper, maybe one laid out by a college newsroom (something I know first hand). It calls itself the North Cook News, and comes in at a slender eight pages. It is a newspaper only in the most technical sense, produced by an entity called Local Government Information Services in the staff box, which lists no staff by name. North Cook News is actually campaign literature of the anti-candidate sort. In this case, against Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Here is a sampling of headlines:

Maybe Gov. Pritzker should resign too;” [sic] former governor slams current one

Why hasn’t Gov. J.B. Pritzker been prosecuted for dodging property taxes?

— and my own favorite, for sheer entertainment value:

Report says Pritzker-family foundation funding ‘overnight camp’ for cross-dressing eight year olds.

Guess NCN was angling for some O tempora! O mores! sort of outrage, but these arguments apparently didn’t persuade enough voters to neutralize the governor’s 53.8% statewide vote percentage last week, or more specifically his 65.4% in suburban Cook County.

Bishop Hill State Historic Site, 1997

Posted on August 28, 2022 by admin

I’m sure there will be some chatter about the 25th anniversary of the death of Diana Spencer this week, but I won’t add to it, except to say we were out of town that Labor Day weekend.

Some years ago, I wrote: “We made it as far west as Iowa, briefly, but the main focus was getting to Nauvoo, Illinois, perched way west on the banks of the Mississippi. The first day [August 30, 1997], we stopped at a place called Bishop Hill, which itself was the site of a religious commune in the 1840s and ’50s, home to a good many Swedish immigrants that followed a charismatic Swede.

“Alas, he died [indeed, was murdered] and there was no one to take his place, unlike certain other cults that flourished around that time and later went to Utah, so they parceled out the commonly held lands to cult members in the 1860s. About a hundred years later, their descendants became interested in restoring some of the town’s buildings, which have their charms. The church was nice in a sort of plain way, and the hotel was a fine example of 1850s Midwest architecture.”

In our time (including 1997), Bishop Hill is a small town in Henry County, Illinois, and a few of its buildings constitute Bishop Hill State Historic Site. The name is an English version of the birthplace of sect founder Erik Jansson, who was from Biskopskulla parish in Uppland, near Uppsala, Sweden. There may be a hill at that place in Sweden, but I’m pretty sure there’s no hill at Bishop Hill in Illinois.

I took some pictures. It was still the days of film cameras, so only a few. Such as of Yuriko, who was large with child at that moment. The child will be celebrating her 25th birthday come November.

Note the bed of brown-eyed susans. Late August is their time. The other day, we saw an enormous crop of them along the shore of Volkening Lake.

A local cat, who was large with tail.

Next, I’m standing near one of the older buildings in town, though I don’t believe it’s part of the historic site. Someone used to sell beer there. Curiously, the same building can be seen in the image illustrating Bishop Hill’s Wiki page.

Another view

I won’t swear to it after 25 years, but I think we arrived too late in the day to see the interiors of most of the historic buildings. In any case, it was our last trip before full-blown parenthood.

Back to Normal

Posted on August 24, 2022 by admin

Last Saturday, I drove Ann and some of her stuff back to Normal for her new school year as a sophomore. Her room is in this tower.

Which is next to this tower.

Nearby is basketball —

— and religion.

But not that much religion. According to a sign near the door, the building is occupied by the New Covenant Community (a “tri-union congregation”), the Judson Baptist Fellowship, the Lutheran Student Movement — and the Center for Mathematics, Science & Technology.

Maybe the landlord (ISU, I assume) considers scientism a religion, but more likely, a tenant is a tenant.

Household Hazardous Waste Run ’22

Posted on June 27, 2022 by admin

There are five permanent places in the state that will take household hazardous waste off your hands, no charge beyond your taxes, according to this Illinois EPA site, plus collections that move from place to place.

One of the permanent facilities, the closest one to where we live (I think), is in Naperville, open on Saturdays and Sundays 9 am to 2 pm. That’s what took us to Naperville on Sunday. Mid-morning, I loaded the back of the car with a variety of chemicals previously found in our garage: cans and bottles and other vessels tucked away in open cardboard boxes so they wouldn’t clatter around too much.

The village of Naperville says that acceptable items include aerosol cans, automotive fluids (including oil, gasoline and anti-freeze), car batteries, fire extinguishers, mercury, paints and stains (oil-based only), peanut oil, pesticides, propane tanks, solvents, thermostats and “unknown hazardous substances.” That last one, I have to say, is pretty bold of the village.

Unacceptable: ammo, compressed gas (except propane), explosives, helium tanks, latex paint, paper or glass or wood — those three generally aren’t hazardous, unless some falls on you, or fuels an out-of-control fire — radioactive materials, sharps, tires, trash or alkaline batteries.

I had none of those. Of the acceptable ones, I had everything but car batteries, fire extinguishers, mercury, thermostats and peanut oil. Peanut oil? Apparently it gums up pipes in high concentrations. Also, I had no unknown hazardous substances, such as boxes one finds floating in the bay.

Since offloading your household waste down in Naperville is first come, first serve, I imagined waiting in a long line in my car, each car belching out auto emissions as they snaked slowly toward the pickup point, where masked state employees appeared and disappeared according to some schedule opaque to me. Hours might be lost to the process.

When we got there, exactly no other cars were ahead of us, and only one came in behind us. A man wearing a white clean suit — are there any other colors? — but not a helmet, asked were we were from, and I told him.

Then he and a partner, also be-clean suited, quickly examined everything in the back and removed everything but a single can, which in their opinion was empty, and could be put in regular trash. That was it. Took all of about two minutes, once the driving was done. Sometimes things work as they are supposed to, even when dealing with the state. Seldom is that written about or mentioned. So I’m doing that now.

Naperville is nearly a half-hour drive from where we live, meaning we weren’t about to turn around and go home right away, burning the gas just for that. So we spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon there. I’m glad we did, because otherwise I wouldn’t have made the acquaintance of an homunculus Charley Weaver.

More on that later. Enough to say now that someone my age just caught the tail end of Charley Weaver.

The Grundy County Historical Society & Museum

Posted on May 11, 2022 by admin

I did a quick look, and it seems that the Rockwell Inn, a restaurant in Morris, Illinois, closed for good sometime in 2013. I ate there in 1987, returning from Springfield from the first business trip I’d ever taken, and remember the dark interior, the very long and ornate wooden bar that had supposedly been at the 1893 world’s fair, and the fish — some kind of fish — cooked in a bag with almonds and spices, superbly done.

That was the only time I ever ate there. I gave it a moment’s thought after I’d visited the Grundy County Historical Society & Museum on Friday, which is in Morris.

If I’d thought of it while I was at the museum, I could have asked the woman at the desk, the only other person there, whether she remembered the restaurant. She might well have, or even pointed out a Rockwell artifact, though I’m pretty sure that the museum didn’t get the bar. I hope someone got it.

The museum has a lot of other things, though. That’s part of the charm of local, volunteer-run museums. Stuff. Such as items to remind us that Prince Albert is, or was, in a can.

Business machines of yore.

Clothes.

Things that used to be found in middle-class homes.

Farm equipment.

And some items specific to Grundy County industry. Coal has been mined there for a long time, leaving behind tools.

Lots to look at on a rainy, cold spring day, when you have a museum all to yourself.

Columbus Never Made It Up This Way

Posted on May 10, 2022 by admin

Positively summerish today. I don’t mind. But then again, I have an indoor job, and was fairly busy this Tuesday in May, so I didn’t have much time for the deck until after dinner, a fine chicken curry whipped up by the chef of the house, which isn’t me.

Back on Friday, such summer-like conditions were merely a longing, since rain alternated with drizzle and back again with rain, all at a charming 50 degrees F. or so. I had the day off and had agreed to pick up Ann in Normal to bring her home from ISU for the summer. One down, three to go.

I decided not to drive there by the most direct route, despite ours being a time of elevated gas prices. The most direct route is I-55, once you’ve reached the southern reaches of metro Chicago.

Instead, I took I-80 a few miles west to its junction with Illinois 47, then headed due south on that road for a short ways, until it meets I-55 in Dwight. You know, just a little variation in the route. Before I got to that point, I needed to use the rest stop on I-80 just northeast of the town of Morris, Illinois. I noticed this curiosity there.

Columbus has a memorial highway? Is that supposed to apply to the entirety of I-80, which runs from New Jersey to northern California? That seems unlikely, but there’s scant mention of it online, at least as far as I’m willing to burrow. None, actually, except a Change.org petition about a different road named for the Genoese navigator in Connecticut.

It Isn’t Buc-ee’s

Posted on April 21, 2022 by admin

In Pontiac, Illinois — out on I-55, not this part — stands Wally’s, a large gas station with a lot of other merchandise and clean restrooms.

Naturally, Buc-ee’s comes to mind, but Wally’s doesn’t seem to have a mascot, though cartoon animals are part of its billboard advertising. Mostly, Wally’s still stakes out its commercial presence in lettering, such as these in the acres-large parking lot.

You need a mascot, Wally. Something to go mano a mano with the Beaver.

Wally’s is that smallest of chains, one with only two links. The other Wally’s, which I didn’t know about till I looked it up, is in Fenton, Missouri. Just opened this year.

Another thing I looked up: Wally’s has 72 pumps, plus a handful of EV charging stations, at least in Pontiac. A normal-sized Buc-ee’s, such as the one on I-35 in New Braunfels, Texas, has 60 pumps, so they’re comparable. In the restrooms, Wally’s says it has 20 women’s stalls and 10 men’s stalls plus 11 urinals, while Buc-ee’s can accommodate 84 in its restrooms all together, though my source doesn’t differentiate them.

Just guessing, but I’d say in square footage, Buc-ee’s has the edge, and it certainly has a greater array of merch, even though Wally’s has a fair amount. On the plus column for Wally’s: a moose head. See ’em where you can.

But never mind those things. The reason to stop is gas prices about a low as at a discount warehouse store.

I decided to document the prices at Wally’s on Sunday as I bought some. Regular at standard gas stations were all still above $4/gallon that day, usually by 20 or 30 cents.

A Short Stop in Pontiac

Posted on March 23, 2022 by admin

We took Ann back to school Sunday before last, the first day of Daylight Saving Time, and since the day was tolerably warm, I insisted on a short stop in Pontiac, Illinois.

Despite Pontiac being on I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis, a route I’ve driven countless times, I’d never stopped there before, unlike such places as Coal City, Dwight, Lincoln, Atlanta, Litchfield and Mount Olive, just to name some of the smaller burgs along the way.

We didn’t spend that much time there. But time enough for us to walk all the way around the Livingston County Courthouse, which is impressive indeed.

It’s the county’s third courthouse; the first was a small wood-frame structure replaced by the second, which burned down in 1874 (pics of the two are here). Architect John C. Cochrane of Chicago, who also designed the Illinois and Iowa state capitols, designed the current Second Empire structure, which was finished in 1875 and restored recently. Technically, it isn’t a courthouse anymore, since the county’s judicial operations relocated to a new building nearby in 2011, but the county still has offices in the older building.

It wouldn’t be an Illinois town of any size without Lincoln acknowledged somewhere, and in the case of Pontiac, it’s a bronze resting on a bronze split-rail fence. It depicts young lawyer Lincoln, who visited the second courthouse periodically.

An Illinois sculptor named Rick Harney completed the work in 2006. Looking at his portfolio, I wonder if it’s easy to access his bronze of Adlai Stevenson in the Central Illinois Regional Airport. Lincoln is fine, but there aren’t that many Stevesons around, even in Illinois.

Looking around the courthouse square, there’s also a less conventional Lincoln.

The inevitable Route 66 mural.

Some handsome buildings from a time when handsome buildings were built in small towns. Before the Depression at the latest, and more likely before WWI.

And a time capsule underfoot.

Looking a little further into that today, I learned that the International Time Capsule Society is a real thing. I knew I got out of bed for a reason.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Illinois