Following in My Foodstops: the Lincoln Highway in Ohio

Posted on October 31, 2011 by admin

Recently I attended a convention in Massillon–always a pleasure, since the town, laden with wonderful architecture, sits smack on the Lincoln Highway and I usually manage to drive at least some of this wonderful road there and back.   Having grown up just off the Lincoln Highway in Indiana between LaPorte and South Bend, where the main drags are–ahem–called “Lincolnway,” driving old highways is simply in my blood.  (More on Indiana’s stretch, which has recently been designated a state scenic byway, another day.)  In recent years, going to this particular convention has given me a good excuse to explore thoroughly our neighboring state’s stretch of this historic road.

Van Wert is the first town of consequence, if you are following the Lincoln Highway eastward from Indiana.  A county seat, it boasts an over-the-top nineteenth century courthouse and other wonderful downtown delights.  In the next block from the courthouse is Balyeat’s  (Balyeats Coffee Shop ).  It has an incredible oversized neon sign decades old offering “young fried chicken,” which borders on the horrifying today, but is so darn cool!  In truth we did not stop there on the way eastward, but did catch it on the way back, shortly before its closing on Sunday night.  They’d had a big day and were out of a lot of food, but what they served–basic American homecooking fare–certainly made me want to go back another time.  Besides, did I mention how cool the sign is?  Balyeat’s atmosphere and location right across from that courthouse is the kind of place where you can imagine all the town’s moving and shaking has been going on–well, since 1924.

Historic Balyeat's Coffee Shop
 Today I am writing primarily of food stops, although I must say the Lincoln Highway in Ohio is a joy to travel, with sweeping rural landscapes and intermittent hamlets and towns that the current US30 ignores, like Upper Sandusky and Bucyrus.  But perhaps my favorite stop on the road to Massillon is Wooster.

 

The Wayne County courthouse in Wooster is the only one I have seen in all my travels that is part of a city block, not set apart.  (The Steuben County courthouse in Angola,  Indiana sits in a corner of the square, but it is still a separate building.)    This amazing Second Empire monument to excess was built 1877-79.   My jaw still drops.


This intersection lies north of a sort of square on which is located one of the most charming places to plot a revolution I’ve ever encountered.  (And from its window one can gaze at the courthouse.)  The Tulipan Hungarian Pastry & Coffee Shop is likely as close to Budapest as I’ll ever get.  The pastries and Hungarian delicacies inspire rapturous praise.  I have tasted nothing  ordinary here, let alone bad.  While the selections of pastries are vast, Tulipan also offers a menu of entrees that includes delicious open-face sandwiches and rolled omelets, something I had not ever seen before.  Light, savory, and deceptively filling, I recommend them all.   We stopped there for some pastry (it’s only 20-odd miles from Massillon) and kept to our plan of stopping there for lunch on the way home.  The only problem is that it has such a wonderful feel about it that it is difficult to leave.

 Massillon, our destination and site of an annual classic film convention in the fall, is a wonderfully historic town, on a river and formerly on a canal, with all the above-ground archaeology associated with such a past.  I had always passed and looked longingly at this interesting little drive-in on the west side of town, but this time finally stopped.  It was a delightful surprise to discover it offered not only an array of ice cream treats, but a sizable food menu that included a variety of tasty sandwiches and salads.



A little research after my return home revealed that there are a number of these buildings around the country, with several in Ohio.   (Read about them here Twistee Treat).  Ironically, I had happened to spot one in Niagara Falls earlier this year.

Oh, so many wonders on Ohio’s Lincoln Highway!  The return trip included that stop back in Wooster at Tulipan–and also a stolen hour at an amazing bookstore half a block away called Books in Stock (Books In Stock: Used, Rare and Antique Books) that is a dangerous place (you will never get away!)   But there is one more food stop I must mention.

The stretch of the old highway between Wooster and Mansfield is especially beautiful.  Just east of Mansfield is the tiny village of Mifflin.  Its main business is the Mifflin Lakes Trading Post, which is one of the few places you may hear someone order 3 dozen nightcrawlers and two scoops of chocolate ice cream.  The storekeeper does wash thoroughly between orders.  This place has a huge supply of every sort of bait and lure you could possibly imagine, along with hunting gear I’ve never dreamed of–and ice cream.  Good ice cream, never mind the crickets.

Old highways, as I said, are in my blood, and the Lincoln Highway never stops calling me.  There is a stretch of the road in Ohio I’ve not yet seen, from Massillon to East Liverpool (home of all that wonderful pottery).  I’m going back later this month.  You can bet there will be a stop at Tulipan!

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The Lake Remembers

Posted on September 21, 2011 by admin

I closed my eyes and just for a moment I was fifteen again, immersed in the embrace of Hudson Lake. The Bluebird was open and I could choose from eight different flavors of ice cream, served up by the large and harried Mrs. Miller, who was constantly harangued by the “hoods” that hung around the old clubhouse. No good-hearted Fonzies, these: I was warned to and knew on my own to avoid them. The ice cream was worth the risk.

But I am not fifteen anymore; I opened my eyes. The old foursquare building that was the Bluebird still stands, converted years ago to a private residence. The once-sizable gravel beach is now just a skimpy strip, for Hudson Lake has risen over the past several years. It is cyclical and will likely recede again before my days on earth are done. There were fewer than a dozen people in the water or relaxing on the shore. Squinting my eyes against the descending sun I noted several fishing boats and other pleasure craft. Hudson Lake has always been a good fishing lake, filled with bass and bluegill and more. After all, it is some seventy feet deep and fed by numerous springs. It had been years since I swam in its waters; why had I waited so long?
Hudson is one of the larger glacial lakes in northern Indiana, by far the largest in LaPorte County. It even has an island.

But Hudson Lake is also an unincorporated town, although today it has no school and almost no businesses. Yet there began the earliest settlement in what was soon to become LaPorte County, starting with a small cluster of cabins near a short-lived mission school for the local Potawatomie, established in the 1820s as a branch of the Cary Mission, which was located near present-day Niles, Michigan. The dwellings hovered on the eastern shore of Lac du Chemin, the original–and much more romantic-sounding name– of the lake. (The translation–Lake of the Road–is much more prosaic.) Located on an old trail out of Michigan that became a stagecoach route, the up-and-coming town boasted inns, a blacksmith shop, and, soon, a school for the growing population of settlers. Above-ground archaeology that recalls those brief days of aspiration remains in the name of the Old Chicago Trail that enters the Hudson Lake community at a steep angle out of Michigan. (Well over a century later, my parents often took that road to Niles to see movies at the Niles 31 Outdoor Theater.)
I remember being stunned decades ago reading in a 19th century county history that Hudson Lake once had aspired to claim the county seat. These days I have a greater understanding of the life cycles of towns, and how the lack of a courthouse or a road or a railroad could make or break even a bustling community, such as Hudson Lake–or more accurately, Lakeport, as it was briefly known–was in the early 1830s. LaPorte, more central to the county, got the nod for the county seat, but Hudson Lake continued to thrive until the railroad came in the 1850s, which chose to locate its depot in nearby New Carlisle, a town that started in 1835 on the Michigan Road just to the south. Hudson Lake’s fortunes began to slide, although the lake itself remained a draw for anglers.

To the rescue after the turn of the century came the South Shore–the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad–an electric line that ran along the south edge of Hudson Lake with a stop at the southeast corner. A hotel stood very near the stop, and across the road the Hudson Lake Casino, where hot jazz and dance bands were the order of the day in the 1920s and 1930s.

When I was growing up the community still retained some of its old resort identity. People from Chicago tripled the population in summer. The hotel was gone, although I have a dim recollection of a faded derelict two-story building that must have been demolished before I was five. The casino was long closed, although when I was in high school there was an ill-fated attempt to reopen it as a teen night club. The plan got as far as the promotional announcements for the first dance with appearances by popular disc jockeys from WLS, the reigning rock station in Chicago, to which we listened religiously.

There was a roadside grocery about a mile from my rural home, with penny candy displayed in glass cases–and it really was only a penny. The elderly old world storekeeper shuffled about in leather slippers. Across from the elementary school near the heart of the community was the “supermarket,” probably three times larger with self-service. There my father stopped to pick up the evening paper, the South Bend Tribune, on his way home from work. The store offered Chicago papers, too, and we took a couple of those on Sundays. The store closed sometime after I left home and housed a few other businesses between closings. Nearby was a filling station, and when I was very young, another old-fashioned grocery store that sold penny candy, although it closed before I finished elementary school. Down the road, across from the lake and not far from the empty casino was a general store, which housed an auxiliary post office. Closed for decades, the building, unrecognizable for what it once was, is now a residence. The filling station, now a body shop, still stands, but hasn’t sold gas for many years. The school, abandoned because of consolidation, was mostly gutted years ago to house various rehab and construction businesses. Yet, a pizzeria that opened perhaps fifty years ago out in the middle of nowhere on the road into Michigan survives. The owners are different, but the food is wonderful. People know, and they come.  And of course, the South Shore still runs–the last interurban.

Sometimes a dip in a cool lake can be a baptism of memory. The water’s embrace awakens long-dormant images of things long-gone.  It’s all still there, but we can’t always see it with our eyes. You can go home again, but it lives in you.

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Library Trails: In the Heart of the Gas Boom

Posted on August 25, 2011 by admin

As many of you may be aware, I have a book to sell on the history of Indiana state parks (People, Parks, and Perceptions) and, having minimal marketing skills, I have taken it upon myself to visit all the libraries in the state in order to persuade them to purchase it. Happily, my efforts have proven very successful, and I’ve enjoyed quite a series of adventures over the last year or so. Yes, adventure is where you find it; open your eyes!

Today I headed out to catch some libraries that I had missed because of their limited hours. First stop was the Swayzee Public Library, located in a small town in Grant County that posts on its welcome sign that it is “the only Swayzee in the World.” The library (http://swayzeepubliclibrary.com/) is in a remodeled nineteenth century brick structure that was once a Methodist church. The building sits on State Road 13 south of downtown, and has housed the library for over fifty years. Inside is light, airy, and inviting, chock full of books, although the librarian ruefully tells me that most of her patrons come in for the DVDs.

If you’re wondering why the town is called Swayzee, it was named for the owner of the land when it was platted in 1880 at the junction of two railroads. Seven years later, natural gas was discovered and Swayzee boomed, but, like so many towns in northeastern central Indiana during those years of wild development, it began to fade when the gas ran out at the turn of the century.

Why “the only Swayzee in the world”? The story goes that a serviceman in World War II wrote back to his hometown with the street address and “Swayzee,” omitting the name of Indiana. (No zip codes in those days, young’uns.) Evidently the letter reached its intended recipient, so, clearly, this must be the only Swayzee in the world. I don’t make these things up (although maybe the folks in Swayzee did.)

From there I took county roads and old highways, passing through Gas City, which has an expanded Carnegie Library ( Gas City-Mill Township Public Library (IN) ) that has retained

Library picture

the handsome original portion on the east end. I’d already made a successful visit there last year, so I gave it a wave and a smile, with a nod to the town’s street signs supported with replicas of derricks in honor of the town’s heritage.

On to Matthews, a town in southeastern Grant County on the old Wheeling Pike, a nineteenth century road that only coincidentally meanders through the south part of the area wherein lay the former gas fields. But the town’s origins in 1895 were literally smack in the middle of the gas boom, or more accurately the huge Trenton Gas Field, which was already well on its way to being depleted. The heyday of Matthews, presumably named for the governor at the time, Claude Matthews, was barely ten years. Having passed through town twice before, I had learned that the library was open only for a couple of hours twice a week; I had planned my trip to catch it this time. But when I arrived at the rundown little building that housed the town offices and the library, it was vacant! Yet the library had been there only a few months before. Fortunately a sign on the door informed me that the library and all the rest had moved into the old elementary school. Matthews is not so large that finding the new location was a concern. About three blocks away at the edge of town was a nice brick postwar elementary school. I wandered in, noting on the door that the library was now open six hours weekly. Down a dark hall I spotted a light from a former classroom that was the library’s new home, small, but undoubtedly with more space than it must have had before. The librarian said “the board” would have to make the final decision, but she accepted my book and invoice, and told a young man sitting there to “run this over” to the president. We had a nice conversation about the role of libraries in hardhit communities, and then she told me of another library that I didn’t even know about in Gaston, a little town just down the road.

I digress to note that one of the joys of pursuing libraries is the wildlife along the way. Not far from Gaston I spotted a red-tailed hawk not fifteen feet from me on a low-hanging wire. It’s a common enough sight today, but my heart still thrills. More thrilling still were the four egrets standing in a small pond next to the road just a couple of miles further. Not to mention it was the perfect summer day, of which we have had very few this year.

Gaston, whose name suggests origins in the gas boom, is in Delaware County, site of the first natural gas discovery in Indiana (in 1876 near the town of Eaton). What’s left of its downtown includes what surely was an opera house, and in one of the storefronts a window displayed painted letters reading “Gaston Community Library”–and also a fitness center and coffeehouse. And more, as it turned out. I walked into a jumble of exercise equipment in a room lined with bookshelves. About halfway back was a partial wall setting off a counter and some tables and chairs, this space also lined with books. There were three fellows of disparate ages seated at the tables and I asked if this was, in fact, the library. “Yes,” responded the youngest, a teenager, enthusiastically, “and a coffeehouse and a church . . . “ at which point, one of the older men took over. Turns out he was the founder of the library (et al.), and cheerleader for the community–and service to it. Michael Osborne loves history and books of all sorts–and he is a down-to-earth pastor bringing the message to the people where they are. “See what this place represents,” he says, putting on the brogue of his Scots-Irish ancestors,“healthy body, healthy mind, healthy spirit.” For on Sundays, he holds church amidst the books. (You can listen to an interview with him here:  Interview.

Bless these tiny libraries in these hardscrabble little towns! You meet the most interesting folks! (And yes, he bought a book.) Having now been to some two hundred libraries throughout Indiana, my adventures have been many. Next time, perhaps, the tale of Alexander, Peabody, and Winkelpleck. A law firm? A 70s rock group? Nope, benefactors of Indiana libraries that bear their names. Andrew Carnegie wasn’t the only one.

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Following in My Foodstops: Lost in the 40s

Posted on August 3, 2011 by admin

People are forever asking me “what’s a good place to eat in _______?” They assume that, since my work and wanderings take me all over the state of Indiana and beyond, I have amassed at least a mental list of favorite places. Well, I have, and I’m always on the lookout for more.  Although I certainly am not averse to gourmet food and healthy fare, on the road my budget, time frame, and inclination tend to favor old-fashioned family-owned places.

This weekend took me northeastward, where I attended the 58th annual reunion of CCC Company 556, the boys who built Pokagon State Park from 1934 to beginning of World War II. They deserve the attention of a separate article, which I’ll be posting soon. The first foodstop was Powers Hamburgers in Fort Wayne, located in a great little late Art Deco building on Harrison Street downtown. Now, you would rightly assume that chains are normally off my list, but small localized chains may qualify. Powers actually began in the mid-30s in southeastern Michigan, expanding to perhaps a couple dozen, building the first Fort Wayne restaurant in 1940. Ultimately there were three in Fort Wayne, including another Deco-ish one on the old Lincoln Highway, but this one is the sole survivor. (At least one of the Michigan stores survives in Port Huron, but it’s paired with a pizza joint.) It was the design of the building that first drew me in years ago. You might think that Powers is just another of those White Castle knockoffs that flourished in the 1930s-1950s, some of which are still around here and there, but you would be wrong. The Powers hamburger starts with a scoop of real ground meat, rather good meat, in fact, and is grilled on order. Each burger is smothered in freshly chopped onions. These are smallish–they’re served on large dinner rolls–but they are heftier than you might think. I recommend their malts. If you’re thinking of a sweet treat at the end of your meal to counter all those onions, Powers offers a variety of baked goods from the New Haven Bakery northeast of town (which I’ll be writing about soon in an article on great small town bakeries around the state). We left Powers with opened sinuses and satisfied tummies. I can even say that the Powers hamburger can be just what the doctor ordered. Some years ago, on my way back from a job a couple counties to the north, I was coming down with a severely painful sore throat that felt just as if I had swallowed ground glass. I stopped at Powers and the hot peppery burgers with all those onions made my throat feel much better. Of course it is true that onions have antiseptic qualities. Perhaps a Powers burger might be considered health food!

Suppertime found us in beautiful Marshall, Michigan, sitting amidst the fireflies outside the Hi-Lite Cruz-In on the far east end of Michigan Street (formerly US112), well beyond the historic downtown. A large chunk of Marshall is designated a National Historic Landmark, most of which is mid and late nineteenth century. But the Hi-Lite opened in 1946, certainly historic in my book!  It’s been expanded some over the years, and boasts a nice patio with several tables and chairs. Part of it is built around a huge glacial rock that evidently was just too big to move. Hi-Lite offers good drive-in food, much of it homemade, like their barbecues and delicious sloppy joes (miles above what we used to have in school!), not to mention their wonderfully creamy root beer. This time I tried their homemade chicken salad with grapes and almonds, quite good! I recommend the thick onion rings, too. There is limited counter seating inside, and of course, curb service in your car. And yes, you can find them on Facebook.

Hi-Lite Cruz In

The final foodstop, a very late lunch the next day, was Clay’s Family Restaurant, teetering on the Indiana-Michigan border overlooking Lake George. It’s just a few miles north of Pokagon State Park on old US27. “A Steuben County tradition” since the late 1940s, Clay’s is simply my kind of place, loaded with charm and tasty traditional fare. They have a good soup and salad bar with two choices of homemade soup (the vegetable soup is so thick it is almost a stew!) and lots of fresh vegetables, along with some of the traditional favorites such as macaroni salad. The sandwiches and entrees are tasty and generous, but the pies–ah!–are not to be missed. Their website (Clay’s Family Restaurant) boasts that “you’ll want to come back again and again!” And indeed I do.

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Lorado Taft in Indiana

Posted on July 19, 2011 by admin

Lorado Taft (1860-1936) was Illinois born and bred, and that state rightly claims him.  Indeed, my first encounter with his work was during my years in Chicago, when I discovered his disturbing bronze “Eternal Silence” (1909) in Graceland Cemetery, also home to his “Crusader,” a work of solid granite completed in 1931.  Lorado Taft was among the earliest major American sculptors from the Midwest.

Indiana, however, claims Taft’s earliest large commissioned works, both completed in 1887:  the fountain statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in, appropriately, the courthouse square in Lafayette,  and the statue of Schuyler Colfax (vice-president under Grant), less appropriately, in University Park in downtown Indianapolis.  (Colfax actually grew up in New Carlisle–where I went to school and where the house in which he grew up still stands.  Colfax is most associated with nearby South Bend, where he is buried.)  The bronze statue of Colfax, which originally stood in the middle of University Park, is resplendent with symbols of the International Order of Oddfellows.

In the city’s Crown Hill Cemetery, Mary Ella McGinnis is forever five years old, captured in marble atop her grave.  At the time I completed my book on Indiana’s outdoor sculptures (Remembrance, Faith, and Fancy – www.indianahistory.org), I had not verified that this was Taft’s work, but I am now persuaded that it is.  The statue was completed in 1888; the child had died in 1875.   An article on this piece will be out soon.

In Winchester, the seat of Randolph County, is a large Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1892) in the courthouse square.  Taft did all the bronze figures.

On the south side of Marion, in the National Cemetery on the grounds of the former Soldiers Home (now a VA facility) is a bronze copy of Taft’s heroic commemorative piece that was dedicated on the Chickamauga Battlefield in 1895.  Smaller than the original, but still most impressive, the piece in Marion was placed in the cemetery in 1915.

Hammond boasts two relief works by Taft.  One is at 649 Conkey Street, a terra cotta high relief featuring a Pegasus over the doors to an administrative office building for the City of Hammond.  (The building itself was once part of the plant site of W. B. Conkey, a huge printing and publishing concern once touted as the world’s largest.)

A much larger work is the frieze that was done about 1927 for a building called Daly Hall, part of American Maize, another defunct company (actually, absorbed by Cargill).  The building was demolished in the late 1990s, but happily the frieze was removed and stored until it could be installed inside a recent adaptive reuse in downtown Hammond, the Towle Community Theater.  I was in that building last December and saw these pieces (they are mounted inside the lobby): Deco-influenced figures of workers and men engaged in sports. The entire work is thirteen feet long and is now displayed in two sections.

Although the focus here is on outdoor sculpture, since the Daly Hall piece has moved inside, Indiana has another Lorado Taft work that I should mention.   In the rotunda of the Statehouse is a bronze plaque commemorating Frances Elizabeth Willard on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of her election as President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

 

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The Island in May

Posted on June 19, 2011 by admin

Morning on Mackinac. The storms of the night have given way to a soft grey morning, and the sun is slipping through the mist, offering some promise of a beautiful day. Outside the cheerful room in one of the less “grand” older hotels, a dray drawn by a beautiful matched pair of black Percherons makes a delivery to the grocery across the street. There are no automobiles on the Island. Last night’s revels–the main street has almost as many bars as it has fudge shops–are forgotten. The morning’s first ferryful of tourists will soon arrive. Thankfully, the crowds are considerably smaller in May than at peak times during the summer and early fall.

Spring arrives later here, but compensates with prodigious blooms. The daffodils, still flowering in the latter half of May, are half again larger than those 400 miles south. The tulips are a riotous clash of colors as if they are celebrating a late carnivale. The legendary lilacs are not yet in bloom, but they will soon spring forth from massive twisted trees well into their third and fourth centuries. Gigantic white trillium, trout lilies, and forget-me-nots carpet the woods.

Mackinac Island is a wondrous mix of so much that I love. The Straits, of course, where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet and mingle. The views of the mighty suspension bridge over the Straits, a marvel of engineering now over 50 years old. The nineteenth century architecture, heavy on the unrestrained Queen Anne. The layers of history (last night the plaintive sound of “Taps” emanated from the old fort just up the hill). The abundant and outsized natural wonders–not just the flowers and trees, not just the persistent gulls and bold bats, but also the ancient breccia rock outcroppings that keep to themselves many a wondrous tale.

The Island. In Michigan one need not say more; people know where you mean. I could live here, I’m sure of it; with my Nordic blood I do not fear the piercing cold of winter. In my dreams I envision many an afternoon in the Island library, watching the snowy straits as I finally return to the regular habit of writing, overcoming my block at last. I would walk and walk, past the glorious architecture, up the hills and deep into the woods–no need for artificial means to keep fit. I would unfetter my soul through long consultations with the Lake that always knows the answers, even if I do not know the questions. Perhaps even the wise old breccia formations would have something more to tell me. Mackinac breccia, by the way, is composed of limestone largely replaced with dolomite (calcium magnesium carbonate). These early Devonian outcroppings appear willy-nilly all over the Island, several large enough to be considered tourist sites, such as the Arch Rock and the Sugar Loaf. West across the water in St. Ignace, gateway to Upper Michigan, the most famous breccia is Castle Rock, once a must-see tourist attraction, but another much smaller one juts up right downtown next to an alley. I should have been a geologist, but I digress.

This all-too-brief respite ends soon. My departure will not be without pain, but the box of fudge that I cannot resist will offer some ease. I will remember, and the siren song of the winds and mating of the Lakes will bring me back again.

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Whither Woodpecker?

Posted on May 6, 2011 by admin

After weeks of deluge and drizzle with little respite, during which bits of bloom and bud burst forth, there came a glorious mid-spring day of sunshine and birdsong. For those same dreary weeks I had been hoping to recreate an amazing experience I’d had the previous year on a similar day.

After running a few errands I felt the need to commune with earthy things and stopped in a greenway along the large creek that runs through town. (Depending on where you’re from, you might call it a river, or if you reside along the Mississippi, it might be beneath your notice.) In recent years the city has constructed a trail alongside, much used by noisy kids and dogs. Perhaps that is why no one else seemed to notice. I heard a loud cry that was positively simian. What was that?! Casting eyes upwards I spotted a gargantuan bird, a pileated woodpecker. Oh my! If the even larger ivory billed woodpecker, whom the pileated closely resembles, really does still live, it is no wonder that it is sometimes called the “Lord God” bird, based upon the startled exclamations at first sighting.

The bird first noted was one of the parents of an immense juvenile still in the nest high atop a hollow sycamore tree. Both mom and dad were in the vicinity but not inclined to give in to junior’s plaintive screams. Ee-eee-eee-eee-eee-eee-I’m HUNGRY was his cry. One of the parents eventually flew over and fed him, but clearly they thought it was time he left the nest and found food for himself. Mama bird even lolled on a nearby branch, preening in the sun (yes, you are a gorgeous creature!), seemingly oblivious to the pitiful calls. No one else appeared to be aware, let alone interested in this avian drama, but my friend and I, fascinated, were rooted to the site for over an hour.

And so, a year later, we returned in hopes of seeing another family of pileated woodpeckers. Alas, their hollow sycamore with the sky-high opening, so perfect for their breed, was gone. Only the stump remained. Perhaps the tree had been struck, or fallen of its own fragility in a storm, or even deemed a safety hazard and taken down. I trust the pileateds found a new home this year.

Creatures we never used to see very much out of the wild now regularly appear in well populated places. It was their habitat first, after all. And so just this week I heard that spooky, jungle-like cry of the pileated at the edge of the village of Clayton. I regularly see blue herons fly over I-465. And in spring and fall, working in my backyard in the inner city, I often hear the haunting bugles of the sandhill cranes. More anon on those wondrous dancing birds.

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I Wonder If She’s Friendly

Posted on January 30, 2011 by admin

I lost a friend this month. She was sleek and elegant, undeniably gorgeous. Her eyes were sapphire blue, and for over ten years her beauty mesmerized me.

Her name was S’mese – la S’mese. Her cunning ways earned her many nicknames over time: Smeezer, Smeezerino, Smeezlet, Miss Priss, Gorgeous Girl, Pretty Little Girl. Smudge Face. She was a very present cat. Like most felines, she did what she pleased, but with such flair!

Lean and sinewy, she could stretch to twice her normal length or curl into the most perfect ball. She had the most delicate little paws – delicate deadly paws with razor claws. I often gently pressed her pads and marveled when she was purring in my lap. One of her most loving gestures was to stretch out that delicate paw and touch me ever so gently.

This fascinating creature sauntered into my life after I had lost an elderly grey tiger cat named Mosby. I had noticed occasional visits to the neighborhood of a beautiful blue point siamese. One evening my sweetie and I arrived back at my house and I saw her. “Oh look!” I exclaimed, there’s that siamese. I wonder if she’s friendly.” I opened the car door and instantly there was a siamese cat on my lap, purring insistently. How could I not be enchanted? By and by I tried to lift her so that I could go into the house and heard the first “rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”–an important word in the siamese cat vocabulary, I soon discovered. Mostly, it means “no!”

That the siamese had strongly suggested I must take her in presented a dilemma, as I had already nearly made up my mind to adopt another stray, a friendly male who was a grey tiger overlaid with white. TWO kitties? I did not want the problems and the time involved to get them accustomed to each other; I really didn’t have rooms for isolation. Together they hatched a plan, and the next day I found them asleep in my garden, nestling against each other. All right, so be it. I called the spay-neuter clinic and set up an appointment for the next day, and swooped up the kitties.

S’mese dominated from the start, even though the other cat, dubbed Rumbles for his near constant purring, grew to be twice as large. She delighted in pouncing on him unexpectedly, undeterred by any swats or interference from me. As I said, she was very present. I gave up on keeping any dried flowers in reach, for I would find stems and leaves scattered about on the table that she knew very well she was not allowed to traverse. And she never did–when I was there to see her. If I was gone for any length of time, I would wonder as I inserted my key into the lock what evidence of new mischief I would discover. I learned I could not leave any small shiny loose things within reach of S’mese–and anything was in reach. I sometimes had kept a bowl of wrapped candies on the table, some of which I would later find on the basement steps where she had swatted them under the door. The dried stems sometimes ended up there as well.

For a small-boned feline who never exceeded seven pounds, S’mese was able to make a tremendous amount of noise in what I called her “thunderfoot” mode, when she galloped from one end of the house to the other. And yet this same creature could slide past me in complete silence and invisibility, leading me regularly to ponder how it was that she got from one side of the room to the other in a nanosecond without my hearing or seeing a thing.

Any remembrance of this beautiful creature must include her love of swinging, as if in her own personal amusement park ride. Many cats have a tendency to jump into a basket or box left lying on the floor. S’mese was no exception, and one day I found her in my laundry basket. I picked it up and she did not jump out. I began to swing the basket gently, and she looked at me with her big blue eyes (guaranteed to melt me) and wrapped her paws around the slats of the basket. I swung her more enthusiastically and she purred loudly her approval. From then on, I tried many variations of this game, swinging her in book bags and boxes. One box in particular won her approval. With typical cat behavior, S’mese would claim a box for a time, enter it regularly for a day or two and then ignore it, at which time I would put it away. But this box was different. It was a smaller-than-standard shoebox, and S’mese, like a feline Goldilocks, found that it was “just right.” If nowhere else–and this kitty knew how to hide–she was likely to be in her box, the Best Box Ever. I could not dream of removing it, but kept on a table beside my computer, where she would nestle in and watch me work, occasionally reaching out her paw to me. Or she would snuggle in for a snooze.

As I said, this kitty knew how to hide. If a severe storm was in the offing, she would disappear, surfacing when the danger was past. Even if the wind was still roaring and rain was pouring, I knew we were safe. If it began to rain and rumble and S’mese did not disappear, I knew the storm would be quick and mild. She never failed–a living barometer.

The kitties were growing old, but they both appeared to be in good health and as active as ever. I saw no evidence of the S’mese slowing down and her blue eyes remained intensely bright. I had begun to notice in the weeks leading up to Christmas that she seemed to be thinner, though she had always been lean. She certainly was well enough to resurrect one of her old tricks from her early years, swatting and chewing at the silver foil garlands that decorated the staircase. Just too much fun! During those years I kept buying new garlands at rummage sales because she destroyed several, but I ended up with a surplus after she stopped the practice for several Christmases. Apparently she was merely biding her time.

The week after New Year’s, she seemed to grow lethargic and I called the vet. I left her there for a barrage of tests and picked her up that evening; the test results would come back the next day. There was a range of possibilities, none good, but some more treatable than others. Once home, she was even more lethargic and uninterested in food. Always a seeker of warmth, her inevitable location in the winter was in a chair directly over a heat duct–or on the heat duct itself. I set her up in a nest of towels warmed with a heating pad and spent a worried night, which sadly turned out to be justified. The vet called me in the morning with the news that my kitty’s kidneys were failing. I had seen no signs, but when there is more than one cat in the household, it is difficult to know who is doing what.

Who knows until it happens what one will do in the face of such news? I am not generally in favor of heroic efforts, but it did seem that with the S’mese, as feisty a cat as one could ever find, there was a chance. I took her to the emergency veterinary clinic to see what 48 hours would do. It did not take quite that long for me to realize that it was in vain. I went to see her the next day, but just before I left the house, the veterinarian on duty, a compassionate lover of animals, frankly told me that the important numbers were not changing. They had placed her in an incubator–yes, an infant’s incubator–and so she was comfortable and warm, but she was dying. When I arrived at the clinic it seemed to take forever for them to bring her out to me, but that was because they were disconnecting and reconnecting everything so that she could stay warm in her incubator. When I saw her I stroked her lovely fur and knew I had to let her go. I was happy for her that her last moments were cozy–another of her pet names was “S’mese McGee” as in the character in the poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee” who was delighted to find himself in a furnace where at last he could be warm. I stroked her and talked to her–and she reached out her lovely delicate paw to me one more time.

Epilogue:
S’mese is buried in the Best Box Ever, not far from the still-remembered Mosby. Rumbles wanders the house confused and mournful, perhaps even on occasion wishing to be pounced upon just once more.

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White Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2010 by admin

A couple of weeks ago I wrote the following:

A postcard scene greeted me this morning–a lovely snow-covered streetscape, flakes clinging to the least little twig. For a brief moment this pure white blanket conceals the ugliness of life in the inner city and surrounds me with peace.
The birds–so far only sparrows–have discovered the feeders I filled last night. Their flutter and flurry delights me and excites my middle-aged cat, who himself erupts into bird-like noises.

Then all became chaos–Christmas rush even though I do not go to malls and avoid that madness at all costs. But there are people to visit, letters to write–you know, real letters, with paper and ink–folks to help, memories to contemplate. . . . And the lovely snow lingers.

My mother would have been 89 yesterday. Reminders of her are especially strong as I unwrap decades-old Christmas ornaments that she passed on to me, creating a “house full of sugarplums” just as she did every year. Yesterday I wrestled the old bottle-brush Christmas tree out of the garage and into the house. Living out in the northern Indiana countryside, we always had a real tree. One year, after I left home, they decided to get an artificial one–and this is it. Admittedly, it is rather tired and certainly not especially realistic, but draped in splendor with lights and ornaments and memories, it is a true Christmas tree. A few delicate ornaments of the thinnest glass from Germany, brought over by my grandmother’s family over a hundred years ago share space with homemade oddities from friends who had more art than money to give at Christmas, and how I cherish these! There is a marvelously-rendered fountain pen of cardboard given by a starving artist to a starving writer, a nicely crafted sled made of ice cream sticks from an older gentleman who helped me get started on some of the carpentry needed for the 110-year-old house I live in, an embroidered teapot commemorating my efforts to save the cherished L.S. Ayres Tea Room. . .

I close with a poem I wrote a long time ago:

Snow-covered city dripping sun-sparkles.
Comes the season
jolly season
beautiful season.
Rush rush the people
can’t see the pretty season
Too busy worrying about Aunt Martha and what will I give her–
not more than she gives me, how embarrassing.

Spirit flits about
opening hearts here and there.
Rush rush it must hit all it can.
Oh happiness
comes to those the spirit enters–
rush rush give all they can
‘cause it’s wonderful you know
and who cares if they get anything
back ‘cause they already did.
Smile at the frantic people ‘cause
sometimes they stop long enough
to think and then the spirit can hit them.

Ding ding go santas on corners
give and smile and feel good.
Eases your conscience doesn’t it.
It’s nice this season.
Don’t you wish it could last.

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“Those Nice Bright Colors”

Posted on December 10, 2010 by admin

Yesterday I sent off my last roll of Kodachrome to be developed to the last place in the country that does it––and which will cease doing this process the end of this month.  In truth I thought I had sent it all in a few months ago.  The results––eight rolls––were stunning!  But a ninth roll had slipped away from the corner of the desk where I was collecting them, and so, if I am to see what I photographed in all its brilliant color, I had to hurry and send it, along with a few rolls of Ektachrome and some color print film.  Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, does it all, but there will never be another wonder like Kodachrome with its richness, depth, and contrast.

Those last rolls I sent in included some great subjects.  Of course there are abundant shots of my beloved Lake Michigan and several Carnegie libraries around the state where I have been peddling my recent book on Indiana state parks.  But perhaps the most magnificent slides are those of Niagara Falls.   Serendipity brought me the opportunity to visit the Falls three times in the last two years.   Part of the Great Lakes system that sings to my soul, Niagara is to me one of the most spiritual places on earth.  I had the good fortune twice to visit during March, when few people are there to mill around the overlook and ask in ten languages “should I use my flash?”  (I was also there in August.  Niagara is a must-see for many foreign visitors.  Many.)  New York state expects these visitors to be sensible, and I am grateful.  No huge barriers obstruct the view.  From Goat Island one actually could wade right into the water atop the Falls (not recommended unless suicide is your goal.)   The roar, which one can hear several blocks away, is hypnotic.  The ground vibrates.  Looking at these slides, it appears I was hanging right over the Falls.  (Well, I was.)   What better subject for my last Kodachrome?  Some of these will be in my photography show at the Plainfield (Indiana) Public Library next June.

All these musings may be a mystery to many.  Film?  What, haven’t I gone digital yet?  No, and thanks to those good folks in Kansas, I can continue for some time to shoot real slides (although alas, not Kodachrome) that I will share by means of real projectors, so that the light shining through brings forth “those nice bright colors” that Paul Simon sang about so long ago.

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