My Caboodles — Chapter 2
Madonnas of the Trail

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Denny

The Madonna of the Trail statues were one of the first things that entered my mind when I initially started thinking of sets of things I had seen all of. When the era of named auto trails came to an end, a couple of the major auto trails undertook projects aimed at keeping their names alive for posterity. The Lincoln Highway was marked by nearly 2,500 concrete posts that literally guided travelers along the entire route. The National Old Trails Road Association’s project was, in some sense, less ambitious in that only twelve markers were placed; One in each state the highway passed through. The markers themselves were much larger and more intricate than direction markers and all twelve still exist at or near their original locations which makes seeing the whole caboodle possible. Photos of the statues follow in the sequence in which I first saw them with the exception of the photo at right. That’s a 2018 photo of the Madonna in Richmond, Indiana. Comments accompanying the pictures include the date of dedication, its position in the sequence of dedications, and the coordinates of its location.

1. The first Madonna of the Trail monument I ever saw was, unsurprisingly, the one in my home state of Ohio. It originally stood about three miles west of downtown Springfield but was moved a little closer to town in 1956 or ’57. The first picture was taken in 2004 at the second location. I never saw her at her original location. The second picture shows her at her current home in downtown Springfield where she moved in 2011. Dedicated 1st, July 4, 1928. N39° 55.496′ W83° 48.677′

2. Of course, there’s also no surprise in the fact that my second Madonna was the one in Richmond, Indiana. Not only are these two Madonnas the closest to me, I believe they are closer to each other than any other pair. The first picture was taken in 2004 on the same day as a preceding picture of the Ohio Madonna. The second picture, with a clearer and brighter Madonna and a new walkway, was taken just two years later. Dedicated 9th, October 28, 1928. N39° 49.835′ W84° 52.334′

3. In 2005, I ventured one state beyond Indiana to visit my third Madonna of the Trail monument in Vandalia, Illinois. A festival that I never did identify, was in progress in the former state capital when we arrived. As part of the festival, raffle tickets were being sold at the base of the monument which sits on the grounds of the old capitol building. Dedicated 7th, October 26, 1928. N38° 57.649′ W89° 05.671′

4. A month later, I added two Madonnas in the states just east of Ohio. The sightings occurred on the way home from a business trip to central Pennsylvania so that state’s Madonna, at Beallsville, was encountered first. Dedicated 10th, December 8, 1928. N40° 03.630′ W80° 00.776′

5. West Virginia’s Madonna of the Trail came next. It is positioned a little east of Wheeling. At this point, 80% of the Madonna monuments I had seen were situated on or very near golf courses and I began to think there might be some sort of symbiotic relationship between the two. Dedicated 2nd, July 7, 1928. N40° 03.362′ W80° 40.157′

6. In September 2005, I bagged my fourth Madonna of the year and sixth overall. The California monument is not near a golf course or any other open space. It is in the city of Upland in the median of a busy street near an intersection with an even busier street. I would, in fact, never find another Madonna and golf course pairing. Dedicated 11th, February 1, 1929. N34° 06.434′ W117° 39.073′

7. In 2006, I drove the full length of the National Road in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the legislation that first authorized it. That took me past all of the Madonnas east of the Mississippi but only one of those was new to me. It was also missing. A sinkhole had endangered the Bethesda, Maryland, monument prior to my visit and it was stored a few miles away awaiting site repairs. That turned into an opportunity for my absolute favorite Madonna of the Trail photo ever. I was able to get a shot of the lady in her rightful place in 2011. Dedicated 12th, April 19, 1929. N38° 59.046′ W77° 05.655′

8. On the west edge of Lexington, Missouri’s Madonna of the Trail became my eighth in May 2007. Getting to two-thirds of the caboodle took just four years but it would be another four years before I would even get started on the last third. Dedicated 4th, September 17, 1928. N39° 11.197′ W93° 53.177′

9. A two Madonna day started in 2011 with the monument in Springerville, Arizona. Here the idea of Madonna of the Trail monuments being given scenic pastoral settings really took a beating. This lady occupies a small plot adjacent to a MacDonald’s. The marker behind her identifies this as a stop on a historic driving tour. Dedicated 7th, September 29, 1928. N34° 07.993′ W109° 17.108′

10. The second Madonna of the day was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’d been in Albuquerque before but had missed the monument. I had previously driven through the city on Historic US 66 which was the National Old Trails Road successor in these parts but I had not driven the original pre-1937 alignment which had followed the NOTR and on which the statue had been placed. Another complication was that the monument had been moved to the north corner of the area it was in which put it nearly a block away from even the old Sixty-Six alignment. To make up for missing it on earlier visits, I’ve included a picture of Madonna with a friend. Dedicated 6th, September 27, 1928. N35° 05.572′ W106° 38.991′

11. The count stayed at ten for another five years. I reached the final pair on consecutive days in 2016. The Madonna of the Trail monument in Lamar, Colorado, is next to an old train station now serving as a visitor center. Dedicated 5th, September 24, 1928. N38° 05.360′ W102° 37.147′

12. In Council Grove, Kansas, the setting for the Madonna of the Trail monument is pretty open. It’s a bit reminiscent of the park-like settings of my early Madonna visits even though there isn’t a golf course in sight. Dedicated 3rd, September 7, 1928. N38° 39.724′ W96° 29.212′

ADDENDUM 14-Jan-2024: After gathering the coordinates of all the Madonnas for another project, I decided to add them here.

Music Review
Blues With Friends
Dion

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Denny

I started off my recent review of Willie Nile’s latest album by talking about my initial experience with it and I’m going to do the same thing here. I ordered both CDs ahead of their release dates but my experiences with them do not have much in common beyond that. I kind of keep up with Willie and placed my order while the music was being recorded. I ordered Dion’s CD in response to an ad on Facebook. I honestly believe it’s the first thing I’ve actually bought through a Facebook ad despite the platform’s tendency to flood my feed with eerily well-targeted items. There was nothing even slightly mysterious about why this album appeared. Just look at its list of guests. Predicting that I might be interested really could have been a no-brainer.

The only thing even remotely eerie occurred on the day it arrived. June 5 was the official release date. On the morning of June 1, I got a message saying my order was out for delivery. Preordering can have its advantages. In the afternoon, I took a look at Facebook and saw that a friend had shared a link to a video that had been posted a couple of days earlier. The video was of Dion singing one of the songs on the album and as I watched it the mail truck pulled up to deliver my copy.

I don’t doubt that current events had something to do with the posting of that particular song. By current events, I mean the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and protests over racial inequality and police brutality. The protests were triggered by the death of a black man at the hands of police although racial inequality was already a major topic of discussion because of the uneven impact of the pandemic on people of color. The black man was George Floyd. He died on May 25. The video was posted on May 29. The song is about Dion’s friendship with Sam Cooke, a black man who died in 1964. The video is extended a bit with some comments from Dion. I suggest watching it regardless of what you think about Dion, the blues, or any of the friends he recorded this set with. It’s here: Song for Sam Cooke (Here In America)

So what about the CD? I once reviewed a CD with a single word and I’m tempted to do the same thing here — with the same word. That CD was Love for Levon which was recorded live at a 2012 benefit concert following the death of Levon Helm. I justified not giving it a real review by telling myself that it was a big enough deal that my tiny voice would be totally drowned out by real reviewers, but the real reason was that there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Both arguments definitely apply to Blues with Friends. The word was “Wow!”

But it’s obviously too late to do a one-word review and there are some significant differences. The biggest is that, while Blues with Friends features an astounding roster of musicians, every song was written and sung by one man.

Dion DiMucci is eighty years old. His career is sixty-three. That’s a lot of time to pick up talented friends and Dion seems to have done better than most and he’s done it all along the way. Some of the friends contributing to this album, such as Joe Lewis Walker and Jeff Beck, have been performing since the 1960s. Samantha Fish began recording in 2009. None of them had to be begged and Joe Bonamassa didn’t even have to be asked. Joe wanted to play on “Blues Comin’ On” from the minute he heard it demoed. Dion credits Joe and his enthusiasm as being the catalyst for the album. As Dion tells it, “So I sent out invitations to my friends — and would you look at the names of who said yes!”

I have a feeling that all that talent could make some pretty crappy material sound good but what it does here is make good material sound even better. Saying that every song was written and sung by one man wasn’t entirely honest. Dion actually had a co-writer on each of them. It was Buddy Lucas on “Kickin’ Child”, Bill Touhy on “Hymn to Him”, and Mike Aquilina on everything else. Dion is the lead singer on every track although he does get help on a few. Of course, when that happens it’s people like Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Patti Scialfa doing the helping.

I’m going to stop it with the details since I know that my tiny voice will be totally drowned out by real reviewers and there were so many wonderful performances by so many excellent artists that it would be nearly impossible to do justice to them all. Wow!

Coincidence at Play (Again)

Posted on June 14, 2020 by Denny

This post originally appeared on April 3, 2016. A few weeks ago I predicted that I would be recycling more blog posts as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restricted real-world interaction, but I didn’t think that would be the case this week. I had a pre-canned series post selected when coincidence struck. I was trying to figure out when I had visited a particular museum and resorted to searching this website for some record. The museum is one with many Civil War artifacts so I used those words in the search and this post appeared in the results. I had all but forgotten it but a reread made me think that a repost might be appropriate. As I wrote four years ago, “there’s still plenty of crap going on.” I did, incidentally, read “To Kill a Mocking Bird” within a couple of weeks of seeing the play.

I’ve yet to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have seen the 1962 movie multiple times and now I’ve seen the play. I had hoped to read the book between learning that the play would be performed this season at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and actually seeing it but that didn’t work out.

The Friday night performance would be the biggest event of my week but I didn’t expect it to lead to a blog post. I anticipated that a canned Trip Peek would be published this morning. A Friday morning email got me to thinking differently.

The email was the April E-News from the Smithsonian. One of the topics was “The Scottsboro Boys” with this two sentence tease: “The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the civil rights movement. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.”

I read the article referenced in the email and could easily see similarities between the 1931 real world incident and the fictional one Harper Lee set just a few years later. Both involved black men accused of imaginary crimes against white women and both occurred in a world where color mattered a whole lot more than truth. Later I read that in 2005 Harper Lee said this was not the incident she had in mind when writing To Kill a Mockingbird but that it served “the same purpose”. Despite there not being an official connection between the Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird, reading about the incident and its repercussions served a purpose for me, too. It provided an unpleasant picture of this country near the midpoint between the Civil War and today. The accuracy of that picture is reinforced by a contemporary pamphlet, They Shall Not Die!, referenced in the Smithsonian article.

I took my seat on Friday with the Scottsboro story fresh in my mind. The stage was bare except for a single light bulb which would actually be removed at the play’s start although it would return later. The stage consists of a large circular center and a surrounding ring both of which rotate. Sometimes they rotate in opposite directions which can seem to expand the distance between actors or the distance they travel. Set Designer Laura Jellinek states that “our main goal was to eliminate any artifice between the audience and the story” and this set certainly accomplishes that. As one audience member observed during the discussion that followed the play, she briefly looked around for the jury during the courtroom scene before realizing that “we were the jury”. At its most crowded, the stage holds nine chairs for the key figures in that courtroom scene.

The discussion I mentioned happens after every performance. Anyone interested moves close to the stage to listen or participate. There were naturally questions about this specific production but there were also questions about the story. There is a sign in the lobby that I now wish I’d taken a picture of. “Don’t read books that think for you. Read books that make you think.” might not be 100% accurate but it’s close. Friday night’s discussion was evidence that this play is prompting some thinking and I’ve no reason to think that discussions following other performances are any different.

There is also a set of blackboards in the lobby. As I assume is true at every performance, the blackboards started out empty except for a question at the top of each. By the time people started heading home, the boards were full. It’s pretty clear that some thinking is going on here, too.

It was the coincidence of the Smithsonian email showing up on the day I was set to see the play that nudged me towards making it a blog entry. There is another coincidence of sorts that I find interesting. Each week, the blog This Cruel War publishes an article on lynchings. The article is published on Wednesdays but, since I subscribe via RSS and I seem to always be behind in my RSS reading, it is often a day or more after publication before I read a specific article. I read this week’s post the morning after my Playhouse visit. In it, the source of the series’ title, “This Disgraceful Evil”, is given. It comes from a 1918 Woodrow Wilson speech in which he calls upon America “…to make an end of this disgraceful evil.”

We don’t have to deal with actual lynchings now as much as in 1918 but there’s still plenty of crap going on. “It cannot live”, Wilson continues, “where the community does not countenance it.”

Originally scheduled to end today, April 3, To Kill a Mockingbird‘s run a Playhouse in the Park has been extended through April 9.

Book Review
A Matter of Time
Ellen Klinkel & Nick Gerlich

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Denny

There’s not much point in counting the number of books published about Route 66; The likelihood that the count would increase before you were done is just too great. An Amazon search simply says “over 2,000”. So why review this one? What sets it apart from the others? The most obvious reason for reviewing it is a simple one: I know one of the people whose name is on the cover. The things that set it apart are not as obvious (or benignly biased). In fact, I’ve only found one thing about the book that I think is actually unique, and I’m not really sure about that. The book has no author; It has a narrator.

Nick Gerlich’s role choice is significant. This is a photobook. Its reason for being lies in Ellen Klinkel’s photographs. They could exist without any accompanying words at all and still tell a story. That certainly doesn’t mean that Gerlich’s words aren’t welcome and useful. It’s simply an observation that the words are narrating a story — really just one of many — present in the pictures. Gerlich, whose day job is as a college marketing professor, is extremely knowledgable on Route 66. In the past, he has filled the role of narrator, in the more traditional sense, for KC Keefer’s series of Unoccupied Route 66 videos. Regardless of whether he is narrating on screen or in print, he writes and researches his own scripts.

The photos are black and white, which is unusual but not unique. What may be unique is how they came to be at all. Klinkel tells that story in the book’s preface. It begins in 2013. She lives in Germany and was in the western U.S. with her husband for a four-week vacation which she describes as “the first time I ever had a serious camera in my hands”. Planned visits to several national parks fell victim to the sixteen-day government shutdown in October of that year and driving a portion of Route 66 was substituted. Klinkel credits this very first time on the historic highway coupled with the “serious camera” as having “instantly sparked my passion for photography”.

No pictures from that 2013 trip made it into A Matter of Time. All photos in the book were taken between 2015 and 2017. Klinkel refers to the images as “fine art photography”. It is a phrase I tend to associate with wall mounted prints or coffee-table-sized books with extra thick pages, but that’s wrong. A piece of the definition of fine art photography is something “in line with the vision of the photographer as artist”, and that fits the images in A Matter of Time very well. They are not artsy in an abstract pattern of shadows way, but in a way that works to capture a “vision of the photographer” and encourages the viewer to mentally reproduce that vision.

Most, but far from all, of the photos are of places I recognize from my own travels on Sixty-Six, and some of those nearly reproduce visions I’ve had myself. There are plenty of pictures of places I do not recognize. Sometimes that’s because they are from a location where I’ve never stopped or maybe even passed, but sometimes it’s because Klinkel sees and shares a vision that never occurred to me even though I’ve stood at or near the very spot she did. I don’t mean to imply that I expected anything else. It’s great to be shown something you’ve never seen, but it can be even better to be shown something known in a new way. Although it is a place I instantly recognized, a favorite example of being shown something in a new way is the early morning shot of the Bagdad Cafe with the coming sun just a tiny but significant twinkle. Another is the low-level shot of a protective wall of tires at a long-abandoned gas station at Texas Exit 0 of I-40.

I confess to initially not understanding the meaning of the word “time” in the title. I guess my first thought was of the elapsed time covered by the popular technique of using old and new images in “then and now” pairings. There is none of that here where no photo is more than five years old. Despite having read Klinkel’s preface, I early on settled on the time element being Gerlich’s words that placed the images in their proper time in history. Those words are certainly important. The often detailed and always accurate telling of how the subject of a picture came to be and where it is located provides both education and mooring.

However, something clicked on a rereading of that preface that hadn’t quite registered on the first pass. Klinkel explains the title quite clearly:

It is a matter of time in a historic and photographic sense; a mattter of being in time before a location fades away; a matter of being in time to capture the sunrise or sunset; a matter of having enough time and patience to wait for the right light and moment.

The historic sense is fairly common. Capturing things fading but not yet completely faded is something that many photographs do. The photographic sense is less so. Being in time and having enough time is not unique but it’s not all that common and it sure is refreshing. And it explains the impressive percentage and variety of truly interesting skies in A Matter of Time.

A Matter of Time: Route 66 through the Lens of Change, Ellen Klinkel and Nick Gerlich, University of Oklahoma Press, October 10, 2019, 10 x 8 inches, 272 pages, ISBN 978-0806164007
Available through Amazon.

Cincinnati Art Climb

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Denny

It probably would have been a low-key opening in any case, but in the middle of a pandemic-driven shutdown, the opening of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Art Climb seemed extra muted. Even so, I was aware of the May 7th opening of the first phase and wanted to check it out. Then, just about the time that enough restrictions had been lifted to make me start thinking seriously about a visit, nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police caused me to back off. I finally made it on Wednesday. Broad steps now connect the museum at the edge of Mount Adams with Gilbert Avenue. For road fan readers, Gilbert carries US-22 and OH-3. The steps end at the museum’s parking lot, about 450 feet away. There are 166 of them, covering roughly 100 feet of elevation change.

The project isn’t 100% complete. There are empty niches where works of art will someday be displayed, and additional tables, benches, and landscaping might appear as time goes on. Dave Linnenman, the museum’s Chief Administrative Officer, notes that “It will be a thing to enjoy, not just a way to get up and down.” Right now, it is fully functional as a way to get up and down and even as a thing to enjoy for many. Plentiful lighting and numerous security cameras are there to make it safe. The lighting will be certainly be appreciated when the popular Art After Dark events resume.

People simply enjoying the steps on Wednesday included parents with young children and some athletic types going up and down multiple times for exercise. A few were even running up some empty sections. What might at first look like someone celebrating making it to the top is actually one of the people making multiple climbs. The young woman had passed me on her way down and again on the way up and was just stretching a bit before starting back down.

The closest thing to sculpture currently on the steps is this tri-level not-yet-operational water fountain. I’m sure that a cool drink of water would be a great reward for the climb especially if the temperature was a bit higher. Today, looking back over where I’d been was reward enough.

The museum was closed, of course, but I walked across the nearly empty parking lot anyway. As usual, Jim Dine’s Pinocchio (Emotional) lets us know how happy he is to be alive and he always makes me feel that way, too. Banners at the museum’s entrance let us know some of the things we’ve been missing during the shutdown. On the day after I took these pictures, it was announced that museums were among facilities allowed to open next week. The day after that, the Cincinnati Art Museum announced plans to reopen on June 20 with reduced capacity and some other restrictions. That announcement is here.

This “steps” sign has nothing to do with the new Art Climb. It has been at the east edge of the parking lot for years and I’ve walked past it many times. I was vaguely aware of where the other end of the steps it refers to was located, but I’d never had any reason or desire to travel them. When I first thought of taking in the new stairs, I figured I would park at the museum and go down them then return. However, when I saw I could park near their lower end, I decided it made more sense to do it the other way around. Not only would going up use the steps as intended for museum visitors, it would have me headed downhill when I was likely to need it more.

I know that all downhill paths are not equal, but decided that today was probably my best opportunity for checking out the old steps. The route does have steps on both ends and there are some in the middle, but they are nowhere near as wide or as even as the new ones. In between is a sometimes paved and sometimes not path that is always narrow. There are no lights on any of this. The lower end of the Art Climb is at the intersection of Gilbert Avenue and Eden Park Drive. The old steps emerge on Eden Park, maybe 500 feet away. I’d parked on Eden Park Drive about midway between the two sets of steps, so using the older ones for my return was somewhat sensible. I suppose I might come down them again sometime, but I’m rather certain that I’ll never go up them.

Music Review
New York at Night
Willie Nile

Posted on June 3, 2020 by Denny

I didn’t actually try to produce a flashback last week but I thought about it. Because I’d pre-ordered the CD, when Willie Nile released World War Willie back in 2016, I got a digital copy before the actual CD arrived. It was early spring and I took a nice walk around the neighborhood with the new music playing in my ears. The walk and the songs both made an impression. A similar situation existed with New York at Night. A digital version became available before the physical version arrived. My World War Willie introductory walkabout was powered by a 2011 vintage iPod. It still works fine but I no longer have any way to maintain its contents. This time I downloaded the music to my phone and set out to enjoy some fine weather and new music.

I’d previously used the phone for some podcasts and music but had not really mastered its operation. I tapped the first track listed; The phone played it to completion then stopped and waited for me to select another. There’s probably some way to get automatic movement between tracks, but a small screen in bright sunlight did not lend itself to figuring that out. So, as each track ended, I stopped walking long enough to tap the next one in the list. The screen size and bright sun also didn’t exactly help an old man’s eyes read each track name. I just tapped each track in the sequence displayed. Back home, I discovered that the list was not in the intended sequence. I’ve not deduced an actual pattern so maybe it really is random.

I quite enjoyed the warm and sunny walk and even stepped inside a store for the first time in several weeks. It was a United Dairy Farmers store where I bought an ice cream cone to help me get home. I also enjoyed the music and noted some tracks I looked forward to hearing again. But I did not feel the same kick and elation as on that 2016 walk. I started this article by saying I had not set out to intentionally reproduce a flashback. That’s technically true, but I think I must have expected one and was disappointed when it didn’t materialize.

Then the CD arrived. It was in the player when I set out on a drive long enough to hear it all. There was no flashback, but the kick was there and the disappointment was not. There’s no real need to dig for an explanation. Many things — and maybe music most of all — strike us differently for no more concrete a reason than it’s a different day. I’ve thought of some reasons for the difference and most have to do with my personal attitude and the fact that driving was less common than walking during the COVID-19 impacted 2020 while the opposite was true in 2016. But I honestly believe that the different sequences also had something to do with it.

The CD opens with “New York is Rockin'” which is, as you might have guessed, a solid rocker. The rockin’ continues through “The Backstreet Slide” and only lets up slightly with “Doors of Paradise” and “Lost and Lonely World”. It pretty much rocks, in fact, all the way through with a couple of exceptions I’ll get to later. Two of those first four CD tracks were among the first four tunes of the scrambled list on my phone but they are in reversed position. “New York is Rockin'” was the fourth song I heard on my walk and “Lost and Lonely World” was the first. The tone that was set was quite different and I think that walk vs. ride and my state of mind are only partly responsible.

Not only is the album heart-pumpingly uptempo, it is heart-warmingly upbeat. At its own heart, it is a love letter to New York City with the city celebrated in both the opening and title tracks. While I’ve often shared that NYC is not one of my favorite places, I very much recognize its concentration of art, culture, and energy, and it has been Willie’s favorite place for a long long time. He certainly captures that energy as well as anyone, and even makes me wish I appreciated the city more. That’s what happens with images like “Barishnikov is puttin’ on his blue suede shoes” and “Pavarotti’s singin’ up at Carnegie Hall” from “New York is Rockin'”.

“Under This Roof”, which I’d heard previously via an online video, is one of the two non-rockers I mentioned earlier. The album was recorded prior to the COVID-19 isolation and well before the ongoing national outrage triggered by the death of a black man in the custody of police in Minneapolis. Its generally lighthearted tone can be seen as a welcome and hopeful distraction and this tune’s message of love and sanctuary even more so. The other softer track features Willie alone at the piano doing a song, “A Little Bit of Love”, that was born in a conversation with his 102-year-old father.

Nile’s current touring (if only he could) band, Johnny Pisano, Matt Hogan, and Jon Weber, anchors the album but there is plenty of help. Perhaps the most notable comes from Jimi K. Bones, who was with Willie when I saw him most recently, and the Eagles’ Steuart Smith. Also notable, in my opinion, is the listing of not only one but two tabla players (Pisano and Frankie Lee). That’s something you don’t see every day.

As I considered the importance of sequencing, I may have discovered a subtle return to the past or I may be imagining it. Back in the heyday of vinyl, the first and last tracks on each side, often called the “four corners”, were considered important. Assuming a split with a half dozen tracks per side, the four corners of New York at Night are the two songs with New York in their titles, “A Little Bit of Love”, and something called “Run Free” which was recorded in 2003. “Run Free” is one of those rock ‘n’ roll anthems that seem perfect for ending a concert — or an album. Are the “four corners” on this album real or imaginary? Betcha know what I think.

Trip Peek #96
Trip #92
Chattanooga Christmas

Posted on May 31, 2020 by Denny

This picture is from my 2010 Chattanooga Christmas trip. It was the second of my three visits to the Delta Queen while it operated as a stationary hotel in Chatanooga, TN. I’d spent Independence Day 2009 onboard and would return for Christmas 2012. One thing that made the trip memorable was the first Christmas Day snowfall in Chatanooga in forty-one years. In addition to the snow, I have memories of a remarkable young man named Jeremy. The unusual snow was enough to keep most employees, including the cook, at home. Jeremy was the desk clerk and apparently the only staff member on board. I’m guessing his age at about twenty. Once he realized that he was essentially on his own, Jeremy took it upon himself to break out coffee, fruit, and pastries so the passengers were fed. I was impressed.

I’d started the trip with seven members of the Gingerbread family courtesy of Ovenmaster Mary, but only the parents and two offspring remained when I took the Christmas morning photo above. I enjoyed walking through the surprise winter wonderland of Coolidge Park and nearby areas then headed home the next day. On the way, I stopped in Nashville and Bowling Green to look in on Belle Meade and the National Corvette Museum.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Trip Peek #95
Trip #125
JHA Conference 2015

Posted on May 24, 2020 by Denny

This picture is from my 2015 trip to the Jefferson Highway Association Conference in Muskogee, OK. The three-day conference, my first JHA event, anchored a thirteen-day trip. The outing included a bit of Route 66 and all of the Jefferson Highway in Oklahoma. I experienced some sadness on Sixty-Six as this was my first visit to the Gasconade Bridge after its 2014 closing and to Gay Parita after the death of Gary Turner, its creator, in January. The bridge’s fate is still undetermined but Gary’s daughter has stepped in to reopen the popular station for travelers. The route home included some US-82 and US-70 and Arkansas’ Dollarway Road that was built in 1914 at a dollar (actually $1.36) per foot. A personal highlight of the trip was meeting Billy Tripp of Mind Field fame.

Signs of Summer (Past)

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Denny

This article first appeared on May 20, 2012. Recent memories and shared pictures reminded me of the places it features so I decided to repost it as close to its anniversary as possible. With concerts, museums, travel, and other story-generating activities currently non-existent, there will likely be more of this sort of reuse before the current summer slips into the past.

The fountain in front of Union Terminal, a.k.a., Cincinnati Museum Center, runs all summer and is turned off all winter. Therefore, one sure sign of summer in Cincinnati is the turning on of the fountain. That happened Friday at 10:30 AM. I had kind of hoped to see the stepped pools below the fountain go from bare concrete to a series of waterfalls right before our eyes but it wasn’t quite that dramatic. Whether the pools were primed in the interest of time or whether the standing water was simply left over from some secret testing I cannot say, but they started the day ready to overflow at the slightest provocation.

I still think bare concrete morphing to cascading waterfalls would have been cooler but watching the fountain go from zilch to a spurt to a full spray wasn’t bad.

All the kids, and there were plenty, were properly wowed and they also enjoyed the characters on hand to promote the ongoing A Day in Pompeii exhibit. I’ve seen the exhibit and it’s a duesy. University of Cincinnati Professor Steven Ellis, along with several UC students, has been instrumental in the current excavations in Pompeii and that was instrumental in making Cincinnati one of only four US cities hosting the exhibit. As you can see, security was tight.

The weather was obviously quite nice for the events at the fountain but Friday was just one of several consecutive near-perfect days. Perfect not only for fountains of water but for fountains — or taps — of root beer. I made it to three different root beer stands on three of those near-perfect days.

On Thursday it was the Jolly’s on the west side of Hamilton, Ohio. Back in 1938, Vinny Jolivette opened an A&W Root Beer franchise in Hamilton. He built this place in 1967 and, casting off the A&W identity, used the family name to inspire a new one for the restaurant. It’s west of the Great Miami River on Brookwood. Somewhere along the line, they added another on the east side of town on Erie. That one has a cooler sign but this one still makes its own root beer and that trumps the sign. The two remain officially connected (The car side signs carry both telephone numbers.) but are managed somewhat separately by two brothers. There is a third Jolly’s in Tiffin, Ohio, that was started, also as an A&W, in 1947 by Vinny’s brother, Roy, and it seems there was a fourth somewhere in Indiana (possibly Bloomington) but I know very little about it.

I stopped by The Root Beer Stand in Sharonville, Ohio, on Friday afternoon. It started life in 1957 as an A&W then went independent in 1982. It stopped using carhops in 1972. Originally built and operated by the Rideour family, it moved on to its second and current owners, Scott & Jackie Donley, in 1990. The Donleys have kept everything pretty much the same and that definitely includes making the root beer using water from their 280 foot well. Claims that “it’s something in the water” may very well be true here.

I got my Saturday root beer fix at the A&W in Union City, Ohio. Despite this being a place I frequented as a teenager, I know few details of its history. I do recall that is was owned by a fellow named Smith in the 1960s and that he operated a used car lot right next door. I have vivid memories of sipping root beer and drooling over a black 1956 Thunderbird that sat in that lot when I was about seventeen. At some point, it became Neil’s A&W Drive In and so it remains today. Curiously, this place doesn’t show up on the official A&W website nor does it have its own site but it does have a FaceBook page.

All three of these places make their own root beer using at least some of the original A&W equipment. Guess that stuff was made to last. All of them taste great and I’m guessing that the recipes are all the same or similar. The Root Beer Stand has its special water and both it and Jolly’s serve their brew in chilled glass mugs. I love ’em both and I do tend to dislike chains but “real” A&Ws (Not stuffed-into-a-corner-of-a-gas-station A&Ws.) are pretty cool and it’s hard to beat an ice-covered mug.

I’m guessing that some noticed the slightly red convertible in the center of the Root Beer Stand photo. That’s my 1963 Valiant and plans to drive it to Darke County and the A&W at the border led to the warm-up visits to Hamilton and Sharonville. The 200-mile round trip was the car’s longest outing since the cold drive home from Cambridge in early 2011. She done good. These pictures show her at Jolly’s and Neil’s.

I recently learned that the neighborhood Flipdaddy’s does brunch on Sundays so I walked over this morning to check it out. It was quite good. I’m always dismayed but rarely surprised to find myself alone on a restaurant’s patio. But, with the thermometer at 74 degrees, I was a little bit surprised today. Lots of people just don’t like any temperature I guess. To be fair, one couple and their home from college daughter did venture outside to eat. That was it. The restaurant was fairly busy inside but just one other outside table was ever used all the while I leisurely worked through my bacon & eggs and slowly sipped my Magic Hat dessert.

My Caboodles — Chapter 1
Corps of Discovery Forts

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Denny

With the “My Wheels” series coming to at least a temporary end, this series about collections of things I’ve visited is being launched to take its place as something to be posted when my real-time world fails to produce an article. The word “caboodle” occurred to me as I was brainstorming titles and I knew it was right the instant I checked the Merriam-Webster definition. The initial chapter concerns a very small caboodle that I didn’t even think of as a group until I had completed it. During its existence, the Corps of Discovery (a.k.a. Lewis & Clark Expedition) endured three winters hunkered down inside some fairly sturdy fortifications. It was while visiting my third, their second, that I realized I’d been to all of them. As the current list of potential subjects for this series is quite small, I’m hoping some memories or realizations will magically appear to lengthen it. Especially since it is being launched during a statewide Coronavirus related “stay at home” order that prevents most of the activities that usually spawn articles here.

1. All three Corps of Discovery winter encampments functioned as forts and that’s how two of the three were identified. The one that most closely matches our common concept of a frontier fort was not. The place where the corps spent the winter of 1803-4 was named Camp River Dubois. I’m guessing that the word “fort” was not used because the location was near Saint Louis in relatively civilized territory. It was here that they prepared for the journey that would begin in earnest in May of 1804. I visited the site less than a month after the two-hundredth anniversary of that beginning. This structure, as well as the others, is a modern recreation. The originals rotted away long ago.

2. In 2008, I found myself on the Oregon coast where the expedition spent its third and final winter away from home. Like many travelers today, Lewis and Clark would spend less time returning from their destination than reaching it and avoid a fourth winter lockdown. In their case, more downstream travel and less getting lost helped considerably. They had traveled as far west as they could and turned their footsteps to the east when they departed Fort Clatsop in the spring of 1806.

3. It was nearly eight years later when I unexpectedly realized that I was only about thirty miles from Fort Mandan and an associated Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center. I made the short detour, of course, and was able to look over an accurate reproduction of the expedition’s quarters during the winter of 1804-5. The explorers found the fort had been burned to the ground when they passed by here on their way home.

While studying a timeline of the expedition at the Fort Mandan site, it struck me that I had now visited all three of the Corps of Discovery’s wintering locations. Now, three-plus years later, when I needed a new supply of posts that could be made without regard for the date, I chose this set of visits, spread over a dozen years, as the subject for the first of the series. The actual visits are here (Camp River Dubois), here (Fort Clatsop), and here (Fort Mandan).

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