Category Archives: Adventure

Then and Now

This continues a series of posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

We pulled out of Memphis and began our third 400-mile drive.

This was the most scenic part of the trip. The rolling hills continued, one long ascent followed by a long descent, followed by another and another and another. There were woods on both sides punctuated by blooming Magnolias and occasionally something that appeared to be bougainvillea blanketing a full-grown tree. That was spectacular. Most of the drive was through Mississippi, which does not have a motto. It does have a coat of arms which includes the phrase Virtute et Armis (by valor and arms).

And here I must correct what I wrote about Minnesota. “Land of 10,000 Lakes” is what’s on our license plates, but our official motto is L’étoile du Nord (Star of the North, or in Latin, “I long to see what is beyond.”)

That could explain a lot about me.

Once again, Lynn and I postulated about what could be wrong with the car.

“Maybe it’s overheated,” she said.

“But why?” I asked. “We’ve only driven 50 miles.”

—

I had driven many cars that were in much more alarming shape than this one. When Vince was a baby I had a Buick LeSabre that was so old it didn’t have seat belts. I would stick Vince in a banana box and put him on the back seat.

There was the 1964 Chrysler Imperial with push button gears on the dashboard. Now it’s a very cool collector’s car, but in 1978 it was just a “winter beater,” as we called cars that were expected to just barely get us through the winter.

There was the car whose driver’s side door had to be held shut by…my arm. There was one that never ran. Never even started. I bought it from a neighbor for $125. He pushed it down the alley into my backyard after assuring me that all it needed was a carburetor.

I went to a junkyard and bought a carburetor out of wrecked car for $50. My brother and his friend Hans came over to install it. The result was Hans running down the alley with his hair on fire, waving his arms trying to put it out. My brother tackled him and rolled him in the dirt before any serious harm was done beyond a temporary bald spot. I had to pay $75 to have the car towed to the same junkyard where I’d bought the carburetor.

So why was I so worried now?

—

But then a second, bigger engine light came on with a loud DING DING. I pulled off in the nearest town, Canton, Mississippi, and parked in front of a liquor store, where I called AAA while Lynn read the manual. I had forgotten there was a manual.

The AAA representative had such a heavy southern accent I was forced to admit, “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand what you’re saying.” She repeated herself slowly. “We can come and tow your car, and you’ll have to find a motel in Canton for the night.”

Just then a monster truck roared into the parking lot. An enormous black man got out and came storming toward us—Lynn literally leaned away from him as he loomed into her window, while I fumbled to lock the doors.

“Ya’ll okay?” he asked. “Ah didn’t mean ta scare ya! Ah seen yur car and it don’t look ya’ll from ‘round here and ah thought ya might need help.”

Lynn and I laughed with relief and assured him we were fine. When he was out of earshot, we analyzed our reaction and agreed we’d been scared because he was a huge, aggressive man and we were in a strange town, not because he was black.

Lynn read from the manual, “If the engine light is red, you should pull over immediately and call for help. If it’s orange, you may continue driving but have the car looked at your earliest opportunity.”

The lights were orange. Surely, another 200 miles couldn’t do any harm. On to New Orleans!

Jim Crow, Old and New

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This is the latest in a series of posts about a road trip from St. Paul to New Orleans that starts here.

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If you don’t learn something about yourself when you travel … well, that’s okay—I’m not going to sermonize—but I was pleased to learn something important about myself in Memphis.

—

In the morning, Lynn and I took a walk along the riverfront, which is beautiful:

We walked back to Beale Street, found a restaurant, and ordered breakfast. We were excited to try southern foods like grits and biscuits. We waited, and waited. You could say this restaurant put the “wait” in waitress. She kept coming by and giving us a dose of another southern treat—calling us “honey”, “sweetie”, and “darlin’” as in: “Your food’ll be up in just a minute, darlins’”

It seemed like half the morning passed away before we got our meals, then we wolfed them down and headed over to the National Civil Rights Museum.

It was difficult to find—there was no signage—but then we turned a corner and there it was, the former Lorraine Motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I recognized it immediately, having seen it a hundred times in iconic photos.

And this was the beginning of learning something about myself, because I got so choked up I had to turn away so no one would see me in tears.

I have been to Holocaust museums in Washington, DC; Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Chicago, and elsewhere, and they’ve been tear-filled experiences too. But then, I’m Jewish. Were my tears only because the story was about my people? That fear—that I only felt empathy for my own kind—was laid to rest in Memphis.

I wiped my tears away but they welled up continually inside the museum, which was one long, sad horror show that traced the abuse of African Americans from slave days up through the assassination in 1968.

There was a large group of school children, mostly African American, going through with docents. I wondered what they felt seeing Africans in chains, the police dogs, the fire hoses? If it was my kid I would want to be on the tour to put my arm around him. There was the usual laughing and fooling around that any group of kids will exhibit, but I wondered if they would have trouble sleeping that night.

—

I commented to Lynn, “A coworker of mine at Oxfam used to find every opportunity to mention, ‘the UK never had slavery’ in a superior tone.”

“We may not have had slaves in the country, but we certainly benefited and participated in the system,” Lynn replied as we read a display about how global the slave trade was.

And of course it didn’t end with the abolition of slavery. “Jim Crow” was the system in the southern United States from reconstruction up through the civil rights era in the 60s that kept “negros” in their place. Here are a few of the ridiculous laws from that time:

Really? Checkers!? Who knew checkers could subvert the social order?

Then we marched slowly through exhibits about bus boycotts, lunch counter protests, and strikes. Then there were the cross burnings, lynchings, and bombings by white racists; somewhat counterbalanced by the support of white and other allies (including Jews).

I watched a video about James Meredith, the first black student to be accepted to the University of Mississippi, in Oxford Mississippi. Of course he hadn’t mentioned his race in his application, and when he showed up to enroll all hell broke loose. After weeks of rioting by whites, which resulted in two deaths, he was reluctantly let in, and as Lynn read later, he did graduate and lived a normal life afterwards.

The museum was really well done. There was a second building that explored African American activism post 1968, but after three or four hours in the first building we had to leave.

—

Last week Vince and I talked to a group about mass incarceration. One of the audience members referred to it as the New Jim Crow. I agree, although in my opinion it’s about poverty, addiction, mental health, and class as much as racism.

Viva, Viagra!

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This is the latest in a series of posts about a road trip from St. Paul to New Orleans that starts here.

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After recharging with burritos and bucket-sized ice teas, Lynn and I hit the road for the last leg of the drive from Chicago to Memphis.

We wanted to drive through Paducah, Kentucky. We liked the name. It would have been our homage to David, our innkeeper in Chicago, and we could have added a fifth state to our route that day. But even with a GPS and a map we couldn’t figure out how to get to it. For what seemed like hours—because it was hours—it looked like we were on the verge of crossing the state line into Tennessee and that Memphis would be right on the other side.

“There’s the sign!” said Lynn. “Tennessee—The Volunteer State?” Whatever does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Something to do with the Civil War?”

I tried to find out later why Tennessee is called the Volunteer State lost interest after 3,000 words about the conflicting stories about which war originated it. Suffice it to say it was some war with England or Mexico or the northern United States.

All 50 states have mottos. We had passed through five states so far. The slogans of Minnesota and Illinois are straightforward: Land of 10,000 Lakes and Land of Lincoln (Abe Lincoln was born in Illinois). Arkansas’, through which we had passed briefly, was Regnat Populus, which means “The People Rule.”

Missouri’s slogan is the strangest—it’s The Show Me State. The official explanation is that in 1899 a Missouri Congressman said:

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

I liked it better when I thought it might have something to do with voyeurism.

—

We checked in to the Holiday Inn in downtown Memphis, which I had chosen because it was two blocks from Beale Street and had $22 overnight parking. I checked the odometer—we’d driven 995 miles since leaving St. Paul.

Within 15 minutes we were out on Beale Street, which is supposedly where rock and roll was created. Or the blues, I can’t remember. Because Chicago also calls itself the Home of the Blues, and of course New Orleans’ claim to fame is jazz … so it’s hard to keep it all straight. If you’ve ever been to Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis or Division Street in Chicago on a Saturday night, that’s what Beale Street is like. Neon signs. Bars and more bars, with music pouring out of them and tipsy people wandering from one to the next, laughing.

Lynn and I got some drinks and sat on an outdoor patio, listening to the house band. This was the first of many moments when I would feel like I had been dropped into a giant, never-ending Viagra commercial. I said this—or shouted it—to Lynn and she gave me the blank look of someone who has never seen a prescription drug commercial. Because there are no prescription drug commercials in the UK. So to Lynn, and other readers who have a National Health Service instead of a Medical Industrial Complex, that link’s for you. Imagine seeing adverts like that 5-6 times during your favorite TV program.

—

We’re everywhere, we post-WWII western baby boomers. Now that we’re beginning to retire in mass numbers you will see us at every festival, concert, and tourist attraction. Boomer men, in particular, have a thing about guitars, and being cool, and fancying themselves as musicians. Their standard gear is jeans and a white T-shirt with a plaid shirt over it, and either cowboy boots or sneakers. Fedoras are required at jazz venues.

I don’t mean to be critical. I’m a boomer myself, although at the tail end, so I’ve seen “my generation” surge along through the pipeline of history all my life. We get blamed for ruining the economy and we are said to be blazing a trail for “vital aging” for younger generations. Thank god there was no Viagra in 1946.

The Other Country

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I woke at 5am. My plan was to go to Walgreens—conveniently located at the end of the block—which opened at 7am. I would buy all the auto fluids they had and pour them into the car in hopes it would make it to New Orleans.

I dressed and slunk out the door to the nearby coffee shop. When I returned, David our innkeeper greeted me and started recounting his early days in Chicago. I had time to kill, so I sat back and enjoyed my coffee and David’s stories.

He had come to Chicago from Kentucky to attend college in 1977. So David and I were the same age. He seemed older, like he’d weathered some pretty tough times.

Anyway, his arrival coincided with the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural History. I remembered “Tut Mania” well. My mother had driven to Chicago with some friends to see the exhibit and came back with T-shirts with images of scarabs and Egyptian cats and—of course—King Tut.

David was taking a class from a professor who was a world expert on Tut, and who was leading the logistics for the exhibit.

“The train from Egypt was escorted by armed guards with shoot-to-kill orders,” he said. “They packed everything in Styrofoam so if the ship sank, all those priceless antiquities would bob back up to the top.” He explained that Tut had been a very minor king who was only famous because his tomb “wasn’t very ornate,” and thus hadn’t attract the attention of tomb robbers.

Talking about King Tut and his college days, David grew animated and could have passed for an archaeology professor himself.

—

Have you ever heard of magical thinking? That was me as I started the car up after a 36-hour rest. Somehow, the engine light wouldn’t come on, right? Wrong.

But there was no going back—we were gonna make New Orleans by Wednesday! Back at the inn Lynn was enjoying breakfast and another of David’s soliloquies. He was talking about Kentucky again. “Most people think it’s like Deliverance,” he said. I gave Lynn a blank look that said, “He’s right.”

—

Travel does not equal adventure, or vice versa. Adventures can be delightful but more often, at least for me, they involve dealing with something strange, stressful, or slightly scary.

Once again, the car was fine above 75 miles per hour but shook if I slowed down.

“I wonder if I got a bad tank of gas at the Cranberry Discovery Center.” This would be the first of many hair-brained theories about the car.

“Maybe it’s the spark plugs,” Lynn suggested. Then, sheepishly, “Does it have spark plugs?”

“I don’t know!” The Mini’s engine was sealed inside a sleek black box. It was just like BMW to make something stylish that prevented access or even viewing.

“Maybe when I get a new tank of gas it’ll fix itself. I’ll stick to gas stations near the freeway that sell a lot of gas, to make sure I get a fresh tank.” More magical thinking.

The landscape slowly changed, from flat and sere to lush, green, and hilly. The car struggled up the hills. But maybe if I just kept driving… we drove from 9 to 3:30 with two five-minute pit stops.

Finally, starving, we stopped in Charleston, Missouri. The “downtown” was deadsville. The only place open was a thrift store. I asked if there was a place to eat in town. The response I got from the woman at the register sounded like this:

“Ya’ll gawla rawla dayown aray-owna Mexican raistrawnt gonna donna lowna haw-way.” Lynn beat it out the door. I fought the urge to follow her while my brain worked to make sense of what she’d said.

A customer stepped forward and said, slowly, “She said there’s a Mexican place out by the interstate.” I thanked him and we drove out of town, pausing only to take a photo of this poor old theater.

We found Las Brisas and ordered iced teas, which were served in pitcher-sized plastic cups. Listening to the accents around us, we felt like we were in a foreign country, but it wasn’t Mexico.

Bobble Heads in Chi Town

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This post is part of a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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I had a surprise up my sleeve for Lynn. It was a piece of Americana she couldn’t miss, I thought, so after we had our fill of Tiffany at the Cultural Center I led us northwest through the city. Did I mention it was cold, and how I was dressed for New Orleans? We stopped in the first of many Walgreens we would see on the trip and bought matching, stupid-looking but warm hats with giant pompoms that bobbed as we walked.

What is it with all the Walgreens? I like Walgreens, but do we really need one every few blocks?

We approached our destination and Lynn was none the wiser until we walked in the door of … a MacDonald’s! But this was not just any MacDonald’s. This was the rock ‘n’ roll MacDonald’s. I had visited it every time I’d been to Chicago. I don’t know why, but it was stuffed full of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia—or at least it had been the last time I was there. I was particularly enamored of a hologram—I couldn’t remember who it was—Elvis? Hendrix? There was also a life-sized sculpture of the Beatles from the Abbey Road album, and a classic car with characters from the Archie comic books.

These are photos from online, because all of it was gone—gone!

In place of all the fabulous rock ‘n’ roll mementos was an exhibit about … MacDonald’s. There was no explanation and no indication that there had ever been any rock ‘n’ roll exhibit. I tried to paint a picture of it to Lynn but of course it was impossible.

The building is still cool and there was a lot of mid Century Modern furniture, which I love. So we looked though the exhibit which also included non-MacDonald’s-related stuff from the 50s, 60s, and 70s like hula hoops and manual dial telephones and Twister, plus references to historical events like the Vietnam War and Nixon’s resignation. We shifted to a different style of tables with each decade, and Lynn nearly fell over trying to get onto a high-concept but wobbly stool.

It was okay, but I was really disappointed. We walked across the street to the Hard Rock Café. Maybe the collection had been acquired by them? But no, there was no sign of it.

We had a cup of coffee and I asked Miquel, our server, the most scenic route to Rogers Park, where we would meet my niece and her boyfriend for dinner.

Miguel was full of suggestions. We had plenty of time, so I decided we could take the slow bus that would give us views of the lakefront. We waited half an hour for the 151 bus in the blistering wind. It crawled through traffic and just when I thought we were set for a nice scenic ride, the driver shouted, “End of the line! Everybody off!”

There are two kinds of bus drivers: friendly, helpful ones and crabby, unhelpful ones. Ours was the second type.

“Will there be another 151 that goes to the end of the route?” I asked.

“No,” was all he had to say.

“How far is it to Belmont Station?” He waved his hand dismissively and said, “Too far to walk.”

“How far is it to Rogers Park?” I asked.

He just laughed derisively, so we hopped off the bus to find ourselves in the middle of nowhere.

It’s times like this that I’m glad to be 56 instead of 26. Back in the day, this would have been a disaster, and I would have walked all the way to Rogers Park and probably gotten frost bite rather than pay for a cab. Instead, I hailed a taxi and we were there in five minutes.

Erin and Chris had picked a great Peruvian restaurant and brought a six-pack of local beer to share. It was nice to catch up with them. The food was abundant and they took home enough leftovers to last a week.

We took a taxi back to the inn. I hadn’t thought about my car all day.

Long Talkers, Tiny Rooms, and Tiffany Joy

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This post is part of a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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After what seemed like hours, Lynn and I stumbled out of the van Gogh exhibit. I blinked like a mole because it had been so dim in there. I needed to find a bathroom and asked a nearby guard, who launched into the story of her life, which included having diabetes, moving to Chicago from Gary, Indiana, and being a weight lifter. I made the mistake of saying, “I lift weights too,” and that gave her license to talk some more. She wasn’t talking with me or even to me; she was just talking.

Lynn had done an about face right away but I would have felt mean walking away. In my imagination I filled in the story of her life—how she must be an impoverished single mother who had to do this excruciatingly boring job, how it must be so hard on her back to stand all day, and so on. Then I remembered I needed a bathroom, butted in to ask her again, and made my escape after many Minnesota-nice thank yous and repetitions of “Have a nice day!”

This type of talking was a theme on our trip, I realize in retrospect. People launching into long, one-way recitations about themselves, with no encouragement from us. There were never any questions about us—none of the give and take that turns talking into conversation. It’s like being held prisoner by words. What is that about? I’ve experienced it from time to time throughout my life but is it more prevalent now? Does it have something to do with social media and people wanting to tell their stories? Is it a symptom of loneliness and isolation in our modern society?

—

Speaking of long talkers, David our innkeeper had recommended that we see the miniatures at the Art Institute. “I took mama and Miss Rose to see them, when they visited from Kentucky,” he said. “Mama didn’t say nothin’ the whole time. I wondered if she didn’t like it. Then I finally said, ‘Mama, don’t you like them?’ and she said, ‘Oh I do! I do, but I can’t imagine dusting all of them!’”

I laughed and Lynn fake laughed but I could tell she was puzzled. Once we actually got to the miniature rooms and she saw what they were, she explained why. “When he said miniatures, I thought of tiny portraits that people used to have done before there was photography.” Here is an example of an English miniature:

Here is what the miniatures in the Art Institute are:

Miniature rooms from various periods and countries—hundreds of them. They are really fun to look at and yes, they must be a pain to dust.

We thought we were done but to reach the exit we had to walk through the Asian section. So we took another hour or so to admire works from Japan, Indonesia, China, and India. Lynn has been to all these places. She’s Anglo-Indian and has been to India many times. She worked for Oxfam in Aceh, Indonesia after the Indian Ocean tsunami. So she’s learned a thing or two about the vast territory covered by the label “Asia.”

“But I never retain anything I’ve learned,” she explained. So she knew which god was Ganesh and which was Krishna but I was definitely going to have to Google them later to learn more.

—

David had also recommended that we visit the Chicago Cultural Center, one block north and across Michigan Avenue from the Art Institute. “It was a library, but now they hold concerts and have art exhibits there, and it’s fabulous,” he said.

And he was right! I had never even heard of the place, and it turned out to be the highlight of Chicago for me. The building was completed in 1897 and features the largest dome of Tiffany glass in the world:

I loved the details. It wasn’t called The Gilded Age for nothing:

I was happy to realize that I still had many classic works left to read: Scott, Burns, Tennyson, Gray. Someday—when I can no longer travel.

Artisanal Art

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This is the fifth post about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Lynn and I spend hours in the Art Institute. We lingered with the impressionists, then she specifically wanted to see “American Gothic” by Grant Wood.

I found a sweet little website for children, or maybe just simple-minded people, that describes the painting: “After he made sketches of the house, Grant looked for just the right people to go with it. He thought his family dentist and his own sister, Nan, would be perfect for the farmer and his daughter. Grant entered American Gothic in a big show at the Art Institute of Chicago, and won the third place prize. People all over America loved the newspaper pictures they saw of it. Soon, Grant’s paintings started to become very popular. One reason for this was that many people felt Grant’s art was easier to understand than a lot of the new modern art being done.”

I could relate to that later, when we visited a modern art exhibit:

The second photo is actually an air vent, but really, how different is it from the “real art” on the left? Maybe I’m just a philistine. But then there was this, made entirely of snake skins:

—

We waited in line for lunch in the shi-shi café at the Institute. The young cook kept up a stream of talk while he worked. Or, that is, he stopped working every time he started talking. He wasn’t talking to us; it was like a stream of consciousness. After 25 minutes we finally reached a table with our stir fries and some fortifying red wine.

Two couples from St. Louis sat next to us at the picnic-style table and struck up a conversation. They were all eating giant sausages. Lynn peered at them dubiously.

“This one is a Chicago style brat,” the woman next to me explained. “And this one is a Polish sausage—there’s a big Polish population in Chicago.”

“And this is a wiener,” said her husband. Lynn turned to me and gave me her special blank expression that said so much.

After they had wolfed down their sausages, Lynn had her say. “None of those were proper sausages! A wee-ner,” she dragged out the name to emphasize its silliness. “What’s a wiener!?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure whatever’s inside isn’t good.” I said. “My mom used to buy them by the dozens and keep them in the freezer. We would eat them like frozen treats. A couple years ago there was an outbreak of a mysterious neurological illness at a meat packing plant in Minnesota. They were using a new technique with high-pressure hoses to blast out every bit of brain matter from pigs’ skulls.” Lynn recoiled in horror, rightly so.

“I’m so glad I stopped eating pork years ago! I’ve never paid much attention to British sausages, or to American ones for that matter,” I said.

“British sausages are very different to what those people were eating. We would never eat anything like a wiener!” Lynn tried to describe how wonderful and superior British sausages were but it was lost on me.

These are the kinds of conversations you have when you travel with someone from another country. They’re amusing and confusing, and eventually I find myself Googling “British sausages” late at night.

—

Back to the impressionists. There was a special Vincent van Gogh exhibit called Three Bedrooms. Lynn pronounced his name “van Goff.” In America we say “van Go.”

There was an interpretive film. They had physically recreated the bedroom. There were other artists’ paintings of bedrooms or some such. And on and on. It really put the “anal” in artisanal.

Then, finally, the three paintings:

Now, I like Vincent van Gogh as much as the next person. Again, maybe I’m just an ignoramus. But I can hear the marketing department at the Institute brainstorming: “I know! Let’s find three almost-identical paintings by some name-brand artist, make up a story about them, and call it an exhibit! We can charge extra and sell lots of merchandise!”

The merch part was good, as I was able to buy my Vince a Vincent t-shirt. One souvenir crossed off the list.

Monk-ey Business

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This is the fourth post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Finally! I will get to our day in Chicago now. But I have to say, it’s the little sights and interactions and quirky people you meet while traveling that make it interesting. You can read about the Art Institute of Chicago in any guidebook or on hundreds of commercial websites, but you would probably not learn that a high street and a downtown are the same thing, and you would never get to know David the Innkeeper.

The temperature had plunged overnight, from the mid 70sF to almost freezing. The wind sliced through the thin clothes I had packed in anticipation of the New Orleans’ heat. No matter how much I travel, I always pack optimistically, and sometimes I end up shivering as a result. Home in chilly Minnesota, I can’t imagine anywhere else could be as cold.

I had checked the map and was focused on finding the Architecture Foundation of Chicago. I had been on their river boat tours several times and they were great. It was too cold for a boat tour, but they had lots of other indoor tours, according to their brochures.

Lynn and I wandered up and down Michigan Avenue for an hour and never found the AFC. I hadn’t realized there was a north and south Michigan, there was construction hiding the building numbers, and finally we just gave up because it was too cold and windy. Besides, we kept being approached by guys dressed as monks asking for money. I say “dressed as” monks because we eventually concluded this was a scam. The first guy approached us and thrust some sort of bracelet into Lynn’s hand. He started speaking badly broken English and pointing to a booklet he had with pictures and symbols that made no sense.

I tried to hand him some quarters, nickels, and dimes leftover from the tollway—win win! “No coins!” he barked.

I was inclined to walk away but Lynn is nicer than me. She’s also been to Bhutan, Nepal, Thailand, and everywhere else there are actual monks.

“You’re trying to build a temple, are you?” she asked, as the fake monk showed her a page of writing. “Where are you from?” she asked.

“Hong Kong,” he replied.

That did it. She said “No thanks,” and walked away. “Hong Kong just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If he really was from Hong Kong he would very likely speak English.”

“Yeah, I bet as soon as we walked away he muttered ‘bitches’ under his breath!” I replied.

—

Finally, our site seeing got underway with a walk through Millennium Park:

We couldn’t stand the cold anymore so headed over to Starbucks for a hot drink while we waited for the Art Institute to open. Of course the people in line with us were from Scotland. That seems to happen all the time.

When the Institute opened we wobbled around for 15 minutes trying to figure out which line to join. I couldn’t believe it cost $25 to get in. That seemed outrageous. I was used to the free admission we have at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which is a great museum thanks to all the corporate headquarters we have here—like General Mills, United Health, Cargill, 3M, and Target—plus our tradition of individual philanthropy. Was Chicago really so different? Was the city in economic straits? I don’t know, but after I dithered and protested and probably embarrassed Lynn by asking a security guard “do we really have to pay $25 to just to see the permanent collection?” she coughed up the admission fee plus an extra $5 to see a special Van Gogh exhibit.

Meanwhile, I was snapping a picture of the back lighted wallpaper in the ticketing hall:

I’m kind of a wallpaper freak. I take photos of beautiful wallpapers when I travel, certain that I’ll somehow recreate them in my tiny condo. How hard could that be?

New Orleans or Bust

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This is the second post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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As Lynn and I were about to leave Madison for Chicago, the car’s engine light came on. I drove to my cousin’s house, pulled Bluebell into the driveway, and popped her hood.

“I don’t even know what I’m looking for,” I told Lynn.

“I know—I always bring mine to a garage—I don’t even know how to open the bonnet,” she replied.

I pulled out the dipstick, already knowing it would be impossible to tell if the oil was full or empty due to one of Mini Cooper’s many design quirks.

“Maybe the engine is hot?” I suggested hopefully. The coolant container was clearly marked: “DO NOT REMOVE CAP WHEN ENGINE IS HOT.” I unscrewed it anyway and quickly jerked my hand away as steam exploded out of it and coolant ran out onto the driveway. I screwed the top back on and waited for it to cool down so I could see how low it would be now—now that I had made sure it was low on coolant.

I didn’t think my cousin knew much about cars, but I still wished he was back from the pow wow. Car problems are the one situation in which I revert to my primitive, dependent woman self. I wanted a man to deal with it. A man would know what to do, right? Never mind the many times I had asked some male relative or coworker about a car issue and they got a panicky look on their face because they knew, as men, they should know about cars but didn’t know jack.

I also fell back on an old coping mechanism—denial. “I think it’ll be okay to drive to Chicago. I’ll deal with it in Chicago.” Thus commenced several days of flipping back and forth from outright heart-thumping panic to the blissful Zen of denial.

—

When you Google “Chicago tollway” here are just a few of the images that come up:

The engine started chuddering along the way and the drive was every bit as stressful as I’d remembered, with the added feature of an endless road construction project which had us all swerving into new lanes every few miles, amidst massive piles of concrete rubble that looked like a moonscape.

Every time we approached a tollbooth I had to talk Lynn through how much money to pull together. “Those little ones are called dimes; they’re 10 cents, get 15 of them. And 10 of the big ones, those are quarters. They’re 25 cents” This is one of those micro culture shock things: the UK has 20 pence pieces, while we have 25 cent pieces.

Each time we slowed, the car shook harder and I feared it would kill and not start again. I made a conscious effort to keep my back and shoulder muscles relaxed. The previous day, it had seemed like a good idea to take a new pilates class. You know, get some exercise in before sitting all day in the car. My torso felt as tight and tense as a loaded steel trap.

I didn’t trust what Marge, my GPS, was telling me, so I exited the tollway early and drove stop-and-go slow for miles through the city streets. The streets were swarming with crowds of people out enjoying the 75F spring weather. Marge got her revenge by beeping loudly at every intersection to tell us there was a speed camera. Fat chance of triggering one of those during rush hour.

Lynn had found a great little place called the Old Chicago Inn just south of Wrigleyville. Lynn and the Innkeeper carried in the luggage while I searched for a parking space. The inn came with free parking—a permit to park wherever you could find a spot in the vicinity. I found a spot two blocks away and killed the motor. I checked the trip odometer—we’d driven 450 miles that day. I sagged over the wheel and exhaled. I thought about calling AAA but then what? They would tow my car to some garage in Chicago, one of the most corrupt cities in America. I was determined to get to New Orleans.

Innformed

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This is the third post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Enough about the car for now! We had 48 hours in Chicago and I put Bluebell out of my mind for the time being. Here’s a photo of the Old Chicago Inn at Christmastime.

It’s an Art Deco-era inn and I was very grateful that Lynn had booked two rooms instead of one. The small rooms were…small, but they were en suite. For you Americans, that means they included a bathroom. The larger rooms shared a bathroom in the hallway.

Our innkeeper was David, and he informed us he was from Kentucky—or “Kaintucky” as he pronounced it. David turned out to be one of the best things about our brief time in Chicago.

He gave us a couple $10 off vouchers for the restaurant next door, which turned out to be a Key West-themed karaoke bar. We ordered a couple sandwiches and beers and sat back to watch the show. We must have raised the average age in there by 20 years; duos and trios of inebriated 20-somethings were sang while others danced. They sang and danced badly, but with a lot of heart. It was good for a few laughs. I’m sure Lynn could have stayed out later but I just wanted to lie down. I know I’m drained when I pass up a second beer on vacation.

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The population of the Chicago metropolitan area is almost 10 million. It’s a bustling, busy place full of skyscrapers, art, industry, tourists, and music. They love their deep dish pizzas and baseball. It’s known as the Windy City, and for good reason. Chicago is perched on Lake Michigan, one of the Great Lakes, and the wind is ferocious. I think of Chicago as like a merger of New York and Minneapolis. A big city with a Midwestern vibe.

Lynn and I had breakfast in the basement of the inn, which had originally been a speakeasy. A speakeasy was a secret, illegal bar during prohibition, when alcohol was illegal in the U.S. from 1920 to 1933. It’s hard to believe, today, that we ever attempted to ban booze. Of course prohibition was a huge fail. My great grandfather went to federal prison for two years because he tried to steal liquor out of a government warehouse where they stored confiscated alcohol. He owned a restaurant and his business had tanked when he could no longer serve drinks. This was in Kentucky, and I mentioned it to David, our innkeeper.

“My grandmother was from Covington, Kentucky,” I said. “She always referred to it as ‘down home.’” I didn’t mention that she also called black people “coloreds.”

David was one of those people who knows a lot about a lot of things and appreciates a captive audience. He didn’t acknowledge my comment but launched into a story about his “mama” and Miss Rose, a neighbor of theirs in Kentucky. David was probably approaching 60. He was gaunt, missing a tooth, and wore Malcom X glasses.

I’m conscious as I write this that you’ll know David was white without me having to write it. I’ve probably done this a hundred times in this blog, but this road trip was packed with interactions around race, so maybe it’s good I’ve caught myself.

David stood between us and the door and talked about his mama and Miss Rose and the antebellum (pre-Civil War) house he’d grown up in. He described the closets which were designed to store hoop skirts and fancy ladies hats, and how they went to the Kentucky Derby every year. Normally I can’t stand this kind of person who talks on and on and never asks you a question about yourself. But David was just a lovable guy.

We finally broke away and walked over to the Belmont station to take the train downtown. Lynn asked me what “downtown” and “uptown” meant.

“Downtown is what you would call the High Street,” I explained. I wasn’t sure about the term uptown.

We arrived downtown and the first thing we saw was Trump Tower. We instinctively turned to each other and exclaimed, “Blech!!”

Breaking Free

Living Well, Despite what Life Throws at You

Category Archives: Adventure

Then and Now

Jim Crow, Old and New

Viva, Viagra!

The Other Country

Bobble Heads in Chi Town

Long Talkers, Tiny Rooms, and Tiffany Joy

Artisanal Art

Monk-ey Business

New Orleans or Bust

Innformed