We were the only guests who got to enjoy breakfast at the Mansion View Inn this morning. Like the inn itself, the breakfast was aesthetically beautiful, obviously crafted by someone with an eye for beautiful things. We enjoyed a meal that you can only get when you are the sole guests of someone who loves to entertain. We started with a yogurt, berry, and granola parfait that would have been a satisfying breakfast alone. Then, there was the breakfast main course, a veggie and cheese omelet, roasted potatoes, asparagus spears, bacon, and an artfully arranged selection of yellow and green kiwis. This was more than we could finish, but we made a valiant effort.
We chatted with the couple that had been contracted to manage the bed and breakfast. We talked with them about their kids, jobs, the responsibilities of managing the inn, and our trip. The husband, who had been a commercial photographer, told us about a similar trip he had taken to New Mexico with a friend to shoot a hot air balloon festival. He talked about how much he had enjoyed taking pictures of all the small towns along the way. And we talked about how, given the rising price of gas, the road trip might soon become a dying tradition if it hasn’t already.
After breakfast, we set off toward Strongsville. Strongsville is a suburb south of Cleveland where Aaron grew up and where his parents still live. Shortly after we were east of Toledo, the brilliant sunshine that had followed us all the way from western Oregon began to dim and we found ourselves under Northern Ohio’s characteristic cloud cover. We know better than to complain about this. The weather has been phenomenally cooperative since the beginning of our trip, and we know that we have been lucky. A meteorologist would attribute this weather to the remnants of tropical storm Faye, which lingered over Florida for days and eventually dispersed into clouds and rain over the rest of the country. We assumed that it was just Cleveland’s way of welcoming us back. It’s just not Cleveland unless it’s cloudy.
We saw many of the same things in northern Ohio that we had seen in the rest of the Midwest. We saw many agricultural areas and small towns, but the fields were getting smaller and the towns were getting closer and closer together. The main streets of the towns were getting larger and the buildings were more densely packed. There were fewer town signs, establishing the town as the Honey Capital of the Nation (Randolph, Nebraska, Iowa) or the Jackalope Capital of the World (Douglas, Wyoming). (Wikipedia has a great list of town nicknames http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_nicknames_in_the_United_States. A fantastic one that we didn’t get to see is Des Moines “Hartford of the West.” ) But, there were still a few gems. Our favorite was an orange banner strung across the road advertising, with the article-free exuberance that is usually reserved for Chinese take-out menus, “Super Gun Raffle!”
As we’ve noted before, we spend a lot of our time on the road listening to NPR. But occasionally, we realized that we had already listened to that episode of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” or we decided that we just couldn’t listen to another hour of the chattering hydra that is political talk radio. In those instances, one of us would begin flipping through the stations. Aaron has been a radio and TV flipper for as long as I have known him. When the station plays a song he doesn’t like or goes to commercial, he begins flipping through the stations for something better. Sometimes this flipping can last for several minutes and through several cycles of the available radio stations. I, on the other hand, was a stay-the-course radio listener. I would flip through the stations to find out which one had a solid signal and played the kind of music that, on the whole, I liked to listen to, and I stuck with it, even through commercials and annoying songs. In the early days of our courtship, this was the kind of personal difference that lead to stupid, surprisingly heated arguments. I thought I might never get to hear a full song on the radio again. But, somewhere along the way, I stopped minding the flipping and even adopted it myself. I have mellowed significantly in my old age.
In our music listening, it was really amazing how many of the same songs are played over and over again. Anyone who listens to radio understands that some decent songs are overplayed until all of their charm is sapped. In the western Midwest, that song was “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It,” a pop song destined to be played at thousands of college parties when the Girls Gone Wild set is just drunk enough to take the hint. As we moved east, the overplayed songs changed. “Love Song,” by Sarah Bareilles, though it is no longer new, is still played enough in the eastern Midwest that you can hear it on some station just about any time. In the same set is Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” (“When I Ruled the World”). There are also a few older songs that have remained popular enough to be a bit overplayed years and sometimes decades after their release. West of Iowa, it was “She’s Got Legs” by ZZ Top, and Sweet Home Alabama. Iowa and eastward, it’s American Pie, and anything by Billy Joel. Queen and Nirvana are pervasive everywhere. Some of these songs are more objectionable than others, but the new songs get the most play by far, and get less enjoyable and more grating every time you hear them.
Around 2:30, we turned off of Route 20 and onto State Route 82 West on our way to Strongsville. Around 3:00, we arrived at our favorite and most frequent lodging spot, “Becky and Ed’s Breakfast and Bed” aka Aaron’s Parents’ House. For months, they had been preparing to throw a party for us on our one night stop. Aaron’s dad, Ed, told us that he had cleaned the porch room, cleaned out the garage, and stained the deck and generally made their already clean house pristine. However, all his efforts had backfired because now the porch was so clean that he wasn’t allowed to smoke his beloved cigars there until winter. It was unnecessary to point out who was enforcing this ban. The consummate hostess, Becky, Aaron’s mom, had made burgers and hot dogs and spent most of the time before the party getting food ready for the guests. About half an hour later, my parents arrived from Granville, Ohio. I was amazed that we had beat them there because my mother has readily admitted that she will probably be early to her own funeral. We all gathered around the kitchen table and talked, mostly about our road trip adventures. In a way, I felt like we had nothing left to tell them. As our parents, they were almost the only people who had the endurance to actually keep up with this novel-sized travel log, and so they already knew almost all of the details of our trip. They had already read most of the stories. But they were kind enough to let us tell them all again.
Eventually, the Eliases’ family friends and our friends from college started arriving. We hadn’t seen most of these people since our wedding almost a year ago, and it was a warm reunion. It was particularly great to see our friends from college and talk about all that was new. People had new jobs. Some had bought their first homes. Some were newlyweds and others were about to be. We looked at pictures, took a few new ones, and generally expressed amazement that time was moving forward.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Day 12: Chicago, Illinois to Toledo, Ohio
The original idea was to get up early enough to miss traffic and to go through any hard neighborhoods while everyone was asleep. But between the wonderfully comfortable featherbeds and Chicago Blue the night before, getting out the door by 7 was out of the question. Instead, we woke up at 7, packed our things and went downstairs to Café Des Architectes for breakfast. After scanning the menu, and still feeling the effects of the cheezborgers the night before, we decided to order the continental breakfast, a basket of bread, croissants, and viennoiseries (pastries) served with juice or coffee. Although the breakfast dishes I saw served to the mostly francophone guests in the restaurant did look delicious, I think the continental breakfast is the best deal by far. The basket is chocked full of tasty offerings. The strong coffee is served in an individual French press with the cream and sugar at the table. We lingered over our breakfast and chatted about the places we had been and what we still to come. The leisurely service probably would have let us stay longer if we had the time.
But for this day, we did not have the time, so we packed up our things, checked out, and drove on. We drove back through the gridded streets of downtown, back to the Congress Parkway and I-290. This allowed us to pick up Route 20 exactly where we had left off. We moved our way through the suburbs, heading south first and then east. As we moved east into the southern side of Chicago, we were fully expecting to find ourselves in a war zone. I don’t know where we came up with this idea. TV. Rumors. Imagination. But there was no war zone, only a neighborhood. Not a wealthy neighborhood and not a white neighborhood, but a functional neighborhood. Although I might have been uncomfortable walking the streets at night, I felt perfectly safe in our car in the middle of the day. As we left Illinois, we moved into Gary, the last link to Chicago’s hard industrial past. We passed the BP Refinery and slogged our way through miles of road construction. The fumes were oppressive.
After we moved away from Gary, it was amazing how quickly the rural landscape returned. Before we reached South Bend, we were again hemmed in by fields of corn and soybeans. As we reached LaGrange and Middlebury, we noticed the traffic suddenly come to a crawl. I leaned out of the window and looked up the berm of the road to see an Amish buggy trotting along on the side of the road. Suddenly, the signs of northern Indiana’s Amish country appeared to be everywhere: men in straw hats working in the fields, Belgian workhorses grazing in pastures, a massive restaurant-lodging-bakery-shopping-wholesale foods complex called Das Dutchman Essenhaus. We also saw curious signs of modernity. Although we saw several families traveling in buggies, we saw many individuals traveling on pretty sophisticated recumbent bicycles. As we absorbed the scenery, we listened to two local activists from San Francisco engaged in a vitriolic debate over a new plan to incorporate bikes into the city’s traffic plan. It was odd to listen to all the thinly veiled attacks on “self-righteous” bikers and “ignorant” drivers, while watching bikes, station wagons, and buggies peacefully and safely share a major road.
Around four we crossed the Ohio border, looking for a bite. We stopped at Spokes Family Restaurant in Pioneer. Spokes Restaurant was in a small building at the intersection of US 20 and State Route 15. The cashier sits immediately to the left of door, in front of an open kitchen and a small counter where four old men in suspenders and trucker hats perch on barstools. To the right, there were two rooms with several booths and small tables. Entering an establishment like this can be a little daunting. When Aaron and I stepped inside, we suddenly felt all eyes on us. We got the feeling that everyone else in the restaurant knew each other and knew that we didn’t quite fit. It didn’t help that we didn’t immediately realize that this was a seat yourself kind of establishment. For an awkward moment, we stood in the doorway, looking at the locals looking at us. However, this moment was fleeting, and we moved to a table in the dinning room. The Spokes Restaurant was about everything you look for in a roadside stop. Simple, tasty, inexpensive sandwiches served with potatoes prepared in every way you can think of. Our waitress, a cheery woman with curled blonde hair and glasses, was quick and friendly. And there was pie. Fresh strawberry pie with massive chunks of fruit and topped with a stylized swirl of whipped cream. As Aaron and I were diving into it, I overheard two men in the booth behind us chatting about our dessert, “Wow, that looks really good. I think I want some of that.” I turned and smiled “Oh yeah, you want some of this.”
We got into Toledo, our stopping place for the evening around 6:30. Wary of our GoogleMap directions, we carefully navigated off of Route 20, onto Central Ave and then Monroe, and then we began scanning the signs for Collingwood. As anyone who has worked their way through an unfamiliar city knows, the street signs are visible before they are legible, and it’s easy to think you’ve got the right street when you find some matching letters. Looking for Collingwood, we passed Glenwood. Then we passed Robinwood. And then—surely, this must be it—Scottwood. And then, as we approached Parkwood, Aaron cried out in exasperation “Oh, come on!” Finally, we turned onto Collingwood. As we moved through the beautiful but slightly faded buildings in Toledo’s Historic Old West End, we came upon an SUV with a tire cover that read, upside down, “If you can read this, please turn me back over.” Spending several hours a day driving, we’ve taken a great interest in amusing car art, so we decided to try to get a picture of the rarest beast, an SUV owner with a sense of humor. However, just as capturing a good shot of the bison proved to be harder than it looked, the driver of the self-deprecating SUV had something of a lead foot and took off as soon as the light changed. Our efficient little Corolla strained to keep up, as we raced through the quiet, historic streets. After screaming past our B&B, we finally recorded the quip for posterity.
We backtracked down Collingwood, and arrived at the Mansion View Inn, a B&B owned by the Toledo Historic West End Neighborhood and run by a member couple. The house is an enormous brick Victorian with gingerbread trim coated in slightly peeling white paint. It is full of impressive dark wood paneling, crafted with the kind of attention to detail that has become prohibitively expensive in all but the most extravagant homes. Our room had a queen bed with a satin cover, shelves and tables packed with antiques and other curiosities, and a private bath with a deep clawfoot tub. The decorative touches were plentiful and steeped in history, but there were also hints at the personalities of the managing couple. Their two cars were parked in the back lot, one with the license plate DOOWOP and the other with PAX ROX and both covered in rainbow and Obama campaign stickers. Interspersed in the National Geographic Magazines and other light reading were openly liberal books critiquing the Bush Administration.
After we had settled in, we decided to go out to see the city a bit and get a bite to eat. the manager who had checked us in, provided us with a print out with descriptions of and directions to their recommended restaurants. We chose a nearby Italian American restaurant. As we followed the directions and found a place to park, I noticed that we didn’t see any people walking around on the sidewalk. As we entered the restaurant, I was taken aback by the emptiness of it. Granted, it was 8 on a weekday night, but there were a couple of business people having drinks at the table outside, a well-dressed couple apparently out for a celebration in the corner, and the clapping of a few devoted fans in separate room listening to the live musical act. As we sipped our drinks under the eerie mural of the New York City skyline prominently featuring the Twin Towers, we watched the waitstaff bring out desserts, frame them in front of a small background, and take pictures for the next menu, but it was slow enough that this didn’t slow down the service at all. As we nibbled on some of the most average pepperoni pizza in all of creation, I leaned into Aaron and whispered, “This place is creepy.” He looked confused. “Where are all the people.”
His expression shifted from confusion to amusement. “What do you mean where are the people? We’re in Toledo at night. There are no people.” I readily admit that Toledo got the short shrift on this trip. It was overshadowed by the fact that we were going to be in Cleveland the next day, having a party with family and friends. Had we been able to stay longer, we would have probably gone to the Art Museum, which is one of the best in the country, or paid homage to Corporal Klinger, Toledo’s favorite fictional native son. But, sadly, all we saw of Toledo was its all but abandoned nightlife.
But for this day, we did not have the time, so we packed up our things, checked out, and drove on. We drove back through the gridded streets of downtown, back to the Congress Parkway and I-290. This allowed us to pick up Route 20 exactly where we had left off. We moved our way through the suburbs, heading south first and then east. As we moved east into the southern side of Chicago, we were fully expecting to find ourselves in a war zone. I don’t know where we came up with this idea. TV. Rumors. Imagination. But there was no war zone, only a neighborhood. Not a wealthy neighborhood and not a white neighborhood, but a functional neighborhood. Although I might have been uncomfortable walking the streets at night, I felt perfectly safe in our car in the middle of the day. As we left Illinois, we moved into Gary, the last link to Chicago’s hard industrial past. We passed the BP Refinery and slogged our way through miles of road construction. The fumes were oppressive.
After we moved away from Gary, it was amazing how quickly the rural landscape returned. Before we reached South Bend, we were again hemmed in by fields of corn and soybeans. As we reached LaGrange and Middlebury, we noticed the traffic suddenly come to a crawl. I leaned out of the window and looked up the berm of the road to see an Amish buggy trotting along on the side of the road. Suddenly, the signs of northern Indiana’s Amish country appeared to be everywhere: men in straw hats working in the fields, Belgian workhorses grazing in pastures, a massive restaurant-lodging-bakery-shopping-wholesale foods complex called Das Dutchman Essenhaus. We also saw curious signs of modernity. Although we saw several families traveling in buggies, we saw many individuals traveling on pretty sophisticated recumbent bicycles. As we absorbed the scenery, we listened to two local activists from San Francisco engaged in a vitriolic debate over a new plan to incorporate bikes into the city’s traffic plan. It was odd to listen to all the thinly veiled attacks on “self-righteous” bikers and “ignorant” drivers, while watching bikes, station wagons, and buggies peacefully and safely share a major road.
Around four we crossed the Ohio border, looking for a bite. We stopped at Spokes Family Restaurant in Pioneer. Spokes Restaurant was in a small building at the intersection of US 20 and State Route 15. The cashier sits immediately to the left of door, in front of an open kitchen and a small counter where four old men in suspenders and trucker hats perch on barstools. To the right, there were two rooms with several booths and small tables. Entering an establishment like this can be a little daunting. When Aaron and I stepped inside, we suddenly felt all eyes on us. We got the feeling that everyone else in the restaurant knew each other and knew that we didn’t quite fit. It didn’t help that we didn’t immediately realize that this was a seat yourself kind of establishment. For an awkward moment, we stood in the doorway, looking at the locals looking at us. However, this moment was fleeting, and we moved to a table in the dinning room. The Spokes Restaurant was about everything you look for in a roadside stop. Simple, tasty, inexpensive sandwiches served with potatoes prepared in every way you can think of. Our waitress, a cheery woman with curled blonde hair and glasses, was quick and friendly. And there was pie. Fresh strawberry pie with massive chunks of fruit and topped with a stylized swirl of whipped cream. As Aaron and I were diving into it, I overheard two men in the booth behind us chatting about our dessert, “Wow, that looks really good. I think I want some of that.” I turned and smiled “Oh yeah, you want some of this.”
We got into Toledo, our stopping place for the evening around 6:30. Wary of our GoogleMap directions, we carefully navigated off of Route 20, onto Central Ave and then Monroe, and then we began scanning the signs for Collingwood. As anyone who has worked their way through an unfamiliar city knows, the street signs are visible before they are legible, and it’s easy to think you’ve got the right street when you find some matching letters. Looking for Collingwood, we passed Glenwood. Then we passed Robinwood. And then—surely, this must be it—Scottwood. And then, as we approached Parkwood, Aaron cried out in exasperation “Oh, come on!” Finally, we turned onto Collingwood. As we moved through the beautiful but slightly faded buildings in Toledo’s Historic Old West End, we came upon an SUV with a tire cover that read, upside down, “If you can read this, please turn me back over.” Spending several hours a day driving, we’ve taken a great interest in amusing car art, so we decided to try to get a picture of the rarest beast, an SUV owner with a sense of humor. However, just as capturing a good shot of the bison proved to be harder than it looked, the driver of the self-deprecating SUV had something of a lead foot and took off as soon as the light changed. Our efficient little Corolla strained to keep up, as we raced through the quiet, historic streets. After screaming past our B&B, we finally recorded the quip for posterity.
We backtracked down Collingwood, and arrived at the Mansion View Inn, a B&B owned by the Toledo Historic West End Neighborhood and run by a member couple. The house is an enormous brick Victorian with gingerbread trim coated in slightly peeling white paint. It is full of impressive dark wood paneling, crafted with the kind of attention to detail that has become prohibitively expensive in all but the most extravagant homes. Our room had a queen bed with a satin cover, shelves and tables packed with antiques and other curiosities, and a private bath with a deep clawfoot tub. The decorative touches were plentiful and steeped in history, but there were also hints at the personalities of the managing couple. Their two cars were parked in the back lot, one with the license plate DOOWOP and the other with PAX ROX and both covered in rainbow and Obama campaign stickers. Interspersed in the National Geographic Magazines and other light reading were openly liberal books critiquing the Bush Administration.
After we had settled in, we decided to go out to see the city a bit and get a bite to eat. the manager who had checked us in, provided us with a print out with descriptions of and directions to their recommended restaurants. We chose a nearby Italian American restaurant. As we followed the directions and found a place to park, I noticed that we didn’t see any people walking around on the sidewalk. As we entered the restaurant, I was taken aback by the emptiness of it. Granted, it was 8 on a weekday night, but there were a couple of business people having drinks at the table outside, a well-dressed couple apparently out for a celebration in the corner, and the clapping of a few devoted fans in separate room listening to the live musical act. As we sipped our drinks under the eerie mural of the New York City skyline prominently featuring the Twin Towers, we watched the waitstaff bring out desserts, frame them in front of a small background, and take pictures for the next menu, but it was slow enough that this didn’t slow down the service at all. As we nibbled on some of the most average pepperoni pizza in all of creation, I leaned into Aaron and whispered, “This place is creepy.” He looked confused. “Where are all the people.”
His expression shifted from confusion to amusement. “What do you mean where are the people? We’re in Toledo at night. There are no people.” I readily admit that Toledo got the short shrift on this trip. It was overshadowed by the fact that we were going to be in Cleveland the next day, having a party with family and friends. Had we been able to stay longer, we would have probably gone to the Art Museum, which is one of the best in the country, or paid homage to Corporal Klinger, Toledo’s favorite fictional native son. But, sadly, all we saw of Toledo was its all but abandoned nightlife.
Day 11: Dubuque, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois
Day 11: Dubuque, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois
We woke as the sunlight streamed into the windows through the lace curtains and slowly filled our room. We made our way down to breakfast around 8:45 There we met the B&B’s other guests, two retired couples from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on a short antiqueing trip. Although they all seemed interested in perusing the areas many shops, one many was looking for beer glasses from the Star Brewery to add to his collection.
The breakfast was delicious. A puffed pancake, which is a dense eggy confection, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and drizzled with honey syrup, fruit salad, bacon, and blueberry muffins. Susan, one of the innkeepers, persistently offered us all more, but the breakfast was far too filling for anyone to think about seconds.
Because a young couple from Massachusetts is a bit of a surprise at an Iowa B&B, we told them all about our trip on Route 20. They all seemed very interested and we talked about a few of the places we have been and the places still to come. But it was Susan who asked the most salient question, “But, why, exactly?” It took me aback, and I had to admit that I didn’t really know. We rattled off the historical significance of the trail as the longest road in America and the route of Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail, but when it came down to it, we decided to go on the trip because we wanted to see the world.
This seemed to make sense to her, and she nodded in understanding. “You know, my mother was a bit of a free spirit,” started as she knitted “and she didn’t stay that way after she was married. I’m not saying anything about marriage, I love my marriage, but she was never really the same after that. When she and my dad were dating in Fort Dodge, one day she got angry at him and said ‘I’m going to Chicago to visit my cousin,’ and she didn’t come back for three years. And they still saw each, he would take the bus in there to go and visit, but she was really out there on her own. And I really think that was the best time of her life. She met a man there named Ray, and we think she really liked Ray, and she bleached her hair. In those days for a woman to bleach her, it was really out there. And, anyway, after three years, my father went to visit her and told her that he had met another woman named Lila and he said ‘I love you, but if you don’t come home, I’m going to marry Lila.’ And so then she came home.”
We all sat back, satisfied that Susan’s mother had returned to Fort Dodge and all was right with the world, but Susan stopped us. “Oh, no, that’s not the end. It gets better. There was no Lila. But mother never found that out until years later. But she came home and decided to get married, but she told Dad that before she got married, she was going to go on the buses and see the whole country. So that’s what she did. She rode the buses everywhere and she saw the whole country and she documented it. She kept notebooks and postcards and everything.” This made me think about the journal entries, pictures, and scraps of paper I had been keeping along the way. I thought about what would be interesting for some curious person to see if they looked at this collection 20 or 50 years from now.
Susan talked more about her mother. “In the last years of her my mother’s life she came here to live with us, and she was just so grateful for everything. And my husband, he was so good to her while she was here. Even years after she had passed on, I just couldn’t be angry at him ever because I remembered how good he had been to my mother.” She smiled and leaned in “of course, that’s worn off by now.”
Susan left the room to bring out the coffee pot. Chuck took up the storytelling reigns. “Yeah, she’s like my wife. You can ask her anything, but you can’t tell her a thing. So I knew we couldn’t tell her to come here, so I just said ‘there’s a room here for you, and you can come whenever you’re ready.’ And one day she called us up and said ‘are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.’ And I told her that she was no bother, but for the first few weeks she was here, she was still needed a lot of reassurance and was always saying that she didn’t want to be a bother. So I printed out about 20 signs of the computer that said in big letters ‘you’re not a bother’ and I put them everywhere in the house. I put one by her seat in the dining room. I put one in the bathroom, a couple in the living room. And I told her that as long as those signs were up, she was not a bother. She did not have to worry about it until she saw the signs were down.”
After Susan had resumed her seat at the dining room table, we talked a little bit about Boston. It seems that the Susan, Chuck, and the other B&B guests had lived in the Midwest their whole lives, but they had all been to Boston or Cape Cod. Susan told my favorite story about Boston. “Whenever I think about Boston, we went on a trip there a number of years ago, back when I used to smoke cigarettes. And, you could never smoke on the streets of Dubuque because people would see you.” That echoes my experience of living in a small town better than anything else I can think of. The good thing is that everybody knows everybody. And that’s also the bad thing. “But in Boston, there was no one there who knew me, and I could just smoke on the streets anywhere I wanted to. Now, I quit 20 years ago, but I still remember sitting out on the street surrounded by all that brick and smoking on the street, and it just felt so free.”
The Hancock House was a fantastic stop, and it made us wish we had more time to stay in Dubuque. The house was comfortable, beautifully decorated, and well-located for walking through downtown Dubuque and the Historic West 11th Street neighborhood, which is packed with stately Victorian mansions. And the breakfast is delicious. But Susan and Chuck’s hospitality is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It is absolutely like staying with those wonderful relatives you kick yourself for not seeing often enough. And what’s more, they create the lively conversation that allows you to get to know the other guests. Truly, a wonderful experience.
We packed up, found our way down the bluff, and picked up Route 20 just as it crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. We were immediately greeted by the prosperous river town of Galena, dotted with picturesque houses, antique shops and more B&Bs. As we entered the agricultural interior of Illinois, it looked something like Iowa, but a bit different. There were still farms across rolling hills, but there were more trees. There were also bigger houses that were not connected with farms, often packed in neighborhoods on the side of the road. It was almost like a self-consciously cuter, more prosperous version of Iowa. I wondered if maybe we were beginning to see the first influences of Chicago, the biggest city we will go through on our trip. Maybe there was a whole set of Chicago professionals who enjoyed making the drive out here on of the weekend to play country, some just for the other weekend, others probably keeping their main home here.
We saw a lot of advertising concerning cigarettes once we got into Illinois. There must be high tax here than there in neighboring Iowa or Wisconsin, which is just a few miles to the north. We saw a billboard erected by the local law enforcement, warning “Smuggle Cigarettes. Get Burned. Fines up to $45 a pack.” On the other side of the equation, there was a gas station that had a sign featuring a smiley face smoking a cigarette, advertising the cheapest legal cigarettes around.
As we traveled eastward, the farms gradually disappeared and the suburbs of Chicago emerged. Our days of happily cruising Route 20 at 65 or 70 miles an hour were over. The pace was now dictated by stoplights and marked with sharp turns. For those interested, our McDonalds count exploded in Chicago, and by the time we left it was in the upper 30s. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but McDonald’s has largely become an urban and suburban staple. We’ve now seen plenty of towns that are just too small for a McDonalds. We left Route 20 in the western suburbs and took 290 into the city. Suddenly, things began to feel more familiar. We started to see public transportation. Much to Aaron’s delight, drivers became more aggressive and, therefore, more predictable. As we drew in, we got our first glimpse of the Chicago skyline, and I felt the rush of excitement in approaching a city, any city, that I had felt as a child.
We navigated through the construction and bustling traffic and made it to our hotel, the Chicago Sofitel Water Tower. If staying at the Hancock House was like visiting family at some point in the past, staying at the Sofitel was like going to a museum in the not too distant future. Muted, thumping techno music greeted us as we walked past the black floor dotted with translucent blocks that gradually changed color. The service was alert and helpful, but certainly more formal and detached than what we had become used to. We took the elevator up to our room on the 16th floor and went to our room. The best part of the room was the plate glass window that looked out to the other high rise buildings surrounding us, giving us a particularly good view of the Hancock Tower, which was only a few blocks away. The bed was made with white linens and feather beds. Aaron immediately fell onto to it face first and let a out a few low moans of contentment. The bathroom was large and very well appointed, with a tub, a walk-in shower, an expansive countertop and a low-flow toilet with a push button flush (the future is here!) The room was decorated in the sleek, sophisticated manner common to upscale hotels, complete with original artwork, a mirrored closet, a massive flat screen TV, a blocky chaise lounge, and a work station.
We left the Sofitel to walk to a favorite place of ours, Navy Pier. We know it’s not anything close to local color. It just may be the most touristy place in the city. We know. But we went almost 4 years ago when I was looking at law schools and had some really great “cheezborgers” at the Billy Goat Tavern, a tiny diner made famous by a Saturday Night Live skit “Cheezborger. Cheezborger. Cheezborger. No fries, cheeps. No pepsi, coke.” It was a bit before my time, but I’m sure it’s very funny. The original Billy Goat is nowhere near Navy Pier, but this is the one we went to an enjoyed when we were envisioning our potential life in Chicago, so it was original to us. We went in and ordered our double cheezborgers, two paper thin patties with two slices of cheese on a soft, grilled bun. We topped them from the condiment bar with onions, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. Then we took our cheezborgers and cheeps out to the sidewalk patio, and reminisced about trips to Chicago past.
After a walk to digest, we took the red line train to Harrison station, and found Buddy Guy Legends, a popular (if touristy) jazz and blues club. We talked to the bouncer and realized that show would not be on for hours, so we decided to leave it for another time. We went back to the hotel, and spent a little quality time with the giant TV and the very comfortable bed and looked for another place that was a little more convenient. We found Blue Chicago, at the corner of Clark and Superior, about four blocks from our hotel. The club opened at 8. When got there at 8:30, it was still mostly empty. The early crowd moved in and took their places at the tables and booths near the stage. The interior was dark, with exposed brick, paintings of curvy black women singing their hearts out, and a bar under a rotating lamp featuring the Budweiser Clydesdale team. There was an eight dollar cover and a one drink minimum. Around nine, the band moved onto the small stage, two guitars, a bass guitar, and a drum set. The lead guitar, pulled up to the mike and said “We’ll get the blues started slow tonight. That’s how the ladies like it.” He picked out a few warbling lines. “And then it gets faster, and faster, and faster. Yes, that is how the ladies like the blues.” They moved through an instrumental piece, effortlessly improvising riffs and trading melodies seamlessly between them. He looked around and said “There are a lot of outtatowners here tonight. I know ‘cause I can smell that fresh outtatowner money. And it smells sweet.” He moved through the crowd, asking people where they were from. Sure enough, the people in the front of the club were all from out of town. Some were not so far from home: Wisconsin, Rochester, Minnesota. We held up the middleweight division from Boston. He nodded “Go Red Sox.” And there were others much farther from home: Germany, Argentina, Israel.
The band moved through another few warm up pieces, and then it welcomed its lead singer, Grana’ Louise. Louise was a short, black woman, with soft, exaggerated curves and dyed blonde hair wound into tight ringlets. She was not in the forties style uniform that the blues mistresses on the wall wore. She wore white sweat pants and a white souvenir tee shirt from Isla Mujeres Mexico. Even though she was not wearing the blues uniform, she channeled their soul. She started off “Where ya been?” about some good-for-nothin’ man coming home “lookin’ bad enough to scare Dracula away.” The chorus finished with “I don’t know where ya been, but ya best not do it again.” Her songs were both soulful and whimsical and punctuated by gyrating dance moves. She pulled in every person in the club. No one could sit still. Some just tapped their toes or their fingers, other swayed in their booths, or clapped with the rhythm. But no one sat quietly by.
As they finished their first set, she quickly asked for a prayer for some members of the band and close friends who had been in a serious car accident that night and were all in the hospital. She asked us to take a moment of silence and send our good vibes out to them. And the crowd that had been so exuberant before was silent. I did send good thoughts to them. Any people who come and bring joy to a group of strangers deserve as much. After the set break, Aaron and I settled up with the bar tender and went over to Grana’ Louise to buy one of the CDs they had for sale.
She asked “Oh, you leavin’ so soon?” We admitted that we had an early morning ahead of us and wouldn’t be shutting down the bar this time around. “Oh, poo. Well, you call up your boss and you tell them you’re gonna be late.”
We laughed. “It’s my mother-in-law,” I said. “And she will not have any of that.”
We woke as the sunlight streamed into the windows through the lace curtains and slowly filled our room. We made our way down to breakfast around 8:45 There we met the B&B’s other guests, two retired couples from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on a short antiqueing trip. Although they all seemed interested in perusing the areas many shops, one many was looking for beer glasses from the Star Brewery to add to his collection.
The breakfast was delicious. A puffed pancake, which is a dense eggy confection, dusted with confectioner’s sugar and drizzled with honey syrup, fruit salad, bacon, and blueberry muffins. Susan, one of the innkeepers, persistently offered us all more, but the breakfast was far too filling for anyone to think about seconds.
Because a young couple from Massachusetts is a bit of a surprise at an Iowa B&B, we told them all about our trip on Route 20. They all seemed very interested and we talked about a few of the places we have been and the places still to come. But it was Susan who asked the most salient question, “But, why, exactly?” It took me aback, and I had to admit that I didn’t really know. We rattled off the historical significance of the trail as the longest road in America and the route of Lewis and Clark and the Oregon Trail, but when it came down to it, we decided to go on the trip because we wanted to see the world.
This seemed to make sense to her, and she nodded in understanding. “You know, my mother was a bit of a free spirit,” started as she knitted “and she didn’t stay that way after she was married. I’m not saying anything about marriage, I love my marriage, but she was never really the same after that. When she and my dad were dating in Fort Dodge, one day she got angry at him and said ‘I’m going to Chicago to visit my cousin,’ and she didn’t come back for three years. And they still saw each, he would take the bus in there to go and visit, but she was really out there on her own. And I really think that was the best time of her life. She met a man there named Ray, and we think she really liked Ray, and she bleached her hair. In those days for a woman to bleach her, it was really out there. And, anyway, after three years, my father went to visit her and told her that he had met another woman named Lila and he said ‘I love you, but if you don’t come home, I’m going to marry Lila.’ And so then she came home.”
We all sat back, satisfied that Susan’s mother had returned to Fort Dodge and all was right with the world, but Susan stopped us. “Oh, no, that’s not the end. It gets better. There was no Lila. But mother never found that out until years later. But she came home and decided to get married, but she told Dad that before she got married, she was going to go on the buses and see the whole country. So that’s what she did. She rode the buses everywhere and she saw the whole country and she documented it. She kept notebooks and postcards and everything.” This made me think about the journal entries, pictures, and scraps of paper I had been keeping along the way. I thought about what would be interesting for some curious person to see if they looked at this collection 20 or 50 years from now.
Susan talked more about her mother. “In the last years of her my mother’s life she came here to live with us, and she was just so grateful for everything. And my husband, he was so good to her while she was here. Even years after she had passed on, I just couldn’t be angry at him ever because I remembered how good he had been to my mother.” She smiled and leaned in “of course, that’s worn off by now.”
Susan left the room to bring out the coffee pot. Chuck took up the storytelling reigns. “Yeah, she’s like my wife. You can ask her anything, but you can’t tell her a thing. So I knew we couldn’t tell her to come here, so I just said ‘there’s a room here for you, and you can come whenever you’re ready.’ And one day she called us up and said ‘are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.’ And I told her that she was no bother, but for the first few weeks she was here, she was still needed a lot of reassurance and was always saying that she didn’t want to be a bother. So I printed out about 20 signs of the computer that said in big letters ‘you’re not a bother’ and I put them everywhere in the house. I put one by her seat in the dining room. I put one in the bathroom, a couple in the living room. And I told her that as long as those signs were up, she was not a bother. She did not have to worry about it until she saw the signs were down.”
After Susan had resumed her seat at the dining room table, we talked a little bit about Boston. It seems that the Susan, Chuck, and the other B&B guests had lived in the Midwest their whole lives, but they had all been to Boston or Cape Cod. Susan told my favorite story about Boston. “Whenever I think about Boston, we went on a trip there a number of years ago, back when I used to smoke cigarettes. And, you could never smoke on the streets of Dubuque because people would see you.” That echoes my experience of living in a small town better than anything else I can think of. The good thing is that everybody knows everybody. And that’s also the bad thing. “But in Boston, there was no one there who knew me, and I could just smoke on the streets anywhere I wanted to. Now, I quit 20 years ago, but I still remember sitting out on the street surrounded by all that brick and smoking on the street, and it just felt so free.”
The Hancock House was a fantastic stop, and it made us wish we had more time to stay in Dubuque. The house was comfortable, beautifully decorated, and well-located for walking through downtown Dubuque and the Historic West 11th Street neighborhood, which is packed with stately Victorian mansions. And the breakfast is delicious. But Susan and Chuck’s hospitality is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It is absolutely like staying with those wonderful relatives you kick yourself for not seeing often enough. And what’s more, they create the lively conversation that allows you to get to know the other guests. Truly, a wonderful experience.
We packed up, found our way down the bluff, and picked up Route 20 just as it crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. We were immediately greeted by the prosperous river town of Galena, dotted with picturesque houses, antique shops and more B&Bs. As we entered the agricultural interior of Illinois, it looked something like Iowa, but a bit different. There were still farms across rolling hills, but there were more trees. There were also bigger houses that were not connected with farms, often packed in neighborhoods on the side of the road. It was almost like a self-consciously cuter, more prosperous version of Iowa. I wondered if maybe we were beginning to see the first influences of Chicago, the biggest city we will go through on our trip. Maybe there was a whole set of Chicago professionals who enjoyed making the drive out here on of the weekend to play country, some just for the other weekend, others probably keeping their main home here.
We saw a lot of advertising concerning cigarettes once we got into Illinois. There must be high tax here than there in neighboring Iowa or Wisconsin, which is just a few miles to the north. We saw a billboard erected by the local law enforcement, warning “Smuggle Cigarettes. Get Burned. Fines up to $45 a pack.” On the other side of the equation, there was a gas station that had a sign featuring a smiley face smoking a cigarette, advertising the cheapest legal cigarettes around.
As we traveled eastward, the farms gradually disappeared and the suburbs of Chicago emerged. Our days of happily cruising Route 20 at 65 or 70 miles an hour were over. The pace was now dictated by stoplights and marked with sharp turns. For those interested, our McDonalds count exploded in Chicago, and by the time we left it was in the upper 30s. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but McDonald’s has largely become an urban and suburban staple. We’ve now seen plenty of towns that are just too small for a McDonalds. We left Route 20 in the western suburbs and took 290 into the city. Suddenly, things began to feel more familiar. We started to see public transportation. Much to Aaron’s delight, drivers became more aggressive and, therefore, more predictable. As we drew in, we got our first glimpse of the Chicago skyline, and I felt the rush of excitement in approaching a city, any city, that I had felt as a child.
We navigated through the construction and bustling traffic and made it to our hotel, the Chicago Sofitel Water Tower. If staying at the Hancock House was like visiting family at some point in the past, staying at the Sofitel was like going to a museum in the not too distant future. Muted, thumping techno music greeted us as we walked past the black floor dotted with translucent blocks that gradually changed color. The service was alert and helpful, but certainly more formal and detached than what we had become used to. We took the elevator up to our room on the 16th floor and went to our room. The best part of the room was the plate glass window that looked out to the other high rise buildings surrounding us, giving us a particularly good view of the Hancock Tower, which was only a few blocks away. The bed was made with white linens and feather beds. Aaron immediately fell onto to it face first and let a out a few low moans of contentment. The bathroom was large and very well appointed, with a tub, a walk-in shower, an expansive countertop and a low-flow toilet with a push button flush (the future is here!) The room was decorated in the sleek, sophisticated manner common to upscale hotels, complete with original artwork, a mirrored closet, a massive flat screen TV, a blocky chaise lounge, and a work station.
We left the Sofitel to walk to a favorite place of ours, Navy Pier. We know it’s not anything close to local color. It just may be the most touristy place in the city. We know. But we went almost 4 years ago when I was looking at law schools and had some really great “cheezborgers” at the Billy Goat Tavern, a tiny diner made famous by a Saturday Night Live skit “Cheezborger. Cheezborger. Cheezborger. No fries, cheeps. No pepsi, coke.” It was a bit before my time, but I’m sure it’s very funny. The original Billy Goat is nowhere near Navy Pier, but this is the one we went to an enjoyed when we were envisioning our potential life in Chicago, so it was original to us. We went in and ordered our double cheezborgers, two paper thin patties with two slices of cheese on a soft, grilled bun. We topped them from the condiment bar with onions, pickles, ketchup, and mustard. Then we took our cheezborgers and cheeps out to the sidewalk patio, and reminisced about trips to Chicago past.
After a walk to digest, we took the red line train to Harrison station, and found Buddy Guy Legends, a popular (if touristy) jazz and blues club. We talked to the bouncer and realized that show would not be on for hours, so we decided to leave it for another time. We went back to the hotel, and spent a little quality time with the giant TV and the very comfortable bed and looked for another place that was a little more convenient. We found Blue Chicago, at the corner of Clark and Superior, about four blocks from our hotel. The club opened at 8. When got there at 8:30, it was still mostly empty. The early crowd moved in and took their places at the tables and booths near the stage. The interior was dark, with exposed brick, paintings of curvy black women singing their hearts out, and a bar under a rotating lamp featuring the Budweiser Clydesdale team. There was an eight dollar cover and a one drink minimum. Around nine, the band moved onto the small stage, two guitars, a bass guitar, and a drum set. The lead guitar, pulled up to the mike and said “We’ll get the blues started slow tonight. That’s how the ladies like it.” He picked out a few warbling lines. “And then it gets faster, and faster, and faster. Yes, that is how the ladies like the blues.” They moved through an instrumental piece, effortlessly improvising riffs and trading melodies seamlessly between them. He looked around and said “There are a lot of outtatowners here tonight. I know ‘cause I can smell that fresh outtatowner money. And it smells sweet.” He moved through the crowd, asking people where they were from. Sure enough, the people in the front of the club were all from out of town. Some were not so far from home: Wisconsin, Rochester, Minnesota. We held up the middleweight division from Boston. He nodded “Go Red Sox.” And there were others much farther from home: Germany, Argentina, Israel.
The band moved through another few warm up pieces, and then it welcomed its lead singer, Grana’ Louise. Louise was a short, black woman, with soft, exaggerated curves and dyed blonde hair wound into tight ringlets. She was not in the forties style uniform that the blues mistresses on the wall wore. She wore white sweat pants and a white souvenir tee shirt from Isla Mujeres Mexico. Even though she was not wearing the blues uniform, she channeled their soul. She started off “Where ya been?” about some good-for-nothin’ man coming home “lookin’ bad enough to scare Dracula away.” The chorus finished with “I don’t know where ya been, but ya best not do it again.” Her songs were both soulful and whimsical and punctuated by gyrating dance moves. She pulled in every person in the club. No one could sit still. Some just tapped their toes or their fingers, other swayed in their booths, or clapped with the rhythm. But no one sat quietly by.
As they finished their first set, she quickly asked for a prayer for some members of the band and close friends who had been in a serious car accident that night and were all in the hospital. She asked us to take a moment of silence and send our good vibes out to them. And the crowd that had been so exuberant before was silent. I did send good thoughts to them. Any people who come and bring joy to a group of strangers deserve as much. After the set break, Aaron and I settled up with the bar tender and went over to Grana’ Louise to buy one of the CDs they had for sale.
She asked “Oh, you leavin’ so soon?” We admitted that we had an early morning ahead of us and wouldn’t be shutting down the bar this time around. “Oh, poo. Well, you call up your boss and you tell them you’re gonna be late.”
We laughed. “It’s my mother-in-law,” I said. “And she will not have any of that.”
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