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.”