2022 KC/MI Wander: Day 10

 

This is Part 8 of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

My first stop this morning was for breakfast, at the Red Apple in Dixon, Illinois. Good food, good service, good prices, and the place was clean. The only problem was that, since I had started my Google Maps instructions directly from my motel (in the email I'd sent myself) but actually started the drive from the restaurant, I seemed not to be on the right route. But once I followed the directions to the point where the two routes converged, everything was okay. 

Technology. Arrgh. I'll say no more.

Miners' monument

So I followed my planned route first to the memorial for the 289 miners who died in a mine fire in Cherry, Illinois about 120 years ago. The monument stands on the mass grave of the men and boys who died that day. They were mostly Italian-Americans, so half of me felt a sort of bond. 

Starved Rock

After that, I went off to Starved Rock State Park, along the Illinois River.  Pontiac was a chief of the Ottawa (or Odawa) tribe who was murdered in 1769 by people from the Illinois tribe. (He, like Black Hawk, also has a war named for him, but that plays no part in this story.) The Illinois indians had a village near the Illinois River; that village was attacked by the Ottawas (and their allies, the Potawatomis) in revenge for the murder, and its inhabitants took refuge on a high bluff overlooking the river. Rather than come down and be massacred, they slowly starved to death on top of their rock. That gave the rock the name Starved Rock, and it's now the centerpiece of a State Park.

When I got to the park, I followed the signs for the Visitors' Center. I turned off the park road into a vast parking lot, nearly empty except for lines of port-a-potties. I tooled around the lot, saw nothing that looked like a visitors' center, then made a driving tour of the rest of the park. River Area; Lodge; Campgrounds; Overflow Parking Areas (several of them). Still saw nothing, so I went back to the original location. This time I saw it, hidden behind the first row of port-a-potties and a bus. So I parked and went up to find out where Starved Rock was. There was a map in a signboard that told me it was an "easy paved path with two staircases" and a little over half a mile's walk.

view from the rock

It turned out that that "easy paved path with two staircases" takes you up to a boardwalk that goes around the rock. It has nice views of the river, but otherwise is nothing worth seeing. Oh, and those staircases? Five stories' worth.

While I was up there, I noticed a belvedere on the next bluff, not too far away, from which I figured I could get a decent photo of Starved Rock. So off I went. Got up there, got my picture, came back down. Just for fun, I counted the steps: 303. That's three hundred and three steps up, and three hundred and three steps down, very slowly. I should have made that trek before I developed arthritis in my right knee. (Which, by the way, if I only have arthritis in my right knee, why is it that it's my left knee that always hurts? Just one of life's little mysteries.)

Naturally, I sweated up a storm. Good thing I'm by myself in the car.

As I drove to my next stop, in Pontiac, Illinois (named for the murdered Ottawa chief, not the car) I recognised that I was passing out of the pleasant rolling countryside and into the flat, boring, Indiana-style landscape, with straight roads and pointless stop signs. 

Once in the town of Pontiac, it was easy to find the Pontiac-Oakland Car Museum: it's right across from the courthouse. The town provides free wi-fi in the downtown area (that is, the blocks facing the courthouse; basically anywhere that's close enough to hear the uninterrupted Greatest Hits of the 1970s and 1980s that play from a series of speakers all around the courthouse). I decided to grab lunch first, something light, so I stepped into a restaurant on the corner. On the Specials board there was a listing for Chicken Pot Pie Soup, which sounded interesting; I like chicken pot pie. I asked the waitress about it; she claimed that the restaurant is "known for it," so I ordered it. (She did admit that she's "not a pie person" and has never tried it herself.) It wasn't bad, but an hour and a half later I thought I was going to be sick. Literally: I went to the public library and stood in the rest room waiting to barf. Didn't, though, so when the urge subsided I left. Did not feel 100% though for the rest of the day.

'57 Chevy Artcar

By the way, you might remember that some time back there was a craze going around the country for painting uniform sculptures to raise funds for various charities. I know in San Antonio we did cows. A town in Kansas that I went to did miniature Swedish horses. Somewhere I've seen buffalo done up in all kinds of arty ways and scattered around town, and I seem to recall a town that had armadillos; I don't remember where that was. And Winnipeg, Manitoba, did polar bears, so it was an international craze. Well, the town of Pontiac joined the craze by having artists paint ... Chevrolets. Go figure. 

The Pontiac-Oakland Car Museum is free to visit. That is the only thing in its favour. It's a fairly small space, and the display consists of only 16 cars, a few cases of Pontiac-related memorabilia, and a small gift shop. The information given about the cars ranges from none at all to the bare minimum. Most cars have a sign that gives the year and model, the number made, and the name of the owner. The rest have no signage at all. The museum makes no effort at educational purpose, despite having quite the impressive looking library in its space. Presumably all those books and papers contain information about Pontiac and Oakland cars. The displayed vehicles are shown in such a way that only a part of them can be seen. You can't walk around them at all. 

1978 Pontiac Phoenix Hatchback

Consider the 1978 Pontiac Phoenix Hatchback, set up with a tent exploding from its rear end. What does that look like from the back? Was it an available option for buyers of the car? (It looks like it might have been.) What would such a thing add to the price of the car? How many people sprung for the tent-thing? In 1978, the American auto industry was still recovering from the 1973 Gas Crisis, and the introduction of regulations requiring catalytic converters. I remember how crappy American cars were in those years. Hell, I owned one of them (a '76 Monte Carlo, which, despite its limitations, I loved). Did the '78 Phoenix manage to introduce anything innovative? (The tent was an oddity, but not an innovation; VW Microbuses had had tents built in long before, and I've seen similar things on cars going back all the way to the 1930s, if not before that.) 

Or the 1960 Pontiac Ventura. A beautiful car, displayed in the milieu of a service bay. Don't you know I'd love to be able to walk around and see what those back lights look like? How the fins are treated? The rear bumper, the trunk lock? Small things, and yes, I'm sure I've seen all those things before, on the many previous 1960 Pontiac Venturas that have passed through my life since that year. (My God, that's very nearly my entire life.)

And what the Hell is a Pontiac Firefly? Was it just so supremely unsuccessful that I never saw one, or knew of its existence in the world? And what's the relationship of Pontiac Motor Division to Oakland? Why do they share a museum? (I actually have some idea of that, but how many visitors to the museum don't?) How much effort would it take to answer these basic questions? Too much, it seems, for the Pontiac-Oakland Car Museum. 

I left, feeling actually pissed off that I'd gone so far out of my way to see that museum. Never mind the other places I went to; the car museum was my reason for what was in essence a half-day detour from where I'm going. And for sixteen cars and almost no information. (It certainly didn't help that, just yesterday, I'd visited such a large and well-presented car collection in Coralville, Iowa.) The fact that it was free to visit is small consolation for the time wasted.

I was almost out of cash, so I'd found a Chase branch close to my planned route, in a town near Joliet, and plugged that into my Google Maps route. (on the bright side, that detour got me 40 miles without a turn, so I could play the music on my USB for a while without worry.) It took me to the entrance of a subdivision six miles out of my way. I looked the address up again, put it in again, and this time it took me to the correct location, about a mile farther down the road.

Technology. Grrr. 

After that I made only one stop, to see a statue in Munster, Indiana. After having driven to that location, I have the idea that Hell is very much like the Chicago suburbs.

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