CHICAGO: MORE CULTURE THAN I’M USED TO…

 …Knowledgeable tour guide was a must!

Long time readers (both of you) will know that I prefer the Sutter Buttes to the TransAmerica Pyramid; the Carrizo Plain to Golden Gate Park. Fewer people. Less traffic. Yes, and a little cheaper. A trip to San Francisco, my nearest big metro area, is palatable because the bucolic Sac/San Juaquin Delta is nearby, as are the cathedral-like coast redwoods. I know I can escape to the Marin Headlands if I need to.

With that in my DNA, I approached a week’s visit to Chicago with some trepidation. As luck would have it, we hooked in with an outstanding tour guide ~ DePaul student and granddaughter Grace Powers ~ for an outstanding taste of this midwestern mega-city. Where do I start?

 

Open Space? Our digs at Villa d’Citta https://www.villadcitta.com on North Halsted in Lincoln Park (a lovely boutique mansion) were only blocks away from the Chicago City Zoo…

…the Lake Michigan waterfront….

…and this grand fountain in Grant Park.

Mid-October weather was perfect for strolling, site-seeing, and stopping for the occasional bite to eat…

…like this Chicago Dog at Harry Caray’s joint on the Navy Pier.  (Enjoyed, also, the major league memorabilia. Could have spent hours!)

 

Evening strolls in the Lincoln Park area near DePaul reminded me of my old digs on Eighth Street in Chico.  Vintage homes.  Shaded by mature broadleaf trees, such as feeling of warmth and neighborhood.

Architecture?  Growing up in Chico, when the University planned and built seven-story Butte Hall, it was considered a skyscraper. So much so that the Fire Department found themselves searching for a ladder truck with a longer ladder.  Turns out, ‘they ain’t seen nothin’.’

Our riverboat tour near the Lake Michigan shoreline highlighted the design eras and the extent of architectural evolution…

 …from the art deco opera house…

…to this mid-century modern example…

…to a post-modern curved glass structure that reflects all the styles along the waterfront.

I didn’t take notes, but the masterpiece below was the first major building designed by a female architect. Visionary! How I wish I'd written down her name. 

This project’s success opened the doors for other women to break into a male-dominated field and enhance the city’s skyline with a new kind of grace and strength.

 

Art?  Fifty-plus years ago, I took an art appreciation class at Chico State to fulfill a humanities requirement. Although my grandfather dabbled in oils ~ I have one of his hanging right beside me as I write ~ I wasn’t much interested in what the prof shared with students on slide after innumerable slide. Little did I know that at the Chicago Institute of Arts, I’d see a two dozen or more of those classic works up close, very real and very touching.  Here’s Rembrandt…

Grant Wood…

Frank Lloyd Wright. (Brother Tim has a desk he created from similar design that I’ve helped him move twice, Tim tells me.)

And this: Van Gogh’s self-portrait which I have renamed two old guys with beards.

We marveled at the collection at the Chicago Institute of Art, wondering how so many masterpieces could end up under the same roof with that roof not being atop the Louvre in Paris.

 

Theatre? An unexpected treat was the opportunity to attend the world premiere of “Leroy and Lucy” at the famed Steppenwolf Theatre on Halsted Ave.  Steppenwolf started decades ago by a group of then recent high school graduates intent on continuing their theatre work.  Over the interceding years, the list of Steppenwolf alums reads like a who’s who of Broadway, screen and television.

Curated for over three years, this show depicts the dreams and demons visited upon perhaps the father of all the Blues.

 Rather than to give anything away, know that as we rose to over a much deserved standing O to the players, I said to Gracie: “I’ve got to see that again!” I'm certain we'll see this work in venues across the nation. Recommend seeing it when it comes your way.

 

Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen intoned that Chicago is “my kind of town,” ~ recall Sinatra’s classic version ~ and we can see why.  The song writing duo certainly captured my kind of razzmatazz and it has all that jazz.  Not sure if Chicago will be calling me home quite soon enough, but we were more than delighted with the art, the culture, the people too, people who, smile at you.

Once of the smilin’-est ones?  Granddaughter Grace.  Thanks for introducing your Bumpa to some culture Gracie! As you might imagine, I can always use more culture.

 

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

 

ABOARD THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR (FINALLY!)

 A life-long dream come true ~ maybe

The California Zephyr has always been mythic to me. Winding like a silver ribbon up the Feather River Canyon, occasionally, we’d be lucky enough to see it as we drove California’s Route 70 in our ’54 Ford toward Quincy and Bucks Lake. Crisscrossing the canyon, if we were really lucky, we’d be crossing the river on a bridge as the train crossed above us, switching sides of the canyon. The silver beauty was always on the other side ~ always just a bit out of reach.  

The Zephyr ran from San Francisco to Chicago under the combined efforts of the Western Pacific, the Denver, Rio Grande Western and the Burlington Route. It had always been my dream thunder across our vast western expanse on this train. Alas, come the early 70s, service ended. As did my dream.  Or so I thought.

 

But along came Amtrak, the Federal government’s attempt to keep rail traffic alive. More successful along the eastern corridor of the United States, cross-country routes would enjoy less ridership. Yet, the Zephyr was revived. Now, however, using the historic Donner Pass Route initially carved by the Central Pacific, silver streamliners no longer grace the Feather.

 

 We board the Zephyr in Sacramento.

 

From the Sacramento Valley Station, the route winds and twists up the western slope of the Sierra with pauses in Roseville, Colfax, and, following the river courses of the American and the Yuba, cresting the Sierra on the highest trackage anywhere in the States. We enjoy a view of Donner Lake…

 …before descending into Truckee for a twenty minute fresh air and, ironically, smoke break.

The route traces the Truckee River through the rain shadowed environs of the east slope of the Sierra. Conifer forests begin to give way to brittle sage and autumn’s golden grasses.  

East of Reno, we begin to get a feel for the vast and vacant high desert. Miles of that sage and mineral wealth (I suppose.)

Our rail journey will take 50 hours, several of those spent lightly sleeping in our rocking accommodation. But, as night falls, I snap this haunting image of a western sunset and wonder about the Shoshone and Paiute peoples who, for centuries, came to an understanding of that whole living in harmony with nature thing that we successors to this space don’t quite get.

Sunrise finds us coursing along the Gunnison River.

Rolling into Grand Junction, CO on the historic Denver and Rio Grande Route, we see one of many grand old stations left to decay.

A few miles of browning hills relentlessly shaped by river and wind…

 …and we rumble into our first glimpse of the Great Plains.  I write ‘rumble’ because, to my untrained train butt, the Burlington Northern / Santa Fe right-of-way east of Denver seems a bit less well maintained than the UP to the west.

 

Lots of flat. Lots of grain ~ amber waves of it ~ mainly, it seems, corn. And lots of endless vistas. One can fly over this country, which we did on our return to California, and not grasp the distances, the vastness and the towns that look like nameless grids or checkerboards from 36,000 feet. We slept through all of Nebraska. 

 

Here’s Burlington, Iowa …

… and an aging Burlington Northern Pullman, Railway Express car and vintage loco. Glad these rolling stock examples are being preserved.

 

An hour or so further and an hour or so short of Chicago, this solitary farmstead captures a contemporary way of life we don’t experience on our western seaboard. And, while not wishing to wax political in this post, I believe I can understand why folks in these parts may see things differently than I do.

 

Chicago would be our literal end of the line. It’s where the Zephyr has always terminated. Chicago: with the ‘El’; the commuter lines to the suburbs; lines to the stock yards, steel and other industries; and the historic Union Pacific; Burlington Route; Chicago and Northwestern; and several other routes. We are informed that within the Windy City’s confines exist more miles of rail line than in the rest of the continental US combined. Rolling the final twenty minutes into Union Station, it’s a claim that’s hard to dispute.

 

After fifty hours on the train, I ask myself, “Did my long held dream of riding on the California Zephyr come true?”  

I recall myself in Dad’s ’54 Ford waving at passengers on the Zephyr as it wound through the Feather River Canyon. I question whether some little kid traveling up Highway 70 in the back seat of his dad’s current day SUV might be missing the opportunity to form his own romantic dreams about boarding this silver wonder and seeing where it takes him.

 

Resource: The Story of the California Zephyr, by Karl Zimmerman. Quadrant Press. © 1972.  Nice historic photo and narrative about the early days of the original Zephyr. (Good luck finding a copy. You might want to check out your neighborhood model railroad shop as they often have these kinds of books.  Plus, model trains are kinda cool.  They bring back the little kid in many of us.)

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press