Tales From the Tour -- January 2003

CHICAGO, IL / PEORIA, IL / BLOOMINGTON, IN / SPRINGFIELD, IL
Our 38-hour break in Chicago started on a sour note. I'd been able to round up a half-dozen people to go out for Indian food, and I'd called Indian Garden, near our hotel, to find out how late they'd be open Sunday night. We arrived at the Lenox Suites Hotel - a place with wonderful rooms including kitchen facilities - at 21:20, ten minutes before the last seating at Indian Garden. I called them again to say we'd just arrived and would be leaving in a few minutes. We all rushed to our rooms to drop off luggage, and as we reconnoitered in the lobby I called once more to say we were on our way. This was 21:32, and whoever answered said they'd closed and couldn't seat us. I pleaded for a couple of minutes, saying we'd rush over and had been hankering for Indian food all day - but to no avail; I wished the 21:30 deadline had been explained to me as a slam-the-doors-shut deadline rather than a yeah-come-by-and-we-can-take-your-order-shortly-thereafter deadline.

Then, suddenly, I became angry. The only reason we didn't make it in time was that we'd taken a 27-minute rest stop because our bus driver needed coffee. I don't blame him for that - it was a long trip - but the stop was supposed to be only 15 minutes, and it had turned into an interminable wait reminiscent of the delays that plague local trains in India. We'd been headed to Chicago, for heaven's sake - a metropolis worthy of every possible moment we could spend there - and to pause for nearly a half hour at a rest stop when we were less than an hour away was the sheer pinnacle of unparalleled lunacy. (Actually, it had been paralleled. Remember the half-hour Wendy's stop on the way to New York City?)

Mainly, I was upset because I felt I'd let people down. I wouldn't have been angry if I'd been the only one trying to find an Indian meal. But here I'd promised people Indian food and couldn't deliver. I recall a children's poem - it's by Shel Silverstein or Judy Blume or one of those people - in which someone explains how boring it is to be known as the most reliable person, as opposed to the most pretty or the most peculiar. I'd be proud to be known as most reliable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I was severely unreliable (and you know I keep track of such things) was 17 April 1996, when I overslept (that's also the last time I overslept, and you know I keep track of such things) and failed to wake up a friend for work. I felt that mistake hang over me for days.

I take you on this long tangent in an attempt to justify the highly unprofessional fit I threw in the lobby when I realized we weren't going to Indian Garden. It involved throwing a city brochure on the floor, shouting something with more expletives than I'm accustomed to using, and storming out of the building and taking a walk around the block in order to cool off. That was all I needed to recover, and the next day I apologized for the outburst to Dave and the hotel receptionist. I unquestionably overreacted, but perhaps using a small tantrum to make my feelings clear, rather than the droll sarcasm I usually employ, will have more of an impact on our travel schedules.

Brian, Eric, and Tammy, amazing people that they are, were still up for Indian, even if it meant a long trip. And long it was: We took a $20 cab ride to Devon Street, a predominately Indian and Pakistani neighborhood in the northern reaches of the city. We walked along the street, peering into restaurants whose owners' children played inside while patrons dined, and eventually we settled on a place called Usmania, which was packed with Pakistanis. Thinking it was BYOB, we got some drinks at a grocery across the street, but in fact Usmania adhered to Muslim customs and didn't allow alcohol at all, and so we saved it for later.

The staff treated us extremely well, and we had a fabulous, cheap meal. The menu was small, but everything was expertly prepared with all the wonderful seasonings we'd been hoping for. Another $20 cab ride and we were back downtown, where we broke open the Taj Mahals (it's really not a wonderful beer unless you happen to be eating Indian food simultaneously) and listened to Brian's hilarious recording of a conversation between one of the Jerky Boys and some schmo who had answered a fake Village Voice ad offering common folk positions on major-league baseball teams.

Back in my room, I looked through a brochure to figure out what to do on our day off. Chicago offered plenty of attractions, but nothing leapt out at me until I found mention of the Baha'i Temple in the northern suburbs. Someone, somewhere - I don't recall who, or on which continent - had once told me I should go there, and on that memorable recommendation I purchased a $5 24-hour transit pass (annoyingly, you can't get them in the subway stations - I had to go to a supermarket) and set out the next morning for Linden, the northernmost station on the Chicago subway system.

Apart from the Taj Mahal, the Baha'i Temple was probably the most beautiful building I've ever been in. It's the only Baha'i House of Worship in North America; there are only seven in the world, and they are all nine-sided structures - nine, the highest single-digit number, represents completeness. You don't hear about the Baha'is very often, but there are about five million scattered around in almost every country. The faith is only about 160 years old, and it combines some of the best of the major religions and philosophies (one God, equality without discrimination, etc.). Reflecting this confluence of ideas, the domed temple is decorated with six-pointed stars, normal crosses, hooked crosses, ankhs, and the like. It's made of a mixture of white concrete and quartz, and the predominant design - carved into the walls and ceilings - is an extremely ornate and intricate lacy pattern. Every time I looked up at the dome, I noticed something new, such as how the elliptical pattern isn't the same in the ringed layers leading to the top, and then how it's not even the same within each ring. I also noticed that there was no donation box: The Baha'is accept funding only from other Baha'is, which may help explain why the temple took 33 years to build.

I headed to Chinatown for lunch - a 33-stop subway ride, mostly above ground, that gave me a good chance to look at the backs of apartment buildings, some of which were remarkably close to the tracks. Chinatown takes up a few square blocks, one of which is lined with a sort of Chinese strip mall called Chinatown Square ("Opening '92," announced a rather outdated sign near its entrance). I had dim sum at one of several restaurants that were all called Three Happiness, and I might have ventured up a staircase off the street into the Sun Yat-Sen Museum, but no one answered when I rang the bell.

The afternoon evolved into a sort of multi-ethnic pastry crawl, though I saved a lot of what I bought for later. I stepped into a couple of Asian supermarkets, got a couple of Chinese pastries at a bakery, and then headed northwest, to the Pilsen neighborhood. Originally bohemian-inspired, the area is now Hispanic, and the two- and three-story apartment buildings bear attractive, simple carved patterns. I walked along 18th Street, which was lined with wonderfully divey-looking bars, and found myself in front of a Mexican bakery called El Paraiso. There was nothing pretentious about the place - just shelves and shelves of huge pastries, and I took a tray and a pair of tongs and helped myself to a couple of the goods, which were only 50 cents each.

I briefly browsed a Mexican supermarket with a suspicious meat aroma before heading further north along Blue Island Avenue, through an area that must be none too safe at night. The avenue took me through a bizarre tunnel with painted human heads protruding from the wall. A short while later I was in Greektown. Here - you guessed it - I looked at cheeses in an Athenian market and paused for a couple of pastries in a Greek bakery. I also stepped inside a religious store full of candles and icons and good-luck oils. It had gotten dark, and I strolled through downtown just as most people were leaving work.

Casey had mentioned a strong desire to have Turkish food - I never thought I'd hear that one! - and so we checked out A la Turca, a few subway stops north of downtown. We were the only customers at the time we arrived, and we sat on the floor and had a scrumptious meal. She actually speaks a little Turkish and guided us toward a couple of the better dishes ("There's nothing like sigara börek" was her proverb of the day).

We got back downtown just in time for me to join about a dozen company members in seeing the new film Chicago, which was excellent. It ended a little before midnight, far too early to call it a night in an exciting city such as Chicago - and, finding no one who might jump with enthusiasm if I were to incite an excursion into Pilsen's nether regions by asking, "Anyone want to check out the dive bars in a seedy yet architecturally stimulating Mexican neighborhood that's a 20-minute walk from the subway?" I made for Redheads, a piano bar just a couple of blocks from our hotel. I arrived midway through a 17-minute rendition of "Hotel California," and I obliged a woman of about 35 who for some reason wanted me to dance with her for the final 42 verses of "American Pie." I had two drinks called Shana's Studio 54 Martini, made with Finlandia vodka, Frangelico, and Amarula - yes, the Baileys-like Amarula, the most splendid of all liqueurs, which I discovered in South Africa and have never been able to find in the United States. The pianist was competent, the setting was intimate, and I stayed for a couple of hours, feeling generally very satisfied with the events of the day.

The next morning I boarded the subway nine minutes before my 24-hour pass was due to expire, got off at Belmont, and walked for a couple of hours through the Lincoln Park and Old Town neighborhoods. Lincoln Park is supposedly an eclectic, cosmopolitan area, but I didn't come upon streets lined with restaurants of every continent as I'd expected - either they're all spread out or I didn't walk along the right streets. The houses were reminiscent of Pilsen's, though, and so it was an attractive walk. Those were my last hours in Chicago, and it was sad to leave - Chicago impresses me more and more each time I visit.

Our next stop, Peoria, Illinois, was a lesson in gray, concrete-box architecture. Peoria's sister cities are Friedrichshafen, Germany; Benxi, China; and Clonmel, Ireland, as is proudly displayed on a sign outside City Hall. Peoria is perhaps best known for Big Al's Speakeasy, a nationally known strip club that I decided wasn't high on my list of sightseeing priorities. On arrival, some of us lunched at Bennigan's, and then I took a walk down to the Illinois River. I happened upon a visitors' center, where a friendly lady plied me with information and brochures and even gave me a free pass to the Lakeview Museum.

Our first show in Peoria was much like our last in Grand Rapids in that the onstage piano didn't work, even though it had worked during the pre-show sound check. I seethed through "Sing Sing Sing," focusing my mental energy on how to put it to our sound techies that the recurrent problems were starting to get on my nerves. In Chicago I'd thrown my first public semi-tantrum (what I do in private when Windows crashes is my own business) since 5 July 1996 and I didn't really feel like throwing another, but the I'll-just-sit-idly-and-wait-for-the-piano-to-start-working-again mantra wasn't having any results. So I explained the situation to Squatch, and we re-tested the piano the following night - it had just been a loose connection. After the show Erica and I headed for Martinis (guess what the specialty drink is), in what used to be Peoria's train station, and had $3 cosmopolitans and played Scrabble. Nobody ever walks anywhere in Peoria, except car-deprived visitors, so it was a pretty desolate trek back to the Holiday Inn late at night.

Wednesday morning I headed to the Lin Hing International Food Market, an Asian grocery store a couple of kilometers from the center of town, near the intersection of Main and University. They had a bunch of the same snacks you see in Asian markets all over the country (my favorite brand name is the friendly-partnership-sounding "Kasugai Peanut & You"), as well as jarred vegetables that sound beautiful until you read that they're all "in brine" - "Banana Blossom in Brine," "Lotus Rootlet in Brine," "Sliced Young Toddy Palm in Brine." This particular store had a good selection of Indian dinner mixes - just add water and you've got dosas or dhokla - and one kimchi mix that enticed me with "just add water," until I looked at the back of the package and realized I'd have to add about 14 other ingredients to get anything resembling kimchi. Then there was the bag of salted turnips whose directions admonished, "Serve with meats, fish or soy, if pleased." It's always interesting to read the packages in these places.

On the way to the store, along Main, I had passed several side streets with signs saying, "No Access Beyond Russell," and so on the way back I had to venture up to Russell and find out why each road was closed past it. Was it like the Peace Line gate in Belfast separating the Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods? If I set foot beyond Russell, would I have to convert to a whole new set of faiths and relinquish my United States citizenship? No, sadly, it was not that interesting. It was simply that there was a diagonal concrete slab placed through each intersection, so that, if you were in a car, once you got to Russell you had to drive along Russell for a block and then head back to Main along the next side street. And if you lived on Russell you couldn't drive for more than a block without being hurled over to Main (or off in the other direction). I was hoping to run into someone who could explain what must be an irksome phenomenon for residents - no doubt some kid in 1932 had been nearly hit by a horse and buggy trying to beat the excruciating Peoria rush-hour traffic choking Main by using a side street instead, and in a fit of outrage the community had barred the street shut forever - but since nobody ever walks anywhere in Peoria, the mystery remains unresolved.

I met Erica for a Lebanese lunch at Byblos, where among a variety of standard appetizers we had the interesting fatteh (beef and chickpeas over crisp pita topped with yogurt). I could have gone to the Lakeview Museum after that, but it was far away, and the museum's explanatory brochure didn't actually explain what there was to see there. And so the free museum pass will no doubt spend the next few years in a very safe place in my apartment, waiting to be used if I happen to return to Peoria. (Copies of my tax returns from the past few years remain inveterately hidden within piles of variegated papers in my bedroom, but anything that may save me a few bucks the next time I happen go sightseeing in a dreary Midwestern town gets meticulously filed for quick access in alphabetically organized folders.)

Instead of heading out to the museum, I crossed the street and spent a couple of hours wandering about the fascinating Illinois Antique Center. It was like a hundred garage sales all rolled into one enormous two-story building - every article was carefully tagged with the owner, item number, and price. It reminded me of the Random Personal Stuff Museum in Buenos Aires (it's not actually called that, but you get the idea). Most of the "antiques" for sale were simple personal effects from the mid-1900s, such as Elsie the Cow paraphernalia, a 10-cent strip of Johnson & Johnson's moleskin adhesive, a June 1951 Department of the Navy instruction manual for using the new T41E1 76mm tank gun, an assortment of 1930s Ku Klux Klan membership cards, and the Secor, Illinois, telephone directory from March 1967.

What an amazing collection of nostalgia items! Especially interesting to me were collections of railroad memorabilia, such as dishware and train schedules. In the summer of 1964, I learned, you could go round-trip from Boston to Miami, a 32-hour trip, for $95.30. I was comforted by the fact that there were other people out there who collected transportation schedules: I've got a freezer-sized collection of airline flight schedules from the 1980s, back before the little airlines were bought up by the large ones. (Anyone remember Republic Airlines? People's Express? The little Florida carrier Devoe?) Could they possibly be worth something?

I picked up an employee brochure called "Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad - Speed Restrictions and Special Instructions: Illinois and Des Moines Divisions, No. S-8, Effective at 12:01 A.M. Standard Time Sunday, July 30, 1967." The rules were a mouthful:

"11. HIGHWAY CROSSING SIGNALS. Operation of highway crossing signals and automatic gates is such that when an engine or cars move toward crossing on main track, the crossing signal will operate, and after crossing has been occupied and cleared, if any movement by such engine or cars is again made toward the crossing without such movement having been started from the outside of the signal starting circuits, which vary in length 2000 feet to 3500 feet beyond the crossing, the signal or automatic gate will not operate, and before any such movement is made over the crossing it must be protected by a member of the crew on the ground at crossing unless it is known that the signal or gate is operating for the movement involved."

And then. . . .

"18. IN TERRITORY WHERE RULES GOVERNING MOVEMENT OF ENGINES OR TRAINS BY BLOCK SIGNALS ARE IN EFFECT. Where maximum speed permitted is in excess of 20 MPH, trains using a hand-operated main track switch, not equipped with electric lock, must have a portion of its train occupying main track or leave main track switch open while using such track."

They don't write 'em like they used to.

One dealer had thoughtfully cut interesting articles out of old editions of Life and the Saturday Evening Post, and I picked out a few about Brooklyn and the Dodgers for my mother, who grew up in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn article discussed the borough's main industries, which ranged in scale from sugar (Brooklyn in the 1940s was the greatest sugar-refining area in the world) to a person who earned his living removing tattoos: "This Sands Street man, a genius, has for years been able to render pristine the epidermis of many a groom-to-be who in a youthful yielding to temptation had allowed a bicep to become the rolling stomach of a lady from Singapore or his forearm to provide a runway for some undraped hussy set to dancing there by the needle of a Liverpool practitioner." I'm partial to long, well-crafted, comma-scarce sentences.

My college roommate Orin drove up from St. Louis with his girlfriend to see Wednesday's show, a performance in which fortunately all the sound components worked, and afterward we caught up on the past few years at the steakhouse Damon's, a chain with an unusual gimmick: They show several TV programs on giant screens and there's a tuner at each table to let you select the program you want to hear. (Or, in our case, you turn the volume way down and catch up on the past few years.) We continued the conversation at the Irish pub Kelleher's. Orin's also in the music business; he conducts and plays piano and organ for an Illinois Christian center called the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows.

An early departure Thursday morning brought us to Bloomington, Indiana, a town most noted for Indiana University and Hoagy Carmichael. I had a few hours to check out downtown, a hefty 40-minute walk from the Quality Inn. On the way downtown I stopped in at the showroom of the Butler Winery (the vineyards are a few kilometers outside of town) and sampled a few of their products. You wouldn't think Indiana would be a hotbed of wine production, but, as I learned during a long chat with Amy Butler, the United States' first well-known, well-respected winery was established in Indiana in about 1800. I picked up two of their best sellers: a sweet blueberry wine and their peachy Indiana White.

Downtown Bloomington is pretty, with an attractive central square that contains the stone 1902 Monroe County Courthouse, topped with a perch-shaped copper weathervane of questionable origin. As I approached the square a helpful pedestrian signal indicated that I had nine seconds left to cross the street. There was much of appeal in and around the square: a store selling board games, a meat market that opens at 5:00 in the morning and closes in the early afternoon, an assortment of bars, a Yugoslavian restaurant, and the Bloomington Antique Mall, which was similar to the one in Peoria but with slightly more pristine, slightly less varied goods (largely table settings and the like). Downtown's main street is Kirkwood Avenue, which runs a few blocks east of the square to the IU campus. I walked around the campus a little bit; there's a small forest on the campus just south of Kirkwood. Our enthusiastically received performances in Bloomington were held at the beautiful IU Auditorium. I caught a TV program in which a reporter was interviewing Bloomington residents to find out their opinions regarding the mayor's proposal to route Interstate 69 through Bloomington; those who had opinions were against the plan, fearing an influx of strip malls and traffic - leave it to the inhabitants of a pretty college town to have the sensible opinions.

Friday morning I joined a few cast members for the hotel's free continental breakfast. The only other hotel guest in the dining room was a man who helped himself to three doughnuts, an act repulsive enough to put me off from taking any for myself. He had clearly made it a habit of consuming three doughnuts at a time for several decades, and when the hotel staff came around and announced that breakfast was about to end he took the ice bucket from his room, filling it with doughnuts in an effort to accumulate enough edibles to stave off any hunger pangs until lunch.

Let's see. . . besides wineries, what do you think of when you hear the word Indiana? Tibet, of course! The United States' first Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the Dagon Gaden Tensung Ling Monastery, is in Bloomington. As the crow flies, it's very close to the Quality Inn, in Cascades Park. But because it's on a road that passes under State Road 45-46, and doesn't intersect it, I had to take a long detour in order to get there. The brightly painted main building and the colorful thangkas flapping in the wind stood out against the stark, leafless, snow-covered trees of the park. It was just this one building and two dormitory buildings up a hill. I walked around the grounds for a while but didn't go in: All the shades were drawn, and there were no signs of life, so I doubted whether they wanted visitors or would know what to do with me if I rang the bell unannounced. In the monastery's driveway were a basketball net, a barbecue, and two cars. The thought of Tibetan Buddhists driving cars stretched my imagination, but presently I saw another car pull up and the driver went inside with his coffee and brown-bag lunch. I guess times have changed.

At Amy Butler's recommendation, Eric and I lunched at a Tibetan restaurant called Snow Lion, one of three Indiana restaurants owned by a nephew of the Dalai Lama. I had a scallop dish with vegetables and vermicelli over rice. We each had to indicate, on a scale of one to five, how spicy we wanted our food; after being assured that the spices would enhance, rather than kill, the taste, I went for five. It was indeed flavorful; the dish had a sweetness that warded off the spiciness for a few seconds after each bite, and then the peppers would kick in and I'd get a mouthful of hot fire. It was wonderful. It may well have been the third spiciest dish I'd ever had, the spiciest (and you know I keep track of such things) being the lamb jalfrezi at the Red Fort in London in December 1987 and a bowl of chili the following day. The Snow Lion also had a splendid dessert: rice pudding with raisins and cinnamon topped with yogurt.

I spent the next couple of hours at the Monroe County Historical Museum. It explained the history of important companies that have been based in Bloomington since the city and county were established in 1818, most notably the 99-year term of the Showers (later Showers Brothers) furniture company, begun in 1856. One exhibit was set up to look like the original one-room schoolhouse, and it contained quotes from people who attended the school and copies of a 1920 elementary-school reader ("O Kate! the old cow is in the pond: see her drink! Will she not come out to get some grass?" is a passage you might have recited from that book). In June 1834 a term's tuition at Indiana College (the predecessor of Indiana University) was $9.50, and in February 1919 the city-wide price of a half-pint of whiskey was established at 12.5 cents. Fascinating.

After yesterday's show I joined a few cast members and their friends at a jazz bar called Cafe Django, where a lounge singer performed sultry old standards respectably, and then at a pub called the Irish Lion. It was a highly enjoyable evening - college towns are dependable for having a laid-back and friendly atmosphere - and we were out until about 2:30, six hours before our bus was due to leave Bloomington. Lack of sleep, the scrumptious Midori-based cosmopolitans at the Snow Lion, the fact that I'd walked the 40 minutes between our hotel and downtown in double-digit-degrees-below-zero temperatures four times during the previous two days, and the thermostat in my room at the Quality Inn - which could be set to make the room either stifling or frigid but nothing in between, requiring multiple middle-of-the-night awakenings on my part so that I could switch it from "scorch" to "freeze" and back again - conspired to give me a case of the sniffles this morning and guaranteed that I'd sleep for virtually the entire four-hour drive to Springfield, Illinois. Today was a hectic day, as we had two shows after that four-hour trip - and to his immense credit Dave arranged for a catered lunch to be awaiting our arrival at Sangamon Auditorium, part of the University of Illinois at Springfield. The college may be better named the University of Illinois Just Outside of Springfield; there wasn't anything to do near the theatre, and so I spent the time between shows chatting with cast members and figuring out how to see the whole of Springfield during the couple of post-dawn hours before our departure for Evansville, Indiana, tomorrow morning. A well-catered reception followed the second show, after which we finally got to check in at the tall, circular Hilton in downtown Springfield. I might have joined a couple of people at the Hilton's jazz bar, but I've still got the sniffles, it took forever to check in, I didn't fancy forking over a $3 cover charge after making it through the whole day without spending a cent, and, frankly, I'm beat. It's a snowy, foggy night here in Springfield, and from my 24th-story window I just had the pleasure of seeing a freight train make its way along the white track bed just a couple of blocks away, the 100-odd cars spanning virtually my entire viewing range - a sight all at once spectacular and mundane, and one that didn't cost me a penny.