Old US Route 66: Attractions

	Gemini Giant, Wilmington, IL The Gemini Giant is a fiberglass mascot of the Launching Pad Drive-In Restaurant in Wilmington, IL. They give out that he is some kind of astronaut or spaceman or something, but I think he is a rogue nuclear power plant worker. Here he prepares to drop the Big One on SR 53 traffic.
[United States. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Braidwood 1: Pressurized Water Reactor." Operating Nuclear Power Reactors n. seq. (20 Sep. 2004): 10 pp. Online. Internet. 14 Aug. 2005. Available http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/ reactor/brai1.html.]	Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant, Braidwood, IL Since 9/11, administrators of strategic facilities have become increasingly sensitive to potential breeches of security and may react aggressively to inquisitive acts on the part of the public such as taking snapshots. Even though the Braidwood Plant stands adjacent to Old US Route 66, I've not dared to observe the occasions of my passage as photo ops.
	Kite Spinners, Redbird Antique Mall, Chenoa, IL Old US Route 66 is a flea-market enthusiast's dream come true. Now, I know Harley riders to be hep to the latest trends in yard art and paragons of good taste, so I'll leave it to you. (As a Goldwing owner, I'm clueless.) Is this cute, or what?
	Route 66 Assoc of Illinois, Pontiac, IL Old US Route 66 tourists on their way south from Chicago must stop at the Route 66 Association of Illinois Hall of Fame and Historic Museum for free orientation and indoctrination. The museum is in the Old City Hall (not the Livingston County Court House).
	Poster, Work on a Farm This Summer, Route 66 Museum, Clinton, OK Likewise those headed east are to turn off at Clinton, OK, to visit the Route 66 Museum there. Admission is charged. One starts in the 1920s and progresses by the decade from one room to the next. The lights in each room come on automagically, revealing wall-sized photos of roadwork in progress. Tokens of each time period and memorabilia from long-gone roadside institutions are displayed, but you are responsible for poking the button that provides ambient popular music by well-known recording artists such as Frank Stokes ("'Taint Nobody's Business If I Do" 1928), Woody Guthrie ("Will Rogers Highway" 1940), Glen Miller ("In the Mood" 1940), Elvis Presley ("Heartbreak Hotel" 1956), The Beatles ("I Saw Her Standing There" 1963), and The Eagles ("Hotel California" 1976).

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me.

As I went walking, I saw a sign there;
And on the sign there, It said, 'NO TRESPASSING.'
But on the other side, It didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

	Midewin Prairie Headquarters, USFS, Elwood, IL Midewin (Mih DAY win) is the Potawatomi name of the Healers' Guild. The US Forest Service is reclaiming the vast grounds of the Joliet Arsenal where weapons of mass destruction were manufactured for World War II. It has been renamed Midewin, and they are slowly turning it back into a natural prairie. Most of it is still in pasture or under cultivation. The project is expected to continue for decades.
	Yellow Cone Flowers, Midewin, Elwood, IL There is a small visitors' display in the office building and a short path around a pond in front of it. Those looking for seed sources and advice about converting midwestern waste areas to natural vegetation will be interested as will hikers. There are (or will be) miles-long walking tours over non-hazardous areas of the site. Check in at the reception desk.
	Brown Eyed Susans, Pony Bridge, El Reno, OK Keep your eyes open for wild flowers all along Old US Route 66. Spraying curtailed their variety, but some species turned out to be immortal. Others have been making a comeback, aided, no doubt, by local restoration efforts.
	Our Lady of the Highways, Waggoner, IL MARY LOVING MOTHER OF JESUS PROTECT US ON THE HIGHWAY ~*~ ERECTED BY LITCHFIELD DEANERY CATHOLIC YOUTH COUNCIL DEDICATED OCTOBER 29, 1959
	Lincoln Tomb Internal and external deterioration of the Lincoln Tomb has prompted two reconstructions. The first began in 1899 and was completed two years later. At that time the height of the obelisk was increased by 15 feet, and the steel and concrete vault containing the president's remains was buried beneath the floor of the burial chamber. During the 1930 reconstruction the hallways were created, and a simple red marble stone was placed in the burial chamber to mark the president's grave. Eleven varieties of marble were used for walls and floors. Bronze statues and plaques were also added. ["Lincoln Tomb ~ Springfield." Illinois Historic Preservation Agency n. seq. (n.d.): 16 pars. Online. Internet. 15 Aug. 2005.]

Knucks

Lincoln Bust, Springfield, IL The bronze bust before the entrance to the tomb is a reproduction of Gutzon Borglum's marble head of Lincoln in the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Visitors are compelled to touch its nose for luck.

Union Miners' Cemetery, Mt Olive, IL Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was an Irish immigrant. Her husband and children died of yellow fever in Tennessee in 1867. She went into business as a seamstress in Chicago and was burned out in the Great Fire of 1871. She then became an agitator for organized labor. She helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the "Wobblies") in 1905. Mother Jones lost as many battles as she won, but still she got results. She was by far the most famous and charismatic organizer for the United Mine Workers. When she began working for that fledgling union in the 1890s, it had 10,000 members; within a few years, 300,000 men had joined, and she organized many of their wives into "mop and broom" brigades, militant women who fought alongside their husbands. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous "march of the mill children" from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children ~ boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills ~ walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but, for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news. [Gorn, Elliot J. "Mother Jones: The Woman." Mother Jones Magazine n. seq. (Jun.-Jul. 2001): 15 pars. Online. Internet. 15 Aug. 2005. Available http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/ 2001/05/motherjones_gorn.html.]

• We assembled a number of boys and girls one morning in Independence Park, and from there we arranged to parade with banners to the court house where we would hold a meeting. A great crowd gathered in the public square in front of the city hall. I put the little boys with their fingers off and hands crushed and maimed on a platform. I held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children. That their little lives went out to make wealth for others. That neither state or city officials paid any attention to these wrongs. That they did not care that these children were to be the future citizens of the nation.
  
• The officials of the city hall were standing at the open windows. I held the little ones of the mills high up above the heads of the crowd and pointed to their puny arms and legs and hollow chests. They were light to lift.
  
• I called upon the millionaire manufactures to cease their moral murders, and I cried to the officials in the open windows opposite, "Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and, when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit."
• The officials quickly closed the windows, as they had closed their eyes and hearts.

• The workers started an agitation for an eight-hour day. The trades unions and the Knights of Labor endorsed the movement, but, because many of the leaders of the agitation were foreigners, the movement itself was regarded as "foreign" and as "un-American." Then the anarchists of Chicago, a very small group, espoused the cause of the eight-hour day. From then on the people of Chicago seemed incapable of discussing a purely economic question without getting excited about anarchism.
• The employers used the cry of anarchism to kill the movement. A person who believed in an eight-hour working day was, they said, an enemy to his country, a traitor, an anarchist. The foundations of government were being gnawed away by the anarchist rats. Feeling was bitter. The city was divided into two angry camps. The working people on one side, hungry, cold, jobless, fighting gunmen and police clubs with bare hands. On the other side the employers, knowing neither hunger nor cold, supported by the newspapers, by the police, by all the power of the great state itself.
• The anarchists took advantage of the widespread discontent to preach their doctrines. Orators used to address huge crowds on the windy, barren shore of Lake Michigan. Although I never endorsed the philosophy of anarchism, I often attended the meetings on the lake shore, listening to what these teachers of a new order had to say to the workers.
• On the evening of May 4th [1886], the anarchists held a meeting in the shabby, dirty district known to later history as Haymarket Square.
• One of the anarchist speakers was addressing the crowd. A bomb was dropped from a window overlooking the square. A number of the police were killed in the explosion that followed.
• The city went insane, and the newspapers did everything to keep it like a madhouse. The workers' cry for justice was drowned in the shriek for revenge. Bombs were "found" every five minutes. Men went armed, and gun stores kept open nights. Hundreds were arrested. Only those who had agitated for an eight-hour day, however, were brought to trial and a few months later hanged.
  

• She herself changed her birthdate at various times, always making herself older than she actually was.
• Mother Jones celebrated her 100th birthday on May 1, 1930, with everyone from the Rockefellers on down sending her congratulations. She died on November 30, 1930. She was 93 or 94 years old.

• The Union Miners Cemetery is linked to ... "The Virden Riot," ... a shootout with mine guards on October 10, 1898, as a train carrying 180 black strike-breakers recruited from the south, attempted to pass through a band of armed strikers and reach safety within a fortified stockade at Virden.
• The mine guards, imported from St. Louis, were better armed and had the advantage of the stockade. The firing was intense, lasting about ten minutes. The train's engineer was wounded, and he returned to Springfield with his cargo still aboard. Dead were seven miners and five guards. Forty other miners and four guards were wounded.
• The men from Mt. Olive were buried originally in the town cemetery, but the owner of the land objected to the ceremonies and other activities which the miners held there. The Lutheran cemetery was barred to them because that minister denounced the miners as "murderers."
• The local union, thereupon, purchased a one-acre site, and the bodies were moved to the new Union Miners Cemetery in 1899. Additional land was acquired in 1902, and again in 1918 and 1931, in order to accommodate the monument [and grave of Mother Jones] which was dedicated on October 11, 1936.
• The dedication was, itself, a monumental event. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought celebrants to Mt. Olive. Others came in private cars or hitch-hiked to the town. The crowd was estimated at 50,000. There were 32,000 in the line of march.

	Meramec Caverns I've been in other caves. I've been in other "show caves." This was the nicest in terms of tourist comfort. First of all, it doesn't smell like a cave. They have some superduper citrusy substance that they must spritz into the air or slather on the guide rails or something. You just can't believe you're in a dank underground chamber. It never occurs to you that you are cheek by jowl next to a bunch of other sweaty tourists. Under the neon sign, which tells you where you are, there is a replica moonshiner's shack complete with still. The tour guide frankly confesses this has nothing to do with the history of Meramec Caverns ~ political, social, or geologic ~ but is merely included as an Ozarks reference ~ so you know where you are. Likewise there is a Jesse James diorama.
	Gift Shop, Meramec Caverns You have to walk past the cafeteria to get to the gift shop, which entirely encloses the mouth of the cave. In the old days, people would drive into the cave and dance on a grandstand built inside. Contemporary visitors may be forgiven for assuming that cave floors are typically flat enough not only to dance on but also to lay a tile floor on.
	Meramec Caverns There is an illuminated picture portrait of Lassie in the cave because an episode of the ever-popular TV series (starring Opie Taylor) was filmed here. You remember it, I'm sure. It's the one where Lassie rescues Timmy, or was it Flipper? Art Linkletter did a gag for his TV show in which a pair of contestants personated a prehistoric cave couple, performing a skit for the amusement of tourists. This is remembered with fondness and commemorated, too, with a stop on the tour and concomitant signage. There is even a Foucault pendulum installed in the cave for a local science fair. It is one of only 16 in the known world. It is the only one that doesn't work. It's too lightweight. It doesn't store enough energy to keep going long enough for the precession of the earth to be obvious.
	Meramec Caverns By now in my description, I've given you the idea that the Meramec Cavern tour is about anything other than the cave. This is not true. There's plenty of cave stuff in the cave and a river, too; you just have to walk for a way to get to it. Also, you have to climb stairs ~ one whole flight ~ so I ask you: If you were a guide in charge of a bunch of sweaty tourists, what would you talk about? The finale is a light show in a "room" with a curtain wall of flowstone (and theater seating). This is accompanied by a recording of Kate Smith (1907-1986) singing Irving Berlin's God Bless America. Apparently hers is the only performance that could ever shake loose a cascade of water from the flowstone. Kate Smith fans don't seem to feel that this is any kind of exploitation.
[Benton, Thomas Hart. The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley. 1934. Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence.]	Okie Baroque I want to include an image not relevant to Old US Route 66 except for its Ozark connection and because its artist was a native of Missouri. This Regionalist masterpiece by Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) includes a haystack, a cow, and an outhouse. It is a representation of an Ozark folk song, The Jealous Lover, but I doubt that the traditional lyrics refer to these extraneous elements. Okie Baroque is a term of derision applied to Regionalism in art, notwithstanding that the subject matter and the artist, too, generally operate at some distance from Oklahoma. OK, how does the painting make you feel? Dizzy? To me, it's "merely humorous." Obviously, the musicians in the scene conjure the scene, so we have to account for recursion in the composition. El Greco distortion allows some dramatic distance from the action; there's no transubstantiation expected; the painting merely epitomizes country music or the act of making it, anyway. The characters are paired. The intensity of the villain is mirrored in the harmonica player. The singer expresses the heroine's expression. All is done in the deadpan style traditional to folk-music performance. The performers distort a facsimile of reality without expecting to be caught in it. They depend on their audience to differentiate between story built of substance and reality from which substance is borrowed. Benton's figures are foreshortened as though you were to view them from below. To keep them from looming out of the frame, he uniformly positions the foreground behind a sill that the viewer must strain to see over. Note: The harmonica player is assumed to be Jackson Pollock. Discussion question: What is the mood of the cow?
	Statue (1972), Praying Hands by Jack Dawson, Webb City, MO American flags flapped in the breeze Thursday at King Jack Park as about four dozen people clasped hands in circles of prayer. They prayed for unity. They prayed for guidance for national and local governmental leaders. And, they prayed for continued religious freedom and Christian reform. Similar prayers echoed throughout area towns at breakfast meetings and ceremonies in observance of the National Day of Prayer. This is the 54th year that the observance, established by an act of Congress, has folded the hands of participants on the first Thursday in May. "I'm all for this program," said Betty Lamb, of Webb City. "I think it's needful. I think unless we turn and hold up prayer before the Lord, our nation is in peril." Webb Citians have an appropriate site for the ceremony: at the foot of a hill where the Praying Hands statue was erected 34 years ago. The creator of the sculpture, Jack Dawson, and his wife, Nancy, were speakers at Thursday's event. "It's not a political statement but a spiritual one," Dawson said of the statue. He said the folded hands that stand along Missouri Highway 171 represent a silent reminder every day that "humility before a living God is where we find that spiritual peace." The United States was founded on a number of precepts that include the right to religious freedom. The Founding Fathers relied on Christianity to underpin the nation they created, Dawson said. He quoted George Washington as having said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." [Woodin, Debby. "'One Nation Under God': Area Christians Pray for Nation as Part of Observance." Joplin Globe n. seq. (6 May 2005): 9 pars. Online. Internet. 16 Aug. 2005. Available http://www.joplinglobe.com/siteSearch/ apstorysection/local_story_098104212.]
	Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS In the southeast corner of Kansas, stands this remnant of strip mining for coal. This shovel was parked on the verge of its last dig and decommissioned in 1974 after running day and night for eleven years. Its motors and hydraulic pumps were removed. In 1985, stairways were installed for tourist access. Because of insurance-company concerns, patrons are no longer permitted on the boom. The model 1850-B, built by Bucyrus-Erie, is still the second largest electric shovel in the world. It ran off the end of a giant extension cord. Its final monthly electric bill was $27 thousand. [Big Brutus: Explore it! West Mineral, KS: Big Brutus, Inc., n.d.]
	Mining Promo Patches, West Mineral, KS
	Operator's Cabin, Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS The operator's cab was the nerve center of the shovel. The breakroom and operator's cab were air conditioned. The monogram worked in the linoleum tile stands for Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining Company. P&M paid $6.5 million for Big Brutus in 1962.
	Bucket, Big Brutus, West Mineral, KS The shovel required a running crew of only three: operator, oiler, and groundman. It was used to remove overburden from coal seams. The operator's cab projects from the corner of the house. The bucket held 135 tons or more. There are stunt pictures of workers' parking a pickup inside.
	Eisler Market (1925), Riverton, KS The store was built in 1925. It was originally a Standard Station. By 1932, a Y Not Eat Barbecue had been added. The Eisler family bought the location in 1973 and opened a market and deli. The old building is well maintained and still contains the original pressed tin ceiling. ["Riverton." Kansas Route 66 Association n. seq. (28 June 2005): 7 pars. Online. Internet. 17 Aug. 2005. Available http://ksrt66association.prnservices.net/ Riverton.html.]
	Eisler Market, Riverton, KS Stop here for all your Route 66 needs. Many travelers find the porch a convenient and pleasant place to hog down a sandwich and soft drink.
	Heyburn Lake, Kellyville, OK Heyburn Lake was named after the community of Heyburn, a post office from 1911-1922, located near the place where the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad crossed Polecat Creek. The project is located on Creek lands in the former Indian Territory. Many of the towns surrounding the project began as trading posts and developed as settlements as the railroads moved west. [United States. Army. Corps of Engineers. "Heyburn Lake Oklahoma." Corps Lakes Gateway n. seq. (n.d.): 11 pars. Online. Internet. 17 Aug. 2005. Available http://corpslakes.usace.army.mil/ visitors/visitors.cfm.]
	45th Infantry Division Museum If you are into ordnance, be sure to visit the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City, OK. Outdoors, there's a pasture with lots of tanks, cannon, and aircraft. Indoors, there are guns, guns, and more guns. The history of firearms in warfare is pretty well covered with not one but several examples from every major conflict. Annotated displays compare and contrast the various specimens.
["Tribes and Nations of Oklahoma and Indian Territories." OKGenWeb n. seq. (6 June 2003): n. pag. Online. Internet. 18 Aug. 2005. Available http://www.rootsweb.com/ ~okgenweb/maps/itmap.htm.]	Tribes and Nations of Oklahoma and Indian Territories Several exhibits at the 45th Infantry Division Museum deal with Indian Wars. One includes a map like this, showing where indigenous nations of the East were relocated during removal to the Indian Territory. I always imagined Oklahoma's being settled in a single land run starting at the Arkansas border. In fact, there were several rushes and lotteries over the years as tribal and unassigned lands were divvied up.

Second State of the Union Address (Excerpt)

"I'm depending on you old men to be a steadying influence for the replacements." [Mauldin, Bill. "Selected World War II Cartoons." Stars and Stripes n. seq. (23 Jan. 2003): n. pag. Online. Internet. 17 Aug. 2005. Available http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/ article.asp?section=104& article=12234&archive=true .]	Bill Mauldin, 45th Infantry The 45th Infantry Division Museum houses a collection of original World War II cartoons contributed by Bill Mauldin, the artist, who served with the 45th Infantry in Italy. He created Willie and Joe, an Oklahoma Redneck and an Oklahoma Choctaw, a couple of grunts who endured the rigors of war up front together. They continually flirted with insubordination. Mauldin's drawings were always controversial. He had enemies in high places, but he had supporters, too, who must've felt he contributed to morale. Perhaps they were not so afraid of a little subversion as we would be, or perhaps they were and found it necessary to provide Mauldin's detractors a lightning rod to discharge their frustration. In this cartoon, Willie and Joe demonstrate that pop-psych manipulation is a two-way street. Overseas, Mauldin's work recorded war from a unique perspective; he drew war showing humor in the face of misery. By November of 1943 his cartoons were being carried in the Stars and Stripes, and by February of 1944 he was detached from the division and assigned to the Stars and Stripes for the duration of the war. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for editorial cartooning, and the army honored his work by presenting him with the Legion of Merit. ["Museum Exhibits." 45th Infantry Division Museum n. seq. (21 May 2004): n. pag. Online. Internet. 17 Aug. 2005. Available http://www.45thdivisionmuseum.com/Exhibits/.]
	Gas Mask, 45th Infantry Division Museum
	OKC National Memorial On 19 Apr 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco, TX, massacre, the 220th anniversary of the Revolutionary War Battle of Lexington and Concord, MA, and four years and a day before the Columbine High School, CO, massacre, a truck bomb set by Timothy McVeigh collapsed the facade of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK. 168 people were killed and over 800 injured. The Oklahoma City National Memorial commemorating the event was dedicated in 2000.
	OKC National Memorial The reflecting pool occupies a portion of the ground where the Murrah Building stood. The black Gates of Time at either end are labeled 9:01 and 9:03, a minute before and a minute after the time of the blast. This is about how long it took the American public to decide there is a perennial threat of domestic terrorism. Specifications developed for new Federal buildings in years since now require street-level barriers and setbacks.
	OKC National Memorial Like an abstract set for the Thornton Wilder play, the Field of Empty Chairs holds 168 illuminated stools, each named for a victim of the bombing. 19 are tiny. These represent the children who were killed while attending day care in the building. "If I had known there was an entire day-care center, it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage," McVeigh said, according to an ABC interview. ["FBI: McVeigh Knew Children Would be Killed in OKC Blast." CNN.com/US N. seq. (28 Mar. 2001): 24 pars. Online. Internet. 19 Aug. 2005. Available http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/03/29/mcveigh.book.01/.]