November 14 -- Eau Claire and the Car Show There

I arrived at my Aunt Marion’s in Eau Claire about 10:00 p.m. The drive from Oshkosh took close to four hours, mostly on secondary roads. In Wisconsin, at night, it can get VERY DARK indeed!

Marion provided a warm welcome, although she was hobbling around. Earlier that day, she had wrenched her left knee badly.

At least the timing of the accident was felicitous, because I was able to drive Marion to the doctor Tuesday morning – something she could not do because her 15 year-old Saturn is a stick shift. Marion was particularly frustrated because she could have driven herself in an automatic car; she had wanted to replace her Saturn with an auto shift vehicle for a couple of years, but just never got around to it.

After x-rays, examination, etc., we went to Borders and made a list of about seven inexpensive new economy cars with automatic transmissions. Marion and I then eyeballed six of the cars at dealerships, and Marion test-drove four of them. We stopped at Starbucks to collect ourselves after the last test-drive, and Marion (collecting herself, left) concluded that she liked the Honda Civic she drove best. In fact, she said she was particularly fond of the white one, with a fawn interior, that we test drove.

One phone call, a return trip to the dealer, and about 45 minutes of negotiation later, Marion was the proud parent of the white Civic she’d driven earlier in the day (upper picture). Not only is it a very nice car, but it does things I discovered her Saturn (lower picture) doesn’t do any longer, like steer, break, and illuminate the road ahead when the headlamps are on.

Congratulations, Marion!

In addition to all the car excitement, Marion and I had a great chance just to visit. I had not been to her place in Eau Claire since at least 2000, and it was nice to get back.

P.S. After we concluded the deal, the business manager at the Honda store asked if I was from the West Coast. He told us no one with my shoes could have been from Wisconsin or Minnesota. Eh? What do you think?

November 13 -- Airventure at Oshkosh

I left Chicago early in the morning in order to make it to the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Airventure Museum in Oshkosh, and then on my Aunt Marion’s place in Eau Clair, Wisconsin before too late. Take a look at the beautiful Windy City Sunrise from the bedroom of Ann’s apartment.

The night before, coming back from dinner in Evanston, I got a parking spot that no one else could fit into. Going back out to the car in the early morning, I was reminded of the practicality of driving a Mini in the city . . .



It was a beautiful, sunny drive: first, I-94 past Kenosha up to Milwaukee, where the highway passes the Harley Davidson headquarters and a large Mercury Marine facility. After Milwaukee, I took Rt. 41 toward Fond du Lac and Green Bay. As the road wound up toward Oshkosh, there was some wonderful Wisconsin farmland to see.
The EAA Aviation Center is the site each summer of one of the country’s great air shows. The museum is a gorgeous new building, with several big halls featuring historical aircraft as well as modern ones. It calls itself a “living museum.”


One of the most fascinating exhibits is a replica of the first aircraft designed to fly commercial passengers up into space, Spaceship One. The exhibit is accompanied by an action footage-packed video in which the test pilot who first took it up into space recalls the flight. As the video plays, the aircraft fins and tail move up and down as they did during the real flight.

A real highlight is the Eagle Hanger, which houses a collection of WWII aircraft, many of them in flyable condition.

These include a Spitfire, the best British fighter of the war – this example saw combat; a Mustang, the best American fighter of the war; a B-25, the twin engine bomber that Jimmy Doolittle flew off an aircraft carrier to lead a daring, early-war raid on Tokyo. There were also great examples of the DeHavilland Mosquito, a famous British wooden fighter-bomber and a P-51 Lightning, among others. The EAA’s best known plane, a B-17 Flying Fortress, which was one of the most famous bombers of WWII, was out on tour.

My favorite in the whole museum was a blue Bugatti sport racing plane. It was built on the second floor of a furniture factory in Paris in 1938 – 1940.
Because of its advanced design, the not-yet-complete plane was hidden in the barn in the French countryside when the German armies approached Paris. The beautiful plane never took flight and remained in the barn for 30 years before being sold to an American auto enthusiast. It came to the EAA, where it was restored, in the late 1990’s. Had someone told me that this was a 2007 design, and currently one of the most advanced in the world, I wouldn’t have doubted it.

November 12 -- Studebaker

Studebakers were the cars of the 1950’s that, as much as any others, are responsible for Americans’ images of cars of that era looking like rockets. There were other makes of that era that had more extravagant fins and wilder chrome, but nothing looked quite like a Studebaker when it was driving toward you.

The family story is fun: successful wagon makers since arriving in the U.S. from Germany in the Nineteenth Century, the Studebakers nearly missed the boat at the dawn of America’s automobile age. The family patriarch, J.M., found gasoline-powered cars to be “clumsy, dangerous, noisy brutes which stink to high heave, break down at the worst possible moment, and are a public nuisance.” One noteworthy exhibit is the carriage (there are a lot of them at the museum) that carried Lincoln to Ford’s Theater the night of his unfortunate encounter with James Wilkes Booth. It was being restored when I was there, so I couldn’t get any pictures.

Back to cars, the younger members of the family persuaded J.M. to get into the 20th Century, and the company rapidly became a successful automaker – at one point in the ‘teens becoming the third largest American manufacturer behind Ford and Buick.

The company weathered ups and downs, went into receivership during the 1930’s. The head of the company was so distressed that he shot himself in the heart. The firm emerged from bankruptcy later in the decade with a line of successful mid-priced automobiles. Studebaker had always used solid, strong sounding names for its models: President; Commander; Dictator (the last ditched at the end of the ‘30’s).

During the WWII years, Studebaker manufactured many of the trucks and other vehicles that the U.S., Britain and Russia relied on. In fact, the name “Studebaker” is apparently still used as the generic name for a certain type of truck in Russian. (Does anyone know if this is accurate?)

After the war, Studebaker hired Raymond Loewy to design the company’s products. It also was early to manufacture “compact” cars, which were popular with Americans in the 1960’s. As a smaller car company that made reasonably priced cars, Studebaker never fully found its footing, however especially once Ford and General Motors came out with competitive smaller models. Studebaker’s South Bend plant shut down in 1963, and the company folded a few years later.

One item worthy of note is that the museum has a nice small collection of perfect condition muscle cars – a Mustang, Camaro, GTO, a really nice Plymouth Road Runner (in the picture) and even an AMC SC Rambler.

November 12 -- A South Bend Surprise

Folks in both Auburn and Dayton had recommended the Studebaker Museum, so I took a day to go about an hour and a half around Lake Michigan to South Bend, Indiana, best known as the home of Notre Dame.

I arrived expecting only to see the Studebaker Museum. I discovered, instead, that it is located in a brand new building right next the Northern Indiana Center for History. And good though the car part was, the Center had something to offer that was even more fascinating.

This special highlight was a guided tour of Copshaholm, an 1898 mansion built by the industrial magnate family, the Olivers. They were a Scots family that arrived in northern Indiana virtually penniless. They worked their way out of the sweatshops to make a massive fortune, largely the result of Pappy Oliver’s invention of a type of plow to which dirt didn’t stick! (Who knew that dirt EVER stuck to plows? Apparently, before the Oliver invention, farmers spent half their time scraping their plows just in order to make them work.)

Until 1977, the mansion was occupied by only two generations of family members. They had moved into it when it was built and kept it in pristine condition. After they died, Copshaholm was given to the Center by the third generation of Olivers.

What makes the mansion so unusual, and perhaps unique, is that it was donated with all its contents: furniture, furnishings, silverware, art; even the clothes in the closets. In addition, few changes were made to the interior or exterior of the place in all the time the Olivers owned it. As a result, what you see is a genuine late-19th Century mansion inside and out.

I can’t do the building justice. It reminded me a little bit of a mini-Biltmore – the Olivers were perhaps super-magnates and the Vanderbilts uber-magnates. The interior was remarkable: beautiful impressionist paintings; hand-painted wallpaper; heavy, ornate woodwork, Tiffany windows. And all sorts of cool contraptions (a steam/convection heating system, a centralized vacuum suction system); furniture from all over the world. Wow! The museum link has only one inside pic, and we weren’t allowed to take snaps when we were inside. You just have to go see it in person, I guess!

After a several-hour tour in the house, the docent took us to a typical worker’s house near the museum. It has been reconditioned to show what it would have looked like with a Polish immigrant family living in it. Also amazing.

I next went to the Studebaker Museum, where there was also an engaging family story . . .

November 11 -- The Meanest Cat in Old Chicago Town!

Sunday was an awesome family and friends day!


My uncle Greg, his wife Elizabeth and their son Max picked me up at 8:45 a.m. outside Greg’s Mom’s condo, which she offered to let me stay in. (Thank you, Ann!) We drove through the part of Chicago that has fabulous old theaters, and which was America’s film Mecca before Hollywood. We then had breakfast with my high school friend Paul and his partner, both of whom are university professors here in Chicago. (G, E, P, R and Max have a meal together weekly.) I had not seen Paul in at least four years and Rob in even longer. Small world: Greg and Paul met at a Halloween party here in Chicago some years ago, after I’d been out of touch with Paul for at least 10 years. They have been friends ever since, and that’s how I reconnected with Paul.


BTW, on Monday, while driving back from South Bend, I heard a Chicago Public Radio piece on a new cookbook. All of a sudden, there was Paul was commenting on a pesto cheesecake recipe! I had thought his observations about the banana pancakes at The Golden Nugget were insightful. But really!

After breakfast, I spent the day hanging out with Greg, Elizabeth and Max, mostly in their great turn-of-the-century apartment. Max, just two years old, chatted merrily in English, and also revealed that he speaks Russian equally well. Greg, Max and I went to Borders and had a fun time reading books there, and Greg gave me an overview of the part of Uptown Chicago in which they live. While we were out and about, Elizabeth managed not only to do weekend office work, but also fixed the four of us a delicious Midwestern lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup.

Among other things, I learned about Spongebob Squarepants (just “Bob” to Max), and discovered that he is just as much fun for adults as for kids! Greg also gave me some preliminary exposure to Noam Chomsky – probably better just for adults – and we took a look at Groton School’s slick, slick, slick new website. Great time.

In the evening, after a full day of hanging-out (yes, Greg, Elizabeth and Max were very generous with their time and hospitality!), I met up with my old friend and colleague Jenn. We went to the apartment near Evanston that she shares with her partner, Geoff, own. There, the three of us (and their Boxer, Joey) had a great time catching up. Jenn prepared a delectable dinner of Asian spice barbequed pork tenderloin with mango citrus salsa, and sesame noodles. The recipes come from Rachel Ray’s “30 minute meals” on foodnetwork.com. I highly recommend them!

November 10 -- Gonna Keep You Waitin' on Dayton

I have not written up America's Packard Museum in Dayton yet. I'm going to post some more recent events and circle back to it later. Then I'll reveal which notorious foreign leader had an armored black limousine that is in the museum; and which famous American (a would-be president) drove a sportster on display and said it was the "fastest [he]'d ever gone on the ground."

Any guesses?

November 10 -- ACD Museum

Big day! Passed the 1000 miles mark (and then some), and was in three different towns: Auburn, Dayton and Chicago.



The first stop, the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, was an absolute gem -- both the facility and it’s contents. It had more than 120 cars, displayed in the former company headquarters. The HQ included a spectacular, meticulously restored art deco showroom. More than a hundred years of automotive history here, featuring some of the most beautiful, technologically advanced, and expensive cars from the first third of the Twentieth Century.

The cars were simply breathtaking. A critic might say that they were over-restored -- to a condition better than factory new. (In fact, the museum had an exhibit about this “problem,” with an example of an unrestored car in adequate working order.) But the cars were so gorgeous I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Indeed, the museum cars could really be seen as handcrafted sculpture, art, and historical artifacts. So beautiful were these machines, and so impeccably displayed, that one need not be an auto enthusiast to go crazy over them.

Some highlights were the first American production front-wheel drive car, an Cord L-29.

The remarkable FWD and unibody constructed Cord 810.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s vivid orange Cord L-29, along with a brace of gorgeous boat-tailed speedsters. Frank Lloyd Wright's car was manufactured in the museum building behind the ACD Museum -- now the National Automotive and Truck Museum of the United States.


And some unspeakably elegant Duesenbergs.


There were a number of non -ACD models. One of the visitor faves was a pretty, red 1950’s Mercedes-Benz 300SL.

I saw my first Pierce Arrow! Story goes, my grandfather had one, and when he went to war he entrusted it to the safekeeping of his brother. Needless to say, his brother totaled the car and my grandfather never had anything quite like it again. I remember a Chrysler New Yorker or Imperial, which had power breaks that my granddad found to strong, and an Audi 100.

A couple of fun facts I learned: getting your car custom painted in gaudy (or tasteful) colors was a $20 factory option back in the late ‘20’s. Also, with some of Auburn’s high-end models, the manufacturer provided a guaranty that the car had been driven more than100 m.p.h. prior to delivering it to its owner.


I definitely want to come back to this museum! Again and again if I can! It looks like there are three other museums that sound worth seeing in Auburn. A national car and truck museum right next to ACD, a “WW II Victory” museum, and the Kruse auto museum.

My next stop was Dayton, and the Packard Museum, which had a very different feel . . .