Listing Through Life

For many years, Starline Manufacturing in Harvard, Illinois produced sleds, wagons and a variety of farm equipment. The factory is long gone, but the building, once derelict, has been turned into a showcase for artists, with galleries and exhibit space throughout.

Every 4th Friday evening (for much of the year), there is an “art event.” Local artists show their works in a small competition, musicians perform live and the galleries are open.

Our friends invited us along. We’re always up for adventure and we were tired of being trapped in our house by a week of miserably hot weather. Five dollars bought us admission, all we could eat pulled pork, mac salad and crab salad, and a chance to see the art and vote for the pieces we liked best. There weren’t a lot of pieces on display — maybe 30 paintings and 30 photos — but we took our time and placed our votes and then wandered through the galleries and hung out and people-watched.

As I strolled about I saw this sign and I walked up to the table and asked this woman how this worked and she said I give her my name and a topic and she writes an atrocious poem and so I thought about it and decided that just because I didn’t have the red chair that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a poem about the red chair and so I showed her this photo on my phone and twenty minutes later I had this poem and I said you have quite the talent there and I tipped her two bucks and she smiled.

“I didn’t invite him. I thought you invited him.”

“Not me. I’ve never seen the guy before.”

“Well, he’s here. Somebody must have invited him.”

Millie and Lucy are litter-mates but have decidedly different personalities.

Millie just throws herself — at people, at toys, at adventures. She’s incredibly fast and rarely stops moving. She likes to be petted but she doesn’t like to stay still. She’s happy to be picked up but almost immediately thinks of something she’d be happier doing. She explores — the first to figure out how to get atop the bookcases, the first to discover where all the dangling cords are located, the first to charge down the stairs.

Lucy is more reserved. She’ll wait a bit before she comes to see me. Most of the time she’s not that crazy about being held, but once in a while she’ll be content to lay in my arms for extended periods. She’s playful, but in a more controlled way. She’s also a klutz, falling off chairs, running into things. I’ve still not seen her on top of the bookcases.

They don’t look much alike either. Apart from the differences in color and pattern, Millie is longer and sleeker, with shorter hair. Lucy is a bit shorter, a bit taller, with longer, thicker hair.

They are so different that I began to have my suspicions. I whispered them to my wife and wondered. But when the vet told us she suspected the same thing it became a near certainty.

Now I dread the day when I’m going to have to sit the two of them down and tell them that they probably have different fathers. Which means, my dear kittens, that your mother was promiscuous!

One day, one of them managed to step on the remote and turn the TV on. When my wife went into the room to check on the noise, they were sitting in the La-Z-Boy watching the screen.

Coon’s Candy is in Harpster, Ohio. We stopped in on a whim and ended up spending too much money on candy and candles and … stuff.

I asked the guy behind the counter if I could take a red chair photo. He said sure, but that I needed something to sit in the chair — I asked if I could borrow a sock monkey off the shelf.

I saw a hot-air balloon mobile made of tin and a funky woodpecker toy. I told my wife she had to do an intervention because if she didn’t stop me, I would buy them both. She took one look and said, “You have to buy them.” Here’s the woodpecker in slow motion for your viewing enjoyment.

I had four hours to kill in Columbus, Ohio, so I decided to go to the zoo.

The park was filled with moms with kids, young couples, and kids on field trips. I felt a little lonely in the crowd.

The zoo covers a lot of land and is visually impressive. I walked a long way before I realized I wasn’t seeing many animals. There were rides and fountains and food stands and face-painting booths and statues of animals, but the animals themselves were hard to find. Instead of a lot of different species, they have large displays for the more popular animals. I strolled through fairly quickly — I got in almost six miles — and looked for red chair photo ops and places where there were no crowds.

There were trout in the water in the polar bear enclosure. This guy was paddling about and caught one of them. Below the tank, there was a place where you could stand and look up at the bears, but by the time I got down there, all three of the bears were out of the water.

Advertisements for the zoo feature “sniff ports” where visitors and bears can smell each other. I saw the port in the polar and brown bear enclosures, but no bears were interested.

The brown bears were close to the glass, but so was a huge group of kids in matching T-shirts. I managed to squeeze in and get this photo. The bear wasn’t really looking at the chair — I just timed it right.

Shortly thereafter, the bears walked the length of their enclosure to a cave (which also had a window). I snapped this photo, but then the crowd followed, and I didn’t bother sticking around.

The Africa area was mostly just a huge enclosure where zebras and antelope and giraffes were mixed together. It looked impressive, but the animals were a long way away. I could have gotten closer if I’d paid a couple bucks to feed a giraffe, but the line was long so I didn’t.

Here’s one of those stretches — this one in the Africa area — where there was “design” stuff relating to the theme but no animals. There were bicycles all over “Africa.” I guess I’m supposed to believe that the natives ride, or at least park, bicycles everywhere they go.

It was hot by this time — in the low 80s. Most of the animals were sleeping in shady corners or somewhere out of sight. I didn’t bother taking photos of sleeping moose, pronghorns, wolverines, etc. because they looked like the piles of fur you see in every zoo. The wolverine enclosure was impressive, however. You walk in this cabin and find a bed and dresser and other furnishings. The back  is a wall of glass, and that’s where the wolverine is.

There were three or four aviaries. I hoped for some red chair photos but they were packed with teens in zoo T-shirts who wandered over and stood next to anyone who stopped to look. In one of them, colorful parrots flew down and landed on visitors’ hands to sip nectar out of a cup. The cups cost $2, so I didn’t bother them, and the parrots didn’t bother with me. I was watched very suspiciously and didn’t even attempt to get one to land on the chair.

In the Congo area they had a boat ride called Zoombeezie Bay with poorly-done animatronic pirates, making the zoo feel very much like a Disney-wannabe.

Both these gorillas were looking at the chair, but they weren’t impressed.

There were kangaroos and flamingos and penguins and all, but I mostly walked by without stopping. I did ask one young woman in the reptile house if I could get a photo of the chair with the corn snake she was holding.

In short, it was a pleasant, but expensive, variation on my daily five-mile walk.