Listing Through Life

Last Tuesday, I went on the annual trip with coworkers. It was a short trip this time, just down to Kane County to the Fabyan Estate.

Riverbank was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan, who made millions in the textile industry. They bought a smallish L-shaped home on the Fox River in 1905 and had architect Frank Lloyd Wright expand and redesign it. By the time they were finished, the Fabyans had accumulated over 300 acres and filled them with gardens, a working farm, greenhouses, a private zoo, and a windmill. They also built a small lighthouse on an island in the Fox River. The authorities insisted that it be a working lighthouse, so George (who thought this was silly) built it without a door. (I’m not sure what that proved, but that’s what we were told.)

George died in 1936 and his wife three years later. The Kane County Forest Preserve purchased most of their estate, and restoration is still underway.

We got a tour of the villa, which is set up more like a museum than a home, with cases full of stuff that the Fabyans collected. The Wright influence is clearly seen throughout. Hold your cursor over the photos for more information.

After touring the house, we switched tour guides and went through the Japanese gardens. Our guide explained that the garden was laid out to give enlightenment. Before I entered, I stopped and pondered how unenlightened I currently was so I could compare later.

After we were finished with the garden, we were told three things:

1. We could wander around and see whatever else there was to see.
2. We were in no hurry.
3. We had to be back at the vans in 10 minutes.

That gave me, my wife and a few others just enough time to dash down to the river and cross the bridge to the island to see the lighthouse, which didn’t look like it would be around much longer.

From the Fabyan estate, we went to Sweet Tomatoes, a restaurant that features a salad bar the length of three football fields.

Just for the record — I didn’t feel any more enlightened, but on my death bed, I will receive total consciousness. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

We got back to our campsite a little before noon. The standing water was gone but the ground was still muddy. After a quick lunch, we set up camp in what dryish spots we could find. Allow me to say a quick word about camping at an Illinois State Park. Don’t. To begin with, it takes about an hour to get checked in. And then there’s the bathroom facilities. Our section of the campgrounds had about 50 spaces, most of them filled, and one bathhouse, most of the time closed. And so what did we have? Four porta-potties, lined up next to each other and located about 150 yards from our campsite. Delightful.

Around 3:00, I went hiking with my wife and several friends. We walked up St. Louis Canyon to see the most significant waterfall in Illinois. Amazingly, although I only live two hours away, I don’t think I’ve ever been there before. It was impressive, although it was tough to see around the dozens of other people who kept wandering where I wanted to take pictures.

Two views of St. Louis Falls

After 20 minutes or so, we hiked back up out of the canyon and took another trail along the ridge to the lodge.

On Friday, I picked up a brochure that mentioned the many chainsaw carvings that can be seen around the lodge. These included Bears Searching for Honey Near the Stop Sign, which we found, and St. Francis, the Totem Pole, which we didn’t. I also found the one of Abraham Lincoln and took my photo with him.

We had to wend our way through a crowd of people dressed up for a wedding. (There are two kinds of people in the world …)

Since we’d gone this far, we decided to walk down a truckload of stairs, across a short valley and up another truckload of stairs to the top of Starved Rock itself. The name of the rock comes from a mostly-legendary battle that may have taken place in 1769. Supposedly, a member of the Illiniwek people murdered Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa. The Ottawa and their allies, the Potawatomie, seeking revenge, besieged the Illiniwek, who had taken refuge on the rock, and starved them out. The shot on the left shows the rock as seen from the lodge. The other two shots were taken from the top of the rock. In the one on the right, you can see the visitor center where we spent much of the previous afternoon in the rain.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and eating and laughing around the campfire.

After spending an afternoon seeing the sights in the greater Starved Rock area in the rain, we convoyed to the nearby town of Ladd, Illinois for supper at Rip’s Tavern. I was told that they have THE BEST fried chicken I’ve ever eaten and that a trip to Rip’s (or is it R.I.P.?) is a MUST anytime I’m out Utica-way.

Now I’m always up for good food and hanging with friends, but to me, hearing about the best fried chicken I’ve ever eaten is about as exciting as hearing about the most exciting hangnail I’ve ever seen. It’s not that I can’t stand chicken — I enjoy a good piece of chicken cordon bleu as much as the next guy (the lightly breaded stuff in which the chicken basically serves as bread for a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich). I’ve even ordered a boneless chicken sandwich upon occasion. But fried chicken on the bone just isn’t civilized. There’s the grease to begin with, but beyond that, the thought of chewing my way around bones and sinews and blood vessels and fat and gristle … But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was told that we had to get to Rip’s just as it opened or we’d have to stand in line for hours. We arrived just after 4:30 and the place was already half filled. As near as I could tell, the menu offered two choices — a quarter dark meat or a quarter light meat. I ordered light. We shared several pitchers of creamy root beer and a pile of fried mushrooms while we waited for our food

They make fried chicken, fried mushrooms, fried potatoes and — apparently having run out of things to fry — fried nothing. This last item is known as “crispies.” It’s a bowl of tiny bits of fried breading that I was told to pile on a dill pickle slice. Our waitress carried all nine orders of chicken out at one time. Mine was plopped in front of me — a hunk of grease about the size of my head, with fries on the side.

It was about this time that I noticed a lack of silverware. Are you kidding me?!? My friends were already neck deep into their chicken, so I figured I better get started. I pulled on a protruding piece and yanked out a bone. Already I had enough grease on my fingers to fry another whole chicken in, so I used my first napkin. Another pull, another bone, another napkin. Another … And so it went. I soon had a large pile of bones on one side and a large pile of crumpled, greasy napkins on the other. And I had yet to take a bite of chicken. I was increasingly become an object of ridicule among my less-civilized companions. There were no more protruding parts to pull on. I just had a wad of chicken the size of a softball and there was nothing to do about it but thrust my fingers into it and pull. That’s when a friend thought to tell me that the meat was hot.

I finally managed to separate a hunk of meat the size of my fist. I took a bite — it tasted like chicken. There was nothing for me to do at this point but to proceed with the determination of a marathon runner. I pulled and ripped and tore and bit and soon managed to down most of it. There almost weren’t enough napkins. When I’d eaten enough to be considered sociable, I pushed my plate aside. Another friend couldn’t take it. He reached over and picked at the skeleton until there wasn’t a bit of meat remaining.

A line was indeed forming in the entry, so we paid (about $9/person including tip) and left. (In spite of everything, I’d had a riot.) We walked up the street in the rain to Torri’s Ice Cream. The building has been around a long time. The walls and ceiling were covered in pressed tin and the fixtures were hardwood. I ordered a Boston shake, something I’d never heard of before. It’s a sundae built on top of a shake. I got a chocolate shake with raspberry ripple ice cream. It was tasty, and, best thing of all, they gave us utensils.

If you don’t mind dismembering fowl with your bare hands and wading though puddles of grease, and if you find yourself anywhere near Ladd, Illinois, you would probably enjoy Rip’s chicken. My wife and daughter did. But don’t forget to bring your own supply of napkins.

Last Friday was solid proof that, with the right group of people, it doesn’t matter a bit that absolutely nothing goes the way you plan it.

The plan was for my wife, daughter and me to drive down to Krispy Kreme on Randall Road for breakfast. We were then planning on stopping in Ottawa to see the Lincoln-Douglas debate site. Then we would head to Starved Rock State Park where we would meet some friends, set up camp and spend the day hiking and cooking over a campfire.

The first clue that things weren’t going to be entirely normal — Krispy Kreme was closed (as in boarded up and signage removed) and had been for some time. We settled for a nearby Panera.

When we left Panera, it was raining. The rain continued as we drove down to Ottawa. We found the park where the debate took place, but we didn’t get out of the car. We didn’t even pull over. It was too wet.

We got to Starved Rock just as our friends arrived. We found our campsite — and two inches of standing water where the tents were supposed to go. We set up a canopy over the picnic table to allow it to dry off, but there wasn’t room for us to stand around the sides. So … for about 45 minutes until the rest of our friends showed up, we stood under the canopy ON the picnic table. (There was rain and mud and mosquitoes, but even so none of us were at all depressed. In fact, we all found it rather funny.)

When others arrived, there wasn’t room on the table, so we gave up on keeping it dry and moved the canopy to the lone spot of high ground in the campsite and discussed the future. We decided we weren’t going home, no matter what. But while we didn’t mind camping in the rain, setting up camp in the rain was a different story. So now what?

We called a friend whose parents own a farm not far from Starved Rock. It occurred to us that it might be amusing to stay overnight in the barn. It might have been amusing indeed, if we had done it, but as the barn was filled with cows …

It was getting near lunchtime, and we still hadn’t come up with Plan B. We drove to the park lodge and bought hot dogs and such in the gift shop. There were three small tables in the room, and we occupied two of them and most of the chairs from the third. We considered renting a cabin or room in the park, but they were all filled up. We considered driving an hour or so and crashing my sister’s house, but she didn’t sound over-enthusiastic when we called and anyway, that didn’t seem much like camping. Then one of our friends saved the day. Her grandparents live in a small town a short way north of Starved Rock. The room above their garage has been turned into a party room, and they were perfectly willing to let us stay there. Crisis averted.

It was still raining hard. We’d solved the problem of what to do with the night, but we still had to decide what to do with the afternoon. We moved out of the gift shop into the lobby and tried to decide what to do next. My wife bought some fudge and we munched on that as we chatted.

As nothing terribly exciting came to mind, I suggested we drive north across the river to the Illinois Waterway Visitor Center, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Museum overlooking Starved Rock Lock and Dam. The Illinois River was above flood level, so no traffic was moving through the locks. (We were told the water was too high for the towboats to pass under the bridges.)

We stood under the overhang on the deck and watched the rain. An occasional Great Blue Heron or Double-crested Cormorant flew by and fish were constantly leaping high above the water in the lock. In the panorama below, Starved Rock is the outcropping across the river on the right.

A busload of school children who were there when we arrived cleared out and we had the museum to ourselves. Even the guy who worked there disappeared into the basement, never to be seen again. The main feature was the pilot house from a towboat that sank in a flood. This confused us a bit, because we had always thought that boats were supposed to stay on top of the water, no matter how deep it got.

I spotted two floats used to keep barges from smashing into the side of the locks. I had my photo taken lifting them as though they were heavy, but my friend went one better. He sat on one and bounced his way across the front of the museum. Even this didn’t bring the guy up from the basement. We engaged in all the silliness we could think of, then left in search of other adventures.

Our next stop was Mix’s Trading Post, in Utica, billed as a purveyor of “Indian Artifacts.” We thought that artifact implied some degree of authenticity, but that was decidedly not the case. We had fun anyway, making fun of stuff on display, playing with a four-foot Scottish claymore (also not authentic — it was priced at $80 and was very tempting to several of us) and befriending a pregnant cat.

The place was decidedly bizarre and the collection of goods for sale was decidedly eclectic. We had carpe-ed the snot out of the diem, and it was time for supper.