The “owned by” includes Dwight Eisenhower (bottom of left-hand column). In a quick search, I didn’t find any background on this plaque in Chesterton, Indiana, which itself is more than one inch square — and worse for the wear.
Standing tall on Route 66 in Wilmington, Illinois, the Gemini Giant welcomes you to the Launching Pad. The giant is one of the Muffler Men listed at Roadside America (many with photos). You can learn “How to Identify Muffler Men.” Accept nothing less than the real deal.
I’m devastated — DEVASTATED — to find out only now there are Muffler Men variations in Springfield (here’s one and here’s the other), Peoria (Vanna Whitewall!), and Metropolis. I missed them all on visits to those towns.
But I’ll always have the Gemini Giant in Wilmington.
Not a Muffler Man, but I saw Superman in Metropolis.
And even Clark Kent, who’s more two dimensional than I expected.
On April 23, 2017, during a trip to Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in search of spring wildflowers, J. detoured us briefly to see H. A. Rathje’s Peotone Mill. Looking like a big-nosed woman with arms akimbo, the Peotone Mill sits in what has become a residential neighborhood.
While I was walking toward the rail overpass at 55th and Lake Park Avenue, someone coming from the opposite direction said something about “stuck” to his companion. This proved to be a Budget rental truck, the top of which was scraping the underside of the overpass (clearance 11’10”). As a University of Chicago police car blocked entry from the west, two young men sat on the ground, one on each side of the truck, probably trying to let air out of the tires.
It was at least 20 minutes later that I realized I should have taken a photo of the wedged-in vehicle. And too bad there’s no photo of the driver’s face when he realized what he’d done. One of the first rules of driving a high-profile vehicle: Know your clearance and plan your route!
This presidential candidates version of the implicit association test is discussed at The Edge. I recall completing a similar test about racism (I came out pretty well, that is, I didn’t associate race with the negative, if I correctly remember the way it worked).
This IAT is interesting because I made more “mistakes” this time. I am not negative toward Clinton as much as toward the idea of a person with a familiar name in the office of U.S. president; it smacks too much of exclusivity.
As for where McCain and Huckabee fall, I can’t explain that.