At the Urbana Sweet Corn Festival, I kept passing this corner booth blasting some intense blues and a sign advertising CDs for ten bucks a pop. I thought, that's good blues for a local guy. Aine and I both have been curious about finding some local jazz and blues around the CU. You know: find a bar with live music, get into the scene. So I figured a good place to start would be this guy: Deak Harp. Only, I never saw anyone in the booth and the CD basket sat empty.
At one point, ready to leave and counting out tickets to buy a gigantic bag of Kettle Corn destined grow old and stale in the cabinet, I passed the booth and saw him. Deak Harp. Local blues legend. He wore a black driving cap and a goatee and dark sunglasses. He looked like Ray Wylie Hubbard and Harry Connick, Jr. and someone's dad hitting mid-life crisis, all rolled into one. I thought this guy's got to be legit. I stomped over and shook my ten dollar bill at him.
"I want one of your CDs," I said.
"Aww, yeah," he nodded. "You musta heard me playin' earlier."
"No," I said, waggling my ten. "I heard the music on the speakers. I like it. I want to hear more."
He snatched the Hamilton from my butter-greased fingers.
"Oh, that ain't me on the speakers. That's me on the CD, though. You want me to autograph it?"
Well, we listened to him on the drive home. He's got a wailing harmonica and a thumping base and scratchy feedback and all the usual blues lyrics. Pretty much everything you could want from a blues album.
I looked him up, this Deak Harp. Ole Deak learned his stuff from James Cotton who played with Muddy Waters. He stamps this genealogy all over his website, so it must mean something. You know, I studied under David Gaines who wrote an article for Texas Monthly about Kinky Friedman. So you should watch me smoke a cigar. Deak makes it explicit that he's playing in the Chicago Blues Style. I've found this appellation lobbed about rather flippantly as though anyone knows that the hell it means.
In case you don't, here's the cheap tour of blue history:
Country Blues came first, in the early 1900s. They played this guitar-only blues all acoustic, mostly because they didn't have electricity. These are your folk-blues singers: Furry Lewis, Mississippi John Hurt.
Delta Blues flourished in the 1920s and 1930s as a regional form of Country Blues, specifically along the Mississippi River in the state of Mississippi. They figured out electricity by this time, so it's plugged in. It's most famous for its use of the harmonica and the slide guitar. Also called the Bottleneck Style because, well, they would stick a bottleneck on their finger to do it. Think: John Lee Hooker.
Chicago Blues emerged as an new take on Delta Blues style in the 1950s. They play this blues louder. A lot louder. They use amplifiers and additional instruments like the drums, the trumpet, the sax, and the piano. Chicago Blues boasts the crooners you're probably most familiar with: Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Reed... and our own Deak Harp.
All that said, ole Deak seemed like a swell guy and I would go hear him play sometime. I didn't get any pictures or video of him at the festival, but I found him on YouTube playing one of the songs on the album I bought:
You'll notice in the video he's playing three instruments at the same time which would have impressed me if I hadn't already seen Dick Van Dyke (of Danville) play seven:
I heard a story on the radio this morning: since the drought has wiped out Midwestern corn crops, rising prices of corn are putting the squeeze on ethanol producers and cattle farmers.
"The nation's corn crop won't meet expectations. Some predict it will be only two-thirds of what was planted in the spring."
"Since the start of the summer at least seven ethanol plants are now idle in states like Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana and Kansas. Including shutdowns from past years... about 10 percent of the nation's ethanol plants are now offline."
"Many farmers are having a difficult time affording the feed for their livestock. Earlier this month, President Obama announced the government would buy up to $170 million in surplus meat as many producers are being forced to sell off their herds to the slaughterhouse."
This past weekend, 50 thousand people converged on the tiny hamlet of Urbana to participate in the annual Urbana Sweet Corn Festival. Held every August in the shadow of the Champaign County Courthouse, this festival bids farewell to summer and welcomes the yearly immigration of more than 40 thousand UofI students.
Unlike Austin festivals, both parking and entry are free. Friday and Saturday nights feature local blues, rock, and jazz bands. We missed the Jazz band Friday night because I was busy getting second place at Poker Night. Which means I broke even. However, I didn't miss the Sweet Corn Festival Mascot: Corny.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, James, if Illinois produces mainly Field Corn, where did they get all this Sweet Corn. For most of the 40 year history of this festival, promoters imported Sweet Corn from a variety of locations all over the US (one of the largest being Colorado... go figure). For the past two years, all the Sweet Corn for the festival came from one source: Maddox Sweet Corn Farm.
Jim and Ted Maddox started their 80 acre farm 15 years ago near the small town of Warrensburg (pop. 1300). You'll find Warrensville about 10 miles northwest of Decatur. They pick their corn fresh every morning to distribute to individual customers, roadside purveyors, and big chains like Wal-Mart. They sold unshucked corn for 5 bucks a bag at the festival.
You can't go to a Sweet Corn Festival without partaking of Sweet Corn, so we headed straight to the corn booth to purchase a cooked and buttered ear. This corn was fresh. You want to know how fresh? Here's how fresh: you had to pick the silky corn hairs out of it as you ate it. That's how fresh.
The corn cost a buck an ear. If you ride your bike, they give you a voucher for a free ear. We drove. While Aine's old new bike still functions in a satisfactory manner, the new old bike demonstrates a reluctance to brake effectively. That's not entirely true. The front brakes work fine. The back brakes not at all. Riding the new old bike feels akin to playing Russian Roulette with a trebuchet.
Back to the corn. I found this video on YouTube about the Maddox Sweet Corn Farm. Watch this:
The Maddox Bros also operate a Christmas Tree Farm. Illinois has over 500 Christmas tree growers producing almost 150 thousand Christmas trees annually. In case you were curious.
The Good Book says man can't live on corn alone, so we rounded out our culinary experience with a slice of Shepherd's Pie Pizza from a booth run by an Urbana pizzeria, Manolo's. They top their Shepherd's Pie Pizza with ground beef, mashed potatoes, and (of course) corn.
This festival had all the classical festival elements, including street vendors...
a dunking booth...
and a petting zoo.
We didn't go into the petting zoo. It didn't feel right without Mr. Higgins. But word on the street had it that this one included an alpaca, a kangaroo, and a camel. We got a close up of the camel.
We spent most of our time near the One Community Together Stage. The community stage was sponsered by the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, named in honor of John Philip Sousa, best known for writing the Stars and Stripes Forever and dressing like a kaiser. The Sousa, an archival branch of the UofI library system, works to support and preserve music of all the cultures that make up our great Melting Pot.
First we saw a Korean Drum performance. They were rockin'.
We also watched a Balinese ensemble. One of the band members clearly doesn't look Balinese. But we forgave this small indiscretion when we heard them. The instruments look and sound incredible. It's not the type of music that gives you an adrenaline rush. I wouldn't listen to this while exercising. But, as Aine mentioned, the music seems to have no clear pattern, so it's amazing they were able to memorize these songs.
These next jokers took about half an hour to get their microphone cords straightened out. I almost got up and left. Then they played the best set of the day. They are Del Sur, a local band that plays South American Folk music. Check out the hats on these guys.
As they played, a little Incan abuelita got up and started dancing. She had to have been three feet tall, but layed down some of the most epic dance moves I've ever seen.
Of course, we caught it all on video:
The only thing better than a pickle surprise is a car show surprise. At the end of one of the four streets covered by festival goers, we happened upon the Urbana Motor Muster. This is one of the major annual events of the Illini Collector Car Club, an Urbana club started in 1961 by 6 guys who really liked old cars. This show had everything from a 20s era steam powered car to a hearse from the 80s.
The cars were parked close and they were surrounded by car enthusiasts, so it wasn't easy to get many good pictures. I did want to get one of Ainers posed in front of a car. Here she is standing next to a hardtop, two-door Oldsmobile 88 Holiday. I told her to give me a sexy pose. This is what I got:
The Muster featured a restored bus from the Champaign-Urbana City lines.
Started in the late 30s, this bus company hit its high water mark in 1958 with over 1 million passengers for the year. After Eisenhower invented the insterstate highway, though, everybody wanted a car and the company withered and died. The city government decided the bus line was too big to fail, so they funded a bail out, took over the line, and supported it with tax dollars. Now only socialists ride the bus.
The bus on display dated to 1958, the magic year. Unlike the 50s, anyone can sit where ever they want to on it now.
There were also, placed with an awkward proximity, booths for the Republicans...
and the Democrats.
I asked the Republicans if they hated women and poor people. They said no. I asked the Democrats if they hated America and freedom. They said no. So, that's settled. Turns out, they mainly disagree on things they have no control over, like the movement of the planets and the economy and cats. Also, they use different colors on their signs.
A little down the way from the pundits and the spitballers, we saw the folks from the Urbana Bible Education Center (located a few feet away in Lincoln Square Mall). They provide low cost Bibles and free Bible classes to the community. Low cost Bibles seem a bold move, given the competition: the Gideons still hand them out for free.
We also saw a military booth, set up in front of the Veteran's Memorial and operated by veterans.
I spent the most booth time at the Forest Preserve Booth, though I didn't get a picture of the nice ladies that worked there. Master Naturalists every one of them. Back when we lived in Austin, I considered taking the classes and becoming a Texas Master Naturalist. I asked her about the Illinois Master Naturalist program (modeled on the Texas program), but they only hold classes on Tuesday afternoon. I asked her if they have night and weekend classes for individuals who are gainfully employed. No. She said they had plenty of volunteer opportunities at which you are welcome whether you are a Master Naturalist or not. I had to explain to her that I don't want to make a difference. I just want to learn a bunch of stuff. But they do have a Tree ID course and several interesting programs.
This is their website:
http://www.ccfpd.org/
And these are examples of some of the events they host:
http://www.ccfpd.org/StarwatchesBatsCoyoteHike.pdf
Before we left, Ainers needed her obligatory bag of Kettle Corn.
Remember, Popcorn (Zhea mays everta) is a whole different animal from Sweet Corn (Zhea mays saccharata). Over 300 Illinois farms produce Popcorn, placing Illinois in 3rd place among Popcorn Producing States (Nebraska gets 1st place).
In 2003, Miss Holister, a teacher at Cunningham Elementary, had her 2nd and 3rd graders petition their state legislators as part of a civics project. The petition? To make Popcorn the State Snack Food of Illinois. Former corn farmer, Senator Larry Walsh sponsored the bill and Governor Rod Blagojevich (now incarcerated) signed it into law.
The kids became known as the Cunningham Kernel Kids.
After we left the festival grounds, we ran into a small table:
Some local politics for you. The Champaign-Urbana Citizens for Peace and Justice are protesting the new jail proposed. The county wants to spend 20 million on new jail facilities, the current jail, built in 1980, is in abysmal shape. Detractors argue that almost 60% of the inmate population is black, which is disproportional to the county demographics: only 17% of the county population is black. Also, they say the money should be spent on proactive measures: mental health centers, youth job training, substance abuse treatment, etc. One of the primary concerns is how tax dollars are being spent: why other programs that could alleviate overuse of the current jail are being underused and why the jail is beyond repair after only thirty years.
Gospel
Sunday went as Sundays go. Laundry. Groceries. Vacuuming. Until we chanced upon a Gospel Jazz Fest in Hessel Park. Over twice the size of Westside Park, Hessel's 27 acres hold ballparks, tennis courts, a playground, a water play area, and hundreds of oversized Midwestern trees. Hessel is one of the older parks in town, dating back to 1918.
This is what it looks like:
Imagine my surprise when we went to walk the dog and saw this banner on the Hessel sign:
Ainers grew up Catholic, so she never developed a keen ear for Gospel Music. She doesn't get that Tent Revival Adrenaline Rush like I do. As soon as heard the music through the trees, I started jumping up and down.
Canaan Development Foundation hosts a yearly benefit concert to raise funds for S.A.F.E. House, an organization that helps people with substance abuse problems. We stumbled onto the 15th Annual Gospel Jazz Fest and listened for a while to a phenomenal choir from Indiana. The Sounds of Praise, led by Sherri Garrison, is one of the music ministries from Eastern Star Baptist Church in Indianapolis.
Watch (forgive the shaky camera work, I'm a total noob):
Beer
After we left the Gospel Jazz Fest, it started to rain. And a rainy day calls for a good soup. We decided to make an old favorite: Chicken Tortilla Soup.
Any good rainy day soup needs a good rainy day beer. I wanted to try a local beer, since our latest local wine selection didn't pan out quite the way I had hoped. Turns out, in Illinois, not only do they sell liquor in grocery stores, but liquor stores are open on Sundays. Go figure. I had grown accostomed to the Central Texas breed of Spirits Merchants: informed, cosmopolitan, and surly. Imagine my shock at meeting my first Illinois Booze Monger: knowledgeable, hospitable, and gregarious. For a moment, I thought I had walked into a book store.
He was more than happy to aide us in our selection of a local brew. Local has a different meaning in Illinois than in Texas. Local here is more of a regional notion, there's a Midwestern Culture that spans the (often waterless) state borders. Local in Texas means specifically from Texas. Texas has this militant independence, this sort of isolated chauvinism that leads to world wars. Also, Texas is far away from anywhere.
That said, when trying local beers, wines, or whatevers, we'll include products from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Missouri. Maybe even Michigan if we're feeling generous.
Sunday, we chose the Domaine DuPage from the Two Brothers Brewery, a so-called French Style Country Ale. With a cloudy amber color and a strong caramelized, hoppy flavor, Domaine DuPage proved perfect for a rainy day. This beverage is welcome in our home any time.
The Two Brothers Brewery operates in Warrenville (in DuPage County... see what they did there?) just west of Chicago. Two Brothers Brewery (literally started by two brothers, Jim and Jason Ebel), started brewing for the public in 1996 and now offers 7 year round beers and 5 seasonal beers.
They also have an accidental gluten free beer. Let me explain. The FDA requires a gluten free beer to contain 20 parts per million or less of gluten. The Ebels realized that one of their beers, made from malted barley, has 5 parts per million of gluten. An enzyme used during the brewing process eats up the gluten molecule, giving them their accidental gluten free beer, the Prairie Path Golden Ale.
A Word on Salsa
We make our own salsa now.
A little bit because it's cheaper per ounce than salsa from a jar. Mostly because the salsa selection in Illinois is abysmal. After shopping at HEB, which has entire aisles devoted to small and large salsa brands from the southwest, finding the two or three brands on a single shelf here can reduce one to tears. You can find Newman's Own (headquartered in Connecticut, for God's sake) and maybe Pace, which doesn't count.
Let me tell you something about Pace. It's not made in San Antonio by people who know what salsa should taste like. Also, it doesn't taste like salsa. It tastes like Cholula with freeze dried chunks of pepper tossed in for color. In the mid 90s, Campbell Soup bought out Pace Foods and the closest Pace processing plant to San Antonio is in Paris, a small hamlet located in the narrow corridor of real estate between Dallas and the Red River. A geographical location Real Texans refer to as South Oklahoma (see also isolated chauvinism).
I found a recipe online that we now use. It requires a food processor. I know this because I burned up three blenders making this salsa. And by burned up I literally mean smoke and flames and blue arcs.
Here's the original recipe from The Pioneer Woman:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/01/restaurant-style-salsa/
We've tweaked it a little bit. If you're curious how, ask, but it tasted super duper in its original form as well.
I forgot to tell you that I lived upstairs in the old WWI barracks. The bunks were single stacked upstairs because the floor was not strong enough to support double stacked barracks. I told you that the barracks had 4x4 posts down the center aisles. They would squeak when the wind blew hard.
Danny, Bill, Frank and I were in Jet Engine Class when our NCO instructor was called out of the classroom. He walked back into the classroom and I will never forget what he said. He asked, "Anyone in here from TX?" Danny and Bill raised their hands. He then said, "The governor of TX has just been shot in Dallas". "Oh by the way, President Kennedy was killed." He turned around and started writing on the chalk board. We sat there in shock. What the hell was going on??
We were later marched over to a large building and it may have been White Hall. We were briefed on what had happened and that we were now on "red alert." In the cold war years that was very serious. We were then marched back to our barracks. Back then we did not have a tv in the barracks. So all we could do was sit around and speculate what was going to happen. It was a scary time for an 18 year old kid so far away from home. I will never forget my feelings during those days. It still chokes me up to think about 49 years later.
By the way, the instructor Sgt Callman was a drunk and he was probably just allowed to stay around until he retired. The whole situation did not seem to phase him. His whole attitude was so ho hum.
Saturday we made a short drive through the corn to Rantoul to see the moldering remains of Chanute Air Force Base. Much of the base is closed, but the Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum (the largest aerospace museum in Illinois, by the way) provided a very worthwhile experience.
Octave Chanute, the so-called Father of Aviation, lived from 1832 to 1910. He got his start as a civil engineer working for railroad companies in Illinois. He designed several bridges and stockyards around the Midwest. After his retirement in the 1890s, he began experimenting with gliders. Sometime around 1900 a young bicycle salesman from North Carolina wrote him asking for advice. Wilbur Wright used some of the design elements Chanute developed, including trussing and the biplane form. Chanute visited the Wright brothers to watch and advise them on some of their early flight experiments.
Wilbur later said of Chanute: "If he had not lived, the entire history of progress in flying would have been other than it has been."
Seven years after Chanute's death, a fledgeling branch of the Army Signal Corps, known as the Army Air Service, established an installation in Central Illinois known as Rantoul Aviation Field. Located in Rantoul due to the proximity of the Illinois Central Railroad and the War Department ground school at the University of Illinois, Rantoul Aviation Field soon received a new moniker: Chanute Field. This small field was fated to become the one of the US military's preeminent technical training facilies.
In 1919, the airfield closed, utilized only as a dumping ground for surplus war material, but in 1921 the Army reopened the field as a technical training facility. Around this time (1926), the tiny Army Air Service became the Army Air Corps. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Corps became the US Army Air Forces (1941). Chanute Field provided training to thousands of recruits during World War II, young airmen who looked much like the two in the pictures below:
The US War Department authorized, in 1941, the formation of a black air squadron. Almost three hundred recruits reported for duty at Chanute Field. After receiving technical training there, they transferred to Alabama for flight school. History knows them as the Tuskegee Airmen.
Chanute served as the primary training site during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Here are Vietnam-era Air Force Uniforms (the Army Air Forces became the independent branch known as the Air Force in 1947):
My dad trained at Chanute during a cold winter in 1963. He slept in the original wooden barracks built after World War I. He said he would wake in the mornings to find his blanket covered in snow that had blown in through holes in the walls. In the 1970s, they tore down those barracks and replaced them with dorm-style brick buildings.
This display replicates the bunks where Dad slept:
Illinois winters did not prove very hospitable to a Gulf Coast boy. Dad said he would smoke a cigarette and stare wistfully at US Route 45, the border-to-border highway that runs through Rantoul, Urbana, Champaign, and ends in Mobile. Here's a picture of Route 45 and the Illinois Central Railroad (Remember the folk song that goes, "riding on the City of New Orleans..." The City of New Orleans was a nightly passenger train that operated on the Illinois Central).
During the 60s, Chanute became the primary training center for the Minuteman program. Nukes! The museum still has some of the training silos on display:
And here's a missile, the Minuteman LGM-30A. L means silo-launched, G means ground-targeted, and M means guided missile. This rocket carried a W56 warhead with a 1.2 megaton yield (that's 100 times the size of the Hiroshima blast):
The War Department recommended Chanute for closure in 1988 and officially deactivated the base in 1993.
The Air Museum opened the next year and contains several exibits with hundres of pictures and artifacts from Chanute's long history, including over 40 preserved aircraft and aircraft maintenance vehicles.
Here's little Josephine next to a EC-121 Warning Star, a surveillence and radar plane used during the Vietnam War, a forerunner of the modern AWACS. See the seagull decals next to the cockpit window?
According to the Internets, the former Air Force base has seen a successful transition to civilian use. Driving around the base, the word successful seems a bit ambitious. Rantoul Products uses two of the hangars to manufacture parts for Jeep Wrangler and Dodge and other buildings are used as a motel, a restaurant, and the most depressing retirement home I've ever seen. Most of the former fancy-schmancy (see also Greek Revival) officers' homes are now privately owned. Lincoln's Challenge Academy, a school for at-risk youth operates in multiple buildings on the former base.
That said, many of Chanute's old buildings looked abandoned and in disrepair, grass growing in the parking lots. Here are some buldings around the base:
And your Parting Shot. A copy of an Application to Date a Soldier. Questions include: Do you cook? Do you make whoopie? Are you married? If so, does your husband travel?
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