The Yarn Spinner

  A Tale of Two Parks And Walter E. Olson                                                                               Riverview. If you are not on Medicare and a present or former resident of the Windy City, you probably don't remember the seventy-four-acre amusement park located at the corner of Belmont and Western avenues. The park was established by Williams Schmidt on the grounds of his private skeet shooting range in 1904. It closed in 1967. Riverview was known for rides like Bobs , a wooden roller coaster. Other popular roller coasters were the Comet , the Silver Flash , the Fireball, and the Jet stream . Aladdin 's Castle was a popular fun house with a collapsing stairway, mazes and a turning barrel and there was Shoot the Shoots . I recall going to the park quite often. Public transportation took you right there. I really liked the Rotor, but I could never muster the nerve to go on the Pair-O-Chutes. In all, there were 120 rides and as you can see, ticket

                        A Trillion Has Twelve Zero’s                                                                          Please read my post “Have you Seen this Man? first       Aside from being the inspiration for a restaurant chain, there is more to E.C. Segar’s obese con-artist romantic glutton and a second banana to Popeye than meets the eye. Wimpy had more on his mind than hamburgers.   The glutinous Wimp was to represent the Government with its voracious hunger for “burger-bucks.” In the heights of Depression-era politics, one can only imagine Segar’s boldness in standing against the increasing debt and public works that had been promised by Washington to be paid on “Tuesday.” What Tuesday? Segar was concerned. You might be as well.   In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected President of the United States. He had a plan to help fix the problems with the U.S. economy. He called that plan the New Deal. As part of the New Deal: ·        The U.S. Go

  Popeye, the (Polish) Sailor Man “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.” Many people claim the character Popeye the Sailor Man created by E.C. Segar was based on a real-life person, one of the citizens of Segar’s hometown, Chester, Illinois. The man in question is said to have been Frank ‘Rocky’ Fiegel, whose parents were both born in Poland. Because of his hardened physique, Frank was known as ‘Rocky.’ His angular jaw and familiar corn-cob pipe could have made a strong impression on the prospective cartoonist who was much younger than Rocky. The Polish American Fiegel, was born in 1868. He was said to have had a heart of gold for children, selflessly helping Chester kids, giving them money, and protecting them from bullies. This was clearly an example of Popeye’s good guy image.   In a 1979 article Chester Man Accepted as Real-Life Popeye was a Brawler, Loved Kids, ( The Southern Illinoisan newspaper) a columnist wrote. “Fiegel, a was a bartender and general laborer around

                           Have You Ever Seen this Man?          Baby Boomers and those alive today who survived the Great Depression will probably remember him, going down the “alphabet” to “X,” “Y,” “Z” makes that progressively doubtful. Mr. J. Wellington Wimpy the “ Trust me, I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” an erstwhile intellectual, well-educated romantic had a prominent role in E.C. Segar’s 1931 comic strip “Popeye” and later into cartoon classics. Many of us grew up with Popeye, the common-man, spinach-eating namesake of the comic strip sailor who always stood-up for what was right, even against the greatly advantaged Bluto. Wimpy was Popeye’s friend, lazy and always supposedly short on cash, he had a voracious appetite he tried assuaging by “bumming” a burger, his favorite food, whenever he could, but with a promise to pay “on Tuesday.”   If you do not recall the comic-strip character offhand, you may remember him in another way. It was this unfor

         Everybody Loves a Baby.…. Pretty Baby, Pretty Baby (?)                            As I walked in through the vestibule with my wife, Juli, I saw a woman with a baby carriage near the display of votive candles. This was not altogether surprising. We had a number of younger families in the parish. The woman was alone, so I thought the mother found the carriage more convenient than dragging a car carrier, bottles, toys, and Huggies into church. If this helped keep the kid quiet during Mass, I thought, all the better. St. Theresa’s did not have a “cry room” for infants and young children. When the time came to receive the Holy Eucharist, “Mom” got in line ahead of us. The carriage was in front of her, but by her side allowing Father Tim to distribute the Communion. (No one wants to leave an infant alone in a public place – even in God’s house.) Father paused for just a second to look into the carriage after giving Communion to the mother. I cannot describe the look on Father’

  The Lustron House     “I will build my house of straw. I will build my house of sticks. I will build y house of……...” Steel maybe? After the World War II, many families had to “double-up” with other family members. My dad slept on a couch in his parent’s home after fighting his way through Europe under General Patton. There just were not enough houses for all the returning vets and their families. Carl Strandlund, a production engineer from Chicago and successful inventor, thought he found a way to address the problem. The Lustron House was born. Everyone likes a maintenance-free home. The Lustron House was the real deal. These prefabricated houses were almost indestructible, and most of them are still around. Fifty made it into National Register of Historic Places. They were made of porcelain-coated stainless steel—inside and out. Take out your garden hose to clean it. No painting needed. The homes are not damaged by termites, remain unaffected by decay, or rodents and