Another rainy gray day, but there is no texture in the sky
this morning. Just one long sky of gray. The river is slightly higher this
morning and running quicker. Another good day for staying inside and getting the
work done.
Yesterday morning started out quite productive with a bit of
reading in the City of the Century
book Todd loaned me. There’s a chapter in it about the stockyards and the local
area of Chicago where my Strohmaier side of the family rooted upon first
arriving in Chicago. Then, it was off to the Life Drawing Studio to do some
writing on the studio with a male model in it. Steve is quite different from
Chelsea, in that he asks the artists about what poses they want, making sure
that they work for everyone. There’s a different kind of respect between them. There
were short poses, long poses, and continually moving poses. I wrote and wrote
and wrote. In the end, I found myself writing about the vulnerability of the
human body and how these sessions bring in both the strength and the weakness.
Off and on throughout the day, I kept doing research on the
New City neighborhood that surrounded the Stockyards from the end of the 1800s
to the mid 1900s. Four generations of the family went through the Canaryville
section of the neighborhood. At the heart of the experience lies St. Gabriel’s
church. I know that my great-great-grandmother Katherine’s funeral mass was
there, her son Charles and wife Irene must have attended the church, their
daughter (my grandmother) Theresa married Larry there, and my mom was baptized there.
There must be even more connections with the church than the few annotations I’ve
found.
The Stockyards were a horrible place, and I’m not saying
that just because I’m vegan. By all accounts the smells and sounds permeated
the neighborhoods, polluting the air and water. This was the poorest area of
the city, though it seems that there were different levels of living.
Canaryville had small houses, and the neighborhood was both German and Irish
Catholic. The Back of the Yards section of New Town, more to the west of the
stockyards were mostly Eastern European—as was portrayed in The Jungle.
I keep thinking about my great-great-grandpa Charles
straight off the boat from Germany. How did he make his journey to Chicago?
When did he root down in Chicago? In the 1910 census his occupation is listed
as a baker. Did he escape the stockyards upon arrival, or did he do both? Were
they in the neighborhood during the 1904 workers strike? So many questions.
After digging into Missouri quite a bit, it’s fun to start digging further into
the Chicago roots.
Yesterday afternoon, as I mentioned in my previous post, was
a Sound of Music pilgrimage, in a
way, the bookend to my other experience in Austria in April 1995. Kirsteen and
I had a lovely afternoon together, and I am so grateful that she was willing
and excited to take the afternoon road trip. We left around 2 and it only took
us about a half hour to get there. Stowe looked fairly cute, but touristy cute—the
town clearly has money for preserving the old houses and historical feel. So,
we drop straight up to the Trapp Family Lodge. A quick browse through the gift
shop left my mouth watering, so I thought it best to leave purchases until
after the tour.
View from the delibakery
Trapp Family Lodge
We went to the lodge’s delibakery for some hot drinks and
desserts. After being served by one of the most untalkative, uncommunicative
barristas, we took our tea, coffee, and linzertorte (Kirsteen) out to the brisk
but delightful outdoor porch. With a view of the Green Mountains and the shifting
clouds, we chatted about our international experiences (hers in Brazil, mine in
South Africa) and our writing. As I said to her later, there’s nothing like a
beverage with a view!
The tour wasn’t quite what we were expecting. We basically
sat in a downstairs room for an hour and a half. The lecture was great, the
short film was interesting, but there wasn’t really any walking around except a
brief foray into the upstairs lounge to see some pictures. The Lodge is still run
by the family, and at the end of the tour, one of the grandchildren came out to
answer a few questions. He was fresh from a cross country ski, but he spoke
quite animatedly about the family history and how they try to have a VTOD (von
Trapp on duty) at the Lodge at all times.
What a legacy. His grandparents, Georg and Maria, were even
more gutsy than the film portrays. Georg basically refusing to sing at Hitler’s
birthday part—to Hitler’s face. The time frame of their story is lengthier than
the film suggests, and by the time they arrive in America, Georg and Maria have
three new children. With ten children to feed, they toured the US singing and
eventually bought a farm and settled in Stowe, Vermont. It’s quite a story.
Outside the lodge is the family graveyard where Georg, Maria, and several of their
children are buried.
The hills are alive and slightly off tune
Georg and Maria's graves in the family graveyard
Kirsteen and I made our way back to the VSC just in time for
dinner. I was too excited from the day to do anything but play with the day’s
photos and do a little bit of research. I skipped the visiting artist’s
sculpture talk completely. Today should be a busy day of morning work-study and
afternoon writing. Eamon leaves today, so I will accost him at breakfast to
sign my book. Well, I could ramble on and on, but the clock is ticking away to
breakfast.
Remember, the hills were/are/always will be alive with the
sound of music…
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