BOXes 5-6: Wisconsin and Chicago

What are we--my parents, Cousin Judi, and Ellen--doing on a ferry boat, crossing the Wisconsin River in 1966? My father never liked to travel, except for going to Western Pennsylvania to visit relatives. But a good friend of mine from college, Gary Gordon, who had gone on to Columbia too, and had fallen in love with a fellow graduate student, was getting married in Madison (her home town), and I'd been invited to be the best man. I'm

not sure if I had sold my Ford yet, in anticipation of returning to Columbia for my Ph.D., but somehow my father was talked into taking a vacation to Wisconsin in the family car.

One day before the wedding, we took a side trip to the Wisconsin Dells--I think I had heard of them from the 3D Viewmaster Reels we all enjoyed when I was a kid. In those days, before I-90 made a visit to the Dells a quick excursion from Madison, Route 113 was one way to get there, but it called for taking a ferry to cross the Wisconsin River at the town of Merrimac. I recall that I was the only one who knew the road was going to stop abruptly at a ferry landing: a surprise for my fellow travelers. [I've just learned that this ferry still exists, and is still free!] I don't remember visiting the town of Wisconsin Dells, which would have been much more modest in its tourist attractions than nowadays--we just took a boat excursion up (or down?) the river to see the famous sandstone formations.

There were two formations where the Dells people presented a spectacle for tourists: a German Shepherd jumped from one rock to the other. I've been thinking that I saw this in person, but since I don't have a photo of the action dog, I'm suspecting that my 'memory' is of the Viewmaster Reel. [Since I posted this I've learned that there was a jumping dog at least through 2012, So I probably just missed the dog in this now lame-seeming shot.]

What else did we do outside of wedding festivities? I recall having pizza at a famous hangout with family and the wedding party, but the evidence of the slides is only of visiting the Capitol and strolling along the shores of Lakes Monona and Mendota:

And here are the four wedding photos from my camera: the bride (Mary Farrell) and groom; myself and the maid of honor (Heidi Pfannkuchen; Ellen recently reminded me of her name); the four of us; and a poor photo of some of the wedding party that I include because it conveys some odd sense of occasion that makes me want to preserve it.

On our way home from Madison we stopped for a few hours in Chicago, which none of us had ever visited. I was especially eager to see the recently opened Marina Towers; which

still look as strikingly original as they they ever did, though today I'm also struck by the fact that I didn't photograph the river, the Wrigley Building or any of the other unique Chicago vistas nearby. The other Chicago architecture I was excited to see was the new Circle Campus of the University of Illinois, built just southwest of the Loop and opened just the year before. Judging by the pictures I took, I very much liked the grandeur of the central space, a sort of abstract modernistic update of a Roman forum or Greek agora--it could hardly have been a greater contrast with the Princeton campus I had photographed earlier in the year! Though I admired both in 1966, today I'm much more aware of the criticisms of the Circle Campus for its concrete sterility and fortress-like isolation from the surrounding city, not to mention the fact that a functioning Italian-American neighborhood was bulldozed for the campus (which uniquely takes its name from a nearby Interstate intersection). In any case, the campus was completely deserted on the Sunday morning we visited it. Ellen and Judi provide bits of color and perspective, but I imagine that my parents didn't especially enjoy traipsing up and down those stairs.

After a stop at the Buckingham Fountain (no pic) and a quick visit to the Art Institute==where there was a dazzling show of contemporary American art (I was floored by Red Grooms' Loft on 26th St and Kienholz' Beanery)--we headed back to Cleveland.

At the end of summer my brother drove me to Manhattan--or so it appears from the following two slides; neither of us remembers the trip. I would certainly have been traveling light: I was moving into a furnished room on W. 86th St,, thanks to my Colgate friend David Hartwell. More on him, the apartment, and my fall semester in my next post.