Day 1
Waiting
As we milled about the Parlor, post-breakfast, waiting for the bus to arrive and steal us away, Brother Neff and Gene stopped by to see us off. Brother Neff, as you may recall, had to open his store late in order to tell us adios. Their appearance was a touching display that I generalized to the entire ward. Actually, for all I know, it may have relieved the ward to have us go, but I’ll stick with my imagination and believe they all wept a tear or two. And while we’re at it, why not imagine them crowded round the bus sniffling and waving lacy handkerchiefs? After all, though to them we may have been just a bunch of smiling transients, to us, they were our home ward away from home. They took us in and made us feel a part of things, and for that I will always be grateful, and they will always have my respect.
Several students presented Sister Toone with a gift there in the parlor, a WWJD bracelet. In order to help her stop tying doors shut, you see. She tried once more to convince everyone she was innocent, but in return received only a chorus of eye-rollings. “WWJD,” several girls chided her.
Luggage had completely taken over the Parlor floor by the time the bus arrived. Brother Dahl sent us strapping lads out to fling everyone’s baggage underneath the bus. By which I mean the storage area under the seats—not up next to the tires where the bus could test their structural integrity. But you knew that.
Thought in the Bus
As we walked onto the bus, Brother Dahl’s appointees for bus leadership approached me and asked if I wouldn’t give a spiritual thought once we got going.
“On the contrary, I would love to.”
But imagine my surprise when, less then ninety seconds after driver Bev put the mechanical beast into gear, roommate Jared—now our fearless leader—stood and announced I would now be giving a spiritual thought.
I had no idea “once we get going” was synonymous with “once we reach first gear.” I had not yet so much as unzipped my backpack in search of holy script, and here I was, called upon to preach. I felt a little unprepared, but stood up and said the only thing I could think of. “Um. Hi.” I held up a pen I had just found in the Parlor a few minutes before. “Does this pen belong to anyone?” I lousily attempted to make a connection to honesty. “Cause I sure wouldn’t want to be a thief.” After one more try at spiritualizing my “thought,” I sat down.
“It’s a good thing we’re all friends here,” I mumbled, “or else this trip would already be off to a terrible, horrible, awful, no-good start.”
Home Teaching
On Sunday, I had promised the Elders’ Quorum home teaching supervisor I would have 100% home teaching for the month. So far, companion Brandon (Mr. Fix-It) and I had met all our people except Rachael. I knew that long highway trips are the modern Lethe, and that if we didn’t meet her now, we likely never would. Fortunately, that morning over muffins, I had been able to make an appointment. So Brandon and I stumbled over feet and bags, and rearranged various women so we could sit next to Rachael, our elusive home teachee.
She was very gracious, welcoming us to her neck of the bus. We sat down and shared the First Presidency message for April, ran the traditional Home Teaching catechism (“Is there anything we can do for you?” “No, I’m fine, thanks.”), shook her hand and returned to our seats. It’s an awful good feeling to have one’s Home Teaching done the first week of the month and to know that all of one’s people are well and fine, isn’t it? I especially like it because it opens the possibility for a second visit. If you visit on the 31st and your family really could have used two visits that month, well, it’s everlastingly too late. You should have shown up a little earlier in the month.
I had this experience last year; a sister I taught had been to the hospital for surgery, been declared pregnant, and nearly lost her baby, all between visits. I felt like a heel. Don’t let this happen to you! Go do your home teaching! And mean it! Now!
If I seem a little militant about this, I suppose I’ve inherited it. My Grandpa Jepson’s home teaching habits are legendary, and they’ve fallen on me through my father. There can be no doubt that Home Teaching is a sacred and highly important calling. (You’ve probably heard something along these lines in General Conference recently.) Not to mention scripturally mandated. Or that it’s potentially very fun.
But all those soundbites miss the fact that Home Teaching is about people. Besides, after we home (bus) taught Rachael, she didn’t seem any worse for it.
Truck Stop
As is my very polite habit, I removed my all-but-garbage-disposalled hat from my head as I entered the truck stop and encountered a timely financial temptation. Hats. The truck stop was selling some very nice hats at very reasonable prices. The temptation was strong. But an equal temptation lurked down another, rather innocuous aisle: Tire thumpers. Very nice, engraved wood tire thumpers.
I first encountered tire thumpers when my brother and I were working nights at a local gas station. On the far left aisle (from the perspective of the cashier), about halfway down the wall were several tire thumpers. I had never seen a tire thumper before. They were 1½” dowels with a sturdy metal cap on one end and a leather string knotted on the other. The only thing we could figure was that “tire thumper” was just one more euphemism (like “blunt object”) for “murder weapon.” I always wanted to buy one with my employee discount (of 0%), but alas, I never did. And here before me were much more stylish tire thumpers. Could I resist?
The answer was yes, I could. I walked away with only a minor twitch and almost had my nose broken by Jeff, gaily swinging his new plastic bag. He had purchased The Phantom Menace, released on video that very day. Once the restrooms were vacated, we boarded the bus and let Mr Lucas entertain us all the way to Chicago.
(Incidentally, perhaps the reason my brother Shawn at least never bought a tire thumper was because he had a special relationship with the sheriff’s department. Every week his last year of high school, and until he left for college, he was pulled over at least twice. Every single week. He was never cited for anything mind you, but they obviously thought he was up to something.
(Once, they confiscated his slimjim because they were “illegal to purchase or to own.” So the next morning he drove to the 99¢ store and bought another. But if they would confiscate his car theft device, what might they have done had they caught him with a poorly disguised murder weapon?)
Museum of Science and Technology
Like any respectable museum, the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago was drowning in naked people killing each other. The size of the statues was difficult to ascertain as they were so high over head, but that they were naked people killing each other was impossible to doubt. The outside of the building is otherwise attractive and, like much American architecture, looks as if it were picked up in Rome or some such place, then plopped down in the New World, immediately validating our culture. (I don’t know why we feel a need for such buildings—are we insecure?) I’m no architectural expert, but with the columns and their fancy capitals and the weathered, green domes, I’ll place a wager under the building being, officially, “neoclassical.” But whether or not it is, what matters is that it is a handsome building and supposed to make you think, “European.”
The first exhibit to greet us upon entering the building through the special entrance reserved for people on buses (I’m forced to presume that although our entrance was separate, it was still equal) was a room full of miniature ships, made with exquisite attention to detail. The display was very impressive, and no one less than Thurston and Wentworth Howell wandering about in sea captain garb and commenting in Cary Grant voices how delightful it all was could do it proper justice. After the boats, appeared an interactive circus full of activities for the five-second attention span crowd. This odd twosome is fairly indicative of how the museum played out. For instance, one of my favorite photographs from the museum, taken in Yesterday’s Main Street, shows a purely modern Coast Guard helicopter about to land in a 1920s American Everytown to perform a daring rescue. Unexpected juxtaposition was the order of the hour, as exhibits overlapped and collided with gusto all over the building.
While on Yesterday’s Main Street, I popped into the theater for a movie. Buster Keaton’s The Paleface was playing on loop, so I sat down and watched until it returned to where I had come in. If you’re interested in the history of the cinema, it may intrigue you to know that until Psycho, this was generally how people watched movies. They would come in at their convenience, watch whatever was left of the movie and then sit through it again until they had seen the whole thing. But Alfred Hitchcock wanted people to watch Psycho starting from point A or not at all. And so theaters were forced to enforce the movie’s schedule. And look where we are today, slaves to theater schedules.
I never did get around to eating lunch—one group of friends would stop for lunch, and I would wander off until I found another group of friends. But there were plenty of fun exhibits to distract me from any occasional physical hunger. Besides, how could anyone think about food while contemplating a lifesize sculpture of an Indiana Jones-type character fighting off a giant dust mite with a whip and handheld vacuum? Or while checking out the next story up with a periscope? Or while dancing in front of a thermal imager? Or while examining what has to be the world’s largest collection of fast food kids’ meal toys?
Oh wait. Maybe that does make me a little hungry. . . .
The Sears Tower
We arrived at the Sears Tower in pleasant sunniness, but by the time the elevator had reached the Skydeck, 1,353 feet above the street, night was upon us. It’s really amazing that America’s tallest building is spitting distance from a massive lake. How the heck does the ground support such a monstrous building? The answer is that the building has been screwed directly into the bedrock. How exactly that was managed, I’m not sure. I’ve never seen a helicopter big enough to handle such a screwdriver. Sometimes you just have to wonder about the stuff you learn on tours. Like the “fact” that the Sears Tower has 106 elevator cabs, including 16 double-deckers! Yeah. Call me a bumpkin, but we don’t have no hundred-six elevator buildings where I come from!
Once at the Skydeck, we rested our foreheads against the glass and started identifying buildings with our handy identification chart:
“Oh! What’s that one?”
“Um, 900 N. Michigan. Ever heard of it?”
“No. But, oh, hey! Look! The Harold Washington Libra—wait. Harold Washington? Who’s that?”
We stayed in the Skydeck until closing time, so we had to wait in a seriously lengthy line to get onto one of the down elevators. Finally boarded and descending, I asked the elevator operator how much a top story office with a view cost. She wasn’t sure. She radioed a few people trying to find out, but with gravity on our side, all I got out of her before we alighted was “A lot.”
The Results of Bad Planning
Not having taken into account exactly how unbearably long it would take to get into one of the Sears Tower’s supposed 106 elevator cars, I was forced, in order to get onto the bus before Brother Dahl issued a warrant, to walk quite speedily. Suddenly, a gentleman selling postcards displaying either various Chicago sights or an announcement that Nintendos now come in multiple colors accosted me. He asked if I would like to buy one, only twenty-five cents each. I did have a little change in my pocket, but I doubted if it was enough. Besides, my life as a free man was at stake. I apologized, and said I had to hurry and get to my car before I was left behind and would have to considering getting an entire postcard franchise. He walked along with me and we chatted amiably as he tried to get me to reconsider (it was almost as if he knew I had a demonstrated weakness for postcards).
“Ah, there they are,” I said.
“Where?” he asked.
“There,” I said, indicating the bus.
“What?! You told me you had a car!”
I explained that if I had said car, it was an accident and certainly not intentionally deceptive. As I tried to calm him on this point, the rest of the students in my entourage clambered aboard the bus, leaving me alone to face the wrath of an angry postcard salesman and, perhaps, the perturbation of those on the bus as well, for making them wait.
But I was unwilling to leave while the man was convinced I had viciously lied to him. I tried to explain again that it was merely a slip of the tongue and can’t we just shake hands and leave as friends?
That he would not shake hands with a lying devil were the kindest words I had received from him for several minutes, so I decided they would have to do. I tipped my hat, wished him a cheery adieu and leapt aboard the bus. Everyone wanted to know what I had done to make him so angry. I asked if anyone remembered my thought from the morning. No one did. I reminded them it had concerned honesty and explained that I had cruelly failed in my social contract to be honest with others. That said, I sat down, the bus pulled out, and we went to the hotel, a Fairfield Marriott walking distance from the Chicago temple.
Hotel
Although I had difficulty believing it, there could be no doubt that this was the same hotel my friend Josh had put me up in the night before his wedding. In fact, I’m relatively certain that one of the rooms our group had commandeered for the evening was the room he and I had slept in. At the very least, I’m almost certain it was the same hallway because the ice machine was in the same place.
Obscure Lines
You know, occasionally I find lines in my journal that have no apparent connection with the day’s events or any memories I hold. The first day of our final field trip provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. It seems more like something out of a seance with a drunken ghost than anything out of my life. See what you think:
“I got a couple of free postcards for holding a piece of yellow paper so they could see how long I staid up top.”
return to the table of contents
Thanks for revisiting Nauvoo with me. I would love to hear your thoughts.