Beware of the ‘Socialist’ Roundabout in Valparaiso

Indiana State Highway 2 bypasses Main Street, seen here, in tiny Westville. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Indiana State Highway 2 bypasses Main Street, seen here, in tiny Westville. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

VALPARAISO, Ind. — When I reconnected with the Lincoln Highway in Mishawaka on Tuesday afternoon, I followed the original 1913 route, which takes a more northerly track through Northern Indiana via South Bend. The highway was later realigned to follow the more modern U.S. 30, which cuts a more direct route from Fort Wayne toward Chicago, linking up with the original route in Valparaiso.

After my afternoon stop in LaPorte, barbershop owner Adam Wilson suggested I check out the tiny town of Westville on my way to Valparaiso and perhaps stop in at Olga’s Restaurant, which I was told serves up some good pizza. Olga’s is owned by the Pecanac family, which eventually settled in Northwest Indiana after fleeing their native Croatia in 1994 during the civil war in Yugoslavia.

I pulled off State Highway 2, which bypasses the town of 5,800 people, and onto Main Street, which was lined with Lincoln Highway “Coast to Coast” banners. As I was driving around town, I found that there’s not too much the place.

I pulled off to the side of one street to check the rest of the route for the evening.

As I was looking at Google Maps on my smartphone, a portly older fellow walking in the street, bright red from a sunburn, approached me.

“Are you lost?” the man asked me.  Continue reading

A Shave, Haircut and Refuge From the Rain at Wilson’s Barbershop

Adam Wilson's collection of vintage and antique shaving and barbering items is on full display at his barbershop in La Porte, Ind. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

Adam Wilson’s collection of vintage and antique shaving and barbering items is on full display at his barbershop in La Porte, Ind. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

LA PORTE, Ind. — As I was walking along Lincolnway in the center of this town of 22,000 people about 30 miles west of South Bend, the skies turned dark and suddenly opened up late Tuesday afternoon.

I mistakenly forgot to bring an umbrella along for this trip, but fortunately for me, Wilson’s Barbershop and Shave Parlor, located in a charming 150-year-old downtown commercial building opposite the La Porte County Courthouse, was right there. In French, la porte means door and Wilson’s door was open.

Owner-barber Adam Wilson didn’t have any customers at the moment and my buzzcut needed to be tidied up in any regard, so the timing was perfect. We got to talking about La Porte and the ongoing renaissance of barbershop culture across the country.

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Exploring the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend

The carriage Abraham Lincoln used the night of his assassination is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Ind.

The carriage Abraham Lincoln used the night of his assassination is on display at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Ind.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When I heard that the carriage Abraham Lincoln used the fateful night he went to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., was on display at the Studebaker National Museum, I knew I needed to swing through the city that most of us know better as the home of the Fighting Irish.

Although I had heard of Studebaker Corporation, which ceased automobile production in the 1960s, I was not aware of Studebaker’s important transportation legacy, which dates back to the 1830s when John Clement Studebaker first constructed a Conestoga wagon to bring his family from Gettysburg, Pa., to Ashland, Ohio — two towns that would eventually find themselves on the Lincoln Highway.

Fast forward to 1852, when two Studebaker brothers, Henry and Clement, started a blacksmith shop at the corner of Michigan Street and Jefferson Boulevard in South Bend — one block from where the Lincoln Highway’s original 1913 route passes through downtown — and soon, the family business became known for its production of wagons and carriages, well before the age of the automobile. (I should note that the Lincoln carriage was not manufactured by Studebaker, but was purchased in 1889 for what would become the Studebaker collection of presidential carriages.)

When the horseless carriage started to gain steam, there was an intense debate over whether to produce an electric car or one powered by gasoline. J.M. Studebaker favored electric cars and said at the time that gasoline-powered cars are “clumsy, dangerous, noisy brutes which stink to high heaven, break down at the worst possible moment and are a public nuisance.”

The first Studebaker electric car came in 1902. Thomas Edison purchased the second such car produced by the company. But the the economics of automobile production soon favored gasoline-powered cars and Studebaker stopped making electric cars. The production of Studebaker’s horse-drawn vehicles, meanwhile, ceased in 1920, according to the museum.

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Rising High Above the Lincoln Highway

One of the many wind turbines within view of the Lincoln Highway near Van Wert, Ohio (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

One of the many wind turbines within view of the Lincoln Highway near Van Wert, Ohio (Photo by Michael E. Grass)

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — How do you know you’ve reached the Indiana state line on the Lincoln Highway? Look to the right. If you stop seeing tall wind turbines, you’re in Indiana.

The area north of Van Wert, Ohio, is a hub for wind-energy production, which is quite evident as you’re driving west toward Fort Wayne. There are hundreds of wind turbines rising from the flat farmland. In 2011, there were about 210 wind turbines in the Van Wert area with hundreds more planned. (The Van Wert County Convention and Visitors Bureau’s promotional website says there are now about 400 turbines.)

Fort Wayne, Indiana’s second-largest city, was my final destination for this leg of my Lincoln Highway trek before temporarily leaving the route to visit my parents in Michigan.

But before that, there’s one landmark I wanted to visit downtown. Continue reading