Nostalgia
Posted April 25, 2007 by James E. Nelson
It occurred to me, while puttering around Illinois and Indiana this week, that just as San Francisco is the native home to the 60s, so the upper midwest is the native home to the 50s. Everywhere we went we found establishments like “White Castle” and “Steak and Shake,” places that have maintained their thoroughly fifties sensibilities without succumbing to mere kitsch. Cleveland is the home of the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame, Columbus is the corporate headquarters of “White Castle.” Indianapolis is the corporate headquarters of “Steak and Shake.” Milwaukee is the home of “Happy Days” and “Laverne and Shirley.”
My sense of the other parts of the United States, including the famed Route 66, which we traveled earlier this year, is that they are overwhelmed by a different sort of mass culture. The other fast food juggernauts have changed with the times. Burger King’s latest logo, Pizza Hut’s newest make-over as the home of “Wing Street,” the taco joints’ (I’m thinking particularly of Taco Johns and Taco Bell) newest color schemes, all are very contemporary. Even though all these places began in the 50s or early 60s, they have all changed with the times. There are certainly throwbacks to the 50s, such as the renewed interest in diners that look like train cars, but because they are retro, they have that kitschy character. But Steak and Shake, with its black and white color scheme, and White Castle, with its blue and white, have always maintained that 50s sensibility without succumbing to kitsch.
Or maybe it’s just the nostalgia of the last several days that has caused us to see things from this perspective.
We had made reservations to come to “Thunder over Louisville” several months ago as an early 25th Anniversary trip. Sometime later we volunteered to go to Louisiana with IOCC to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. The plan was to go in the summer, after Church School was finished for the season. (Do you know how hard it is to find a substitute high school teacher?) But the IOCC sent out a plea for immediate help. They needed volunteers at the end of April. We decided to combine the two trips into one, and drive to Louisiana instead of fly. That gave us several days of free time in our old haunts before we went to Louisiana.
One of the first things we did was return to Bardstown Rd in Louisville, one of America’s great business districts. We used to get our groceries at Kroger, do our banking, and even eat at Wendy’s every Wednesday night. Brenda worked at Highlands Community Daycare, and on Wednesday nights she worked evenings in the same neighborhood. We would meet at Wendy’s for dinner and then pass Chris off, so Brenda could go to her next job.
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| Highlands Daycare, where Brenda used to work. |
Near the old Wendy’s (which is still there), things began to look familiar. Brenda told me to take a right on Cherokee, and then a left down an alley. And sure enough, there was the historic Louisville home that had been transformed into a daycare center by Highlands Community Ministries.
It was here that Chris learned to call his teacher “Miss Kim” in proper southern fashion, and Brenda got truly established in what turned out to be a successful career in child care.
We also traveled north to Grammer, Indiana, my very first church that I served as a student pastor. (The little brown house next to the church is where we lived on the weekends.) Many small, rural churches have had to permanently close their doors because it cost too much to hire a pastor. Grammer took a different approach. They embraced student pastors from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. They made training young pastors their primary mission, and even though they only have a handful of members, they have thrived as a congregation for all these years.
During the initial interview they also joked that it was a rare opportunity to serve in a church building with classic European cathedral architecture because the building had flying buttresses. As you can see, it was actually an afterthought, a way of keeping the north wall from collapsing. But that was the sensibility of this congregation—do what you must do, and rather than complain about how bad things are, just have fun while doing it.
Since we were in the neighborhood, we also went up to Indianapolis so that I could show Brenda a piece of our retirement. While I was trucking I ran across a huge (!!) warehouse area near the Indianapolis airport. It’s not unique. I’ve seen such places in several cities, especially where interstates come together. But the one in Indianapolis impressed me because of it’s expansiveness and busy-ness.
A few years ago I discovered how it works. The company that builds and rents the warehouses is different than the names one sees on the buildings. Drive through these warehouses and you will see buildings with Lowes, WalMart, Johnson Controls, etc., above the door. But they’re just paying rent to Dividend Capital, the company that owns the buildings. I also learned there was a severe shortage of such facilities when a neighbor of ours optioned several hundred acres of farmland to such a company. We may have one of these facilities a couple of miles from the house. And then in a serendipitous moment, I received a mailing from my broker saying that the company in Indianapolis was expanding and needed expansion capital. It’s not publicly traded, so they were seeking investors directly through their network of brokers. We decided to invest. I knew the location and understood the business. And since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to stop by.
As we pulled off of busy U.S. 40 to look at the buildings, I was reminded of Dave, my father-in-law, who would stop on the edge of the interstate to look at his cattle grazing out in the field. It seems we all need to keep an eye on our investments and our future, whether its cows or warehouses.
Copyright © 2007 James E. Nelson (Just Another Jim). All Rights Reserved.
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