Notre Dame +

We watched a beautiful clear sky sunrise this morning from the big east facing windows of  our favorite coffee shop in Nappanee (the Starbucks kiosk in the local Martins grocery store), while deciding what to do with this gift after so many rain and windy days.  Guess what?  The city of Notre Dame, adjacent to South Bend, IN, caught our attention.

That's right, ND is it's own city, with a zip code, police dept, and fire department.  It's only a short 40 mile drive from our "home", so off we went.

This is one of the two main roads into the campus:

Not very impressive, huh? The Golden Dome in the distance and a tree lined street….

Here are two views of the Visitors Center:

Starting to get a feeling where this is going?

Notre Dame was founded in 1842 by Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C, a priest of the congregation of Holy Cross. The University was governed until 1967 by the Holy Cross priests, when governance was transferred to a board of lay and religious Trustees.  The University holds it's Catholic identity very firmly, and the statutes require that the President of the University be a Holy Cross priest.  We joined a tour of the campus that was led by a 2nd year student who walked backward for an hour and a half while describing many of the buildings and points of interest. Our first stop was the Grotto of our Lady of Lourdes, a favorite place to pray and contemplate (particularly before home football games!)

Our second major stop was the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.  Now, irregardless of one's religious preferences, this is a beautiful place to worship.

The altar area was magnificent, with painted murals on the ceiling above. If you look carefully just to the left lower center, a figure with a 3 leafed clover appears….can you say Irish?

Adjacent to the Basilica is the Main Building, so named because it was one of the first buildings of the modern era.  Built in the shape of a cross, it houses offices and administrative suites, as well as the home and office of the President of the University.  It's said that when winter snows fly, the decision to have classes or shut down the school is determined by whether the president can get to his office….since he lives there, they always have class!  This is one of the halls in the Main Building showing the exquisite decor.  The murals depict the arrival of Columbus in the New World. Can you imagine attending classes and studying in this building?

In the center of the Main Building is the rotunda. Under the Golden Dome, it represents the center of the campus.

The outside of the rotunda, of course, is the Golden Dome.

The Main Building, including the figure of the Virgin Mary is 230 feet tall, and is plated with a fist sized amount of gold.  Every ten years the dome is cleaned and the gold removed and replaced.  A small amount of the removed gold is placed in every Notre Dame football helmet and is also used for the seal on graduates diplomas.  The stairs that you see have an interesting story.  It's said that in the early days, a student became locked out of the building when it was used as a dorm and spent a cold night on the steps.  Discovered the next morning by the rector, he was punished by never being allowed to use those steps again, instead being required to take a circuitous route through another part of the building.  To this day, the steps are not used by any undergraduate to go either up or down.  On graduation day the new graduates are allowed to use the steps one time as a symbol of their achievement.  Our guide took the long way around while we tourists used the steps!

The adjacent Basilica has a spire with a cross on top that is 235 feet high, symbolizing the higher power of Jesus.  No building on campus is allowed to be taller than the Basilica.

Right next to the Main Building is the Hesburgh Library, with it's reflecting pool and mural of Jesus. The library is at the exact opposite end of the South Common from the football stadium and its goalpost.

Which has resulted in the rather casual nickname of "Touchdown Jesus".

The football stadium is closed for the summer due to artificial turf being installed, as you can see in the photo above, but we were able to get up and personal with the Gipper, Knute Rockne.

After a great lunch on campus at Legends restaurant, with a theme of all the sports heroes of Notre Dame, we headed into Michigan to have a look at Lake Michigan. We finally arrived in Benton Harbor, MI, where we found that all access to the Lake was required a rather hefty fee.  A little bit of exploring got us to Rocky Gap County Park, just a few miles north of BH, where we could park and walk on the beach without charge.

A few miles south, in the town of St Joseph, we stopped momentarily in a no parking zone to snap a photo of a very nice beach.  We wished we could have visited, but we didn't have enough time left in the day to justify the parking fees.

She Wants to Shop

The Shipshewanna Flea Market is only open two days a week, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Yesterday we had rain until noon so we decided not to go.  However, today dawned bright and warm, so off we went!

The entry to the market is through a large auction shed with a dozen or more auctioneers all working different parts of the building, and hundreds of people milling about.  The auctioneers stand on stools and move from one section to another.  The owners of the "stuff" have piled it up, and everything is sold.  Seemed to us that the more rust on the item, the more money it sold for…..

After walking up and down the outdoor aisles for a couple of hours, without much success, we decided to exit the premises.  Donna was looking for a particular woodworking craftsman that she had bought some things from last year, but we didn't see him anywhere, and he wasn't on the directory.  Uh oh…

On the way out, we stopped at Yoder's Meat and Deli Market.  Now, just about every third person that lives in this area is named Yoder.  There are Yoder insurance business's, Yoder auto shops, just about everything that you can imagine. Of the two that are left of the "every third person", one of them is named Miller, and the other one is referred to as "the other brand".  Guess you know where we fit in…

Yoders is cool, with hundreds of cheeses and preserves, specialty sauces, mustards and such, and a complete butcher shop where you can order custom cuts of beef, goat, bison, chicken, veal, and pork, as well as any kind of sausage you could imagine.

As Donna ran into the Blue Gate Restaurant and Bakery, just down the street from Yoders, to get a home made Dutch Apple pie (for later, you understand), I snapped a quick photo of a neat horse and buggy.

Our lunch stop today, late in the afternoon, was at Das Dutchmen Essenhaus, where we enjoyed a buffet in a facility that obviously can seat a great many people.

On the way home to Nappanee, we stopped at the Dime Store in Wakarusa for a bit of salt water taffy.  This store is devoted to nostalgic candies from years past, along with novelties and current candy.  I couldn't pass up these two:

But before I could slip them into the cart, Donna reminded me that bacon (even in candy form) is not on my preferred list.  DagNabIt!

A Mystery Solved, Works of Art, and Junk

Downtown Nappanee is home to the Nappanee Center, which is a collection of items of historical and anecdotal interest to the town of Nappanee.  It also is a stop on the Quilt Gardens/Heritage Trail.  This is a series of flower gardens planted in the patterns used in quilts.

This Schoolhouse Quilt Garden is a well tended example of the many quilt gardens in the area.

Inside the center, handmade quilts are displayed, some of them over 100 years old.

Also inside was the answer to a mystery that surfaced during the Fourth of July parade in Nappanee.  The local fire apparatus had a picture on the sides that referred to "Smokey Stovers".  I didn't know what that referred to, and finally today the mystery was solved.

The cartoonist Bill Holman created a comic strip in 1935 that featured a two wheeled fire truck, ofttimes driven by "Smokey Stover", the strips' fire chief.  The "Foo Mobile" was one of the central things in the strip, as was the eccentric chief, Smokey Stover.  A local man, Pete Schlatter, figured out how to build a working replica of the Foo Mobile, bringing the comic strip to life, with the help of the Nappanee Fire Department…..the Smokey Stovers!

The real Foo Mobile is, or was, a completely working automobile with a small engine, lights, and steering.  

After lunch at the South Side Diner in Goshen, IN,

we continued into White Pidgeon, Michigan, to visit Bontragers RV Salvage Store.  Normally we don't shop at salvage yards, but we had heard that this location was amazing.  And it was!

Nuts, bolts, aluminum and wood.  Screws, cabinets, windows and doors.  Lights, electrical panels and fittings.  You name it, they have it, and want to sell it.  Wheeling and dealing is the name of the game and it is a free for all with all participants thoroughly enjoying themselves!  What a place!

Capshaholm and Studebaker

Capshaholm is the name given to a 38 room mansion built by J.D. Oliver in 1898, in South Bend, Indiana.  Built of native granite (deposited in Indiana by glaciers) that J.D. purchased for a song from local farmers that wanted the rocks removed from their fields.

Oliver was an immigrant from Scotland, and arrived in Indiana after several failed attempts to provide for the family on the east coast.  J.D. was an ambitious sort, and was known for doing whatever was necessary to get ahead.  He once received a job offer several days journey away from home.  He had just enough money to get there, and when he arrived, he found that the company he was supposed to work for had folded. Not having any money, he walked all the way home.

Eventually he landed a job in a foundry, where he learned all that he could about steel fabrication and casting iron.  He soon had saved enough money to purchase a small foundry of his own, and went into the business of making plows, a highly necessary item in the rapidly expanding farming communities around South Bend.  A series of experiments led J.D. to invent a cooling process that imparted immense strength to previously weak cast iron.  Steel plows lasted a long time and stayed sharp, but were very expensive.

Cast iron plows were cheap, but broke easily, so his innovation was a huge breakthrough. A US patent led to the formation of the Oliver Chill Plow company. Eventually the company began manufacturing motorized farm equipment and tractors and eventually was absorbed by another equipment manufacturer.

To make a long story shorter, J.D. became very, very wealthy and in 1898, after only two years of construction, he, his wife, and their four children moved into the mansion with seventeen servants and staff and a butler, where they lived for years, and their children after that, before the estate was donated to the city of South Bend, complete with authenticated furnishing right down to the rice grains left in the containers in the kitchen.  Everything in the house is documented to have been in the house, even the renovations done in the '30's have been left exactly as when the Oliver family lived there.

We took hundreds of pictures, but I'll try to post the most impressive.  The grand entry and staircase, along with the main fireplace, and drawing room ceiling treatment were pretty special!

This entry door is 3 1/2 inches thick, rides on three large hinges, and moves like it was on glass:

Intricate carving in Mahogany, Oak, Cherry and Pine as well as detailed plaster reliefs are everywhere in the home and become almost overwhelming!

The furnishings include a Tiffany Grandfather clock (yes, Tiffany).  The clock ceased to function some years ago, and every attempt has been made to find a repair person, to no avail. So it remains as it was in a hallway.

The Master Suite is kept exactly as it was when the last Oliver spinster daughter passed away years ago, complete with the adjacent bathroom.

I could go on, but will conclude our tour with this photo of The Black Madonna.  From the twelfth century, it was in a cathedral that burned. It was the only artifact that survived, but with soot on the Madonna's face, hence the name.  The Smithsonian has made several unsuccessful attempts to acquire the painting, so it's value is inestimable.

Next door to the mansion is the Studebaker National Museum, with 150 years of Studebaker history inside, from a reproduction of the first Studebaker wheelbarrow to the 1963 Avanti.

The museum contains example from all the eras of the Studebaker company, including early wagons,  electric cars that were only made for a few years, and some of the most beautiful examples of early coachwork.

There are Presidential Carriages, 1950's prototype vehicles, and Studebaker/Packard hybrids, but Donna and I both thought that the 1961 Hawk was the epitome of Studebaker.