The Corona Diaries Vol. 19: Eddie Touhy Is Rolling in His Grave

Mid-June 2021

For the Frau's birthday we had dinner at the Tornado Room, a downtown steakhouse. It was quite tasty. We were there last year and I had a wedge salad. This year she took the plunge and enjoyed it so much that we ended up buying a head of iceberg lettuce and French dressing on our next trip to the grocery store so she could make it at home.

The plan originally was to have dinner one last time at The Wonder Bar but I found out, much to my chagrin, that it was permanently closed when I called to make a reservation. While I was aware that the owner is selling the property to a developer who has an 18-story apartment building planned for that block, I thought that it was to remain open for a while yet as designs were being finalized and approvals sought from various city commissions.

This is a shame as The Wonder Bar has been around since 1929 and was built for Eddie Touhy, brother of Chicago mafia kingpin Roger "The Terrible" Touhy. There are supposedly tunnels underneath it that were used for bootlegging operations during its early years. And there is also tell of openings in the walls that were like arrowslits - but for guns. There is some hope left as a group is trying to find a spot to move the building to instead of seeing it succumb to the wrecking ball.

********

The next day the Frau and I hit the road for Dubuque. I'd been there previously but that was in the mid-90s. At that time I was dating a young lady from Dubuque and I went to meet her family one Thanksgiving.

My memories of that trip are limited to meeting her kin and eating too much. While I remember her father being standoffish in a not totally unfriendly way, I was warmly welcomed by multiple families, you might say. My girlfriend's mother died when she was quite young – an infant, I believe. Her father remarried and her stepmother became "mom". (I hope I am getting this right.) They divorced and he later remarried again. And so we ended up spending time with and eating meals at the homes of her father, her mom, and her birth mother. I think my stomach nearly ruptured by the end of the day. At the last stop, I was offered my fourth or fifth slice of pie of that day and, because A) I wanted to make a good impression and B) I love pumpkin pie, I accepted. Upon completion I immediately felt like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and desperately hoped that my darling girlfriend would not offer me a mint.

Since we were doing the family thing, we didn't sightsee. This meant that our trip this year might as well have been my first visit although I did get a sense of vague familiarity as we crossed the Mississippi River and headed towards downtown.

Our first stop was at 7 Hills Brewing Company for lunch. It was in an old industrial building in the Millwork District which was largely given over to slick new apartments and trendy eating and entertainment venues. Other buildings had similarly been brought back to life while I saw some that were still being used for industrial purposes. I saw a few that still sat empty as they awaited their turn to be gentried.

We ordered some fried Brussels sprouts to start which seems to be a trendy appetizer these days. I did some research before we left on the indigenous foods of Dubuque and didn't find anything**. No equivalent of Chicago's Italian beef or deep dish pizza. It could have been my poor Googling skills, though. Brewpub fare is generally a rather monotonous assembly of burgers, wings, and sandwiches these days so I really had no right to expect some uniquely Iowan food there.

Tangentially, I recently learned that it was only in the 1990s that the bitterness was mostly bred out of Brussels sprouts by Dutch botanists. This makes me wonder what my parents were thinking as they ate them back when I was a kid.

To drink we opted for variety in the form of a four beer flight. And, since we were in Iowa, one of our choices was a glass of Town Clock, a pilsner made with the food item I most closely associate with Iowa - corn.

The consensus was that the green tea ale was the best of the bunch (although I also really liked the cherry wheat ale) and we ended up bringing some home with us.

I found this next to the men's room:

After lunch it was off to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. We started in the Mississippi River/freshwater building. Walking in, we were confronted by a large pool full of fish and turtles. A pair of wood ducks sat on a log preening themselves.

The ducks were there sometime later when we left and I was surprised that they didn't seem to have moved and I wondered just how they were made to stay on the log or near the water since the pool was not enclosed.

Personally, I could have watched the turtles all day.

Another tank held snakes and we were glad that they were behind glass and not on a log pile free to attack us.

We stepped outside to make our way to the other building and were pleased to not only see that the William M. Black, an old steam-powered dredge from the 1930s that was used by the Army Corp of Engineers was docked nearby, but also that touring it didn't involve an additional fee. While walking on the dock out to it, we passed by a section of the shore that was a pond/wetland area replete with docks that allowed you to walk out into the water and feed the fish and see more turtles.

On the way to the ship, we were attacked by a red-winged blackbird! I guess its nest was close by. While there was a sign warning folks about this behavior, you had to pass through the gauntlet first before you came to it. Thankfully we came out unscathed.

It was neat to walk around the ship imagining the crew running around performing their assigned tasks as the ginormous pistons turned the wheels on the sides of the ship and propelled it down the river.

The other building of the museum had exhibits about salt water marine biology as well as a social history of the Mississippi. We learned about how Native Americans used the river as well as the vast trade routes that were served by the river. E.g. – pipestone mined in Minnesota made its way south on the river while German silver crossed the Atlantic and ended up in New Orleans before being shipped north.

We saw more creatures of the deep there and I thought this sight had some H.P. Lovecraftian/Cthulhu vibes.

The Frau and I were extremely impressed by the museum. It was really neat to see all of the marine life, learn a bit about the vessels that sailed the Mississippi, and get some of Dubuque's river history as well. It's a huge and very important river but doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves. Popular culture doesn't seem to do as much to acknowledge its importance, celebrate it, and mythologize it as it used to. Or perhaps I am just not paying attention to the right bits of pop culture.

On the way down, we caught Highway 61 just outside of Dickeyville where it joined Highway 151 heading southwest. Thinking about all of the legend and lore surrounding the Mississippi River, I also thought about the history of Highway 61. It is storied in its own right. Witness it in the title of one of Bob Dylan's seminal mid-60s albums, Highway 61 Revisited. The highway's northern terminus used to be in the far northeast reaches of Minnesota, near his birthplace. (Today it's closer to the Twin Cities.) It winds south 1,400 miles or so to New Orleans, largely following the river.

Following Highway 61 you encounter a lot of the history of the middle of the country. Some highlights were included in Son Volt's "Afterglow 61" which references Bob Dylan up north, Mark Twain in the middle, and Leadbelly down south.

US highway from north to south.

It's history breathing.

I think one of the attractions for me of the Mississippi River and Highway 61 is that they speak to the history of not only the Midwest, from which I hail, but the middle of the United States generally as opposed to the coasts.

The museum complex is part of the Port of Dubuque which seems to have largely been transformed from an industrial area into an entertainment/tourist one. My only gripe is that the riverfront area is cut off from downtown by railroad tracks and an expressway. That's too bad but I'm sure it has been that way for ages and is what you get for having so much industry on the river.

While the Frau took a short nap, I went out for a stroll around downtown to see the sights. Just a couple blocks from the hotel I spied the namesake of the corn-laced beer that I had with lunch.

A few blocks away is the county courthouse that was built in the 1890s.

Dubuque has retained a lot of old buildings which means there were quite a few ghost signs to be found.

********

The bonus photo this time features Piper and Grabby back when Piper was just a couple months old.

** I did a poor job of searching the Internet and have since discovered that Dubuque's indigenous dish is the turkey and dressing sandwich. You take cooked turkey and combine it with dressing. To this you add gravy and this admixture goes on a bun. I do not recall seeing this on any menus.

While not a Dubuque specialty, the maid-rite sandwich is an Iowa staple. It's a loose meat sandwich - ground beef - but I am unsure of the exact nature of the seasoning. I do not recall seeing this on any menus either.

Hopefully the trendy joints in the Millwork District aren't all turning their backs on their Iowa heritage. Every brewpub in this country has wings and burgers and flatbread pizzas. So dear trendy Dubuque establishments: deviate from the norm by adding some local color with a maid-rite or turkey and dressing sandwich. Or both.