LILEKS (James) :: The Bleat 2019 THURSDAY

Did I post the correct index redirect yesterday? I can’t remember. i was so exhausted, and I was elsewhere. It was quite a production; shame if you missed it.

So. Text from my sister on Monday: Aunt Joyce had died the Friday before. Not unexpected. Left the office, went home, threw some stuff in a suitcase, and drove up Ten again.

I pulled off at the St. Cloud rest area, because that seems to be the new tradition. When I was coming up before Dad passed I got a burger at the St. Cloud exit, because I left in the morn to get home to Fargo in time for supper, but now, hell, no one cares. There’s no one waiting.

Technically, it's Frazee.

The rest stop has a fancy coffee machine.

I can pay for the coffee with my watch. It’s the gesture sci-fi movies ever anticipated: holding up your wrist.

There were many customizing options, and it promised a good-tasting jolt. Your corner coffeehouse!

It was absolutely indistinguishable from the ordinary coffee-machine crap. I sat at a bench, with this view . . . .

And sipped and thought and felt the fall creep in. I’d left in a hurry. I didn’t have a coat.

Took the usual route - St. Cloud, Royalton (passed Pirate’s Cove, remembering stops with Daughter), Motley, Staples for coffee and gas, then Verndale. You’ll recall that the one of the glass globes on the WW1 memorial was broken. I had this feeling that it would be broken forever, and that would be unutterably depressing, a sign of how time moves on and people forget. It’s a tiny town. You can’t imagine anyone getting up a drive to fix it, you know?

I’m so happy to be wrong.

They’re solar powered. They glow at night again. The monument has been painted. It’s gleaming. A hundred years later, it survives.

Back in the car, and listened to a five-part Johnny Dollar, as is my wont on these trips. I didn’t remember this one. It’s remarkable.

Pulled into Fargo, swung through downtown to check the progress on the new Skyscraper.

I still think the orientation of the building is peculiar, but I'm liking it.

Ate dinner at a diner and used the Wifi to file some words for the paper.

There’s no Wifi at Dad’s house.

Which, technically, is my house.

It’ll never be my house.

Isn’t it odd, how you can own something but know you don’t and can’t and won’t.

More tomorrow.

Sioux City is a big bigger than we usually do, but it’s good to visit places with lots of stuff, instead of the same sad parade of two- or three-story brick buildings from 1908.

The old in the new:

Gabberts is a furniture chain, high-end, not too many outlets now.

Hold on do I have a fever is this some sort of a strange dream

Everything about this shot is so well-composed I have to thank Google once more for this gift.

Banal, but well-composed.

LET'S MAKE UP FOR THE DISUSE OF CLASSICAL ELEMENTS BY BRING THEM BACK REALLY HUGE

You know when you walk in the air conditioning will be going full blast.

The 80s had different ideas, didn’t they?

Someone should paint that light-post red, so it makes people think the turkey is done.

“What should we do for the ground floor, to let the building interact with pedestrians and street activity?”

“Eh, some grates. Suck or blow, I don’t care.”

Bob here saw something that night, scared him half to death. Hair went white. Hasn’t said a word since.

I’m starting to think this city is just a really good Sims mod

Possibly a motel. (Once again, for the record, I’m doing this ages after I snapped the originals, and probably came here for a motel.) The brick design is from the downtown two-story motel era.

Different views of the obligatory old red-brick 20s structure. Original windows - but the marble?

It has the look of a latter rehab. But not necessarily.

Downtown malls, that’s the ticket. That’ll bring the shoppers back.

I wonder if that was a ballroom up there.

Another ground-floor postwar renovation for which no one today is particularly grateful:

Well, it’s something.

Sometimes I'd almost prefer nothing to these Roman Forum ruins.

What the -

It’s rare that the upper floor is a more modern style than the lower floor.

From the Somber Serious Machine-Age Federal style. It’s nice. We were one of the few countries that could do Fascism Style well.

Oh ABSOLUTELY that fits on a terra-cotta classically-detailed building. What sort of coke-fueled disco hell was this for?

Ah, now I see - that was a hotel awning. I mean, this has to be a hotel, right?

The Warrior.

The building was designed by Kansas City architect Alonzo H. Gentry in the Art Deco style.

The brick exterior features terra cotta ornamentation. The hotel opened on December 20, 1930, built by the Eppley Hotel Company. Eppley was bought by Sheraton Hotels in 1956, and the hotel was renamed the Sheraton-Warrior. Sheraton remodeled the hotel in 1962, moving the lobby from the second floor to the ground floor and converting the hotel to a motel, renaming it the Sheraton-Warrior Motor Inn. Sheraton sold the hotel to Gotham Hotels Limited in 1968 and it was renamed the Warrior Motor Inn. The hotel closed in 1971 following a strike by employees, but was sold and reopened the following year as the Aventino Motor Inn. It closed permanently in 1976.

It was gutted for . . . senior housing! But that didn’t go through.

Now it’s on track to be an actual hotel again.