109th Annual Chicken Noodle Soup Dinner

Sometimes a Good News Story simply doesn't leap off the computer screen.  Sometimes a Good News Story can be rather vague and elusive.  Sometimes it takes what Old School journalists once called "shoe leather" to track down the Good News.

Today we used some virtual "shoe leather" in tracking down a Chicken Noodle Soup Dinner.

Here's how it all came down.

Weeks ago we decided to occasionally check news media of cities and towns along Route 66 for Good News Stories.  Today we went to Joliet, Illinois. Sadly, there's not a lot of Good News happening in Joliet.
However, we spied the media's "events calendar" and saw a tiny notice for the 109th Annual Hope United Methodist Church Chicken Noodle Soup Dinner.  That's all--just a 109th annual, ho-hum.

Say WHAT???  How could you have a 109th annual Chicken Noodle Soup dinner and it NOT be news?

So, that's when I started trying to figure it all out.  It wasn't easy.  Apparently, the Joliet media have become so jaded and nonchalant about their annual Chicken Noodle Soup Dinners they don't give a damn.

But not me, man!  I give a damn!  So I kept digging and digging and eventually got the story.  It wasn't easy.  I finally had to theorize that maybe The Methodists are big on Chicken Noodle Soup Dinner.  My theory was RIGHT and that's when things started rollin my way.

Apparently, numerous United Methodist Churches around the Nation have been staging Chicken Noodle Soup Dinners for DECADES!  I kid you not.  And they don't just open up a bunch of Campbell's Soup cans.  Nope.  They cook real chickend and make actual home made noodles.

I mean, it's The Real Deal--The Full Monte--and it's a BIG DEAL, too.  Some of the Methodist's annual Chicken Noodle Soup Dinners draw upwards of TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE! Some of the Faithful have had to hand make over a THOUSAND pounds of real noodles!  Yessirrie, we're talking B-I-G!

As nearly as we can figure, United Methodist Church Chicken Noodle Soup Dinners are part and parcel of generations of makers and eaters.  Who knew?  I had NO idea!

COVID caused most Churches to serve drive-up only.  Typically, such a dinner is served the Friday before Lent begins...which just so happens to be this Friday, February 29, 2025.

Here are a couple of links:

https://www.kansas.com/entertainment/restaurants/dining-with-denise-neil/article298926730.html

https://www.umcnic.org/news/chicken-noodle-dinner-unites-merged-church-to-its-past

Lora Webb Nichols

 

"On October 28, 1899, Lora Webb Nichols was at her family’s homestead, near Encampment, Wyoming, reading “Five Little Peppers Midway,” when her beau, Bert Oldman, came to the door to deliver a birthday present. The sixteen-year-old Nichols would marry the thirty-year-old Oldman the following year, and divorce him a decade later. The gift, however—a Kodak camera—would change the course of her life. Between 1899 and her death, in 1962, Nichols created and collected some twenty-four thousand negatives documenting life in her small Wyoming town."

The narrative above is the lead paragraph for a wonderful article in "The New Yorker" magazine.  Of course, it is paywalled but I was able to access the article simply by providing an email.  I have several "dummy" email accounts on hand for just such a purpose!  It's well worth trying to access "The New Yorker" article (linked here) but if you can't access it we have provided a variety of other sources to learn about this remarkable woman and her incredible photographic legacy.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/a-womans-intimate-record-of-wyoming-in-the-early-twentieth-century

Lora received her clunky Kodak box camera when she was sixteen years old.  Her she is shown wearing her Mother's hat  January 6, 1900, a little over two months after getting the camera.  There are over 21,800 of Lora's photos archived.  You can access them via this link:

https://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu/luna/servlet/view/all/who/Nichols%2C+Lora+Webb%2C+1883-1962.?sort=rid%2Ctitle%2Cdate_original%2Csource

This is where Lora lived when she received her camera.  Her Family called this place "Willow Glen".  Those are Wyoming's Snowy Range Mountains in the background.  This link gives you a good, all-around introduction to Lora and her work.  It also features some of her iconic early photos.

https://www.wyominghistoryday.org/theme-topics/collections/lora-webb-nichols

Here's another snippet from "The New Yorker" article: "Nichols’s images from the first half of her life often depict what Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, a historian of the nineteenth century, termed “the female world of love and ritual,” a domestic sphere of deep bonds between women."  Shown above is Lora with her pet cat "Yankee Doodle".  The photo was created February 6, 1900, and Lora looks much older than her 16 years.

Kodak's boxy, primitive roll-film cameras revolutionized photography.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lora_Webb_Nichols

About six years after Lora became a prolific photographer she opened her own darkroom.  Lora's photographer pursuits would continue for 49 years!  Here is a link to a book about her:

https://www.lorawebbnichols.org/lwn-shop/bookonly

From our own personal perspective there are many things to love about Lora's photos.  One of those things are glimpses of various aspects of early 20th Century Life in the rural west.  We've always wanted to see what an early telephone switchboard operation actually looked like and Lora caught this one "in action", to to speak.  We look forward to perusing Lora's archive into the foreseeable future.

A One Room School

Back in 1905 when Malmborg, Montana's one room school was built there were perhaps 200,000 such tiny schools nationwide.  Today there are maybe 400 remaining with about 60 in Montana.  Lauren Miller of "The Bozeman Daily Chronicle" did a truly excellent article on Malmborg's one room school.  It's just about as good a story about a small school as you'll ever find in the main stream media.

Lauren Miller's sweet article isn't dated (at least that we can find) but we'd guess it was published early in the 2024-25 school year.  The copyrighted article is filled with great quotes and pertinent insights.  It's a credit to the journalist's craft!  We're hoping to get formal permission to continue this share.

As Teacher Alison Bramlet said: “I’m home. I love this place. I just feel like it’s so much fun. I don’t ever not want to come to work. Everyday I get up and I’m like ‘I get to go to school’ and I’m so excited about it.”

Here's the full article:

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/it-kind-of-becomes-an-extended-family-embracing-tradition-and-community-in-montanas-one-room/article_43295d94-6acd-11ef-a00b-873f4881d265.html

Towanda Trifecta

Long before Route 66 was a gleam in anyone's eyes, a precursor of the fabled highway was a mere dirt street through Towanda, Illinois.  In this circa 1908 photo expertly colored by Maestro Gary Cascio, you caneasily see the two-track street through Towanda's fledgling "downtown".  It was gradually improved until bypassed in 1924 by State Route #4 which became Route 66 in 1926.

 

Towanda, Illinois, has created a world famous mini monument to Old Route 66.  In fact, a credible case could be made that it's one of THE BEST such monuments on the entire route from Chicago to LA.  There's so much to love about Towanda's Historic Route 66 Trail!  But, wait, there are also two other routes of 66 thru Towanda!  It's a Towanda Trifecta!

Towanda started strung out along a steam puffing railroad. The typical dust-to-mud-to-dust dirt main street featured stereotypical clapboard businesses.  The first so-called "highway" would have been a road paralleling the Chicago & Alton Railroad.  

By the 1920's, we betcha traffic began zooming through town, local folks cried out for a bypass.  Sure enough in 1924, The Illinois Highway Department obliged and ran State Bond Issue 4 along East Jackson Street, bypassing so-called downtown Towanda. This is the highway that became the first official Route 66 in 1926.

An interesting tidbit we did not know is that the entire length of Route 66 was paved in Illinois in 1926!  

Well, time passed and that didn't work out too well either.  So in the postwar period, the State rebuilt Route 66 as a divided four lane highway etching a graceful curve around the west side of Towanda.  This would be the iteration of Route 66 that people remembered and the one that became today's memorial trail.

Blue is the original 19th Century "highway" through Towanda. Red is the 1924 version that became Route 66.  Yellow is the 1950's bypass and pink is today's I-55.

Eventually, of course, Ike Eisenhower's grandiose interstate highway system supplanted the 1950's four lane Route 66.  I-55 moved even farther west of Towanda.  Meanwhile, the Illinois Highway Department abanadoned Route 66 through Towanda and began plans to demolish the Money Creek bridge.

That's when things changed for the better and Good News began to roll.

Fred Walk figured Route 66 could be the hook to get his high school students motivated in civic engagement. He proposed the students place a memorial sign by the closed road.

“They didn’t quite see my vision,” Walk said with a laugh, recalling the initial response. “It was like, ‘Why are we out here? Just a barren stretch of road; there is nothing there.’”

Their attitudes changed once they learned more about Route 66’s importance nationally and in their backyard.

“After we did the sign, I started thinking we could do much more,” Walk said. He met with state officials about turning the road to nowhere into a parkway. There was one problem: The state planned to tear down an old bridge over Money Creek that would have cut the parkway in two.

Walk and the students launched a successful “save the bridge” campaign that upset the contractor who was to receive $80,000 to remove it. But they won over local politicians.

“I wanted to provide an avenue for my students to model for them how they could become activists and model that sense of activism whereby they could get involved in their community,” Walk said.

See: https://route66towanda.org/

Today, Towanda's Ode to Route 66 is world famous.  It's an EZPZ way for Highway Heritage Fans to safely walk a stretch of the old Mother Road.  And that's Good News.  We love it.

HUGE KUDOS to Fred Walk and Towanda People for keeping Route 66 Alive & Well!

You can get a glimpse of Old Towanda with postcard views we downloaded from eBay listings.  We put them into a Google Photos album here.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8G93Fq7K8bwYdY4A6

Here are lots of Towanda links

https://news.illinoisstate.edu/2014/11/alums-driving-force-preserving-route-66/

https://web.archive.org/web/20090612095445/http://towandahistory.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towanda,_Illinois

https://www.duncanmanorhouse.com/

NOTE that the word "Towanda" is far more associated with the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" than with this small dinky, little town.  Towanda, Illinois, actually draws its name from Towanda, Pennsylvania, and it's a long story.  Towanda, Kansas, also exists.  All three town names have Native American linguistic roots.

The "Towanda" used in the movie probably traces its roots to an African name but the linguistic roots are very unclear.  In the movie, the word "towanda" is used as a sort of rallying cry for self-affirmation.

Interestingly in Fannie Flagg's original book, the word "towanda" is only used on roughly two pages.  Its usage in the book s extremely aggressive and may be offensive to some tender readers.  We transcribed the entire pages in which "towanda" was used in the book and you can read those passages here:

https://towandatales.blogspot.com/2025/02/birth-of-towanda.html

Hot Dog

 THERE SHE IS!  IT'S CHLOE!  

The tension builds as Chloe races through a farm field.  WOW!  Look at her GO!

How are they ever going to catch that Hot Dog?  Well, they DO catch Chloe and that's why this is a Good News Story.  Philip Foree is using a thermal drone to help locate and catch lost pets. 

"Every situation is different. Every dog is different. Different dog breeds have different tendencies; depending on the size of the dog, they go different distances away from home or where they've been lost from," Foree said. "Circumstances surrounding that can change how far they go. It's always fluid. It's just a dynamic thing that we try to deal with the best we can."

Above is how Foree arranges his rig in the field.  Below you can see all of the various apparatus and components he uses to find lost pets with his thermal imaging drone.  Check out this video of The Chase for Chloe: https://youtu.be/k9X0C2OasGQ?feature=shared

Foree has established quite a reputation for success.  He doesn't charge for his work.  His reward is often just the sweet satisfaction of seeing a pet reunited with a happy owner.

Here are two stories about Foree's enterprise.  Below the story links is his Facebook address.

https://www.25newsnow.com/2025/02/04/skyward-heroes-pet-saving-duo-uses-thermal-drone-reunite-owners-their-dogs/

https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2025-01-30/eye-in-the-sky-puts-pet-rescue-efforts-hundreds-of-feet-above-ground

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093192562429

A Giant Story

 

 Perhaps you've heard of The Gemini Giant?

The Giant is arguably The Best of Route 66's seemingly endless array of cherished roadside icons. John and Bernice Korelc opened a Dari-Delight restaurant in Wilmington, Illinois, in 1960. Five years later they bought a 438-pound fiberglass Muffler Man figure for $3,500 at the annual National Restaurant Association convention. Seeking to capitalize on America's fascination with the Space Race, they rebranded the restaurant as the "Launching Pad" and had the statue outfitted as an astronaut with helmet and rocket. A naming contest was held at the local grade school to give the statue a new moniker, and Cathy Thomas's suggestion of "Gemini Giant" was selected as the winner. Since then, the Giant has become famous iconography of Route 66, often appearing national and international media alongside stories about the Mother Road. Its continued presence in Wilmington has become one of the most photographed destinations for travelers making the Route 66 journey.

WAAY bigger than you think it is!!

There's absolutely NO doubt that The Gemini Giant is an other worldly, larger-than-life hulk in Wilmington.  We visited The Giant in October 2002 and it was a shock to actually see the statue up close in person.  It was much larger than photos made it seem to be.  As a result of our visit in 2002, we've kept a fairly close eye on the roadside icon.

The Launching Pad restaurant changed hands a few times and finally fell on hard times. It became apparent The Giant needed to be "saved" from rather wanton destruction.  Somehow area history fans managed to get a large grant from the State of Illinois. The Gemini Giant was auctioned off on March 20, 2024, for a winning bid of $275,000. A City of Wilmington press release announced the winning bid was made by the Joliet Area Historical Museum utilizing a state grant, and that the statue was donated to Wilmington and will be displayed at the South Island Park.

Due to strange circumstances surrounding The Giant, crews were dispatched the day after the auction to remove and safeguard the icon.  After a thorough "rehab & repair" of The Giant, it was then erected in Wilmington's South Island Park. A happy celebration and dedication ceremony was staged November 30, 2024 with The Giant standing tall in its new location.

Bob Navarro, president and CEO of Joliet-based Heritage Corridor Destinations, snaps a quick selfie moments before he helped cut the ribbon for the Gemini Giant's new statue location in Wilmington's South Island Park. (John Ferak/Joliet Patch Editor )  For numerous other photos of the event see:

https://patch.com/illinois/joliet/15-amazing-photos-wilmington-throws-party-gemini-giant-returns

Why were we at The Gemini Giant in October 2002?  Good question!  We were serving as Volunteer "Secret Shoppers" for the US Forest Service.  (Long Story.)  Anyway, we had an appointment at the nearby Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.  So we stopped by to see The Giant.

Here are some additional links:

First, the obligatory Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_Giant
A well done, interesting story describing the situation "before" is devolved.

https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/launching-pad-gemini-giant-illinois/

Article has many photos of the day the Giant was removed but it's a real slog to read.

https://choosingfigs.com/living-without-a-car/
After the situation devolved...

https://patch.com/illinois/joliet/destruction-launching-pad-underway-police-cite-owner-12-photos
This is the best summary of the giant fiberglass statues we've yet found:

https://www.routemagazine.us/stories/american-giants

Roadie Randy here...

Yesterday's Random Randy has moved over for today's Roadie Randy.  Whazzup wit dat?  Well, there are lots of ways to find Good News stories.  Going Random is one such way.  Being a Roadie is another tried and true technique, too.  We like to mix it up a little bit.  So, this morning we decided to begin to tackle Good News on Route 66!  WHOA!  Talk about a tall order.  Of course, it will take weeks to peruse each and every little city and town along Route 66. 

First, of course, we needed to find a complete list of cities and towns along Route 66.  Then we decided to start from Chicago and head west taking the route that's the best.  Legendary Bobby Troup's included only a scant few of the route's communities.

Now you go through Saint Looey

Joplin, Missouri

And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty

You see Amarillo

Gallup, New Mexico

Flagstaff, Arizona

Don't forget Winona

Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino

But there's more--a LOT MORE! So today we're covering only the first two west of Chicago and that would be Cicero and Berwyn, Illinois.  It sure didn't take long to find a nice Good News Story in each of those suburbs of the Windy City.  So, here we go, Roadie Randy rollin' on Route 66...

Tonight's the 17th Annual Cicero Father-Daughter Dance!

The Valentines Father/Daughter Dance is a unique opportunity to strengthen the relationship between fathers and daughters. It is the one night girls are able to transform themselves into princesses and spend a one of a kind evening with their dads.

On Friday, February 9th, 2024 around 500 Fathers and daughters came together at the Cicero Community Center joining each other to celebrate an evening full of music, dancing, dinner and of course a lot of fun! Tonight's 17th annual event will be larger.

Fathers and daughters are able to check in with ease, pick a corsage of their choice, take great pictures one of which is framed and the other picture is available with silly props. The pictures are printed instantly for families to take home. In addition, dinner and dessert are included.

The gym is decorated full of hearts and the dance floor is taken over by dancing enthusiasts all evening long. Families are able to enjoy an evening like no other.

Source:
https://thetownofcicero.com/2024/02/12/cicero-celebrates-annual-father-daughter-valentines-dance/

For over 75 photos of one of the Father-Daughter Dances, plus some fun narrative see:
https://www.facebook.com/TownofCicero/posts/pfbid0ZFjNRnqzPRjTKGsVitZ3jTEwkDUYL2gcZZ2d9NCvjSWyPvLFzouvsiJyKXsaQMVjl

Now let's move on down the road to Berwyn, Illinois.  Berwyn is basically Cicero's next door neighbor.  It didn't take long to find Mario Manfredini in Berwyn.  He's about as close to a celebrity fire house chef as you can get.  Plus, Mario makes and sell his very own pasta sauce.  It's in about a dozen stores in the area and also marketed at the Downer's Grove Farmers Market.  Mario's not a bit camera shy.  In fact, he lights up when the camera points his way.  He's a classic, almost stereotypical Italian guy.

His fire house chef days started early in his fire fighting career when someone on his shift was fixing lasagna.  Mario's fire house life change when “One of the guys was making lasagna. He went and bought some jarred sauce. I was like, ‘What the [heck] are you doing?’ That’s a no-no in our family.”

Then Mario joined Berwyn's Parks Board which had staged a spaghetti fundraiser. When he first joined the board, he said he was floored to learn the previous year’s dinner lost $3,000. “How do you lose money selling spaghetti?” Manfredini said. “Well, they had a restaurant do the cooking, didn’t have enough people to attend. ... I said, ‘Let me do the cooking this year.’ The first year I did, we made about $3,000."

That's what started it all and now Manfredini a locally famous.

Here are a couple of GREAT videos featuring Mario Manfredini.  I think the second one is even better than the first one:

https://youtu.be/dAbPZzgAMec?feature=shared

https://youtu.be/Grg5EwXQuDQ?feature=shared

  

And here's the story that jumped started this feature:
https://www.shawlocal.com/my-suburban-life/thank-you/first-responders/2024/05/02/berwyn-battalion-chief-finds-success-in-the-kitchen/

These two stories are about as far as we're gonna git today.  Thanks for reading.

Random Randy here...

Time once again to dance to the beat of a different drummer...

That's right.  Today's the day we cut the cord, pulled the plug and stopped reading mainstream media.  We're returning to our roots as a small town newspaper publisher.  We're headin' out on that Random Road roamin' far and wide for Good News.  It's easy to find if you know how and where to roam.

Our first Good News came to us today from a Dear Friend who's a Good News story all by himself.
He sent this to us via Facebook Messenger and said, "I thought you might enjoy it."  Indeed, it jump start our return Random Randy.

Anyway, "When legendary pro skateboarder Tony Hawk shared this glorious 1979 photo of Shane to his combined 15 million followers on Instagram and Facebook, the girl who grew up in Fayetteville, raised three children here, and still calls it home, became a legend, too."

I think you might enjoy it.  See:

https://www.fayobserver.com/story/lifestyle/2024/11/04/who-is-the-mystery-skater-shared-by-tony-hawk-shares-fayetteville-observer-photo/76047957007/

 

Random Randy's first Big Hit today (working as his own random self) was this clip of a famous local landmark known as Upper Mesa Falls in Island Park, Idaho.  The Henrys Fork River pours out of the Island Park Caldera over the lip of this spectacular feature.  We've been there more times than we can possibly remember and we've taken many, MANY Dear Friends to see this Wonder of Nature.

Well, who'd a thunk it but Upper Mesa Falls will have a fleeting nano-second of fame in the upcoming Super Bowl!  How so?  Upper Mesa Falls get a teeny, tiny split second scene in an iconic Budweiser ad.
Jake, a Clydesdale foal, is the star of this Super Story.  You can see Jake Photoshopped into Upper Mesa Falls at the tip of the top arrow.  Likewise, the focus of the Story is a beer keg and you can see it Photoshopped in at the tip of the bottom arrow.

As usual with Budweiser's annual classic Clydesdale ads, this one's sure to tug at your heartstrings, too.
We found the story in the Columbia, Missouri, newspaper.  The video is embedded in the article here:

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/meet-the-clydesdale-foal-starring-in-sundays-super-bowl-commercial-for-budweiser/article_e962a324-e321-11ef-bd90-53f296be96dd.html 

While roaming into the Jacksonville, Illinois, newspaper we found a fun article about an NFL Super Bowl player who has a soft spot in his heart for "shelter dogs". Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi has been working for a few years to help get dogs into loving homes in the area by paying fees for more than 500 successful adoptions so far. Nnadi has coached a shelter dog for the Puppy Bowl.  Of course, that immediately got us interested in the Puppy Bowl so there are several links to follow for this story.

Here's the first one:
https://www.myjournalcourier.com/sports/article/kansas-city-chiefs-player-becomes-a-coach-to-a-20150553.php

And the second:
https://www.discovery.com/shows/puppy-bowl

And the third:
https://www.discovery.com/shows/puppy-bowl/see/2025/pb-xxi-gallery

Trust me, if you have even the slightest bit of Love for Dogs, the above links are for you!

This is an interesting choice for a Good News story.  We decided to include it because many people in Ottumwa, Iowa, Dearly LOVE this dam and want to save it.  Ya just never know what people are gonna "love" so that's why we decided it's good news their dam gets to be saved.  It's kinda of a goofy story that perhaps only a civil engineer or a dam fan could love but here ya go:

https://www.ottumwacourier.com/news/local_news/albert-discusses-plans-to-rehab-historic-hydro-dam/article_f1313684-dfe7-11ef-bfa0-3b3dd3c03187.html

We actually started doing our Random Randy gig 9 years ago.  And we did it for nearly a year before we moved on to other random stuff.  Anyway, above is one of our favorite random stories from 2016.

You can read it in context here:
http://www.livesimplecaremuch.com/2016/04/some-sunday-stories.html

So just how random is random, anyway?  Glad you asked.  Here's what we do.  We pick a somewhat random starting point.  In this case it was Keokuk, Iowa.  We've been picking on Keokuk for decades to it was a somewhat familiar random point.  Then we ask our handy, dandy Random Point Generator to pick out five random points with a 150 mile radius of Keokuk.  Then we go looking for towns & cities that might have a newspaper.  We find those newspapers online and attempt to find Good News.  Lots of newspapers these days are behind strict paywalls so that kinda cuts down on our success rate.  In the graphic above, Keokuk is the white map pin in the white circle.  We visited newspapers in Ottuma, Iowa, Columbia, Missouri and Jacksonville, Illinois.

50 years ago we were up to our own eyeballs in writing and publishing Good News.  We started the "Zionsville Main Street" newspaper in August 1972.  It's a long story, of course.

We've been featured in various newspaper coverage for many decades.  This is our first appearance on a front page in 1958.  We'd been in other local stories for a few years before this.

Just for grins we threw in a couple of clips about our newspaper daze. 

The source of our new blog's title page graphic is here:

https://ohsobeautifulpaper.com/2011/04/the-printing-process-letterpress-printing-with-antique-type/

EMMY ROX!

We actually don't have to look too far for Good News.  We got Good News right here in our Home Town.  And her name is Emmy!  And Emmy ROX.  Emmy's  "7 Questions" has become a local, beloved institution.  And in her own right, Emmy has become a world class interviewer.

Here she is with Jeff Foxworthy.  Man, you gotta watch it to believe it. Emmy even cracked up the comedian!

Yeah, that's how GOOD Emmy can be!

https://www.eastidahonews.com/2024/09/jeff-foxworthy-answers-7-questions-and-cant-stop-laughing-when-emmy-reveals-a-secret-about-her-dad/