Lincoln Highway road trip wrap-up #2, from Holland, Michigan. Signs!
I wound up lingering in South Bend for a good part of the day. For one, there’s another superb car museum – the National Studebaker Museum. The plant was in South Bend until 1963 at which point production was moved to Canada for the final three years of Studebaker’s long, lingering illness and death, with all production ceasing in 1966 (except for the continuance of the Avanti for a bit by others). Classic industrial design (Raymond Loewy was involved with a lot of it from 1939). Fantastic collection. There’s also quite a good city history museum with a fun exhibit on the short lived All American Girls Professional Baseball League whose archives are kept there (some of you may remember the film “A League of Their Own”). The city was the home of the legendary South Bend Blue Sox (1943–1954). Plus, I drove around a couple of historic residential districts and checked out the industrial relics of the former manufacturing district by the south bend of the St. Joseph River – that is where the few remaining Studebaker buildings are. (I think today I finally reached my limit of rust belt explorations and am very happy to be here in lovely western Michigan along the lake.)
Anyway, this post is about signs. I love old roadside signage. One hard and fast rule of US road trips is that the older and less well traveled the road, the better the old signs. This particular trip had an almost overwhelming number of them – I really had to pick and choose what I would shoot. I have already posted a few; here is a small selection of the many others.
My favorite is Balyeat’s Coffee Shop in Van Wert OH, maybe because it was such a fine experience eating there and getting to see the old place. One really wonders how these places hang on in a time of high costs, economic hardship and competition from fast food and roadside chains, and it is hoped they can persevere for a little longer. I had been told by a couple of people already to stop there. It was worth it – the dictionary entry of comfort food. The owner, Anita, came over to my table and we had a good chat; she sat down and joined me for quite a while. Lovely woman. Like so many on the trip she was so very friendly and welcoming. The pièce de résistance of the meal – the blueberry pie baked by her granddaughter – was phenomenally good. On the way out when I went to the register to pay, she wouldn’t let me. The lunch was on her. Priceless.
