Tilford Scaredly

Happy Halloween!! Today we all decided that there would be no better way to get into the Halloween spirit than to dress up like a bunch of Tilford Dudleys. So this afternoon, just before Dr. Reid's Material Culture class, we all painted mascara mustaches on our faces--just like Tilford used to have. Dr. Reid thought it was hilarious, and everybody we ran into in the history department appreciated the humor of it all. Then the next two pictures are from our scary cemetery adventures this evening. We started out at Shiloh Cemetery, where Thomas Lincoln is buried, and heard ghost stories from Matt about how "Tom" still checks up on his farm every now and then. After that we went looking for Tilford Dudley's grave in this random cemetery out by the train tracks in town, but it was to no avail. We kind of creeped ourselves out though, by being out there after it got really dark. But we had flashlights and each other, so we were okay. It was a very fun Halloween adventure! After that we got some pizzas and went back to our classroom to watch "Dracula." That is a seriously messed-up movie, and I wasn't too disappointed when Laurie and I had to leave to work on our presentation about Marshall's Main Street in Historic Preservation tomorrow. Earlier today we had more fun Halloween times at the Dudley House. We met there this morning to get our picture taken for Mattoon Journal-Gazette. The man who will be writing the feature story on us this Sunday interviewed Catherine and me about Tilford's career. He said that it's going to be a pretty extensive article, so we're all quite excited. After the pictures and interviews, we walked around the Dudley House looking for the angry ghost. Paul Bauman, the guy from church who used to be in the HA program, had told us before that he swears he encountered the ghost when he was at the Dud's house one night. He was working up in the archive room, and then he heard the downstairs door open, footsteps come up the stairs and walk down the hall, and head into the back bedroom where Dr. Dudley (T-Dud's dad) had his office. Paul heard things being thrown around in the bedroom (which he had locked earlier), and then he heard the footsteps go back downstairs and leave--but he never saw anyone. Paul went and checked out the bedroom, which was still locked, and found it in complete disarray--but he had just organized everything in there earlier in the day. Yikes! So we went looking for the mad ghost today, but did not find it. We even opened the door to the attic, but no one was up there. After the T-Dud House, we all went and had a Halloween breakfast at the South Side Cafe. I had a delicious omelet. After breakfast I went and got a flu shot, then it was off to school for class this afternoon. It has been a very fun and spoooooky day! I saw a lot of funny costumes today, but my favorites were those that I saw pictures of Camden, Riley, Sidney, and Eliza wearing!! One year ago today, Mom and I had the funnest Halloween ever at the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana!! That was a Halloween I will surely never forget. It's not every day that you get to spend Halloween at THE most haunted house in America!

Halloween Eve!

Happy Halloween Eve! Last night there was a very spooky moon--it was bright orange, and the "Man in the Moon" looked especially sneaky. Tonight I am hosting our weekly HA meeting--which I still maintain that we don't really need to have, but alas--it's worth it just to keep everyone happy, I guess. I will be serving doughnuts and apple cider--very fall-ish! Today was the perfect fall day! It was in the 60's outside, sunny, just a little cool, and the leaves on the trees were brighter than ever. I love fall and spring!

I walked to Wal Mart this afternoon to buy some paper plates for tonight, and they already had their Christmas stuff out!! But it's not even Halloween yet! And what about Thanksgiving??? Hmmm, very strange. Well, I guess they had their Halloween and Thanksgiving stuff out simultaneously.

Today in Dr. Barnhart's class, he was talking about maps, and it was interesting, but he was talking so much that it was putting everybody to sleep :-) We were trying our best to stay awake, but it was nice and warm in the room and we kept dozing off. I was sitting by Catherine, and Kristen said that when one of us would finally give in and close our eyes for a second, the other would wake up, and visa versa. Kristen herself petered out a couple of times, and everybody else had very heavy eyelids. I have decided that this Local History and Interpretation class is the most random class I've ever had :-) We've stopped having formal reading assignments, and these days he just kind of talks about whatever, but it's always interesting.

Tomorrow, for Halloween, all of us are going out for a spooky breakfast! We don't have Mrs. Miller's Museum Administration class in the morning , so we'll have time to sit down and enjoy a Halloween meal. Then we have Material Culture in the afternoon, and then after that . . . we're going on a Haunted Cemetery Tour of Charleston!!!! Hooray!! This is something that Catherine, Sarah, and I thought up today, and Sarah is going to develop a tour route for us. There are lots of crazy stories about some of the cemeteries here, and we're going to visit the graves of some of the city's most famous residents--including Thomas Lincoln (Abe's dad) and Sarah Bush Lincoln (Abe's step-mom). We can't find where Tilford Dudley is buried though, so we might not be able to visit his grave. I kind of think he's not really buried here, but I'm not sure. Well, I've got to go vacuum for tonight! Oh, one more thing--tomorrow morning, before breakfast, the Mattoon Journal-Gazette wants to take a picture of all of us in front of the Dudley House because they're going to do a huge feature on Tilford Dudley and the projects we've done!!! Yay--we're famous!

Moonshine and Marshall

Oh, the adventures today! First off though, the first picture you see here is from a couple of weeks ago when we had Disability Awareness Day in Museum Administration. I just barely got the photos from Kristen, and I thought that this one captured just how ridiculous we all looked! Thankfully I didn't have to walk around school being both hearing and visually-impaired, but I did have to walk around with those headphones on--I certainly got some strange looks!

Now, about today--after Museum Exhibits class this morning, Laurie, Catherine, and I took off for the little town of Marshall, Illinois, which is a member of Illinois's Main Street Preservation program. We have to do a report on the Main Street program this Thursday, so we thought we'd go take some pictures and gather information today. We took a little detour on our way down because we wanted to stop at this place out in the boonies south of Martinsville (which is south of Marshall) to eat at this place we'd heard about called Moonshine. I know what you're thinking--a place serving strong drinks? That's what I thought at first, but it's actually a world-famous burger place. They serve what's called the Moonburger. It is literally out in the middle of NOWHERE!! My GPS was guiding us through the farmland to get there, and we were going down dirt roads, gravel roads, through cow pastures, and we finally made it . . . only to find that they closed at 1:00 (it was 1:30)! :-( We were so sad. But, we want to go back another day and try it out--it is a hilarious little place, and usually it's the places like that where you'll find the best food. So, we drove up to Marshall for lunch. A lot of places there had already closed too, but we were able to eat at the Marshall Family Diner. It was a hilarious little place, and the food was really good. They had Mexican decorations all over the place, which we thought was funny, and all of the locals were there shootin' the breeze and drinking lemonade. They were telling each other funny stories, and my favorite comment was when this older lady said, "Bill, will you internet me that picture?" That's way more fun to say than "e-mail." We had some tasty grilled cheese sandwiches there, and then we went out to look at buildings. They have some really cool buildings there, and it's great that the Main Street program is helping them restore and preserve them all. We were cracking up today because Marshall has to stretch a bit to tie themselves to Lincoln, but as is the case with all Illinois towns, they've done their darndest. They have an inn there downtown (which is for sale--anyone looking for a business?), which Abraham Lincoln supposedly slept in one night. And our favorite was a brochure that featured a stone well from which Abraham Lincoln supposedly drew water one time. They're stretching it with the well! We met some really nice people who let us come in and look around their buildings. They've got some great restoration projects going on, and it was neat to see the work they're doing up close. When we were back inspecting the rear of one of the buildings, we couldn't help but notice some brick pieces on the ground that had fallen off the building's exterior. We broke all historic preservation laws and took one of the little brick pieces--we just wanted a relic to show we'd been to Marshall! :-) Later we went out looking for bridges along Route 40--also known as the National Road (which we will be featuring in our corridors exhibit next spring). We were looking for one bridge in particular, and we ended up doing a little off-roading to try to find it. We never found it, but we did find this old road made of bricks--maybe an older version of the National Road? Since we were gathering relics, we decided that we needed to just take one little piece of brick that had been chipped off of the road--and we can say that it's part of the National Road! It was a beautiful fall day today. The leaves were soooo pretty, and it was nice and brisk outside. We were gone much longer than we had planned, but we were having so much fun that we just lost track of time. On our way back to Charleston we had to stop at Dairy Queen in the town of Casey to get pumpkin pie blizzards--which were delicious. Also on the way back, we had to stop at the World's Tallest Abe Lincoln statue since Catherine and Laurie had never seen it before. You can see from the third picture up there just how tall Abe really is in comparison to little Laurie down there by his feet. They thought the statue was hilarious and decided that it is the ultimate Land of Lincoln icon. Well, I'm off to bed. It's been a fun day but I'm pooped!

Deadly Dudley is Dead!

Hoooooooooooooooooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The two-month-long Tilford Dudley marathon has come to a close, and I am exceedingly grateful. I am also exceedingly worn out. T-Dud nearly did me in. You may notice that I haven't posted anything for a couple of days because I haven't had one single free second to sit down and write about how crazy everything got, but now I can breathe and reminisce about the craziness that was my life for the last 48 hours. Where to begin? Well, first of all, before the craziness began, I had a great day yesterday with Greg up in Springfield and Athens (remember, it's pronounced like "Ay-thens"). I had to leave kind of early, and I was up a little late the night before trying to finish Dudley stuff, so I could tell that it probably wasn't going to be a weekend when I would catch up on sleep. I drove up to Sullivan, where Greg's parents live, and rode with them up to Springfield. We got all of the big stuff moved from his Springfield apartment to the house he'll be renting in Athens, which is about 15 miles north of the big city. He only lives about a block away from the funeral home there (which is haunted, I have decided), so that will be convenient for him. We almost got to go dig a grave, which I thought would have been the perfect Halloween-ish activity, but someone else ended up doing it, which made me a little sad. Because I thought it would be funny to say that I had gone grave digging for Halloween. Then Greg's parents took off back to Sullivan, and he and I went to a Halloween party at his boss's house (which is not the funeral home) :-) Pretty much the whole town of Athens was there, and everyone was very, very nice, so we had a good time. They had a big bonfire outside, and everyone wanted me to tell ghost stories. I don't know why they wanted me to do it--they're the ones who work at a funeral home! :-) But I told them the story about the Myrtles, the most haunted house in America, where Mom and I went last Halloween, and they loved it. Greg and I then went back down to Sullivan, I picked up my car, and headed for home. Unfortunately it was a little late when I got back, so I couldn't resolve some Dudley issues last night, but it was sooooooo much fun! I like Greg a lot, and we had a great day together. As I was coming back into town, it was really quiet outside, but then I seriously saw Raggedy Ann and Andy running across the street. I thought that maybe I was so tired that I was hallucinating, but I think then I realized that there was a costume party going on at one of the bars by campus :-)

So, this morning is when all of the excitement began. I was planning on going to part of church, probably leaving after sacrament meeting, but that definitely did not happen. I'm glad that the Duds are done now so I can return to normal church activity. I got up at 6:30 a.m. to try to download some service packs for my computer since Catherine finished up our Powerpoint yesterday in Powerpoint 2007, which I do not have and which is not compatible with earlier versions of the program. I tried everything, but the program would not work. I also had to finish pulling some of my facts together, and I was getting very afraid that what I was going to say didn't make any sense. By this time it was about 9:30, and I realized that church wasn't going to happen and that I'd better switch into crisis recovery mode. I talked with Catherine, and we figured out how we could get the Powerpoint from the computers at school to her computer (complicated by the fact that her Internet got disconnected), and we could use her laptop for the presentation since she has the 07 version of Powerpoint.

So, we decided to go over to school, where we discovered there was no paper for printing our presentations. We finally rounded up paper, and then got to work trying to get the Powerpoint to work on Catherine's computer. I had made the original Powerpoint to match the exhibit--using the same fonts and colors, but Catherine's computer didn't have the right fonts, so everything looked funny. So there we were trying to download fonts two minutes before we were supposed to meet Dan at the Dud's to practice the presentation (he was going to be our Powerpoint operator during the show). We were scrambling around like crazy, but finally got it and took off. When we arrived at the Dudley House--by this time it was about 11:15 a.m. (the presentation was to start at 2:00), we found it in complete disarray. We decided it must have been that angry ghost who lives there, but found out later that one of the community theater groups had a meeting there last night. The chairs were all over the place, tables were moved around, the Powerpoint projector and screen were gone, and when we opened the door to the exhibit room, we found that a bunch of the exhibit panels had come unstuck from the walls and fallen to the ground. All was chaos! The three of us scrambled around, looking for projectors, taping panels back up on the wall, arranging chairs, and moving tables. We finally got to the part where we practiced our presentation, which was good because there were a few errors we needed to fix. We had a couple of minutes to eat lunch, and then it was showtime.

I forgot to say that all last night, during what little sleep I had, I dreamed that Mr. Riccio came to the program and disliked it so much that he was yelling at us telling us what a bad job we did (he's probably the last person in the world who would yell at anyone). In the dream he asked my why I had done such a terrible job, and I said, "Well, I didn't get any sleep last night!" He said, "That's no excuse! You are all fired!" :-) So when I saw Mr. Riccio and Dr. Small walk into the Dudley House today, I started laughing and told them the story about my dream. They thought that was soooooooooo funny. Greg also came to the presentation this afternoon! It was totally like bringing him to a family reunion because everyone wanted to meet him. Dr. Hardeman even showed up for the program, and the first thing he asked me was "How's the mortician?" I said, "Well, he just so happens to be right here so you can meet him." Dr. Hardeman thrilled about that and had a great time asking Greg questions about dead people and such. Thankfully the Dud's house was not full to overflowing. We had about 40-50 people there, so everyone could squeeze in. There were quite a few students there for extra credit :-) It must be a rough year in their political science class.

I think that the presentation went really well today. I was realizing last night that parts of mine were quite boring when I was talking about all of the court cases Tilford was involved in as trial examiner for the National Labor Relations Board, but I had a big, funny finish, so hopefully that made up for any boringness experienced during the rest of it. I ended by bringing the topic back to the town of Charleston and talking about some of the labor unions that were formed here while Tilford was back in Washington fighting for labor unions. There was a place here in town during the 1930s called the Brown Shoe Factory where the women employees were only making 11 cents an hour. They decided that this was not enough, went on strike, and violence erupted. In an article entitled "Fists, Clubs Fly During Fracas," (fracas is my new favorite word) a local newspaper reported that: "Numerous women took part in the fighting and their presence was evidenced today by the finding of a skirt in front of a newspaper office, lost by some unfortunate feminine battler." This really got everyone going. In fact, Dr. Barnhart was laughing so hard that I wasn't sure if he was going to be okay. :-) Catherine did a great job, and everyone seemed to really enjoy the afternoon.

I am now back at the apartment, completely pooped, but I need to finish drawing some exhibit ideas for class tomorrow. I have to do architectural drawings of how I would set up a theoretical exhibit, so we'll see how that goes. Tonight I am determined to go to bed really early! I am so happy that the Dudley drama has ended. We were saying today that we never have to speak of him again, but we surely will, as he has now become like another appendage to us. And, we need to find his grave for Halloween, so we'll talk about him more this week.

Haunted Dudley House

I know that you have all been dying to see a picture of Greg, the mortician, so here he is--he doesn't really look like a mortician, does he? Tomorrow is our big moving party up in Springfield, which should be very fun. Dr. Small, Dr. Reid, and all of the students are quite intrigued by the fact that he is a mortician, and they are all looking forward to meeting him on Sunday. It will be kind of like taking him to a family reunion because everyone will be wanting to talk to him--hopefully it won't totally scare him away!

I found out today that the Dudley House is haunted! Well, I didn't find out from my own experience, but supposedly some crazy stuff has gone on there when people have been in there by themselves. These people, mostly members of the Coles County Historical Society, have decided that the ghost at the Dud's house is not one of the Dudleys, but one of the patients that T-Dud's dad, Gerry, who was a doctor, treated (or maybe failed to treat properly--thus the angry ghost?). Very spooky. It's a good thing that I don't plan on hanging out there by myself anytime soon. Speaking of T-Dud, it says in Who's Who in America that he's buried in Charleston, but we all thought he was buried up in Washington state. If he really is buried here, we are totally going to go find his grave on Halloween!

The T-Dud presentation has been coming together well today. There's just so much stuff to talk about with his career! Catherine and I are going to meet tonight to put everything in place. Aly, Kristen, and I were supposed to go out and do house surveying today, but it's nasty rainy weather outside, and quite cold, so we're postponing until T-Dud is done and the sun comes out next week. We were going to have Kristen over for dinner tonight, after surveying, and then we were going to have Catherine come too--since we'll be doing T-Dud stuff, but somehow the word leaked out, and before I knew it, everyone assumed that we were having a class dinner over at our house tonight! I have no idea how that happened, but I knew that I was NOT going to make dinner for everyone tonight, so we decided that we'll go try out the new Mexican restaurant in town. In fact, there are two new Mexican restaurants in town, which is quite a big deal, considering that there aren't all that many restaurants, but we're just going to try one tonight.

Today Dr. Reid was telling me about Amish funerary practices--very interesting! I told her that I have decided not to ever die so I don't have to be embalmed, which she thought was quite funny. Last night we all went to hear Dr. Small's presentation about architecture and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and it was awesome! Well, I'm off to do more Dudley stuff. We keep teasing Catherine about marrying Tilford's grandson who is going to school in Colorado right now--then her last name could be Dudley! But then we decided she might not want to marry into the Dudley family. Speaking of Colorado, I've been rooting for the Rockies in the World Series, but they're having a tough time. Everyone here but Aly is hoping that they'll rebound once they get back to Denver for the next game. Aly is a huge Red Sox fan, so she has been quite excited that they are winning. It's kind of funny--she's from New York, and her dad is a huge Yankees fan, but she became a Red Sox fan during college (this makes her dad very sad). Dr. Reid and I are hoping that the Red Sox players won't be able to breathe when they get to Denver because they won't be used to the thin air!