Maxine drove. The campus was mostly deserted for the holidays, and with the bus lanes and ubiquitous crosswalk yields, Maxine trapped herself in the wrong way of a one-way. As she was trying to find an escape, I saw a montage of passersby, street-crossing pedestrians, and other drivers giving us the same upset look. Mouths agape, angry brows, and those "What are you doing?" arms. I experienced all of it in slow motion. I thought it should have been set to the Danube Waltz.
When not anxious about the road, Maxine and Jim happily carried on with the tour. They told me that the University of Illinois was the first original public land-grant university in the country. It was also one of the best designed universities for people with disabilities, both in its infrastructure and in its academic resources. In many ways, the University is still ahead of its time.
Maxine shifted her focus onto a building far in the distance, a good half-mile off. "That is the Krannert Center," she said, emphasizing the fact by suddenly yielding in the middle of the road, which gave the impression that the Krannert Center was this very spot. She was now in the campus bus lane and, still with eyes locked on the Krannert, told me that the University blew its entire quota of teak on this building, imported from Thailand. Meanwhile an almost-hit pedestrian flipped us off although I may have been the only one to notice this.
Jim and Maxine were infectiously enthusiastic about their old haunts, both encyclopedias of fun facts about every building we passed. Even the buildings they didn't know much about were at least given over to speculation. "Dorms," Jim said as we passed two identical blocky structures that indeed could be nothing else. He then explained the large population boom in the 1960s.
Our van crawled in search of an exit. There was a large city bus trundling towards us at not a snail's pace. I briefly thought of how monstrously unfair it would be if Maxine killed all of us just then before she safely tucked into the curb.
By coincidence we had stopped in front of the main attraction, what we had previously discussed at dinner: the Morrow Plots. These are the country’s oldest experimental crop fields--second oldest in the world--with the University planting maize here continuously by the same traditional methods since 1876. The sign at the entrance read: “Results demonstrate that use of science and technology as increased crop productivity over four-fold.” As a historical relic as well as a research site, the plots continue to offer many insights into the effects of fertilizers and the longevity of natural soil in monoculture practices.
Overlooking the Morrow Plots was the Astronomy building, an old buttercup yellow house with white trim and a 12-inch telescope crowning the top, its aluminum dome glinting in the sun. As an Astronomy professor, this was Jim's palace. From the window of his top-floor office, he would look down at students frantically clapping wooden blocks together in the field to scare away the crows. We giggled. “Fond memories,” he said.
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| Jim and Maxine |