Just where was that street?

It's been a busy day so far - and it's far from over. This morning, amongst other things, I had to choose some silver to place in an exhibition. I chose 3 pieces and then, of course, had to polish them, photograph them for my records After that I drove to Palatine to give them to the Kalo Foundation president and to have a lovely lunch she and her husband. I have to give kudos to Betsy (the president) for all of her hard work. I wish I could do more, but I'm so far away geographically from Park Ridge that it makes it difficult. ■ After lunch it was back her to work on a handout of a historical map of Park Ridge artists. Pretty easy except for the fact that one of the addresses doesn't make any sense - any more. I've got an address of 306 Des Plaines Street - but - Des Plaines street runs east/west with addresses in the 1600 to 1800's. Hmmm . . . this sounds like there was another street named Des Plaines, but has since been renamed to something else. . . . so I called the local Park Ridge expert. Ed is doing some research to find it. He sort of remembers it, but it's been a long, long time since Des Plaines was renamed to something else. I await his phone call. ■ Now I've got to run and get a package out in time for Mother's Day. More later. ■ 10:15 pm - I did sweet Italian sausage on the grill tonight. Sauted some onions; had picked up some rolls from Jewel; a little BBQ sauce; and it was delicious. ■ I just took a typical "Mollie on the bed" picture. I'll post it in tomorrow's blog. ■

History

In last night's post I referenced a 1944 Park Ridge phone book. These old documents are fun to look through. I found my grandparents phone number in the book (click on the photo for a larger image) and underlined it in red (not in the actual book, just on the photo!) The phone numbers back then were much different than we have today. For instance my grandparents phone "number" was 391-J. Back then you had operators that would connect you - no direct dial. And late at night the operator might have fallen asleep and you would have to drive to the telephone company and knock on the window to wake her up! When I was a child I can remember that we had party lines. You'd go to call your friend, pick up the phone and people were on the line and talking. You'd have to wait, checking the phone every so often, to find when they were off and you could make your phone call. I remember when everyone got their own line and you didn't have to wait for someone to get off to make a phone call. Boy, those were the days! Now we can call from just about anywhere to anywhere using our cell phones. Technology is amazing. In fact my new blog will deal with some of that. I need to get a few more ducks in a row over the next couple of days before I release the blog. ■ More later. ■