Cars on a Stick

Today I found a cache of notes that I made over the last few weeks — they’d gone missing for a while, as things often do in my home office, or in my home, period. So I’m going to write about a few things that I’ve skipped recently.

When I visited Forest Lawn Cemetery on September 1 to see the Showmen’s Rest, I noticed on my map that I would also be very near the Cermak Plaza Shopping Center in Berwyn. Then it occurred to me that I could also see “Spindle,” because it’s in the middle of Cermak Plaza’s parking lot, there for all to see.

So after paying my respects to the deceased showmen, I drove over to Cermak Plaza. In every other way, the place completely ordinary. It has a Circuit City Office Depot, Lens Crafters, Dollar Shop, Shoe Carnival — a cross-section of lower-middle to middle retailing, a lineup of the usual suspects. Actually, the shopping center is cut below most, at least in terms of looks. Not a cent has been spent on landscaping, for instance. The parking lot covers the entire space between the shops and the lot line next to busy Cermak Road — a bleak lake of blacktop.

But none of that matters up close to “Spindle.” Essentially, it’s eight cars skewered on top of each other on a sturdy-looking, 40-foot spike; 1970s vintage autos by the look of them. Probably junkers by the time that artist Dustin Shuler erected this work in 1989. A red VW bug is on top, poised like a cherry. One car that I could see still had an Illinois vanity plate: MARS 1. Wire mesh wraps around the bottoms of all the cars, to prevent heavy metal pieces from crumbling off, I suppose. Pigeons are obviously fond of this unusual work.

When we were returning from Yellowstone last month, I briefly toyed with the idea of driving by Carhenge in Box Butte County, Nebraska. We didn’t do that, but at least I’ve now seen our local car sculpture.