too late

Story of my life...missed chances

     I actually found a copy of "Mrs. O'Leary's Comet" on line.  But by the time I ordered it, someone else had bought it.
     There is one other copy listed as used for  a little over $20 for a paperback.
     But that is too much for me to buy on a lark.
     If you did not read last night's post, a man wrote that book hypothesizing that a comet actually caused the Chicago fire as well as the Peshtigo and Manistee fires, which all occurred the same day.
     However I did find an old book written by Emily Post, called "By Motor to the Golden Gate."  This divorced woman, her daughter, and a companion, drove across the country in 1918.
     They got stuck in the mud just east of Rochelle because 38 was not totally paved.  After finally getting pulled out of the mud, here's what she said:

          No matter how squalid the town, 

or how poor the accommodations, we meant to 

cross no more bridges like that last one until the 

roads dried! Then we made two turns like a 

letter Z and found ourselves in the sweetest, 

cleanest, newest little town imaginable. Its 

streets were all wide and smoothly paved with 

brick, and its houses, mostly white, were set each 

in a garden of trim and clipped green. There was 

a new post-office of marble magnificence and a 

shopping center of big-windowed, fresh-painted, 

enterprising stores, but no hotel except a dingy 

ramshackle tavern that we took for granted was 

the one mentioned in the guide book. We won- 

dered if one of the neat, sweet little houses might 

perhaps take us to board instead. 

     That town was Rochelle.  

     And she did eventually find a clean comfortable hotel....the Collier, now long gone.

     Life is funny, isn't it.