I got started by 11am, driving 12 miles of parallel roads from the ELT to downtown Griffith. Walking the ELT has made me become more knowledgeable of the sidestreets. I got straight to Griffith without backtracking. I parked a half block from the town's police department and continued walking north from where I left off on Monday.
This section was the prettiest section yet. The ELT here is landscaped, with shade trees planted off the path that will eventually become a thick canopy. Trees are dedicated to former town residents. Names are no longer the Polish, Czech, Bulgarian names from when I was living here, but now are also Spanish, Bicycle parts are painted in bright colors and created to look like flowers. Benches and water fountains, the first ones on the trail, dot the two-mile section of the Griffith trail. There are even two small library boxes to donate books. The trail passes through the elementary and high school of town (Go, Panthers!) before the trail continues on into Highland with more of the same thing on the trail. This is a very neat and well-maintained trail.
A lot of people were out today, most likely to get some exercise in before the rain. Clouds were a dark grey toward Chicago and moving south. I was a half-mile from making it to the Ridge Road overpass in downtown Highland. Would I make it there and back before the rain? I took the chance. Seeing the Ridge Road overpass made me realize that I'm walking on a railtrail that back in the 1960s my brother Tom and I would ride our bikes from our home off Liable Road, a 1.5-mile away, hide in the grass away from the tracks and lay pennies on the track, wait for the next train and watch it rumble over the pennies. Tom had me convinced that melting pennies was against the law and that we were committing crimes by melting pennies on the track. We'd pick up the warm, melted pennies and dart off with our bikes back to the house. We were serious felons! The houses bordering the trail have got to be 60 years old and counting. While the Erie-Lakawanna line is no longer around, the area, and especially Griffith-Highland, still have plenty of trains that rumble through town and stop traffic.
This chance was a good one. I got to Highland's Jewett Avenue just before 1pm. This is a small street below the Ridge Road overpass. The ELT turns northwest here, crossing Kennedy Avenue and going toward Wicker Park, another mile away. I didn't want to exhaust Zeke any more. I turned around at Sip's Coffee shop, where two women, Nicole and Maria, and Maria's son John, were outside enjoying the breeze when we began to chat. Maria is a 1989 graduate of Highland High and we started talking about old businesses in Highway Avenue, Highland's secondary business street where we did plenty of shopping. "Remember the custard shop on Highway?" Maria asked. "Remember that old Mobile gas station with the Pegasus sign?" I responded. Maria is too young to remember that my first schoool, K-grade, was in an old red brick building that is now Main Square Park. The building was torn down in the 1970s. The old Ben Franlin Five and Dime store is now an Ace Hardware. (I will confirm all this on my next walk on the ELT, hopefully tomorrow when I will make it to Hammond's southern section.)
I thanked the gals for the pleasant exchange and turned around. There were still plenty of people using the path, including a gas company employee checking the buried line next to the path. It started misting at 1:40 with two blocks to go, but then the rain held off. All the brewpubs were closed until 3pm and I decided to drive into Highland and get some pierogies from Dan's Pierogies off Jewett and make them for dinner.
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