Jammin' at Muddy Waters' Place

Chicago rocks its annual Blues Fest June 10-12 - a fine time to make the pilgrimage to Muddy Waters' house (4339 S Lake Park Ave) on the South Side. This is where guitars screamed and bass lines rolled at new decibel levels, because Waters and friends had plugged in their amps. So began the electric blues.

Impromptu jam sessions with pals like Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry erupted in the front yard of the red-brick abode. Waters lived here for 20 years, until 1974, but today the building stands vacant in a lonely, tumbledown lot. It's private property, so you can't go inside. A sign commemorates the spot.

Mythic Homerun in Minnesota

Exactly 44 years ago, on June 3, 1967, Minnesota Twins player Harmon Killebrew smacked a home run that rocketed 520 feet into the left field stands and shattered two seats. The Twins never sold tickets for those mythic chairs again.

The Mall of America now stands where the old ballpark used to be, and a chair beyond the mall's log flume (yes, the Mall of America has an indoor log flume, as well as roller coasters, minigolf course, shark aquarium and wedding chapel) marks the spot.

Killebrew died on May 17. I happened to be there May 18, and many people dropped by to pay their respects and offer flowers. A chubby 10-year-old boy stood beside me.

'Did you come to see Harmon?" he asked. 'We're gonna miss him.'

RIP, Killer.

Dylan's Duluth

Folks in Duluth are low-key about native son Bob Dylan. The Electric Fetus record shop, which was advertising a deal on Highway 61 Revisited in honor of Bob's birthday last week, sits a few blocks down the road from his birthplace. When asked if many visitors stop by to get directions, the clerk looked blankly and said, 'Dylan's from Hibbing.'

Perhaps it should be noted the Electric Fetus also sells bongs.

Cabrini's Illuminated Fall

On March 30, the wrecking ball swings into the building at 1230 N. Burling St., the last of Cabrini-Green's high rises.

Built between 1942 and 1962, Cabrini became the poster child for failed public housing. It was an anti-oasis, a 70-acre patch of 15,000 poor, black residents bordering but segregated from Chicago's richest neighborhoods in the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park. Cabrini's collapse into drugs, gangs and violence made it infamous - as did the 1970s TV show Good Times, in which the opening credits play over the blighted landscape.

Developers have been demolishing Cabrini bit by bit since the late 1990s, moving residents to mixed-income housing across the city and suburbs. The building on Burling is the last to go. You can watch the event in real time at Project Cabrini Green. The Museum of Contemporary Art and several youth-oriented Cabrini nonprofit groups have turned the demolition site into a lighted artwork that will have a beautiful demise.

Illinois Celebrates Reagan's 100th Birthday

Illinois may be the Land of Lincoln, but northwestern Illinois is all about another presidential son: Ronald Reagan. Dutch spent his childhood here - born in Tampico, high school in Dixon - and the region works hard to promote its Reagan shrines. That's why Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert and a host of other Republican dignitaries are coming on Feb. 4 to kick off Reagan's 100th birthday year. The Centennial Commission has the slate of events. 

Dixon holds the top sights. A Reagan portrait made from 14,000 red, white and blue jellybeans hangs in the Dixon Historic Center. Reagan's Boyhood Home has a bizarre statue of Reagan admiring corn kernels in his hand and a one-of-a-kind gift shop run by chatty locals.

North America's Last Guillotine

A guillotine sliced just once in North America, in 1889 on the island of St-Pierre, a stone's throw from eastern Canada. You can see it at the L'Arche Museum there.

Monsieur Neel had killed another man in a booze-fueled fight and was sentenced to die by the blade. Only one problem: St-Pierre didn't have a guillotine, so the islanders had to import one from Martinique. There was no executioner either. So the islanders convinced another prisoner - Monsieur Legent - to pull the lever in return for a reduced sentence.

As promised, Legent dropped the timbers of justice. The locals then shunned him. He was unable to get food or shelter and eventually had to be evacuated to France. The Juliette Binoche movie version bypasses that part of the storyline.

Al Capone and St-Pierre

In Chicago we have Capone sites such as the St Valentine's Day Massacre lot and Holy Name Cathedral. But I ran into more Capone recently while working on the island of St-Pierre.

St-Pierre floats 15 miles from eastern Canada, near the province of Newfoundland (which I cover for Lonely Planet's Canada book). The fog-mantled little land mass is a territory of France, complete with berets, baguettes and Bordeaux. Back in the day it was forsaken and lawless.

Enter Capone. When Prohibition dried out the U.S.'s kegs in the 1920s, he set up shop in St-Pierre. He transformed the sleepy fishing harbor into a booming port that hauled in 300,000 cases of alcohol each month. Bottles were removed from their crates, placed in smaller carrying sacks and taken secretly to the U.S. coast by rum runners. Cutty Sark whiskey crates piled so high on St-Pierre's docks that locals started using the wood to build houses. Some homes are still around - as is the bootlegging supposedly.

So they may be toasting Capone on St-Pierre today, as Jan. 17 is his birthday. In Chicago, groupies typically mark the day at Capone's gravesite at Mt Carmel Cemetery in suburban Hillside, leaving offerings of whiskey or a Cuban cigar.