There were a total of 14 CMGC members who traveled by Amtrak from Chicago to La Crosse on the second last Friday of January, and we all returned on Sunday, contented to be back home. The meeting place before our departure was the area a half-flight below the mezzanine food court and behind the main bar (The Depot) in Union Station at Jackson and Canal in Chicago. While the location is difficult to describe, CMGC members never have trouble finding the area and gathering here. It just happens.

On the train to La Crosse

On the train we found seats together, due mostly to the efforts of club members to hold seats, and the train left exactly on time. The seating was spacious, having been engineered in a prior era when customer comfort was important. The conductor was very friendly, and at one point she brought cups of ice from the café car for some of us. The car was perhaps a little on the warm side, but this was quite preferable to what we imagined would be the likely alternative of no heat at all. And the weather was perfect for a trip by train, in that driving an MG though near freezing, near white-out fog would have meant constant concern for black ice and other drivers. ‘Much better to be inside a huge metal can like a train car.

Snacks were soon being passed around, frequently accompanied by drinks of various kinds. As our group has mellowed quite a bit over the years there was no behavior to attract any attention. All we had to watch for was not to block the way for others as we wandered among seats visiting. And there were the occasional other passengers who got snared into our travel as time passed. There was a bewildering assortment of snacks: about six kinds of cheese and the same number of salami and ham, fresh cherry tomatoes, raspberries and cucumbers, roll-up sandwiches, shrimp cocktail, pasta salad and endless boxes of candy and crackers. It appears everyone had brought a small suitcase of clothing and a large suitcase of food to share.

La Crosse is a middle distance away, about 230 miles by train and 50 miles further by auto. But we got there five hours after leaving Chicago and ran into one of the unexpected snags that makes travel interesting. The Amtrak station is about two miles north of our hotel, and neither of the two major cab companies had any reasonably available service. CMGC members pooled their Uber and Lyft resources, and everyone was soon at the Fairfield Hotel.

At the Dahl Auto

Discussing autos with the museum curator

ut we did not stay at the hotel very long. Most of the group checked in and then went across the street to Earl’s Grocery and Saloo. Friday night is not party night at Earl’s, and we were able to sit together as we sampled from a respectable collection of draft offerings. It should be mentioned that Earl’s does not sell groceries, and does not serve food, but beverages only, from a large central rectangular bar.

Saturday, following a pleasant breakfast in the hotel, we tip-toed through the icy slush two blocks to the Dahl Auto Museum. The museum was developed about 10 years ago and laid out by a professional design company from Madison. It houses part of the extensive Dahl collection of cars, both antique and modern. The museum uses all the wall space that is not glass with displays, murals, timelines and collections of hood ornaments and gas signs. It incorporates a replica section of a drive-in movie theater which may seem too commonplace to many of us but will soon be relegated to the status of a rotary dial phone.

The original Dahl dealership sold Fords and continues to do so today. The preponderance of Ford products is not as surprising as obscure vehicles like a 1914 Saxon with right hand steering. And, again unexpectedly, there were modern Mustangs and a Ford GT. We spent about three hours looking at cars (but never touching them, of course) and speaking with the curator. All the cars are perfect or close to it. And all the cars are on inflated tires – there was not a single jack stand in the whole collection. Couple that with the presence of batteries in all the engine bays that were open (positive terminal disconnected) and the impression was that any of the vehicles could have been driven from the showroom type display at any time you wrote the check.

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