Rummage blog.

My drizzly nose hung on a little longer than I expected, along with a slight headache, minor sore throat and all-round vague malaise throughout Saturday. Not what I'd called an illness, exactly, but on the borderline, and a nuisance in any case. It didn't keep me from going out -- it was a warm, very pleasant day -- and spending some time in the sun, which didn't help. But I didn't need any over-the-counter elixirs to sleep soundly last night.

This time last year, we went to a large rummage sale on the grounds of a church in the town of Hoffman Estates, St. John's, which these days is a Church of Christ. We hadn't come that way just to go to the sale, and it was a long trip home for us that time. Turns out it is an annual event. I'd forgotten about it; but Yuriko remembered, and knew that it was yesterday, so we went. Now this church is about ten minutes' drive, and we did make the trip for it. She ended up with some pillows and glassware. Lilly got a doll.

I got to look at the church and adjacent cemetery again. The stones are in German, most of them, and date from the late 19th century. Most are worn, but some have held up remarkably well over 100+ summers and winters. The white frame church isn't very large, and clearly inspired by New England churches of a somewhat earlier period, which I suppose really goes all the way back to Christopher Wren. But I wasn't feeling like asking anyone about it, and I didn't see any written material around. A cursory look around the Web this morning turned up nothing.

Somehow, though, it suits me to guess at the history of this place -- a gathering place for German Lutheran farmers in northern Cook county who hired an architect who himself had come from New England, as so many settlers did in the Midwest. An aging and dwindling congregation of German Lutherans in the early 20th century, maybe as late as the '20s, when the suburbs really got under way hereabouts, and at last a conveyance of the building to a Church of Christ congregation. The take from this year's rummage -- at which some people obviously buy tables, so it isn't completely nonprofit -- seems to be going to retrofit the front entrance of the building to allow wheelchair access.