Rifle Club

(click to enlarge)

A moment of memory for Rifle Club, to which I belonged for two years. We met in the basement of the old YMCA, across from the Lincoln Library. 


The above shot is 1957 and all boys, but girls belonged in other years. (Look just beyond Rod Gabel's shoulder.) 


The club had no social purpose: we rarely talked, just practiced shooting, studying the targets, and cleaning up rounds. It was a brief pastime, but memorable. Perhaps you had one like it. 

Lincoln Day

Big excitement in Springfield today:

200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

Visit and speech by President Obama.

Landing of Air Force One at Capitol Airport.

All details, and video, at the SJR site.
See also pictures here.

Thanks to Judi Dunkel Headrick for the heads-up.

Boat House

A story in the SJR today reports that the Washington Park lagoon will once again have a boat house, thanks to an anonymous half-million dollar donation.

Designed by famed landscape architect Jens Jensen, the boathouse was built in 1914 and stood until the 1960s, when it was torn down.

I remember ice-skating on the lagoon in the 1950s. We went into the boat house to warm up by a pot-bellied stove and sip hot cocoa provided by the Girl Scouts, at five cents a cup.

But that building was on the south side of the lagoon and it was shingle-style, all closed in. This postcard drawing may be of an earlier boat house, built in 1903.

Do you remember the boat house, the concession stand and natural spring, the riding stables west of the park? So do the commenters on the SJR story.