Sunday came very bleak, cool, and overcast. My vision seemed just as clouded as the gray sky. The area was desolate. Shrubs shivered in the wind, the pavement beneath me was cracked, and the empty fountain was a sickly green hue littered with abandoned coins. I couldn’t even tell if the large clock in the middle of the archway was working. The edges of the architecture were blackened … with what? I did not want to know. Few bodies moved around the entryway, and only a handful of cars occupied the lengthy parking lot. It was if this place had gone without human contact for hundreds of years. It was if the Justice League had abandoned their headquarters long, long ago.
I entered Union Terminal expecting the inside to be the same as the outside. It wasn’t too far off, but certainly more lively. I stopped at the door and looked up. A climbing archway rose before me, and I became surrounded by echoes. It was if I had stepped into a place that belonged neither here nor there and was just it’s own. Huge paintings of people on the walls made me feel watched, and I was confused by just what the pictures were trying to depict. Figuring I’d come back to look at it again, I took directed my view forward. To my left and right were museums that I was disheartened to not be able to go into. Ah, perks of being a poor college student, huh?
I began my short, small tour of the terminal by walking to my right. On my way, I passed one of those devices that will press a penny into a thin sliver and print a new picture on it. I remember when my father and I did those at every museum we would visit. “Can I smash a penny, Dad??” As a child that stuff was fascinating. I was just holding a round, Lincoln penny in my hand but now it’s a thin oval and has a pyramid on it. Nostalgia swept over me so I stopped and began to rifle through change. I didn’t care what picture was going to be on my penny, so I just began to turn the crank. Gradually it became tougher and tougher to turn until – plink - my brand new penny toppled out. It read “Cincinnati Union Terminal” with a picture of a train. That was pretty awesome.
When I turned to move on, I found I had intrigued an audience. An elderly couple had watched as my nostalgia got the better of me, and they asked to see the finished penny. The gentleman was fresh out of pennies to make his own, so I offered one of mine. I have way too much change as it is…. He seemed almost delighted to feel the pressure of the penny going through the innards of the contraption and the woman looked on it fondly when he presented it to her. I smiled to myself, wished them a nice evening, and moved on.
As I walked around the circumference of the building, I peered into the entrance of a museum and saw a large dinosaur skeleton. Oh, how I longed to go in and see that dinosaur. How I longed to go into the museum. Oh, well. I found myself at the front of a gift shop and figured this was as close as I could get. Gift shops are a source of nostalgia, too, and damn there was some interesting stuff in there. Not the puzzles, games, toys, or candy, no. There were rocks and fossils on display and for sale. My inner archeologist found a job in examining all the different formations and my inner collector wanted to buy them all. The trilobites were my favorite next to the nautilus and some of the fossils were extremely amazing. There were drawers of more and more fossils that you could peer into and check out. One very interesting drawer that I opened contained a mineral with a shimmering rainbow of color. Apparently this had been formulated and grown in a lab. Weird, but interesting nonetheless. I looked around the entire shop and even ran into that elderly couple again in the library. Oh, and I did end up buying some candy before I left.
When I walked through the exit, I decided to take another look up at the painting. Maybe now I could figure out what was going on. It worked its way around the dome starting with a Daniel Boone figure and progressing through the ages in style and landscape. I tried to imagine a story within it, but I suppose I may have been trying too hard. Some of the images were confusing and I wasn’t sure if the Native Americans were being portrayed in a good way or bad. In part of the painting, there was a depiction of the building process of Cincinnati and I liked seeing the city skyline portrayed in an under construction setting.
It was at this point that I realized there really was a train terminal in this place. A sign read, “To Trains.” I wanted to follow that sign and the sign for the Omnimax Theater, but alas…. I moved on.
Venturing downstairs I came to the Children’s Museum. Oh, nostalgia, my old friend. The kids on the inside were running through a huge jungle gym that had been created to look like the woods. A forest of tunnels, ropes, pathways, and slides constructed a wonderful learning environment and I remembered what it felt like to feel smart at that age. Going to museums meant feeling smart about things. There was a large waterfall in the middle that even included a fish tank with blue gill at the end. I longed to see what the rest of it looked like as I remembered running through the Chicago Children’s Museum at age 10. I was able to look at the children’s drawings that had been hung outside the walls, but I began to feel like too much of a creep, and walked back upstairs.
One more look around at the giant echoing dome before I grabbed an exhibit guide, and walked out the doors. I walked around the side of the building and felt tiny in it’s immense shadow. There were even less cars and less bodies as I made my way towards the parking lot. I decided to take a detour to the fountain and watched as a couple kids jumped through the tiers of the empty, rotting mess. Their parents wanted to leave but these kids were making money by picking up coins someone once abandoned to a wish. I took some pictures of them as the setting sun reflected in the fountain and made things look a bit better than they had been, but eventually I packed up and got the hell out of there. Not that I didn’t like the place, I just don’t think it resonated with me like most people. That, and I couldn’t go into any of the stinking museums. Oh, how I longed for the museums. At least I came home with a penny from my visit to the Justice League.
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