Learning to Drive

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Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Learning to DriveDirector Isabel Coixet has put together an altogether pleasant comedy (trailer) set in Manhattan, although much of the action takes place on the inside—inside Wendy Shields (played by Patricia Clarkson) whose husband has left her for younger woman, forcing her to rethink her life. This leads to the startling decision to learn to drive. It takes place on the inside of her Sikh driving instructor, Darwan (Ben Kingsley), whose life is upended by the arrival of an Indian woman he’s never met who’s expecting to become his wife. And, it takes place on the inside of Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury), who speaks little English and who has entered a much more foreign territory than a stamp on a passport would suggest.

The superb cast conveys all the internal yearning, turmoil, disappointment, and joy experienced by these characters without the burden of a heavy-handed script. Writer Sarah Kernochan based the screenplay on a New Yorker essay and built in plenty of funny and sweet moments, too. Especially appreciated is the opportunity to see the colorful and intriguing interior of a Sikh temple.

The cramped confines of a car make for filming challenges worthy of a team of contortionists, but it’s an intimate setting, too (as the excellent 2008 British movie Happy Go Lucky proved), in which quotidian experiences are spiced with the ever-present possibility of catastrophe (bicyclists! trucks! jaywalkers!). “You can’t always trust people to behave properly,” Darwan advises, and this truism resonates with his pupil. Though she would add the caveat that he actually does.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 67%; audiences 68%. Hard to understand why the critics dinged this movie for “predictability” and didn’t notice that exact problem in the awful Grandma which they liked! If you’ve had a hard week or are allergic to people screaming their problems at you for two hours, this is the better choice.

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Lincoln and More — Springfield, Illinois

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New Salem, Lincoln, log cabin

New Salem, Ill. (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

A recent visit to Springfield included both highs and lows. Among the highs: the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum provides a creatively constructed retelling of the Lincoln story. While a familiar one, there also are a few surprises. The displays include two “Journeys”—the boyhood journey and the White House journey—special exhibits and a short film. All very nicely done. What surprised me most, perhaps because I’d forgotten in the recent outpouring of regard for Lincoln and my admiration of Daniel Day-Lewis, is the extent and viciousness of the press coverage of his Presidency. His critics weren’t above taking swipes at Mary Todd Lincoln, either. Perhaps our political dialog hasn’t moved toward more civility in the last 150 years, alas.

Lincoln home

The Lincoln home (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Other Lincoln-related highs were the reconstruction and historic district where his Springfield home stands—the only house he ever owned. Very interesting. And shifting back in time and creature comforts, New Salem, a recreated village a few miles northwest of Springfield, recreates the community where a young Lincoln lived for six years. There he tried to run two general stores and their failure prompted him to try something else—the law. New Salem includes 23 historically furnished buildings—homes, stores, shops, tavern, and so on, with costumed interpreters happy to tell you about life in this short-lived frontier outpost.

The state capitol was an unexpected beauty! Construction began in 1868, and it now appears to be in the last stages of a major renovation, complete with recreation of the elaborate stenciling and its acres of marble gleaming. There are tours, but we did it on our own, and since the legislative bodies were not in session, we could duck into the elaborately detailed house and senate chambers. If beauty is elevating, the people doing the people’s business have a lot to aspire to.

Illinois Statehouse, capitol, stenciling

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

We also enjoyed historic Edwards Place, home of the Springfield Art Association and a good demonstration of the stages of architectural renovation, and especially the Dana-Thomas House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1902. Owner and widow Susan Lawrence Dana wanted a place she could entertain for her various charities, and Wright gave her so much more! Small rooms, but 35 of them in 16 different living levels totaling 12,000 square feet, a nine-pins alley, a feast of leaded glass ornamentation in stylized Midwestern motifs—butterflies, corn, other plants—the largest collection of site-specific original Wright art glass.

On the downside, Springfield itself is tired and dusty. Several things we wanted to see were unexpectedly closed. The restaurant where we’d made an Open Table reservation was closed for vacation and—worst of all—someone stole my umbrella on a day it was pouring! Luckily, I saw her with it outside the capitol and said, “I think that’s mine.” It must have been my New Jersey affect—Tony Soprano and all. She surrendered it immediately.

Your Travel Circles:

  • Springfield is less than a hundred miles away when you’re in St. Louis (96 miles)
  • You’re only about 200 miles from Springfield when you’re in Chicago, Indianapolis (213), or Columbia, Mo. (185)

****The Laughing Monsters

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Freetown, Africa

Freetown (photo: bobthemagicdragon, creative commons license)

By Denis Johnson – The Laughing Monsters (2014) is an antic suspense novel that focuses on two friends—one white, one black—whose wild adventure starts in pre-Ebola Freetown, Sierra Leone, and unravels across Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana. Their goal is to make a financial killing doing something—selling government secrets, peddling fake uranium—then retire to a life on the beach.

Roland Nair, the book’s narrator, is a Scandinavian/American/NATO spook and an admitted coward in a land where courage needs to come in more than the liquid form he prefers. His long-time friend, handsome Michael Adriko, a son of Uganda, teeters on the edge of a major breakdown. Adriko’s undeniable courage and latent lethality is a good way to get both men into trouble. And does. But is Nair working with Adriko or against him?

Also along for the ride is Michael’s fifth fiancée, Davidia, daughter of a U.S. military commander running a secret post somewhere in the Congo. Davidia is beautiful—men’s “gazes followed behind her as if she swept them along with her hands,” and both Nair and Adriko want her. She’s patiently trying to make the best of their low-budget accommodations and travel arrangements, but even she reaches her limit and, anyway, her father wants her back.

Johnson, who won the National Book Award for his 2007 novel about Vietnam, Tree of Smoke, effectively evokes the fractured spirit of the place—the do-si-do-ing for advantage of the operatives loosely connected with various spy agencies with whom they negotiate, the tunnel vision of the American military personnel, the sinister and sometimes overtly threatening village residents they encounter when they’re far from transportation and cell phone coverage.

banana leaves

(photo: Sandi Plek, creative commons license)

The author presents his characters with precision and a fine appreciation of absurdity. Here’s how Nair describes one of Michael’s reckless schemes: “As [Michael] expressed these ideas he followed them with his eyes, watching them gallop away to the place where they made sense.”

Johnson is equally good at conveying the sensory-overload of the African environment: not only the mind-baking heat and the mud and the tainted water, but the ramshackle villages and spluttering vehicles, the barmen and the prostitutes. Nair plunges into political incorrectness with an unforgettable description of an African prostitute “wearing a curly blonde wig, like a chocolate-covered Marilyn Monroe.”

I really enjoyed the first 175 pages or so of this 228-page book, though in the final section, the gods of chaos and Really Bad Hangovers hijacked the narrative, and I felt I was losing the thread. On the whole, it is as described by New York Times critic Joy Williams, “cheerfully nihilistic” as it lays bare the “giddy trickle-down of global exploitation and hubris—the farcical exploits of cold dudes in a hard land.”

Indianapolis Gems

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Indianapolis has been on a 50-year path to assuring its downtown remains vital and inviting. More than a billion dollars has been spent in downtown development, which included its successful early efforts to become a sports mecca (it’s home to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and National Federation of State High School Associations).

In the last decade, the city has created 150 miles of bike lanes and trails. The award-winning Cultural Trail alone has generated about $300 million in new development. Opened in 2013, this wide pedestrian and bicycle path makes an eight-mile loop around the city’s center, linking the Capitol, the Indianapolis Zoo (Luckily we didn’t go there on the day we visited downtown. A cheetah got loose—no end to the excitement in Indy!), the Canal and White River State Park, six cultural districts, and major museums.

One of these is the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art—an unexpected delight in this flat Midwestern city. Noteworthy paintings and bronze sculptures in the downstairs galleries provide a mostly romanticized view of their subjects—settlers, Indians, cowboys, and the landscape. Such works were how Americans on the East Coast first came to appreciate the beauty of America west of the Mississippi.

Upstairs are beautiful photographic portraits and artifacts from many American Indian cultures. The museum offers hands-on demonstrations for kids, too, as well as special exhibits and sales throughout the year. The museum’s indoor-outdoor cafe overlooks the canal and offers southwestern cuisine. A great stop. Also see my review of the Eiteljorg’s neighbor, the Indianapolis State Museum.

Your Travel Circles:

  • You’re only an hour from Indianapolis when you’re in Bloomington (51 mi)
  • About two hours away when you’re in Cincinnati (112), Louisville (115), or Dayton (117)
  • About three hours away when you’re in Columbus (175) or Chicago (182)

Grandma

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Lily Tomlin, GrandmaWait for cable. This Paul Weitz film (trailer) has had some mixed, but mostly positive reviews, and we gave it a chance based on the cast line-up: Lily Tomlin, Marcia Gay Harden, Sam Elliott.

As it turns out, the best, most persuasive performance comes from pale-as-paper Julia Garner, who plays Tomlin’s 18-year-old granddaughter, Sage. Her role mostly requires looking on in dismay as the “grown-ups” whom she hopes will help her rant viciously at each other and dredge up decades-old animosities. By staying out of it, she is revealed as Sage the wise, not Sage the turkey-and-dressing ingredient.

People vary sharply in what they find funny. Alas, I don’t find a firehose delivery of insults and putdowns more than boring. Tomlin’s character, poet Elle Reid, is unnaturally prickly and, faced with the pregnancy of her high school student granddaughter, she’s not even sympathetic—or discreet. “She’s already pregnant,” she announces to a young man who glances Sage’s way.

The movie’s plot revolves around Elle and Sage’s attemps to scare up $600 for an abortion, scheduled for 5:30 pm the day the movie takes place. This is not a gleeful situation, either. (The old Dodge was pretty cool, though.)

I’m a fan of Tomlin’s acting, but laudatory reviews to the contrary, she doesn’t seem really engaged with this highly predictable material. The ill-conceived (you should pardon the expression) and flimsy device of the appointment deadline puts manic urgency into the pair’s approaches to a succession of unlikely loan prospects. Tomlin’s interaction with the loser boyfriend is unbelievable in every particular, and nothing written for Tomlin’s character suggests she has a poetic bone in her body or the necessary mental discipline and insight for that craft.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 93%; audiences: 72%.

Baby Doll–McCarter Theatre’s Season Opener

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Baby Doll, Tennessee Williams, McCarter Theatre

Hoffman and McDermott in Baby Doll

Perhaps Tennessee Williams and comedy don’t usually share your same mind-space, but here is a comedy-drama rather neglected in the back of his vast repository of work. Princeton’s McCarter Theatre (link includes a behind the scenes video) has found it, resurrected it, and mounted it in an exciting production on view through October 11.

The play, Baby Doll, was always a mashup. It began with two one-acts (“27 Wagons Full of Cotton” and one with a title something like “The Dinner Nobody Wanted”). It was turned into a script for a 1956 Elia Kazan movie starring Caroll Baker, Karl Malden, an Elie Wallach in his first movie role. That version went through many Kazan-initiated revisions and excited much Church opposition for its racy content—tame today compared to prime time tv. Williams later wrote a full-length stage play based on the screenplay, Tiger Tail, that had a short Broadway run in 1999. But generally, the project lay neglected.

Recently, it was retranslated and revived in France by Pierre Laville, and when McCarter’s Emily Mann read Laville’s version, she saw great potential. She and Laville share “adapted for the stage” credits, as further work had to be done by Mann to reflect American perspectives, particularly regarding race relations in Mississippi in the early 1950s. Miraculously, two weeks before rehearsals began, Mann discovered in Princeton University’s Firestone Library the original movie script by Williams, as he wrote it before Kazan’s “help.” More revisions ensued.

“Baby Doll” is a 19-year-old beauty, married to a much older man, Archie Lee Meighan and living in a falling-apart plantation house (handsome stage set). Baby Doll thought she was not “ready for marriage” at age 18. Although the wedding took place then, it is yet to be consummated (she still sleeps in her crib), according to the deal she, Archie Lee, and her father made before his death. The waiting—which is to end in two more days when Baby Doll turns 20—is driving Archie crazy. He both loves and lusts after her, feelings she does not return.

Archie Lee is nearly destitute, having lost his cotton gin business to the nearby Syndicate plantation, and Baby Doll is furious that the house’s furniture is repossessed. When the Syndicate’s gin is destroyed in a not-so-mysterious fire, the young plant manager, handsome Silva Vacarro, pays the Meighans a visit, bringing with him 27 wagons full of cotton for Archie’s gin. When Archie leaves to take care of the cotton, Silva—an Italian and exotic in those parts—tries to trick Baby Doll into revealing her husband’s role in the fire, and, as New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood says, “we can practically see her little mind clicking along a few beats behind her tongue.”

The comedy in the play comes not from Neil Simon-style one-liners, but out of the human absurdities of normal, everyday action and impulse. In a post-show discussion, the actors said Mann insists they play their lines straight; playing for laughs would cheapen the effect. That earnestness is what makes the four characters—Baby Doll (Susannah Hoffman), Archie Lee (Robert Joy), Silva (Dylan McDermott), and Baby Doll’s Aunt Rose Comfort (Patricia Conolly)—so believable. While you’re chuckling, your heart is twisting. The play ends on a bit of a Scarlett O’Hara moment, with Baby Doll’s resolution to let tomorrow take care of itself.

Veteran actor Patricia Conolly talked about some of the similarities between the elderly, half-deaf, semi-oblivious maiden aunt she plays here and other Williams characters she’s portrayed. Such women live on the edges of family and society, and they must make enormous effort to “get along,” even with the most demanding hosts (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche DuBois says.) Otherwise, as Aunt Rose Comfort puts the problem, they “have no place to go.” (Aunt Rose is a secondary character who manages to put a monkey wrench in situations fairly often, being where she shouldn’t be or not being where she should be. And, if you’ve ever had an elderly relative who’s become hard-of-hearing, you’ll know Williams got it right: she hears what she wants to hear!)

At only 90 minutes, Baby Doll is not as complex as Williams’s Big 3: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, but it’s well worth adding to your Williams experience.

Cover-Ups and Freak-Outs

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quilt, stars

“Stars and Sparks” by Judy Tescher (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

A terrific show is at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis through October 4. Titled “19 Stars: Quilts of Indiana’s Present and Past,” the show was conceived as a way to mark the upcoming 200th anniversary of Indiana statehood, the 19th state to join the Union. The quilts on display—19 historic ones and 19 contemporary designs—all have reference to star patterns and themes. The photo at right is a portion of one of the modern quilts, “Stars and Sparks,” by Judy Tescher (and now the screensaver on my iPhone).

The historic quilts were made from the 1830s to 1980s (historic? I remember the 80s!), while many of the contemporary quilts were created especially for this exhibition. All show both literal as well as creative interpretations of the star motif. The 2010 artists use a wide array of construction techniques and often work collaboratively. Modern sewing machines have expanded the types of actual quilting they can accomplish.

quilt, stars

“Stars” by Mary Kay Horn (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Some of the quilts are beautiful mostly because of the fabrics used, and some, old and new, because of the intricacy of the quilting, which is what holds the fancy top together with the (in historic days) cotton batting in the middle and the usually plain backing. At left, “Stars,” by Mary Kay Horn, and, below, “Bohemian Fireworks,” by Sandra Peterson, which uses the same color techniques the Impressionist painters did to make the colors pop.

I still have and use quilts my grandmother and great-grandmother made, and I have a dim memory of visiting my great-grandmother’s home when a neighborhood quilting bee was in progress. The tops of the patchwork type of quilts were made from material leftover from sewing. Adult family members could point to a patch and say, “I always loved that dress”—one they’d had when they were schoolgirls—or “That’s the dress I wore to cousin Louise’s wedding!” Other tops seemed to have been made from purpose-bought fabric because the whole project uses the same materials—too much material to be just leftovers. A “Lone Star” quilt—popular in my grandparents’ home state of Texas—and a detail from it are at the bottom of this post. It’s from the 1830’s, the oldest quilt in the show and the detail indicates they were no slouches when it came to intricate quilting in those days either!

quilts, stars

“Bohemian Fireworks” by Sandra Peterson (photo by Vicki Weisfeld)

A unique aspect of this museum visit that other patrons cannot count on experiencing was that the power went out shortly after we arrived. Thankfully, emergency generators kept the quilt exhibit well lit. Though parts of the museum were in darkness and had to be forgone, we became fascinated to watch catering staff soldiering on with the setup of a wedding dinner and reception for about 350 people (counting place-settings), and the band members snake their many cords across a stage. This space was well lit by windows in the middle of the day, but at party time, who’s going to take the chance to plug in that amp?

The reception was booked for a room on the top floor, so cocktail tables, plastic bins of glassware, and everything had to be carried up four flights. The wedding guests, I’m guessing, would miss those elevators, too! If you’ve ever organized an event of this size, you’ll see how it had all the makings of a major freak-out opportunity. I couldn’t help hoping no one had told the bride’s mother yet, that the power would kick back on, and she’d never have to know.

Your Travel Circles:

  • You’re only an hour from Indianapolis when you’re in Bloomington (51 mi)
  • About two hours away when you’re in Cincinnati (112), Louisville (115), or Dayton (117)
  • About three hours away when you’re in Columbus (175) or Chicago (182)
quilts, stars

“Lone Star” from the 1830s (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

 

quilts, stars

“Lone Star” detail (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

****The Financial Expert

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India, dawn, village

(photo: Mario Lapid, creative commons license)

By R. K. Narayan (1906-2001)– A friend brought me this book from a trip to India, where the acclaimed author is well appreciated for his classic tales. They combine a deceptively simple narrative style and acute perceptions of human nature in all its absurdity and poignancy. Graham Greene was an early Narayan admirer and helped bring his work to attention in the West.

In this novella, the hero, Margayya, although indubitably Indian, also is “a type which should have taken its place long ago in world literature because he exists everywhere.” Margayya, whose name means “the one who showed the way,” indeed does show the way, although his ultimate destination is not what he hopes or has planned. His story begins in his early career, sitting daily underneath a banyan tree at the center of his dusty village with his small box of forms and pens, helping peasants sort their finances, brokering loans, and earning barely enough to keep his wife and adored son, Balu, in food.

Over the course of the book, his financial prospects greatly improve, Balu grows up, and Margayya rises to great heights on the back of his miraculous financial innovation that the reader recognizes as, essentially, a Ponzi scheme. But ungrateful Balu proves Margayya’s undoing, and the lesson stretches beyond the financial calamity it produces: “The only element that kept people from being terrified of each other was trust—the moment it was lost, people became nightmares to each other.”

As the plot winds toward the inevitable, Margayya’s vanities, his obliviousness disguised as business acumen, and the jockeying for advantage of everyone around him—in an economic environment where so little advantage is to be had—provides ample fodder for  the kind of laugh-at-ourselves “humour that knows no national boundaries,” says Der Kurier, Berlin, also the source of the earlier quote.

The story takes place in the mid-1920s to 1940s, when colonial rule in India was drawing to a close and the country’s legendary legacy of bureaucracy was increasingly entrenched. This exchange between two of Margayya’s acquaintances sums up the incessant frustrations:

The first man is commenting on his difficulties getting a nuisance business moved somewhere else: “. . . you know what our municipalities are!”

Second man in an aside to Margayya: “He is himself a municipal councillor for this ward . . . and yet he finds so much difficulty in getting anything done. He had such trouble to get that vacant plot for himself—”

First man: “I applied for it like any other citizen. Being a municipal councillor doesn’t mean that I should forgo the ordinary rights and privileges of a citizen.”

Well said. I laughed out loud.

In the introduction to another of his books, Narayan says that in India “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story,” and in Margayya he has selected an unforgettable protagonist and packed his tale with humanity.

***The Forsaken

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Ace Atkins, motorcycle

(photo: Heinrich Klaffs, creative commons license)

By Ace Atkins – This crime thriller series featuring Jericho, Mississippi, sheriff Quinn Colson has been widely praised as offering “a new standard for Southern crime novels.” I haven’t read the others in the series or perhaps enough Southern crime literature to judge, but I’m puzzled by that characterization. Perhaps it’s inevitable, as cultural homogenization and Wal-Mart have taken over this country, but the people didn’t behave, speak, think, or live in a landscape that seemed uniquely Southern to me.

The principal character—Sheriff Quinn Colson—didn’t come off the page. He’s kind of laid back, kind of taciturn, kind of boring. I definitely did enjoy several of the women characters: smart-ass Chief Deputy Sheriff Lillie Virgil (good banter with Colson) and townswoman-with-a-fractured-past Diana Tull. The assorted criminals, low-lifes, and ne’er-do-wells were mostly off-putting and two-dimensional. Also, is it really necessary for there to be a beheading any time Mexicans are involved in a story? It seems like authorial shorthand to show how badass they are. (We’ve reached a sorry state when fictional beheading can become ho-hum, though it is definitely not in The Cartel, reviewed last Friday.)

The set-up of the novel is this: In 1977, 17-year-old Diana Tull and her 14-year-old girlfriend Lori Stillwell were abducted on a lonely country road by a badly scarred black man driving a gleaming Monte Carlo. Diana was raped, shot, and left for dead, and Lori was murdered. Within days a local motorcycle gang, the Born Losers (apt, that) vowed to avenge these crimes on behalf of their member, Lori’s father, and abduct a black loner, beat him, and lynch him.

Sheriff Colson’s absent father—a former Hollywood stunt man—was loosely affiliated with the biker gang and witnessed the execution. Colson’s uncle, the former sheriff, allowed the crime to take place and didn’t investigate, following the precepts of the “let sleeping dogs lie” school of law enforcement, which he continued to follow, even when Diana told him she’d seen the murderer again, several weeks after the crime. The lynched man lived alone in a shack in the woods, owned practically nothing and certainly no fancy car; nor did he have the terrible scars that Diana described. Why the townspeople are surprised to eventually learn the wrong man was lynched is a mystery in itself.

Fast-forward to the current day, and the pot is boiling: the old sheriff is dead and replaced by his nephew Quinn; Diana is a successful store-owner who, initially egged on by Lori’s father—now an impoverished drunk—has decided for reasons not entirely clear to reignite the investigation into the tragedy of the murder and lynching; and Chains LeDoux, the leader of the Born Losers in its heyday is about to be released from state prison.

To his credit, Sheriff Quinn is not ready to consign the resurfaced lynching to the cold case file, and investigating it predictably causes all kinds of secrets to slither out of the woodwork. While the theme of revisiting past crimes and depredations in order to establish responsibility is worthy, in this book, we learn next-to-nothing about the nameless victim of the lynching, enabling scant emotional investment in the crime’s unraveling.

I’m prepared to believe readers of Atkins’s other four novels in this series have become attached to the characters and may like this one better than I did. Atkins has received many award nominations in the genre and was selected by the Robert B. Parker estate to continue writing books for the popular Spenser private investigator series.

Classic Cruisers

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Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Think of Dayton, Ohio, and you probably think of the Wright Brothers and latter-day U.S. Air Force resources, but it also contains a unique tribute to the automobile. “America’s Packard Museum,” located a short distance from downtown, displays an impressive collection of more than 50 classic cars from the Packard Motor Car Company. The company began producing true luxury vehicles in the early 1900s, with models that cost more than the average price of a home in those days.

Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

The museum’s restored cars are beauties even now. I especially liked the yellow model pictured, which offered its passengers a literal “trunk.” James and William Packard weren’t fussy about body design. Customers could purchase their chassis and engine and add their own custom-designed body. One model in the museum had a French-designed body, for example.

During the Depression, the company began producing a more moderately priced line, as well as its luxury models, which in the long run diminished its reputation as an exclusive brand. During the early 1940s, the company gave over total production to the war effort, building aircraft and marine engines. When automobile production resumed, the luxury and lower-priced, lower-profit models were too difficult to distinguish, further diluting its reputation as a high-end manufacturer.

Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Two of the “Caribbean” luxury convertible models, produced from 1953 to 1956, are shown in the photo at left. The museum includes a gorgeous mid-century red convertible once owned by Perry Como. According to the docents, a recent visitor said, “Oh. He’s the governor of New York.” No, you’re probably thinking of his dad.

You can easily spend an hour examining the wide whitewall tires, the perfect paint jobs, the leather interiors, and real chrome details of these cars. The volunteer docents are full of information and affection for the collection. It’s easy to see why.

Appropriately enough, this award-winning museum is located in Dayton’s old Packard dealership, built in 1917. Emblazoned on the wall is the company motto—created when the company president was too harried to talk to reporters about his cars—“Ask the man who owns one.” Packard merged with the Studebaker company in the early 1950s, absorbing a boatload of Studebaker debt, and produced its last vehicle in 1959.

Your Travel Circles:

  • You’re only an hour from Dayton when you’re in Cincinnati (54 mi) or Columbus (71)
  • About two hours away when you’re in Indianapolis (117) or Louisville (155)
  • Just over three hours away when you’re in Detroit (209) or Cleveland (211)
Packard Museum, Dayton

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)