Ch.1: The Margrave Woźniak

Ragnar is about to meet the margrave Woźniak.  Why a margrave?  Presumably because we are on the border of Saxony and Poland.  Why Woźniak, a common Polish name?  It began with farm machinery pushing westward across the prairie at the rate of thirty miles per year.  Cyrus McCormick, Jr., the president of International Harvester (his father had designed the reaper) built the "Men's Club House" of his McCormick Reaper Works at 2530 S. Blue Island Ave., Chicago.  In 1951, Stanley Wozniak, a Polish immigrant, bought the property and made it "Wozniak's Casino Lounge, No.2".  (No.1 had opened in 1938).  Have a look at the place; it's now an empty lot:

My fraternity used to hold its initiation dinners here.  Imagine a long-decaying Polish banquet hall:  red velvet wallpaper that you suspect has absorbed decades of airborne grease, chafing dishes of mostacholi, an open bar, all under eerie artificial light.  Best of all, there was a bowling alley in the basement.  Here is a picture of the main hall in the McCormick Days:

Here is a clip from the movie Backdraft (1991), filmed in the same room (the band in the background is The Drovers---they also played at our fraternity parties):

Backdraft (1991) at Wozniak's with the Drovers

Now I'll let the margrave shuffle around the town in his private corridors.  Next time, I'll tell you about the geography of Ragnar's journey.