Palmer House Candelabra

Last night was a rough one, I had two bad dreams and Anne had one too. In my first bad dream, I was arrested for murder. I didn’t do it, honest. I didn’t even know the victim. This dream had a rural setting. It occurred at night. I was in a one room, clapboard shack. I was sorting through a suitcase, full of old memorabilia. Through the large windows, the shack’s single bare light bulb illuminated the immediate exterior surroundings. I saw a man in a cowboy hat escort two young women outside the shack. The women held scarves up to hide their faces, but also peered in at me. The sheriff led the women away, but eventually came back for me. This lawman wore a white cowboy hat, like Marshal Raylan Givens of the TV series Justified. I have just watched three seasons of this show. I woke up before he could put the cuffs on, or pull.

My second bad dream took me back to Chicago. For some reason there were toll booths on the city streets of downtown Chicago. We were crossing against the light and got about halfway across the street, to the second toll booth, before traffic held us up. We were waiting on the island when a transit cop arrested me, not for jaywalking, but for standing too close to a toll booth. Instead of cuffs, she used a medical arm brace, like people with bad sprains use.

Anne’s bad dream also involved me behaving badly. We were on some sort of new age tour. When our bus arrived at our destination, some commune, we were asked to remove our shoes and only walk barefoot on their ‘sacred soil’. I was invited to join some adherents who were smoking pot and drinking alcohol. Remember this is Anne’s dream. Anne went on until another commune member came to her and asked, “You’re Tourist #18 and you are with Tourist #19, right? We’re going to have to ask him to leave.” At least I wasn’t arrested this time.

Two 24 carat gold angels greet guests as they walk into the grand lobby of the Palmer House. These angelic candelabras were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. One of these candelabras is pictured with this post. Three Palmer House Hotels have been situated on the corner of State and Monroe in Chicago. The first opened in 1871 and burned down just 13 days later in the Great Chicago Fire. After the fire, Palmer immediately set to work building the first fire-proof hotel. The guest list of his second Palmer House is a virtual who’s who of 19th-century luminaries. In the 1920s, the current, much larger hotel was built, then after WW II Hilton Hotels acquired the Palmer.