Our Lady of the Underpass

It's things like these that sort of finish up the job of falling in love with Chicago for me.  The quirky things.  A few things fell into place over the weekend  1. My brother and I did a Luke Wilson movie rental called Henry Poole Was Here about a man with a salt stain on the side of his house that looked like Jesus. 2. Then somehow got to talking about the original Our Lady of Guadalupe image that hangs in a church in Mexico City (I'm forever fascinated by this story) 3. My brother and sister-in-law picked us up an awesome book called Oddball Illinois with loads of strange stories, folklore, religious happenings, and, well, oddball things to see and do in this Land of Lincoln (and TRUST you me, I will be sharing many of them with you).  All of this made me sit up and say "Oooh. I need to get a photo of Our Lady of the Underpass for my blog!" But I was surprised and disappointed to see that it had, once and for all, been covered up. You might remember this from four or five years back, the very same week the new Pope was elected, a woman was driving down Fullerton Ave. and glanced out her window to see an uncanny salt stain image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Throngs of people caused some traffic problems for a while, there were a few battles between graffiti artists, devotees armed with cleaning agents, and the city, but after a few months the hubbub died down and now, years later, there is just a quiet little candle-lit shrine under the humming expressway.  (See here for original images of the stain.) Anyhow, for me it's sort of like those old ghost stories that I love. I can't say that I really believe them,  but they thrill my imagination.  And even after long turns of the imagination I don't actually think that the Virgin Mary made an appearance under I-90/94. But I'm moved by the story.