Missing Miss I Will

If you can't find it on Google it ceases to exist.

There was a Ray Bradbury story I read years ago about how all the literary characters in novels end up living on Mars, but when the book they were in ceases to be read, the characters fade from view leaving a hole in the community. I've just discovered such a hole--Miss I Will has disappeared.

I learned about Miss I Will in the Eagle, the most wonderful bar in the world, which once operated where Giordano's now is in Hyde Park. In the middle room, there were two large murals from the 1930s, facing each other across the room. On the south wall, was the 1930's skyline of New York, with Miss Liberty prominently in the middle. On the north wall, was the skyline of Chicago around the time of the Century of Progress, with Miss I Will in the middle, looking rather like a starlet or a chorus girl from the Gold diggers of 1933--hair all bottle blonde and marceled. She was smiling, close up, from somewhere out in the lake in front of the skyline of Chicago. I always liked the face-off between the ladies. I hope that wonderful pair of murals found a good home.

I've been looking for her, wondering if I'd hallucinated her, when I finally stumbled across her on a poster for the Century of Progress. I admit I preferred the Eagle version. This one is scowling out at us, clearly not very happy about the state of things, and the welcome is reduced to a crook of the finger. Maybe it's the NRA eagle that's landed on her head that bothers her or the dispossessed Pottawatomie (wearing a Plains Indian headdress) behind her.

I always liked the idea that Chicago was represented by Miss I Will--so much persistence, so much determination. I think we need her back in town.