Convention Weekend in the Gray City

Written By Greg Bergkamp

In the autumn of 1970, I was given the opportunity to attend the annual Associated Milk Producers, Inc. (AMPI) convention under the auspices of John and Flo Hampel.  We left the train station in Wichita on a Thursday night.  Destination;  Chicago, Illinois.  I was twelve years old at the time and although I had studied United States geography, I did not know exactly where to place the Windy City on my mental map.  (As fate would have it, I again left Wichita on a Thursday night fourteen years later, relocating to Chicago to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago.)

One of the most memorable aspects of the weekend was the train ride itself.  It was the first and only time I had ever traveled by train in the United States.  We left about 8:00 P.M. and it was a holiday on steel wheels.  Not only were there relatives on the train, but the entire St. Joe area was represented.  In addition to John and Flo Hampel, some of the other people I remember in particular include Mike and Tim Hampel, John Bergkamp, and Paul Blasi.  Anyone under age eighteen probably didn't sleep much that night on the train.  We played cards, talked, laughed, and probably disturbed anyone trying to get a good night's sleep.

The first thing I remember seeing in the morning light was Joliet, Illinois.  It was the first time I had every seen so much heavy industry.  The visions of the smog, smoke stacks, and dirty buildings remain.  It made me appreciate how relatively clean Wichita was.  We arrived at the Chicago train station around 8:30 A.M. Friday morning.  Uncle John called a cab (my first cab ride) and we were taken to the Palmer House hotel.  I don't remember how much the ride cost but I recall thinking at the time how expensive it was.  We went to our rooms, changed clothes, and went out to see the city.

One of our first stops was a wax museum.  I remember the realness of the displays and the people, such as Napoleon and Josephine.  From here, we went to the attractions on the lake shore;  specifically, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum of Natural History.  Unless you have been to either one of these, you cannot appreciate the enormity of these fascinating Chicago showplaces.  On the way to our next tourist site, we had to stop and get directions.  Mike Hampel volunteered to walk across the street and ask a street vendor how to get to our next site.  He talked with the vendor for quite some time and John Hampel, who was standing next to me, impatiently asked, "What's he trying to do, get a job"?

En route to the Catholic church we went to that weekend, we walked by the First Chicago Bank building.  It is sixty stories tall and curves upward from its base.  The Gray City holds some very interesting architecture.  Then we got a good look at the John Hancock Center, which was one of the world's tallest buildings at the time  (Sears Tower and the World Trade Center were yet to be built).  Now I knew why Chicago was considered the home of the skyscraper.

Our stay at the Palmer House was a vacation in and of itself.  It was the first time that I lodged at a hotel.  We stayed up late watching The Dick Cavett Show, drinking Coke, eating ice, and talking.  In 1970, a bottle of Coke from a vending machine was usually ten cents.  At this hotel, cans were a quarter.  We were so intrigued with the abundance of ice from the machine at the end of the hall that one afternoon, we opened our window and created a man-made hail storm on the construction workers below.  They were wearing hard-hats so I am confident that all we did was annoy them.

When my sister Joan found out that we stayed at the Palmer House, she told me how lucky I was to stay at such a famous hotel.  I don't remember any of the specifics she told me, but a little research of my own uncovered some interesting facts.  The Palmer House was built shortly after the great Chicago fire of 1871 by Potter Palmer, an early Chicago merchant.  Palmer referred to his new State Street hotel as the "Finest in the West."  It boasted 650 rooms, an elaborate facade, large rooms, and statuary in the lobby.  But most importantly, it was the first wholly fireproof hotel ever built in the United States.

I do not recall much about the convention itself.  At twelve years old, I really didn't understand the politics of the milk industry or the purpose of AMPI.  The whole weekend went very fast and before I knew it, we were on the train back to Kansas.  The ride home seemed a lot longer than the one to Chicago.   The exhaustion finally overcame me;  I hadn't slept much since Thursday evening and now I had to repay mother nature.  We arrived back in Wichita Sunday evening and Matt Bogner took me home.

As a footnote, I almost went to the AMPI convention again in 1971.  John and Flo Hampel insisted that I should and they again agreed to watch out for me.  However, in an eleventh hour decision, I did not attend the convention but Joan and Byron went instead. It was a weekend that I sure wanted to be a part of.