Without a Tracy

“We hate to do it but we really have no choice,” says Jean Gould O’Connell, the daughter of famed American cartoonist Chester Gould (1900-1985), when asked about the decision to close Woodstock, Illinois’ Chester Gould-Dick Tracy Museum. Explaining this institution’s plight, the Chicago Tribune notes that

The guest book hasn’t been signed in weeks. The shelves are lined with unsold Dick Tracy pens, yellow fedoras and coffee mugs. And on a recent February morning, a broken furnace kept museum director Jim Johnson shivering until closing. Only a few visitors stopped by, one of them a repairman who got the heat turned back on.

With attendance plunging, museum officials have decided to close in June the 1,000-square-foot shrine to the comic strip detective and his creator--longtime Woodstock resident Chester Gould.

Sad news, indeed. And unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to make it to this museum (which opened in 1991) prior to its closing. But there’s always the chance to order souvenirs via the Internet. I might look good in one of those yellow Dick Tracy T-shirts ...

READ MORE: “I Like ’Em Tough: 75 Years of Continuous Crime-Stopping,” by Jim Doherty (Mysterical-E).