I may be mistaken (and I hope I am!) but I think the Town of Motels sign, advertising Breezewood, PA, is history. I don't want to be alarmist, but as I breezed along "America's first superhighway" last weekend, I came around a familiar bend, and I saw a sign...only it wasn't the one I expected.

Now, at my advanced age, this may be a hallucination. Maybe it wasn't the turn I though it was. Maybe it wasn't the sign. Maybe. I'd appreciate clarification from other American Roadside fans....

The Sign has been in ill repair for a couple of years...but I never thought I'd see it go. Sigh.

Tell me it ain't so, Joe....

Being that it's his movie, it was only fitting for Garrison Keillor to be the first actor to show up at Mickey's Diner in downtown St. Paul Saturday evening.

As Keillor walked by the small crowd that had gathered to see what all the fuss was about, Mike Hardin, 20, an autograph seeker, whipped out a 1980 vinyl copy of "The Prairie Home Companion Anniversary Album."

"Where'd you get this?" Keillor asked, as he signed the album cover with a blue marker. "I hope you didn't pay full price for it." The radio legend was in a jovial mood as filming for "A Prairie Home Companion," a Hollywood movie about the fictional last broadcast of his famous radio show -- left the Fitzgerald Theater for a night. Every other scene has been shot in the downtown theater, where Keillor regularly performs his radio show.

It took the city two years, several court orders and possibly more than $1 million to get its hands on the land now occupied by the downtown Belmont Beverage store. Now the city has decided it doesn’t want to build a hotel at Jefferson Boulevard and Harrison Street after all, raising several timely questions about government’s proper power over private property.

To city planners, moving the site of a third downtown hotel to the north side of the newly expanded Grand Wayne Convention Center — perhaps to the corner now occupied by Cindy’s Diner — will better promote the redevelopment of Harrison Street, The Landing historic district and Fort Wayne’s riverbanks. To others, however, the change of heart illustrates the dangers posed by the use of eminent domain – dangers some City Council members want to curb.