Leaving Arkansas in Sunshine

It’s amazing what a short whiskey and an hour and a half nap on a good bed can do to improve your mood.  I woke up hungry in another strange motel room.  It was dark and still raining hard.  I ventured down to the lobby. 

I asked the night clerk, the very cheerful woman who rented me a room, if there was a rib joint close and she suggested one straight out the parking lot blocks away.  As I guided the Buick through the rain I plowed water most of the way.  I couldn’t help but think of the flooded road I turned back from and whether I would have made it had I ventured into the pond around the Forked River Bridge.  I hunched over the steering wheel reading street signs, then turned, splashed through deep water at the curb, and parked in front of a little place called the Delta Q.

There weren’t many cars in the parking lot, and when I walked in a big garbage can was in the middle of the dining room, water occasionally dripping into it.  Only a few tables were occupied.  The waitress came right over.

“Excuse the mess.  It’s been raining for three days and our flat roof just stated leaking this afternoon.  I guess it’s a two day roof.”

She handed me a menu and set a small bucket of homemade pork rinds in front of me.  They had craft beer and I ordered one.  I used to love pork rinds.

The menu told me they served all the standard rib joint fare.  I have trouble deciding between ribs or brisket.  The waitress brought my beer. 

“It says you can get your ribs wet or dry.  Which is best you think?”

“Wet.”

She didn’t hesitate.  I like that.

“The dry have good smoky flavor but sometimes they’re a little bland.  The sauce they use on the wet ribs gives them more flavor, but they’re still not what I call spicy.  Course you can put the sauces on the dry ribs yourself but I don’t know, I just think the wet are better.”

“You smoke your own meat here right?”

“Oh yeah.  The owner is all about the hogs, the wood, how hot, how long.”

“Good.  I’ll have a slab of wet ribs with baked beans and cole slaw on the side.”

“Coming up.”

I got on Delta Q’s wi-fi and checked out their competition at a site called ‘The Best 20 Restaurants in Forrest City.’  I found a little of everything; Mexican, Asian, seafood, barbeque, and steakhouses.  Twenty restaurants?  How did a town of 15,000 hit that culinary jackpot? It seemed so ironic that seven hours earlier I was unable to find even a hot dog near Frog Jump Tennessee and here I had my choice of foods.  It’s literally feast or famine in America.  Find the interstate and you apparently find the food.

Of course you do.  That’s where people with money are spending it.  This is where they’re travelling, spending the night, being away from home without a kitchen.  It’s the interstate, a funnel with people pouring through it.  I’m sure at one time you could find a nice hotel on Route 51, and probably a good cheap meal.  But why would I expect to find either there now?  The only people traveling on Route 51 are locals.  They don’t need a hotel room.  And how much money could you make in a restaurant in Frog Jump anyway?

Apparently not much given the looks of that shuttered restaurant where I regrouped in the rain.   Meaningful commerce and services appear to be over in those communities.  If you need something drive to a community which corporations find worthy of investment.  I’m not sure they are going back to small town America anytime soon.    

My waitress brought the ribs and she was right.  They were none too spicy.  I added some sauce from the table.  I figured there was not much dry rub on them either.  I get it though.  It’s that understated smokiness they’re after in the South.  I still like the sauce we’re used to farther north.  I was hungry.  The ribs were gone pretty quickly.  Good smoky beans.  The slaw was so so, drowned in sweet creamy dressing.

The waitress came to clear the table.

”What’s for dessert?”

“You sir, are in luck.”

People had been calling me sir all day.  I must look old.

“I’m biased but I serve the best bread pudding in Arkansas.”

“Did you make it?”

She laughed pretty big at that one.

“God no.  And you’re lucky.  The owner, who like me doesn’t know the first thing about bread pudding, buys two big pans a day from a lady in town that makes it fresh in her own kitchen every day.  If you want dessert, try the bread pudding.  Plenty of vanilla, touch of cinnamon.  I’m telling you it melts in your mouth.”

Not many waitresses describe a dessert like she did.  She looked hungry just talking about it.

“Bread pudding it is.”

“Good choice.  I’ll warm it for you.”

Sometimes you get an unexpected surprise on the road.  I expected bread pudding that stands tall, all square and sharp edged, sort of stiff and heavy.  This plate of bread pudding looked different, shallow and slumped over, a little sloppy.

When I got a forkful in my mouth I sat unmoving, closed my eyes, and hummed.  I did that involuntarily, I’m convinced, to shut out all other sensations but taste.  Who would think scalded milk, heavy cream, eggs, butter, vanilla, and a few spices with bread cubes could result in such complex flavor and be so damned good?  It was light and moist, disappearing in my mouth with little need for chewing.  I almost ordered another.

Hats off to the woman in Forrest City who bakes that delicious bread pudding.  I’m still mad at myself for not getting her name.  You ma’am, whoever you are, make the best bread pudding I ever had.

The next morning was still overcast and rainy.  At the breakfast buffet, still eating those instant scrambled eggs with lots of hot sauce, I caught the weather report.  There were flash flood warnings all around me.  I headed for the Interstate again. 

I took 40 W to Little Rock, thought of Bill Clinton in his heyday but not enough to stop, and stayed on 40 to Pine Bluff.  As I drove the sky began to clear.  The rain became a sprinkle, and then went away.  I turned my wipers off for the first time in days.   Screw the floods.  I left the Interstate in celebration, taking Arkansas Route south 425 toward Monticello.

On the floorboard of the passenger seat were a batch of CD’s in a cut down brown grocery bag.  My CD’s live in the shack and rarely travel.  I pulled it up on the seat beside me.  Music on the road trip was way overdue.

“Love and Theft” called to me.  I had been thinking about those songs in the silence of the past rain filled days, trying to recall whole lines and not just phrases.  Sometimes you just need to hear good songs again.  It had been way too long since I had heard those.

I first unwrapped the “Love and Theft” disc the morning of September 11, 2001.  My son had just pulled out of the drive on his way to high school.  Moe was away at college.  I had a little time alone before leaving for work and I skipped the news, anxious to hear the latest from my old friend Bob Dylan.  Later when I later got the office I discovered all hell had broken loose. 

You never know what you are going to get in a Dylan album.  I was pleasantly surprised with this one.  For Dylan it was positively buoyant.  Strong melodies and great unexpected lyrics like always.  Even his voice sounded better.  I turned up the volume that morning, just as I turned it up 17 years later, the sun shining on my Buick, speeding down some two lane Arkansas road headed for the  Louisiana state line.  The world has changed entirely since the first day I heard those tunes, but the feeling I get will always stay the same.

I was waiting for the lyrics to “Mississippi”, a state I would get to eventually, and there they came.  Four line stanzas, two rhyming couplets each.  Here’s four of the twelve.

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees
So many things that we never will undo
I know you're sorry, I'm sorry too

Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sinking fast

I'm drownin' in the poison, got no future, got no past
But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free
I've got nothin' but affection for all those who've sailed with me

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay
You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way
Only one thing I did wrong
Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Dylan recorded his first album in 1962 when he was 21 years old.  This one was recorded in 2011, nearly fifty years later, when he was 60.  That made him 77 years old wherever he was as I was on my leisurely tour of the sodden South.  I hope he’s taking care of himself.

As I drove through the little town of Hamburg, Arkansas, “Floater (Too Much To Ask)” came on.  It’s a stroll of a tune, four line stanzas again, lines two and four rhyming most of the time.  Dylan, like many of us, makes up his own rules.  The stanzas are related in subject only a little.  Great musicians hold it all together.  Here’s but a few.

I keep listenin’ for footsteps
But I ain’t hearing any
From the boat I fish for bullheads
I catch a lot, sometimes too many

They all got out of here any way they could
The cold rain can give you the shivers
They went down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee
All the rest of them rebel rivers

My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don’t know if they had any dreams or hopes

I had ’em once though, I suppose, to go along
With all the ring-dancin’ Christmas carols on all of the Christmas eves
I left all my dreams and hopes
Buried under tobacco leaves

It’s not always easy kicking someone out
Gotta wait a while—it can be an unpleasant task
Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up
And tears or not, it’s too much to ask

Turned out Hamburg was my last Arkansas town.  Civilization gets sparse near the Louisiana line.  I drove between two National Wildlife Refuges, Felsenthal and Overflow.  The Ouachita River flows through there.  Wetland areas it sounds like, full of birds, slow water, and gators.  I’m sure it’s beautiful, but I wasn’t stopping.  I was into the music, the trees, and a bright blue sky.  It was still cold in Illinois, but springtime had come to the South. 

“Moonlight” came through the speakers.  I’d forgotten all about it.  How many other beautiful things in our lives do we lose track of never to revisit?   I played it too or three times, trying to burn the tune and the lyrics into my poor old brain.  I don’t want to lose it again.  Three line stanzas, with two rhyming, and one line so pretty he repeated it in six of the eight verses.

I’ll give you the first five stanzas, but you really should listen to this one.  It’s short.   Ask Alexa or your favorite, always listening home robot to play it for you.  Bob appears to have the rights sewn up, as he should, so I can’t find a free link to give you and you don’t want to listen to a cover. 

The seasons they are turnin’ and my sad heart is yearnin’
To hear again the songbird’s sweet melodious tone
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

The dusky light, the day is losing, Orchids, Poppies, Black-eyed Susan
The earth and sky that melts with flesh and bone
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

The air is thick and heavy all along the levy
Where the geese into the countryside have flown
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

Well, I’m preachin’ peace and harmony
The blessings of tranquility
Yet I know when the time is right to strike

I’ll take you cross the river dear
You’ve no need to linger here
I know the kinds of things you like

Sometimes a day and a song complement each other.  It was one of those days.  The Buick and I were headed to Natchez Mississippi, and we had all afternoon to get there.

Road Trip Re-routed.

There’s not much Kentucky between Cairo and Tennessee.  Before I knew it I was crossing the state line on Route 51 into South Fulton and heading down Route 43 to Greenfield, Tennessee.

Route 43 was still a little well traveled for my taste.  I was looking for America’s backcountry.  At Greenfield I turned off on Route 54 and headed toward Trenton on my way to Humboldt.  The towns thinned out considerably.  About the time I turned onto Rt. 54 the sprinkles on the windshield turned into bona fide rain.  I switched my wipers from intermittent to low and hunched forward a little in the seat.

I’d been worried about the weather all morning.  I made the mistake of overhearing a local weather forecast while I was eating breakfast, those instant scrambled eggs they serve you, and they talked about a strong belt of heavy rain extending from the southwest heading northeast.  The creeks, streams, and ditches  were full of water.

It had been raining for days.  I was a little concerned back in Kentucky when I passed Bayou de Chien between Clinton and Crutchfield.  Bayou de Chien translates roughly to “slow-moving creek of the dogs.”  I thought bayous were further south, like in the Louisiana swamp.  Bayous are typically low lying areas attached to a bigger body of water, a lake or a river, and have very little current.

But what did I expect?  I was following the Mississippi River, which drains the world’s third largest watershed area.  If you look at a map of the continental United States, the Mississippi basin brings water from the Eastern slope of the Rockies; Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and the Western slope of the Appalachians.  It’s over a million square miles, just behind the Nile, both of which are less than half the area of the Amazon River basin.  I wasn’t thinking of that at the time.  I began to pay as much attention to the rivers and streams on the map as the Tennessee back roads I’d chosen to travel.

The intrusion of modern life on those Tennessee woods was growing less and less all the time.  It was not readily apparent how people were making a living down there.  There was some pasture and beef cows, your occasional plowed field getting ready for a crop of some kind.  But there was not much in the way of commerce, aside from Dollar General and gas stations  I was a little mystified by the economy, but that interest was soon overtaken by the weather.

One thing seemed clear however.  Rural Tennessee car owners do not believe in trade ins.  Most country places appeared to have every vehicle the family ever owned surrounding their modest homes.  Cars and trucks, running or not, and your occasional pile of car parts, were a definite feature of the landscape.

Past Humboldt I encountered the unincorporated collection of houses and sheds known as Frog Jump.  Somewhere before Owl City I entered Hayward County.  The next county would be Crockett, which had to be named after Davy wouldn’t you think?  As it turned out I never made it to Crockett County, because to get there I had to cross the south fork of Forked Deer River.  It was raining even harder as the Buick nosed down a little valley on a wet two lane pavement.  I turned my wipers up to high.

You could almost see it coming.  Full ditches, big sheets of water in the pastures.  I’m not sure what constitutes a flash flood but there was a lot of water around me. 

You have to understand that when they built the interstate highway system they didn’t follow the lay of the land.  They changed it as they saw fit.  Graded the curves nicely and gradually so cars didn’t have to reduce speed, created overpasses, taking earth from adjoining land creating borrow pits, built up the low places, knocked down the hills.  The roads we travel most often, while not quite weather proof, are much less susceptible to floods, blizzards, and extreme weather than secondary roads, let alone the two lane track between Frog Jump and the Crockett County line.  As I got closer to the river I could see I was in trouble.

There was a big pond at the bottom of a flattened out valley that in normal times must have been but a small river.  In the middle of the pond was a bridge.  The bridge was above water, you could see a little sliver of open sky under it, but getting to the bridge was obviously a problem.  There was that, followed immediately by driving through the pond on the other side of the bridge to open road. 

At the point where Tennessee Route 54 disappeared into the pond was a dump truck with Tennessee DOT painted on the door.  He didn’t have his flashers on.  Just parked there.  I stopped a little behind him and surveyed the situation. 

I began something of a risk inventory by thinking of what was underneath the Buick.  I had fifteen inch wheels and fair clearance.  Between my feet and the surface of the road was what exactly?  A foot maybe?  A little more?  And in that space I had an exhaust system, an oil pan I imagine.  But being that the Buick was front wheel drive not much of a drive train.  I had a catalytic converter I suppose.  There were brakes to consider.  But brakes dry out.

Close to the river channel, wherever that was, there was would be current that could float a stalled car off the road I supposed.  But the water would have to be damn deep to kill a V-6 engine and sweep my full size Lucerne down the south fork of the  Forked Deer River.  That’s what I told myself anyway.

On the other side of the pond, an equal distance from the bridge, was another state truck.  As luck would have it a jacked up pick up, which had the look of a four wheel drive outfit, pulled up by the truck and began talking to the state worker inside it.

‘This is great,’ I thought.  ‘That four wheel drive pickup will drive through the pond and I’ll be able to see just how deep it was.  Besides that, he’s probably a local and I’ll get to see just where the road is.’ 

It looked like a straight shot to me.  Head to the bridge, cross it, go straight across the pond on the other side aiming towards the road ahead and up the hill.  I had a plan.  Now all I needed was for that truck to drive across and show me just how deep the water was.

In a few minutes the truck lurched forward, stopped, turned around, and drove off the way it came.  That was enough for me.  If he wasn’t willing to try it, I was out.  Discretion, I have learned, really is the better part of valor.  I shut off the Buick, put on my jacket, and went out in the rain to talk to the guy in the truck.  He rolled down the window and pulled the bill of his cap down.

“How you doing today?”

“Aw right.  You?”

“Well this rain is slowing me down.”

“Yeah.  There’s flash flood warnins out.”

“What’s the best way around this?”

'You can go back to County Line Road, Take a left, go about a mahl, swing around and get on a ridge out there.  There’s a better bridge across the river on County Line.  Higher.  It ought to be all right for you I’d think.”

“Thanks a lot.”

As I walked away he called back

“Good luck.”

I’d rather he hadn’t said that really.

I drove as directed and about a mile down County Line Road I encountered a flag man, a whole line of trucks, and beyond them a backhoe.  He didn’t look any too happy to be out in the rain.  His truck had the Hayward County logo on the side.  I stuck my head out the window.  He walked up to where I was. 

“What’s happening?”

“Road’s closed.  Culvert washed out.  Going to take most of the daiy to get it fixed if then.”

“How can I get to higher ground and cross the river back there?”

“Fy were you, I’d go back to 54 and head east to Aig Hill road, take a raht.  Follow it on down around, get back on this here road.”

“Ag Hill Road?”

“Aig Hill.”

“A-i-g?  Aig?”

“No Sir.”

He was smiling.  Rain dripped off the bill of his cap.

“When you order breakfast wut do you order with hayem?”

“Eggs.”

“That’s the road you want.  Aig Hill.”

I laughed and so did he.  I felt dumb.  And to think we were both speaking English.  As I got further south my ear got better, and I embarrassed myself less.

I never found Egg Hill Road.  It started raining harder. 

I bailed out to Rt. 412 and headed west to Maury City where I would pick up Route 88.  It looked bigger in the road atlas.  But before I got there I was stopped by barricades. 

I was going nowhere fast.  I decided to get off the road, get a bite to eat, consult with the locals, and reassess my route on a bigger scale.

Damned if I could find anywhere to eat.  Closest I got was this defunct converted eatery/gas station, which at one time proclaimed they were serving pizza.  I’d say the last wedge of pepperoni pie was sliced some time ago.

I pulled under the canopy, which used to shelter the gas pumps, got out of the rain, walked around the Buick to stretch my legs, and took a serious look at the atlas.

If I really was in a storm system headed north and east it made sense to go west.  I’d spent half the afternoon in Tennessee, and hardly gone anywhere.  I decided to get to a bigger road, quit screwing around with these blacktops, and head west to Arkansas.
 
Somehow I got to Gates, got on 51 South (my god how far south does 51 go anyway?), and went to Covington, which put me on a path to Memphis.  I didn’t want to go to Memphis, but I needed bigger, better, and higher roads.  I’d find a way to cross the river north of Memphis if I could.

I couldn’t.  I’m sure there was a bridge somewhere short of Memphis, but I couldn’t see it on the map, and I didn’t want to spend time looking for one.  51 became Interstate 40, and I crossed the Mississippi once again on a big four-lane bridge into Arkansas.   It was hard to see the river, but what I saw looked wide and very fast.

I hate being on the interstate in heavy rain.  40 West was full of semis and they threw a curtain of rain up from their tires that covered the Buick.  I didn’t see much but managed to get out of heavy traffic on Rt. 795 to Marianna Arkansas, then back on 40 W. for a short bit to Forrest City.

I was in constant heavy rain.  It’d been a long day.  I called it quits in Forrest City at a Holiday Inn Express.  Out of the backwoods and into mass market interstate commerce where everything was bright, shiny, and clean.

The young woman at the front desk greeted me with a big smile

“Good evening sir.  How was your day?”

I smiled.

“Wet.”

I made it to Cairo, but it was nothing like Egypt

When I woke up in Cape Girardeau Missouri not only was it still raining, it was foggy.  When I opened the hotel blinds I couldn’t see my Buick  across the parking lot.

I hadn’t slept well.  I kept waking up wondering where I was and what I was doing.  Seems like I used to adapt more quickly.   

I stayed in a Drury’s Motel, which in addition to offering free breakfasts like all the other mass market  interstate hotels, also provided a free dinner buffet till 10:00 p.m. complete with three free drinks; your choice of wine, beer, or hard liquor.  Pretty hard to pass up.

So Drury’s, who along with their peers were not content with taking virtually all the interstate travelers out of breakfast places like Denny’s, Waffle House, and Bob Evans, was attempting to also steal the night time trade of travelers who might otherwise have flocked to the chain restaurants that surround them.  It wasn’t the best dinner, tacos, salad, and the like, but three free drinks?  Who says no to that, especially when it’s raining?  Not me.  They served Maker’s Mark .  Disturbing trend I’m sure for the restaurant industry.

Although I had not been in Missouri long I headed through the fog back to Illinois.  I crossed the Mississippi for the second time on Route 45, and on the Illinois side headed South on Route 3 towards Olive Branch.

Had I gone but a few miles north on Illinois 3 I could have visited the town of McClure.  But other than saying I’d been there, what would I have seen?  McClure is a town of 400 named after Thomas McClure and his wife Caroline.  Tom used to be the postmaster.  Someone saved the big old McClure house and put it on one of those registers of historic places.  The town still has a post office, but Wikipedia reports “only a few businesses remain.”  I skipped it.

The fog was clearing off but it was still sprinkling rain.  As I went further south water stood in ditches on both sides of the road and you could almost feel the rivers closing in.  I could picture the map and the narrowing spit of land I was driving on, nearly engulfed by water.  I was nearing the very tip of Illinois, defined by the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  There were no intersecting roads.  The land was taking on a swampy look.     

I drove past the Cairo Regional Airport.  The runway was mostly covered with water.  One pickup truck and no planes were parked by the hanger, no longer if ever a bustling transportation hub.  I drove through Klondike, then Future City.  You have to be hopeful to name a place Future City.  It looked to me that hope had faded long ago for that small burg.

And then I came into Cairo.  Cairo is not pronounced like the city at the mouth of the Nile River in Egypt (Kigh’ row) or like your old time corn syrup (Kay’ row).  Locals say Care’ O.  If you want to be hip you say Care’ O too.

The word that best describes Cairo, however you want to say it, is empty.  Aside from my Buick, there were few cars moving about.  The streets were oddly quiet.  I turned down a side street and passed under a sign that said “Cairo Historic District.”  A wide avenue with big houses greeted me.  Some looked good.  Others were abandoned.

Downtown was marked by gaps like a mouth with missing teeth.  I turned again and encountered a gravel road and a wall, a levee if I’m not mistaken, stretching into the distance.  On the wall a painted banner proclaimed  “Cairo Mural Wall Project.”  The project ended after four murals.  Beyond them was a long stretch of bare pockmarked concrete.

The four murals recalled the past.  Lewis and Clark had stayed in the area for four days on their expedition.  Another mural marked geologic periods of the past.  Yet another steamboat traffic and ferries.   None  recorded any part of Cairo’s  last  hundred years.  There’s a reason for that.

 Something happened in Cairo.  Something bad.  In 1969 when I was a freshman at ISU I attended meetings of an organization called “Friends of Cairo.”  The meetings were dominated by African Americans from Cairo giving witness to the racial war being waged in their town.  I was a farm kid from an all white community, but I was learning.  How could I not have known about this till I went to that first meeting?  After almost fifty years, I had to see visit the scene of these crimes. 

In March of 1969 a police car was hit with bullets, a black man’s car had its windows shot out in retaliation, and several white men fired at the predominantly black Pyramid Courts housing project from the Mississippi river levee.  April saw a total of 28 fire bombings including a laundromat, a tavern, a mostly black high school, and the Tri County Health Clinic which was set ablaze twice.  During the second fire, firemen responding to the fire were shot at.  In another incident, white police officers trying to enter the Pyramid Courts housing project to conduct a search for a murder weapon were confronted by 200 black residents and forced to leave.

May of 69 saw 175 national guardsman and 30 state policemen dispatched to aid Cairo’s 15 man police force in an attempt to enforce a temporary curfew.  Police and business leaders testified at hearings in Springfield on the unrest, while the Negro United Front organization protested the presence of members of the vigilante “White Hats” group, predominately white business owners, at those same hearings.  Later that month, gunmen attacked the Cairo police station firing 100 rounds into the building in 15 minutes, while a wallpaper warehouse and the Tri-County Health Clinic were firebombed as responding firemen were fired upon. That time the health clinic was allowed to burn to the ground.

In June a legislative committee in Springfield recommended a 70 man state police force patrol the city, that “White Hats” members not be deputized, and that a federal state of emergency be declared so federal funding for housing and business development could be made available.  No action was taken.

In July, six ministers from the United Front of Cairo, some of whom I had heard speak at ISU, were evicted from Illinois Governor Ogilvie’s office in Springfield where they had organized a sit in.

Finally in October of 1970, after continued shootouts at the Pyramid Courts housing project and three separate automatic gunfire attacks on the Cairo police station, Governor Ogilvie ordered a 24 man state police force and an armored car to patrol Cairo for an indefinite period to stop “indiscriminate gunfire and lawlessness”.  Eventually peace of a kind came to Cairo.

Cairo in 1920 had a population of 15,203.  In 1960 its population stood at 9,348.  Cairo in 2016 had but 2,016 citizens.  Little remains of the town it used to be. 

Cairo is famous for being mentioned in the great American novel Huckleberry Finn.  It was Huck and Jim’s destination after they left upriver on a raft from Hannibal Missouri on their great journey, but fog and the raft’s encounter with a river boat dashed that idea.  Their barge floated past Cairo and were doomed to continue into the deep South. 

Their plan was to pull onto the Illinois shore near Cairo, sell the raft, find passage up the Ohio to states more sympathetic to runaway slaves and in doing so win Jim his freedom as a slave.  Why not try their luck in Illinois?  That was the question literary critics and historians later wondered.  I think Cairo’s history in the late 60’s gives us the answer.  Illinois may have been a free state on paper, but its southern most city offered little sympathy for black people either in Huck and Jim’s era, before the Civil War, or even a hundred years after it. 

Go south of Cairo and you immediately cross a river.

I crossed the Ohio into Kentucky, found myself once again on Route 51, and stopped on a rise past Wickliffe see if I could spot where the Ohio meets the Mississippi. Turns out that rise was the old site of Fort Jefferson, established in 1780, and later used by Union forces in the Civil War.  The fog was gone and the rain was merely a drizzle.  I got out, stretched my legs, and saw clear as day where the Ohio joined up with America’s greatest river.  I think that marks the start of the lower Mississippi.  Barges were tied up, the river was high on its banks, and the current was quietly raging south.  I wasn’t so sure I had picked the right time to be on a route that followed the river.

Ferris Wheels and Accredited Professionals

The Ferris Wheel/Jacksonville story, the one the woman in Worrell Land Services wanted to tell me when I was lost on the road trip, can be long or short.  I’m going with short.  It’s interesting for a while, but once you get the idea it’s not. 

In 1893 W.E. Sullivan, owner of the Eli Bridge company in Roodhouse (a railroad town down the road from Jacksonville) went to the Columbian Exposition and rode the first ever Ferris Wheel and marveled at its construction.  He came home and announced to his wife that he had found the single thing to which he wanted to devote his career.  I imagine the conversation went like this.

“I tell you dear, it’s amazing and thrilling.  I could make a wheel that’s portable and take it to people all around the country to enjoy.”

“Really honey?”

“Yes.  I’m convinced.  To Hell with bridges!”

“W.E. don’t say that, we could be ruined!”

But that’s exactly what old W.E. did, went into debt and in 1907 came up with a design, Big Eli #1, you could put on a train car.  Six men could put it together in a day.  It had ten buggy seats and ran off a gas engine.  He set the first one up right there in the park in Jacksonville where a Sullivan built wheel, Big Eli #17, now stands.  In 1919  he moved his company to Jacksonville.  A Big Eli #1 is on display at that factory, still Sullivan family owned and located in Jacksonville. 

In 1955 the same company invented the Scrambler, which some of you may have thrown up on at the county fair after too much cotton candy, corn dogs, and lemon shake ups.  The local Rotary Club takes care of the Big Eli wheel in the park, now owned by the city of Jacksonville, and you may or may not be able to ride it in the summer once in a while.  Don’t quote me.  I’m not going back to look it up.  I already know more than I want to know about Jacksonville and Ferris wheels.

(Except for this.  They no longer have a double Ferris wheel at the Illinois State Fair, which is a damned shame.  If you find a double Ferris wheel within driving distance, let me know.  I love that feeling when the wheel you are riding changes from the top to the bottom, or vice versa.  I’d like to experience that again.)

So there you go.  You learn something every day.  Worrell Land Services is a whole other thing, and not nearly as easily deciphered.  Here’s how they describe themselves on their web page. 

Worrell Land Services has built a reputation as a leader in rural real estate and farm management in Central Illinois. Satisfied clients attest to our expertise in the following areas:

·        Farm management by accredited professionals who run the day-to-day farming operation, maximize income potential and simplify life for landowners. Our team manages every detail with care, as if it were our own land.

·        Agricultural, recreational, residential and commercial real estate services by a brokerage and auction team with decades of proven results.  We leverage our strong relationships within the local communities and agri-businesses to connect buyer and seller in a way that helps both achieve their goals.

·        Appraisal services that equip landowners with a fair market value for their property.

·        Professional consultation with land experts who listen carefully to each individual need and help landowners make sense of all the options.

At Worrell Land Services, you aren’t just a number.  Your story is unique, your legacy important. Whatever season you’re in – from wrestling with the emotions of selling the family farm to searching for your first home – we can help.  Contact us today to let us know how we can serve you during this season in your life.

I know it’s just promotional material, probably ghost written, but I take stuff like that seriously.  Not once in their self description do they mention farmers.  There’s farm managers, accredited professionals, land experts, land owners, brokerage and auction teams-but no farmers.  How could farmers possibly be left out?

And excuse me, but whenever I see the phrase “this season of your life” I assume that season is winter, and refers to old people.  I could be over sensitive, as I’m going to turn 67 later this year, but I think this is a pamphlet clearly written for people like me.

Who do I mean by ‘people like me?’  Baby boomers who grew up on small farms, left, and never went back.  Farm kids who learned how to make a living some other way because small farm life went away. 

Between 1950 and 1970 the number of farms in the U.S. declined by half and the number of people living on farms dropped from over 20 million to less than 10 million.  My family was part of that decline.

Maybe you and your siblings still own the farm.  Maybe everyone moved away.  Even if they didn’t chances are none of you is working that farm.  It became too small.  The scale and the economy of farming squeezed many of us out.  And so in this “season of your life” something has to be done.  You and your brothers and sisters can’t pass the farm on to all your kids, a big group of far flung cousins. There’s too many of them to share decision making and receive slivers of income from a small acreage. 

Besides that the asset, the land, is very valuable.  Ironically while farm income remains stagnant the price of good Midwestern farm land remains high.  Farmers at the end of their working years find themselves land rich and cash poor.  It costs more than ever, the margins keep getting smaller, commodity prices stay low, and individual farmers assume both more risk and more stress. 

That’s where the nice conference room down the hall at Worrell Farm Services, the one with the soft leather like chairs comes in.  You sit down with a “land expert”, put your family in the hands Worrell Land services, and figure something out.  Either you sell the farm right away or you let them manage it and it’s sold later.  Either way Worrell Land Services, and others who put the business into agri-business, are sure to have a profound effect on America’s landscape.

When this change takes place who buys the land? Who farms it next?  I have a sneaky feeling the farms in the pictures lining the hallway of Worrell Land Services are quickly reduced to an Excel file in the hard drive of an “accredited professional”, and when that file is opened and glowing on a computer monitor the numbers point the way.

If you think guiding a self driving car by GPS through city traffic is doable, think what a snap it will be to remotely drive one combine through an empty forty acre cornfield?  Everything suggests farming is going to an even bigger scale.  What does the future hold for the farms that crowd the two lane roads I travel on my way south and east, and the families that now own them? 

You can learn a lot of things on a road trip, even if they’re just questions.  I find questions about the past easily answered, while answers about the future escape me.  That’s just how it goes.  

Road Trip-Leaving Illinois

(from previous post) I had breakfast at the counter and brought in the Atlas in to peruse.  By the looks of it all the other diners were  having the buffet.  I knew what I wanted before I sat down.  Fried mush with eggs.  As I waited for my order to come up I opened the road atlas to Illinois and looked at where I might go next.  The Dixie was as far as I’d figured it out.

In my mind this road trip was a river run.  I wanted to follow the Mississippi, more or less, skip New Orleans and cut over to Pensacola where I would join Ottawa friends flying in for a four day golf trip.  Though I was going south and east in the end, I first wanted to get to America’s big river.  I found McLean in the atlas and considered my options.  Then breakfast arrived.

The mush wasn’t that good.  Identical oblong patties, fried too long and tough, suggested frozen patties.  They looked like those bad slabs of so called hash browns.  However the eggs were good.  Nice runny yolks like over easy should be.  I had to remind my young waitress to bring the milk, which happens a lot.   They pour your coffee right away and forget you want another beverage. 

If I was doing the Route 66 trip I would follow I 55.  There are preserved stretches of Old 66, scraps of pavement really, and old roadside attractions, scattered along the way.  But I took 55 to Springfield so many times over so many years I dreaded the thought.  Why could I not have lived in the days of self driving cars when I was making all those trips to the Capitol to find money and promote good policy for troubled kids?  I’d been down that road too many times.  I nixed that idea.

What’s best on these trips is a good old two lane state highway, or any road actually with a line painted down the middle.  Those roads have less stop signs and are more likely to be somewhat direct.  They’re slower, but unlike the interstate you can pull off and walk into real country, meet real people.  And if this really was a river run, why not get to a river and follow it to the Mississippi? Look there I thought.  Route 136 would take me to Havana on the Illinois River.  From there I could get on 78 and parallel the river to Alton, cross into Missouri at St. Louis, then hug the river going south.  Perfect.

Something was drawing me to St. Louis and I wasn’t quite sure what.  I celebrated a wedding anniversary there, which one I couldn’t tell you, in an old historic hotel years ago and have fond memories of that great, but not too big, American city.  Plus, I’d get to see the Mississippi River where it is joined by the Missouri but before the Ohio River kicks in.  It’s a magnificent river, the Mississippi, and between St. Louis and just below Cairo it changes dramatically.

I paid for my breakfast at the Dixie, put the decal on the Buick, and headed west on Route 136.  If I’d ever been west on that road I don’t remember it.  As much as I like to go down familiar roads nothing beats discovering new places.  I went through San Jose, which in the pattern of Illinois towns named after other more famous places is pronounced “San Joes”  in the unlikely event you might confuse that little Midwest town for its more famous namesake in California, or Costa Rica.  Similarly, my neighbors in Marseilles take pains to say “Marr Sales”, so you don’t mistakenly think you’re in a Mediterranean port on the coast of France. 

I met up with the Illinois River in Havana, pronounced just like the capitol of Cuba.  Havana looks to be doing pretty well.  New stores and well paved streets.  I worked with a good guy from Havana and have lost touch with him since I retired.  In the event he still reads this blog, I hope you’re doing well Greg. 

As I got closer to the river, irrigation equipment started showing up.  That’s not common in Illinois, and indicates not a lack of rainfall but soil that doesn’t hold moisture well.  Sandy most likely.  You get down to places like Manito and Spring Lake where they grow melons and stuff and you figure the ground is changing.  It’s more expensive to farm irrigated ground.  Given the prices farmers get for grain these days and the cost of growing it I honestly don’t know how they’re making it.

Route 78 took me to Bath.  I was interested in Bath, because my brother takes his boat down there from where he camps across from Kingston Mines.  He talks about it from the perspective of the river.  There’s the famous Bath Ditch, and a restaurant on a barge in the river, or is that in Liverpool?  I’m not sure he’s seen Bath from the road.  Bath may have seen better days, or not.  I’m no authority.  But Bath is low lying, and it looks like floods may have taken their toll on the town’s real estate.  Just guessing but I bet you can buy a house very reasonably in Bath.

Bath bears little resemblance to Bath England just as I doubt Liverpool resembles that famous British town on England’s Atlantic coast.  310 people live in Bath, and it appears the town is most famous for its Redneck Fishing tournament.  I’ve reviewed it online and it is not your average contest.

In this non angling contest fishing poles are not allowed.  Loud flat bottomed Jon boats with outboard motors troll the muddy water while contestants line the boat with large dip nets.  They are after Asian Carp, an invasive species that threaten native fish populations in the Illinois River and elsewhere throughout the country.  This is not a catch and release tournament.  The object is to get as many of these big ugly fish out of the water as possible.  Did I say they drink a lot of beer at the Redneck Fishing Tournament?  It’s a colorful event.

From Bath I veered away from the river through the towns of Chandlerville, Virginia, and finally Jacksonville.  I got goofed up there.  Determined not to use my smart phone to bail myself out, why I’m not sure, I took some kind of alternate route, looped around the main drag, ended up losing Route 78 and unable to find Rt. 267, the road I wanted to take south. 

I don’t try to figure out what I do wrong in those cases, I just plow on.  I stopped for a very old fashioned thing, to get directions, at an office where I saw a guy getting the mail from a mailbox on a post by the street. I was stopped at a light.

You can get the mail with purpose, in a hurry, on your way to doing something else.  Or you can get the mail for a diversion, searching for something to do.  This guy was obviously in the latter category.  He leaned against the mailbox, flipping through the envelopes, checking out the cars, smiling and waving at folks he knew.  As he sauntered across the street into his building I followed him. 

It was the office of Worrell Land Services, which told me nothing.  All I wanted was directions.  Any competent English speaker, or even someone speaking Spanish slowly, would do.

I encountered two women behind a counter in a large, very quiet office.  They both came up to greet me.  Sometimes you wander into places where you immediately sense there is not enough to do.  This was one of those places.  Both women were equally attentive, wide eyed and smiling.  They might have spoken at once, but I think one of them beat the other to it.  Their eagerness was a little intimidating.

“How can we help you?”

“I’m just lost.  I thought I was going to intersect 267 which would take me to south to Greenfield but I got off track.  Where would I find that?”

The face of the woman standing fell.  She was clearly disappointed. 

“I’m not from here so I can’t tell you.”

On the other hand the woman on the left grew pretty animated.

“I can tell you!  Which way are you headed?”

“I’m in your parking lot.  I’ll go anywhere you say.”

“Well, you want to take a left out of our parking lot, head back east, and follow this road down to the city park.  You’ll see a Ferris wheel there.  Do you know the history of Jacksonville and Ferris wheels?”

I hesitated to answer.  Avoiding long conversations about things I don’t care about is not my strong suit.  I hate to be rude.  But in this case I had to pee like a racehorse.  As much as I would have liked to hear about the Jacksonville Ferris connection, which was not much at all, I had no time to listen.

“I don’t know the Ferris wheel deal, but I’m afraid I will have to hear that story another day.  I’m behind schedule as it is.”

I had no schedule. 

“Oh, of course.  Well you turn left and go let’s see, how many blocks?”

She began counting blocks silently on her fingers, starting with her thumb.  She started over.  Then she exploded with a shout.

“FRANK. HOW MANY BLOCKS FROM HERE DOWN TO THE PARK?”

There was a long pause, then a muffled reply from down the hall.

“Six.”

“Six blocks, then turn right, that’ll take you right to Greenfield.” 

She flashed a huge smile.

“Thank you very much.  You’ve been a big help.”

She stuck out her hand, I extended mine and she shook it vigorously, for a little too long. I got the slightly creepy feeling she would have hugged me if a counter hadn’t separated us.

“Do you folks have a bathroom I can use?”

“Of course.  All the way down the end of the hall and right. You can’t miss it. Light switch is on the right.”

I turned and hustled down the long hall.  On my way back I noticed picture after picture of small farms, sets of  buildings from an aerial view.  Some looked like our old farm, buildings in poor repair, while others looked pristine and newly painted.  Old pictures I guessed.

I passed a nice looking conference room with plush leather looking chairs, and a big office with the mail fetcher sitting motionless behind a big desk, his face illuminated by a computer monitor displaying an Excel spreadsheet.  He looked positively bored.

On my way out I grabbed a pamphlet, thanked the ladies again, and followed their directions.

267 south to Jacksonville takes you through what some would call a big empty part of Illinois. To me it wasn’t empty at all.  Sometimes it seemed like the road intruded on what would have otherwise been a giant fallow prairie waiting to sprout.  Past Woodson there was only Greenfield, Medora and Brighton as far as towns, between Jacksonville and Godfrey.  Otter Creek runs through there.  It’s Macoupin County I believe.  Nice farms.  Little to spoil them.  The Buick was humming along.  The sun was shining though clouds were moving in.  This is what I was looking for; big quiet country.  It’s a place where you can think.  I still hadn’t turned on the radio.

As I got close to Alton and the river, everything changed.  The city emerged.  I knew upriver the Illinois, which flows through my town, had joined the Mississippi.  It is hard to find an old bridge on a small road to take you across the Mississippi.  I got sucked into traffic and was thrown onto a modern bridge across the river before I knew it.  Unlike old bridges,  new bridge construction creates solid side walls that make it hard to see the river.  I wanted to gauge the flow, see what was floating down, but I was going too fast and my view was obstructed.  Sometimes you have to drive rather than gawk.  All I could see was that it was wide.

No sooner had I gotten across the Mississippi river and into Missouri than I was heading up and over the Missouri River, which looked equally big.  With both the Illinois and the Missouri emptying into the Mississippi the volume of water had to increase significantly.  After a quiet ride through farmland I picked up a sense of energy.  Maybe it is the confluence of all those rivers, but it felt like there was a lot going on in St. Louis, and somehow that energy made itself into the Buick.

It started to sprinkle.  I was in the midst of rush hour traffic.  To be expedient, and get out of town as quickly as possible, I stayed on 55, forsaking 61, the two lane which might have taken me south more slowly, past Festus and Crystal City.  Somewhere in there the sprinkle turned into rain. I stayed on 55 till Perryville, then took 61, a two lane, down to Jackson and pulled in for the night at Cape Girardeau.  Long day.