Welcome to Forgotonia

Chapter One

The one and only time I ever agreed to help, I was on edge every time I heard a car slowing down on the highway.

The sound of the bell on the door—which I could hear from the living room on the other side of a cubicle wall—put me in a panic. Please don’t be a customer please don’t be a customer.

My older sister, the cool-headed one of the two of us, usually watched the front office of the motel, and babysat my cousins at the same time, on weekends when my aunt and uncle went out of town or out with friends on a Saturday night. But she was about to graduate, and now that I was in high school, I could perhaps be her replacement, was the thinking.

The babysitting part on this Saturday night just meant hanging out with my three younger cousins. The scary part was that these cousins’ home—a living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms—was in the “living quarters” of a motel. The motel entrance, a small office from which to book customers, rent rooms, and distribute keys, just happened to be behind a small partition in their living room.

Chapter Two

My aunt and uncle ran the Prairie Winds motel, a one-story brick business on Highway 136 on the edge of town, about 15 miles east of the Mississippi River. I wouldn’t know until many years later that I had had legitimate reason to be freaked about facing whoever it was that might come in and cause the bell to jingle. Growing up, I had no idea that the motel’s original proprietors—my grandparents—had once been robbed there in the middle of the night.

No, what had me trembling that night was not man, but machine: if any of the travelers who stopped in for the night paid with a credit card, I was going to be in trouble. My aunt had tried, patiently, to show me how to swipe the card through the little box with the keypad on it and complete the complicated transaction. But after the third time, (as I am still guilty of doing when it comes to anything with numbers), I nodded and pretended to get it. “Oh there, I see,” I said, smacking my forehead. “You guys go ahead and go to your dance, don’t miss it on account of me!”

As soon as they left, my cousins got out a board game and I said a secret prayer. Dear God, please don’t let there be any customers and if there are please let them write a check.

Chapter Three

Luckily, the few times someone did come through the door over the course of that Saturday evening, it was just a friend of the family stopping by to say hi, or maybe a deliveryman for the ice machine. I never had to use the credit card machine. But the next few times my aunt and uncle asked me to babysit the kids and the office, I was relieved to have legitimate excuses to be unavailable on a Saturday night: pep band, marching band, or play practice. (Oh and yes, um, dates.)

In today’s Google-map era, there is perhaps little reason to worry late at night about how much further down the road the next gas station or motel might be. But back then, the Prairie Winds was the only place to stay–with maybe one or two sketchy exceptions–in the area, with the next option 30 miles to the east, or across the Mississippi into Keokuk, Iowa to the west.

So it actually a pretty genius idea when my grandpa, a farmer, decided to go into business for himself, (in addition to farming), and build a motel on the edge of Carthage, just near his home and farm. If I’m remembering correctly, Grandpa built the place himself. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering that this is the same man who, today, at 89, is still farming. And the same man who, as a teenager, left school to take over his family’s farm after his father went blind. My grandma would spend many years helping run and clean the place. She was the one who chose the romantic name.

I never heard either of my grandparents mention the story of the robbery; as is perhaps typical of their generation, they saw no need to talk about it. But I eventually learned from my dad that my grandparents suffered a harrowing, nightmarish experience one night when what seemed like just another traveler coming off the highway turned out to be a man who would hold them up at gunpoint and leave them bound and gagged. They lived, thankfully, but apparently not “to tell the tale.”

Chapter Four

By the time my cousins were in their teen years, at some point in the 90s, my family sold the motel to an Indian family from Chicago, and it has been sold again at least once since then. The place is a bit of a lighthearted Carthage joke now; if you’re back for a wedding or a reunion, you might hear, “Where you crashing tonight, the Prairie Winds?”

And the sight of the place in its current state, along an off-interstate stretch of the Midwest, was enough of a story-in-itself to capture a noted photographer’s attention. In August, the New York Times photography blog, Lens, highlighted a series of photos from rural Illinois called Prairieland by Dave Jordano.  There, in the collection of sad places that have seen better days, was the Prairie Winds. (You can read more about that in my initial post here.)

Screen shot of Prairie Winds photo by Dave Jordano

Even though I’m now aware of what happened to my grandparents on that terrible  night, the motel still conjures pleasant memories for me,  not just of spending time with with my cousins in their home in the living quarters, but also of eating Sunday dinners at the buffet when there was still a family restaurant attached.

It might not be much more than a sign of another era now–another symbol of the left-behind feel of west central Illinois. But because I know who built it, it will always be a symbol of two other things to me:  my Depression-surviving grandparents’ sense of industriousness, and their strength.

Postlude: That car in the picture is very much like the kind I used to cruise around in when I was a high schooler– a blue 1985 Crown Vic, to be exact. As you can imagine, this also played a role in the status of my Saturday nights.

Yesterday, I told you about the Chicago-centric publication Newcity publishing a “postcard” from the Forgottonia region, (including a stop in Plymouth, Ill.), which I raised a couple of questions about here. Interestingly, only three days after the Newcity story, the same Hancock County hamlet of Plymouth—AND a piece of my own family’s history—was featured in the New York Times‘ photography blog.

Lens Blog- NYT.com -”A Prairie Wanderer in Search of the Human Touch“

screen shot of Plymouth on NYT blog

I couldn’t believe my eyes when a friend sent me the link to this blog via a Facebook message. This was a friend who (like any good writer) has a deep abhorrence of exclamation points.”OMG!!” She wrote. “Check it out: Prairie Winds!!!!!!” But before I explain the Prairie Winds part, let me tell you about the other things I found when I went to the link above. The blog, Lens: Photography, Video, and Visual Journalism, which “present[s] the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting,” was on that day highlighting the work of Chicago-based photographer Dave Jordano. The former adman returning to his early roots in documentary photography had traveled around rural Illinois in the fairly recent past, capturing scenes of rural Illinois for a series called Prairieland. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, in his journey through the tiny dots on the

photographer Dave Jordano's website

Illinois map (many of which I’ve never heard of), Jordano had cast his photojournalistic and artistic eye on several spots in our immediate region. (Although what he has documented is not, of course, entirely “pleasant”). If you’re at all interested in photography, photojournalism or documentaries, or how our region is seen through others’ eyes, you should check out the photographer’s web site, where you’ll see stirring shots that capture

• a young man in Bardolph, (in McDonough County, Ill.)
• a series documenting the destruction of Gulf Port during the Flood of 2008
• a set of trophies from a no-longer existing school in Plymouth (shown above)
• and many other sad, self-contained mini stories, like this one.

It turns out that one of the Prairieland shots, too, captures a piece of my own family history. Of all places in the world, this photographer had cast his photojournalistic and artistic eye on the Prairie Winds Motel, which just happens to be the little mom-and-pop business that was built by my grandpa—and co-operated by my grandma—back in the early 60s in Carthage, Ill. More on the motel—including one rather terrifying tale—to come.

NYT Lens blog

Maid Rite, Macomb, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

At home from work today trying to write a eulogy for my grandmother. Meanwhile my pipes are frozen and I’m boiling pot after pot of water in my spaghetti-making pot and pouring straight into the toilet.

Do not be jealous of my day home from work.

Chapter 1
Last night I had Christmas with my Little Sister from BB/BS, who I will call J. She’s a 7th grader now, and she and I  were matched in the BB/BS program when she was in 2nd or 3rd grade. When I picked her up at 5:30 as the snow was starting to accumulate,  she was super excited to give me my present. She was like, “Which do you think we should do first–open our presents? Or eat supper.”

So of course I made the right choice.

When we got to my house and I opened my present– a leapoard-print Snuggie– I laughed and told her I’d love it, and of course I had to try it on. (Perhaps I should say here that despite having heard all about this year’s fad and its accompanying commercial, I’ve never actually seen the ad, since I don’t have TV). As I modeled it for her, her face fell for second, and then she looked at me like I had said the moon is made of cheese. “Not like that,” she said, coming over to adjust it. “You’ve got it on backwards.”

Chapter 2
Ashamed, but determined to right myself in her eyes, I then got out the stuff for us to make a “homemade” pizza (the Alison version: pre-made whole-wheat crust, Ragu sauce in a jar, etc.);  and let her pick her activity for the night. She chose making homemade soaps for people in her family.

A bit of explanation: a couple of years ago, I decided–in the spirit of wanting to give people practical Christmas gifts, ones that didn’t cost much, that didn’t use up a ton of resources, and that I actually made with my hands, (vs., you know, something I bought at Miley-Mart that was probably made by a child in a factory), I decided I would look for a way to create some Christmas gifts.

So I found, like, the easiest possible idea out there– buy block of soap, melt chunks of it in microwave, add color and scent, pour into mold, viola!

(But then, of course, in my typical fashion, I began hunting down more and more materials at Hobby Lobbies and Michaels’ and other places I can’t reach without using up lots of gas, and spending a bunch of money on fish- and frog- and turtle-shaped molds for my nephews …)

Chapter 3
Anyway, because I have a galley kitchen with about 2 inches of counter space, we  moved the microwave to the center of the dining room table; cleaned up from supper;  dusted off all the soap-making supplies (yeah yeah, so there may have been a cat hair or two in some of the  molds. What can I say? I’m a busy woman);  and let the crafting commence.

At first I thought we’d make soaps for her to give to her mom and aunt.

But as we got started, J. started making a list of all the people she wanted to make one for, and she began adding cousins and teachers and church people to her list…and even as it got later, and later,  I couldn’t say no.

I have to admit, I had been secretly planning to have her home by no later than 8:30-ish so I could have my own little wind-down night. But she was so in the Christmas spirit, she even wanted to make a soap for a nurse at a local nursing home who helps take care of her grandma.

So we called her mom and got permission to keep going until 10.

But here I was, after having just the day before finished a semester of taking six hours of graduate credit, plus working full-time; house a mess;  Amazon packages and wrapping paper in piles everywhere; cat trying to destroy the curling ribbon; my back starting to hurt and my mind wandering to how nice it would be to have a glass of wine; and J. and I melting, pouring, stirring, melting, pouring, stirring, then wrapping all of her creations–I think we made close to 20 soaps– at 10 o’clock at night.

I was absolutely freaking exhausted. But at the same time– sap alert, sorry– it really made me see the excitement and spirit of Christmas through a kid’s eyes, rather than in my usual Christmas-is-just-a-consumer-event Grinch-yness. When we headed out to my car after 10, everything was blanketed in snow and it was beautifully quiet. It was a wonderful night.

(The only downfall: I got Ragu  on my Snuggie.)

How cute are they?

Madre y Padre

I’m feeling very thankful today for the fact that I not only have two intelligent, funny, loving, and kind parents, and not only that they’ve stayed married for 40 years, but also that they seem to be happy about that decision. It is almost easy to take for granted how truly lucky I am.

Saturday
We met up to celebrate last night for some fine dining, a la Aurelio’s in Macomb. (Pizza and playroom = not a bad idea when taking small kids out to eat.)

Serendipity, baby
In retrospect (1 day later, I mean), meeting up here seems appropriate for a different reason: my parents actually met in Macomb. They were students at WIU in the 60′s, (Dad a local farmboy studying horticulture, and Mom a northern-IL gal studying Spanish). They got engaged here in Macomb, too; if I have my story straight, Dad proposed to Mom under a tree on West Calhoun Street, just in front of the former Haeger Pottery, and across the street from a somewhat scurvy apartment where he was living with his friends (and which is quite possibly still very scurvy, but which fact I cannot prove). And now here I am more than 40 years later working for, and studying for a master’s degree at, the university where they met.

From ‘Frisco to…
For the first year after they were married, my parents lived in the San Francisco Bay area while Dad was stationed in the Navy (and did his subsequent Vietnam tour). But  farming awaited for my dad back home.

The fact that they lived in California–or that I didn’t get to–was something I used to c them about when I was a teenager.  “You guys lived in California and you came back here?” On purpose?!?

Now, though, I’m pretty glad we’re all right here in Forgotonia.

My parents opening their gifts

My parents (on the right) with me, my nephew Carl (1), my sister Melissa, my bro-in-law Andy, and my nephew Curtis (4). (My bf, Chris, took the pic. And, btw, we via the Internet.)

mi familia

Once again, Rockin’ Rod makes the local news.

(From this week’s Journal-Pilot.)

Surveying the customers

By Joy Swearingen

Hancock County Farm Bureau president, Rod McGaughey, surveyed customers at the biofuel promotion day Friday. Ethanol and biodiesel fuels were sold at a discounted rate to promote their use, and to show drivers how to use the 24-hour fuel station at West Central FS just west of Carthage. In his survey, McGaughey asked two questions* related to the use of E-85, a higher blend of ethanol fuel. In response to asking if drivers would use E-85 fuel if a pump were available, he received 49 “yes” and 40 “no” answers; 15-20 percent already drive a flex-fuel vehicle [....]

* And no, in case you’re wondering: when he was done surveying them, he did not lean in the car window and serenade them with some karaoke Cash!:)

The rumors are true: my dad was on TV the other night!

Some people in the area reported to me that they saw my pops on TV on Monday night.

I can’t find a link to it on WGEM’s web site! And I missed it when it aired. Bummer.

But I called home last night and I got a firsthand account from Daddy-o himself.

Dad said a reporter from the NBC affiliate in Quincy came out to the farm and they went out to one of the cornfields. They talked about this spring’s farming conditions (too wet; we need more warm, sunny, “drying” days).

Despite the fact that he gave about a five-minute interview, when the segment aired on the 6 o’clock news, he was only on for a few seconds.

“And then,” he said, “when I watched it again on the 10 o’clock, they’d already edited me out by then. Ah, well, fame is fleeting anyway.”

“Yeah, that news business, it’s cutthroat,” I said, and we chuckled. “They probably had to cut you out to make more time for the top story by then. You probably got bumped because of a shooting. Or actually because of all the flooding going on.”

“Yeah,” Dad said. “Anyway, I didn’t say anything too dramatic. I told them that for people like me who’ve been in the farming business 20 to 30 years, this isn’t like anything we haven’t seen before. So, you know, I wasn’t all doom and gloom.”

“Um, Dad? That’s why you got cut.”

We also had a laugh over Dad’s 15 minutes of fame around town. When he went to Coffee [daily gathering at Hardee's with my grandpa, my uncles, and a bunch of other farmers], he had at least one moment of celebrity.

“Well, when I walked in, Old Man Twaddle said to me, ‘Hey, how’d you get to be on there?’ And I told him, ‘Well, you gotta be good looking, of course.’ And Old Man Twaddle said, ‘Well, that’s why they didn’t pick me!’ “

The following was originally aired as a commentary on local NPR-member station WIUM/WIUW Tri States Public Radio.

Children in the region will be out and about knocking on doors this week. Commentator Alison McGaughey says that’s exactly what gives her fright.

Tomorrow night, I will be participating in trick-or-treat—my first time as an adult.

Not as a parent taking kids from door-to-door, but as a citizen, opening my door to the treat-seekers.

I should be excited, but I’m nervous.

I’m not afraid of the ‘trick’ part. It’ll be the children of friends and co-workers who’ll be stopping by. And I’m going to be generous. I’ve got full packs of bubble gum to give out, which isn’t too shabby, I don’t think. So I’m not worried about anyone throwing eggs.

I’m nervous because this is a big step for me. This is my first time participating in Halloween as a city dweller. (Well, “city” in terms of being aMacomb resident who lives within city limits.)

You see, I grew up on farm a few miles outside town, which you could only reach by driving down a bumpy gravel road. In my entire youth, we had exactly one visit from kids seeking candy. For people who live out in the country, Halloween is a silent night.

We only lived a few miles outside town. Even if any of my friends had thought to come all the way out to our house for a fun-sized Snickers, their parents would have discouraged it. “My dad says it’s too hard on the tires.” Or, “My mom wants to know if your mom will bring you into town instead, because she just washed the car.”

At least this meant Halloween got to be all about me. My parents drove me in to town and I got to hit up everyone we knew. I never had to sacrifice a single second of loot-gathering time by staying home to return the favor.

And really, we weren’t all that cracked up on people popping in, anyway.

When you live in the country, a knock at the door is something to fear. If it’s not the Culligan man or the meter reader, chances are it’s some drunk dude who staggered for miles to the first light source he saw after he slamming his car into a ditch five miles away. (We never were quite the same after that one.)

The one Halloween that some kids did come to our door, I was long past the age of being a trick-or-treater myself. It was my senior year of high school, and I was doing homework at the kitchen table when my parents suddenly appeared in the adjacent dining room, peeking out through the blinds and looking concerned. “What’s going on?” I said.

“Someone’s coming down the road, and they’re slowing down,” Mom said. “They’re stopping. I think we’ve got trick-or-treaters!”

Sure enough, the car stopped, and a little witch and a fairy princess stepped out, followed by their mother. Family friends of ours. Mom darted to the kitchen. “What am I going to give them?”

“I don’t know,” I said, jumping up and searching through my bookbag for stray pieces of gum. But all I found were cough drops. “Don’t we have any…chocolate chips or anything?”

But we were out of time.

“Trick-or-treat!”

I went to the door. “Um, just a sec,” I said. I tried to think of something to stall them, as I heard cabinet doors banging behind me.

Then Mom was behind me. I was just about to say, “Sorry, kids,” but I watched in horror as she dropped packages of instant oatmeal into their plastic jack-o-lantern buckets. When they looked up at her with somewhat bewildered thank-yous, this was her reply:

“Hey, at least it’s brown sugar!”

I Mean, Like They Say, Forgive Us Our Trespasses…),

But If, Hypothetically, I HAD Been There, These Were the Pictures I Would’ve Taken:

Ever since I was a teenager, I have been obsessed with the legend of Vishnu Springs—the site of a once-popular resort that’s now a ghost town, hidden deep in a ravine in McDonough County.

Despite having grown up just a few minutes down the road from the place, I’d never heard of it until my late teens, when my aunt and uncle—who had gone to nearby Western Illinois University at the height of the hippie era—were reminiscing about how they’d hung out at a commune in the woods, a building that had been the Vishnu Springs hotel, when they were students.

The site, they told me, was completely hidden from the road, and it wasn’t really near anything, but was a few miles north of the village of Tennessee, Ill.—just down the road from my hometown of Carthage, and only a few miles west of Macomb and WIU.

You go out in the country, they said, you get to this certain spot, and then you have to crawl back through the brush, walk a long way through the trees and down into a deep ravine.

And then, after you’d hiked back quite a ways, there stood the old hotel— a place where legendary Chicago mobsters may or may not have stayed.

Vishnu had been a resort in the early 1900’s, a place where rich folk came to bathe in the natural spring because they believed it held magical powers.

It was once so popular that the railroad even built a line directly between Vishnu and Chicago, they said. And now there was nothing left but the old hotel buried deep in the woods.

I sat spellbound as they described the place to me. It was like finding out the Titanic itself had been lying at the bottom of our farm pond all these years and no one had ever thought to mention it.

I thought about Tennessee—which I knew to be nothing more than a spot in the road on the way over to Macomb, a smattering of crumbling houses and trailers with seemingly permanent yard sale set-ups in the front yard—and the whole thing sounded as magical as if my home stomping grounds had once been connected to Oz.

Over the years I’ve hoped for the chance to see the place, but the property was privately owned. I knew the general location but wasn’t sure exactly how to find it.

And, if I were not afraid of getting in trouble, I would admit here that finally, a few weeks ago, I got a chance to see it.

But I’m not going to admit that.

I’ll just say that if you ever did happen to get to see it, you’d find the spot to be not much to look at itself.

I mean, it’s really just a dilapidated, unremarkable building.

It’s only if you’d try to imagine the life that had once come through the place that you feel like you’d seen something special.

Then, you’d be angry at the idiots who have felt the need to leave their mark there. Because, unfortunately, as the hotel has sat idle, it’s been a graffiti magnet.

If I had been there, I would tell you that I couldn’t understood how a place of such historical significance could be left in such disrepair—why no one has ever undertaken the project of at the very least getting a historical marker made.

But this week there’s a bit of news in the local media about Vishnu Springs.

Last weekend, the local historical society took a trek to Vishnu, bringing some local news reporters along, and one local paper mentions the possibility that the place could, eventually, come back to life some day.

According to the Macomb Eagle, “…WIU received the 220 acres as a gift from the granddaughter of the early 20th century owner, Ira Post. Brush has been cleared, the hotel has been inspected, trails have been made and plans are being forged to restore the ghost town into a site of natural and archaeological studies.”

While so far the plans to do something with the grounds sound rather nebulous, it’s good to know there are at least people thinking about what can and should be done.

I just hope that while the plans are taking shape, the hotel and grounds can be protected from further damage.

It’s not much to see, but it’s something worth saving.

Because, if I had been there, I would say I could almost hear the train whistle as I walked around the grounds. The bustle of women in big hats and dresses. The bubbling spring. The breath of life once breathed in this rural, remote Forgotonia.