Welcome to Forgotonia

Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland by Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My holiday/vacation/part-time-employment-status reading blitz continues!

I was intrigued by this book from the moment I heard about it, not only because it takes place in Iowa (where I just moved) and on a farm (which is the way I grew up), but also because I discovered that I have a few small things in common with one of the authors, (namely that we both once lived and worked in the same small-ish town, and we graduated from liberal arts colleges located a stone’s throw from one another).

Anyway, in addition to having the true-crime hook, the story ends up being quite moving and creates a human picture of the alleged assassin, who, you begin to realize, was in many ways a victim. I appreciate the huge amount of work on the part of the authors’ having worked-in the social and historical research from the time, creating a rich picture of what life must have been like for people (especially farm women) involved in the story.

After the initial draw of the true-crime element, I did start to feel that, in the section of the alleged assassin’s trial, there was less of a hook-y mystery than maybe I had been hoping for. But it was still a compelling read.

And on top of the personal/local connections I mentioned above, it turned out that part of what inspired the research on this story was that it had been reported on (for a Des Moines newspaper) by a young woman who went on to become an award-winning author who was a contemporary of Eugene O’Neill–and she was from Davenport.
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Recently I shared with you that I got hitched after many years of single-hood.

And I also told you about how, subsequently, I left my animal-infested rental cabin (in rural, small-town Illinois) to move in with my husband in semi-metropolitan “Quad City” area in Iowa).

Hence, it’s time to share with you some thoughts about crossing the state line and becoming an official Davenportian, as I like to say.

(I also like to call Bettendorf [one of the cities in this area] “B’dorfadorf,” in the style of “badonkadonk.” You may call it that as well.)

1. DMV Delight

My transformation became official on my second day here, when–upon realizing I was about to become an illegal driver in two states (my IL sticker set to expire)–I shucked out an arm and a leg and got my vehicle registered in Iowa.

Thankfully, I’ve got an aging Honda. They charge you by year and size of vehicle here. (Yet another reason not to drive a tank.)

my proof of purchase

When I opened the door to the Davenport driver’s facility, I wasn’t upset when I saw how many people were seated in the waiting area. Cool, I thought. Now I can get all those jokes on the sitcoms!

Where I grew up, in rural Illinois, not only did I not have to take a number at the DMV, but, the person at the desk would usually wave me over, call me by my first name and ask me what my mom has been up to lately.

So I have to admit I was almost disappointed when the Iowa DMV workers whipped me through one line to the next and I was in and out in under an hour. No chance to build up cred as someone who has finally lived a “big city” experience.

But I did take away one memorable moment: I discovered that the state of Iowa has some kind of weird dental discrimination.

When it was time to get my new license, as I stood in front of the blue background cloth, the lady manning the camera commanded me to brush my bangs off my forehead. “No problem,” I told her.

“No teeth,” the lady said.

“Huh?”

“You can smile, but you can’t show your teeth,” she said.

“Oh…okay,” I said.

What’s the state of Iowa got against a toothy grin? I don’t get it. But I didn’t want to argue. This lady might have had the power to deny me residency.

So I grinned, weirdly, and now I have a very Kermit-the-Frog face on my ID.

2. All Moody, All The Time

(And no, I’m not talking about my husband discovering what I’m really like now that we live together. Ha!)

I wonder what Elvis Costello could come up with if he were asked to update “Radio, Radio” after spending just one day in Davenport, Iowa in 2011.

Ever since high school, (or, for the past 15 years up until now/ having access to Spotify), I’ve envied my Seattle family members, college friends from Chicago, and others who lived in a place where there were radio stations playing music that was actually recorded in the current year.

As a kid, I had no problem getting access to the tunes I loved, because, first of all, I had no concept that there was anything other than Top 40 radio, and because second, I actually loved what was mainstream and popular, from Whitney and Bobby to Wham! and Belinda Carlisle.

These days, whenever I listen to Top 40 radio, in any location, I hear myself saying things I (of course) swore I’d never say: “Gah, what is this crap? That little Katy Perry is just another flash in the pan, you wait and see.”)

But now that I’ve moved to a place that actually has some population–a place I totally assumed would have at least one decent radio station, if not several–I find myself actually excited when I land on a station that’s playing anything recorded after 1978.

When I run errands or drive to work, and it happens to be a time when I’m not interested in listening to NPR, (i.e., news over, classical music begins), I scan the stations and it goes a little something like this:

“I can’t drive fifty-five” (skip) “…I was born on the bayou” (skip) “Today’s Tom Sawyer …” (skip) “…I ain’t no Fortunate Son” (skip) “…hold on to that feel-ay-ee-ay-in’… ‘” (skip) “….please join us in prayer here at Moody Bible Radio–”(skip)…”…I ain’t no senator’s son…” (skip) “…welcome to the Women’s Connection, where today’s focus will be: ‘How can be we work Jesus into our morning carpools?’” (skip)

 

Now, mind you, I love Credence and Journey and Rush. (Sammy Hagar, though, not so much). And I’m fully aware that ClearChannel owns the entire world and the days of varied radio are long over. But why can’t I find at least one station playing something other than classic rock?

Oh wait. I can.

Between every snippet of 70s-era guitar solo, I land upon admonitions to stop sinning and get with God before He smites me down right then and there in the automatic car wash.

The other day in my 5-minute drive between dropping off recyclables and stuff to donate to Goodwill, I got yelled at so vehemently by a guy declaring that life. starts. AT. CONCEPTION, I was starting to feel guilty for something I hadn’t even done.

3. Cross-Town Traffic (Brought to You by Big Brother)

At the risk of making myself sound like a serious hick, I have to admit that I’m still culture shock over the fact that there are two, four, even six of everything here: Hy-Vees, Targets, Wally-Worlds, Paneras, etc. There are two shopping malls, a “north” and a “south.”

And, while I haven’t really patronized any of those too much since I moved here, I have been running around a lot doing errands–partially related to moving/getting settled in, and partially to be a helpful housewifey type (since I’m only partially employed and my husband is double employed). So, whenever I ask my him how to get to some business or facility, I love that I can legitimately use phrases like, “Is that downtown?” Ooh, so urban.

On the other hand, I am so not used to actually having to wait (more than 3 seconds) at stoplights.  Or the fact that, on my drive to and from work, I pass through no fewer than three “photo-enforcement zones,” otherwise known as intersections through which, at any time, I could be videotaped and subsequently mailed a mean-ass letter saying I was going too fast (or interpreted a yellow light as “speed up.”)

My husband, Chris, has already received at least 2 of these evil letters in the mail in the last year or so, complete with a link to a video of himself behind the wheel. (And no, he claims, he was not caught picking his nose.) And a co-worker at my new part-part-time job told me she’d received a few as well, but, hey, “There’s a silver lining. They don’t affect your insurance.”

Well, I’m used to living in a place where the only “stoplight” in the entire county was a blinking red light on a pole.

4. The Final Nail in my Coffin of Nerd-dom

I have always–always–thought that if I lived in a place of any size, I would patronize the local music clubs and go to shows whenever anybody decent was in town.

But, in the weeks since I’ve lived here, I’ve already missed a couple shows of note: a group of Communion folks performing at the club with the weird name, and Paul Simon at the big arena (i Wireless). And the talented singer/songwriter M.Ward will be in town in a couple of days at RIBCO.

Question 1: Am I a drooling fan of any of thee above? No.

Question 2: If any of these acts had come to any of the small towns where I previously lived, would it have been thee biggest moment of the year? YES.

The truth about my new life is that, instead of spending time at rock shows, I’ve been…(tucks head down in shame)… hanging out at the library. Actually, make that libraries.

Did you know that there are places in this country that you can go to and find books and music and movies and that they let you take them home for FREE??? And that some of them even have coffee shops inside?

The linked library system in these quad cities is amazing. I can’t stop checking stuff out. And wondering aloud, “Why did I ever used to buy books, again?”

(Oh, and speaking of the driving situation earlier?? This sign at one of the Davenport libraries was definitely a first for me.)

In Conclusion and In Sum

The verdict, in the big picture, is this: I absolutely love living here so far. So much so that, with frequency, I’ve been shaking my head and going, “What took me so long?”

I have creative interests, so of course I need to live in a place where there are art museums, concerts (I will go, eventually), actual downtowns.

I do wonder, though: As I start to get more and more comfortable in a place where, (as you can kind of see in the background of the library pic linked above), there are cookie-cutter houses popping up everywhere, and where I can hit a Target just by throwing a rock, (but also where the neighbors in our apartment complex are not only strangers, but people who seem to attract the police on a daily basis), will I miss at least some parts of living in a small town?

What if I lose a part of my authentic self by becoming less rural and more suburban?

Mostly, I feel I’ve already gained so much by living here. (And, no, not just weight from better restaurants).

EDITOR’S NOTE: I wrote the following post, like another I posted recently, back in September before I got married. So you will get to enjoy knowing that what you’re reading about as “upcoming” has actually happened. Oooo irony!)

Chapter 1:

One is the Loneliest Number… if You’re Over 25 in a Small Town (And Even Kind of Makes You Feel Like You Smell Bad)

I’m the last of all my close friends, and the last by several years, to get hitched. (The last time I was asked to be a bridesmaid, George Bush Junior was in office and I still went “out” on Saturday nights to some place other than the video store.)

For a long time, before I met Chris, being single made me feel like a pariah.

In Sex and the City, being a singleton is sexy. But in rural America, I felt like I’d been cursed with some strange disease–one that some people had heard of, and assured I would eventually get over, (but for which they had no recommendation on getting cured).

When each one of my friends “married off,” (a phrase I’m putting in self-conscious quotes because I hate it, but can’t think of a better way to say it right now), I’m ashamed to admit that my happiness for them was tainted by a serious case of self-pity.

It wasn’t that I wanted to get married, per se. For most of that time I wasn’t even in a relationship, let alone dating (because in the sparsely-populated area where I lived, there was seemingly no one to date. Insert “keeping it in the family” joke about rural people here, I know you want to).

But I just didn’t want to keep reliving the nightmare of K-12 P.E.

In other words, every flip through the Engagements column in my hometown newspaper, every perusal through the Class Notes section of my college alumni magazine, felt like a personal stab, like I was back in the gym and dying a little bit with each team captain’s selection of kids who actually possessed eye-hand coordination (until eventually the coach would have to forcibly put me and one other sad straggler onto a team).

So, all of this is to say, sometimes during all the stress and petty issues involved in wedding planning, I have to stop and take a moment to remind myself how I lucky I am that the emphasis is on “I’m marrying a wonderful person!” rather than “I’m (finally) getting married!”

It’s kind of sad that I got to a point in my twenties where I honestly believed this would never happen.

In fact, I probably would never have met Chris if it weren’t for the fact that, when I was already into my 30s, I started hanging around with a group of much younger people: a group of early-to-mid-twenty-somethings with whom I was enrolled in a graduate program in English (them full-time, me a “townie” taking classes at night after work).

They didn’t introduce me to my future husband, though–at least not in a direct way. There were maybe a total of two guys who would hang around, and, (in addition to the fact that they both had girlfriends “back home”), I felt a bit maternal toward them, knowing that I’d once babysat kids born in the same year as them.

But I benefited just from being around people whose status in life was a bit more open-ended. In other words, when two of my girlfriends in this group would get emails from guys on an online dating site, their responses were more “Hmm, should I click on this guy?” than  “If I don’t click on this guy, am I wasting my last possible chance at love and maybe marriage and of not dying alone with my cat?”

Being around them made me feel less pariah and more Cool Older Chick Who Can Drive Us Around Campus in Her Car.

So I went from obsessing about the self-imposed SINGLE sign around my neck to being somewhat spunky about my single status–or at least thinking a little more liberally. So I get online myself, with the goal of doing nothing more serious than getting a coffee with some local guy.

(Instead, I ended up emailing and then talking on the phone with, and then meeting face-to-face, a guy who treated me like a best friend, and three years later we’re getting married.

But he still lives two hours away in a small-ish city. So my sad assessment of the rural dating pool–or puddle, if you will–remains unchanged.)

Chapter 2:

Old-y but Good-y

Perhaps it’s obvious for me to point out that wedding traditions and expectations–and the bridal mega-industry–are geared toward much younger women.

When one of my childhood friends got married, we partied so hard at her bachelorette party that I was hungover for what seemed like a week afterward.

Yet when she contacted me recently about hosting a bachelorette event for me, she pointed out that two of the four women on the guest list (including her) are breastfeeding, so they may not be able to stay the night out of town, let alone tie one on.

So I will not sugarcoat it: the truth is, it’s more than a little weird to just be getting married at an age when some of my closest friends have not only given birth multiple times, but have already made reproduction-related decisions involving outpatient surgeries.

I know plenty of people who felt certain in their love when they married in their early 20s.

(One of my closest friends is married to her high school sweetheart, and they are one of my favorite couples. Sometimes when I’m having dinner with them in their farmhouse with their three kids, I have to remind myself that they got together when we still had a curfew.)

But what I’ve had to stop and soak up is the wonderful feeling of certainty, as a bride on the “other side,” i.e., past 30), that I’ve found the right person to be my partner.

I can say for sure, because I have the benefit of hindsight, that if I had gotten married at 24 instead of 34, I would have been taking the biggest step in my life but doing so from what was–for me–a less-than-healthy time, emotionally and mentally.

Having said that, I won’t deny the fact that things like being “given away” by my parents at the beginning of the ceremony have given me pause. Participating as a grown woman in a tradition designed to feel very “Daddy’s little girl”  seems like trying to stuff myself into a little pink tutu.

There’s definitely some strangeness of entering into marriage at an age when I could or (“should” by some folks’ standards) have a daughter getting married not too far into the future.

But at the same time it’s cool to think about the fact one of my close friends’ little girl–a third-grader already–has known me all of her life and will remember being at my wedding.

I like knowing that, because Chris and I are a little older, our friends’ kids–ranging from infants to one high schooler–will be part of the day, and that instead of throwing a bouquet at them, I’ll be tossing them candy.

Chapter 3/Conclusion:

The One and Only Perk of Aging is Giving Less and Less of a F#$% About What Other People Think

Aside from being mature and centered enough to know that I’m marrying the right person, the other big benefit of being an older bride is in knowing that all the little details of the wedding planning–details I watched friends fret so much over–aren’t going to change the way people already see me, (or cause the world to end, for that matter).

I want the event to seem thoughtfully and creatively planned, and I desperately want people to have a good time.

But when it comes to things like not wearing a veil, or not spending money on gold-embossed monogrammed napkins ,(or, um…not getting married in a church), I’ve reached an age where I know that if people don’t like the choices I’ve made, there’s nothing I can do about it. And furthermore, if they’re the type of people to disapprove of our somewhat offbeat wedding, then they weren’t invited and can go jump in a lake (but not the one where we’re getting hitched).

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As you might know from having read my post about our potentially questionable choice of wedding venue, “C-NOR” (Chris Norton) and I got married a few weeks back. (Yay! Oh, and, btw for my loyal readers: I decided to stick with my last name. So, all that neurosis over punctuation was totally worth it.)

So now I live in Iowa, and not only am I out of the Forgotonia region proper, but I’m actually in something of  a metropolitan area now. (They have bookstores here! And coffee shops! Giddiness abounds!)

So should I keep a blog about life in the “rural Midwest”? I’m not in a rural area anymore. But I was for more than 30 years, and I consider my having grown up on a farm and in a small town to be a defining factor of who I am.

Should I keep the name and just blog about whatever I want to, (with a clickable explanation at the top that says “about the name”)? Or, if change it altogether and create a new URL/address/place for you to bookmark, will I lose you because I already went from Blogger to WordPress (and sometimes debate going back to ye olde Blogger stomping grounds)?

With so many good blogs out there to read, not to mention websites and newspapers and magazines and all the other things competing for our attention, what will make it worth your time to keep coming back? Why should I keep up a blog at all?

I guess the answer will be that if I feel like I have something to say, I will try to get myself to just say it, and hopefully it will be entertaining or valuable to you, too.

According to my hometown paper, the weekly Journal-Pilot, there’s big news in the town of Carthage.

Behold:

“Plans proceed for traffic light to replace four-way stop“

That’s right. The blinking-red-light-on-a-wire in the middle of town—that would be on Highway 136, right between the DQ and the Hardee’s—is going away.

Of course, to those of you who aren’t from my hometown, this might seem like less than interesting news. (And okay, it’s not exactly “breaking”—it’s from last week’s paper. And you have to scroll down to the sixth paragraph of this story to find it. )

But the red light in the 4-way stop—and that’s what it’s called, by the way; not “the intersection of such-and-such streets,” but just “the 4-way stop”—is an icon. It’s a symbol of small-town life, in a place where traffic is so scarce, my driver’s ed teacher actually used to use lines like this when we were practice-driving in the taupe Taurus:  “Okay, try to pretend there’s a yellow light,” or the classic, “Now, if you needed to switch lanes, and let’s say someone was behind you– what would you do?”

(And my college friends wonder why I was always too chicken to drive in Chicago. Or Peoria. Or…Monmouth.)

Anyway, there’s no information in the newspaper story about what would necessitate an actual stoplight in Carthage. This is all you get, before the story moves on to another subject in the next paragraph:

“Bidding on the four-way stop expansion and installation of automated traffic lights [was] at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. The project, originally drawn up in 1995, is expected to cost around $1 million.

Obviously it hasn’t been too pressing an issue if they’ve been working on it for more than 15 years.

But now that it’s on it’s way, it’ll be the second stoplight in the entire county (Hamilton can claim rights to the first). Next thing you know? Urban blight.

Hedge balls for sale at Hy-Vee

The first time I ever saw such a concept was on the Knox County Scenic Drive. My sister and I laughed about it all afternoon. Where we were grew up, these ugly little bombs seemed to be as common as the rocks on our gravel road, or acorn caps scattered under the trees.

Hey, wait a minute….
ACORN CAPS, 80 CENTS APIECE!
…anyone?

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

Thanks to a tip from a fellow Flickr-er who landed on my photostream, I learned that the publication Newcity: Street Smart Chicago recently ran a feature about the Forgottonia region. Intrigued, I discovered that the Aug. 3 item features photos and an interview with a resident of Plymouth, Ill., the tiny village near my hometown of Carthage.

“Postcard from Forgottonia: The land that time chose not to remember“

Newcity's "postcard" from Forgottonia

The story is well-written. And I’m always fascinated to read any “outsider’s” take on this area. But I have to admit a bit of confusion and frustration with this piece. There’s a whole lotta “land that time forgot”-type generalizing:

“Forgottonia is a kind of negative image of urban America—which from the Forgottonian perspective presents itself as the indifferent republic of… well, let’s call it Oblivia for lack of a better term…Nobody sets out purposefully to explore the region of west central Illinois known colloquially as Forgottonia. The place creeps up on you as gently as a childhood memory, and it is only later that you realize you have set foot in this unmarked republic of corn, dust and melancholy. As its name suggests, it is less a place than a feeling—a sense of having slipped away from the present moment into some other time stream, which has been dammed up by indifference and neglect and now registers only as a trickle.”

And until I reached the Plymouth part of the story, I began to wonder if the writer had even visited the region he was describing. I was also intrigued by the fact that the only source the writer acknowledges (other than the interview with a resident) is the feature on the origin of the Forgottonia movement that appeared last spring in the publication produced by WIU students, Western Illinois Magazine.

I’m familiar with Newcity, but only familiar. [Readers: Does this Chicago-centric publication typically do "downstate" features? And in its "News" section?] What about you—when you see objective descriptions of the “forgotten” place you call home, do you feel fascinated, too? Excited? Annoyed? Insulted? Let me hear from you.

Plymouth, Ill.

The old school house in McCall, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

When I was a kid, there was a sign just near here that read “McCall, IL — Population: 8.”

This little old school house is just a mile or two west of my parents’ house (where I grew up).

My dad went to school in a one-room country school house just like it, and just down the road from here. He says he remembers playing in a baseball game against kids from this school.

I wanted to capture it because, even though it’s always been a landmark down the country road I grew up on, I know it won’t be there forever. One of those things you look at a million times and don’t pay much attention to, but then feel surprised and a little saddened when it’s gone.

(There was another one less than a mile from home to the east, and it got torn down a couple of years ago, just a few months after I went to take pictures of it.)

This schoolhouse is located along what is now being called the Mormon Martyrdom Trail. More on that later.