A Tale of Two States

 

I'm the one on the left, if that isn't clear

Road Trip! For the first time in a long time, we hit the road and sky, making the trek back to Illinois at the end of October for Family Weekend at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, IL. Snacks for the car ride south, we headed out.

Driving down Route 47 was like a drive down memory lane, the flat farm till plains and open sky, but the fields now dotted with wind turbines, their giant blades spinning slowly, dwarfing the farms around them. These are new.

 

The campus is compact, friendly and welcoming, with plenty of events for the weekend.

But we opt to head south, to the little tourist town of Casey (pronounced Kay-zee, after the old radio station, WKZI). Along our way, we start to see oil wells, with their pump arms cycling up and down, and a sulfurous smell saturating the air. We pass through the aptly named town of Oilfield.

 

I Google the history of Casey, IL, and learn that John D. Rockefeller paid over a million dollars for the oil field back in 1910. Casey found its place on the map, as the nearest town with banks and saloons, situated along the railroad, and eventually along Interstate 70 when it was built.

 

https://www.cityofcaseyil.org/tourism/casey-history

 

Illinois truly is a tale of two states. Wind turbines and oil wells. And the farther south we drove, the fewer Kamala signs there were, foreshadowing what was to come. It’s a tale that has been told over and over, the divide between urban and rural. Illinois is a microcosm of the country, with Chicago and college towns voting blue, and the rest of the state voting red.

 

But that hadn’t happened yet, and so we were cheery and playing tourists in Casey, seeing the sites. Its tagline is “Big Things in a Small Town.”

 

https://www.bigthingssmalltown.com/

 

It’s home to the world’s largest rocking chair, mail box, key, pencil, taco, wind chimes, and the list goes on.

 

A town tabby cat plays mayor and greeter.

 

And the Casey Coffee Company has some of the best coffee anywhere!

 

It was also a trip back in time, back to the late 1980s when I practically lived there, when there was another kind of drilling going on, for siting a proposed low-level radioactive waste facility, which was never built. I look for old landmarks, some are still there, some are gone. The Casey Motel is no more, nor is the Bottle House. But Richard’s Farm restaurant is still there.

 

I don’t go looking for the apple house, but a poem from Spoon River Anthology comes to mind, from one of my earliest forays into theater, when I played the part of Hare Drummer:

 

“Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s

For cider, after school, in late September?

 

Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets

On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?

 

For many times with the laughing girls and boys

Played I along the road and over the hills

When the sun was low and the air was cool,

Stopping to club the walnut tree

Standing leafless against a flaming west.

 

Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,

And the dropping acorns,

And the echoes about the vales

Bring dreams of life.

They hover over me.

 

They question me:

Where are those laughing comrades?

How many are with me, how many

In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,

And in the woods that overlook

The quiet water?”

 

 

References:

 

Masters, Edgar Lee. 1915. Spoon River Anthology. St. Louis: William Marion Reedy. New York: McMillan and Company. 

© 2024 Rosemary A. Schmidt

Rose Schmidt is the author of The Happy Clam (© 2020), and Go Forward, Support! The Rugby of Life (© 2003), both published by Gainline Press. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of any other agency or organization. Use of individual quotes with proper citation and attribution, within the limits of fair use, is permitted. If you would like to request permission to use or reprint any of the content on the site, please contact me. Twitter: Rosebud@GainlineRS