CHAPTER 5:
INDIANA
Because of a difference in taxes, we find the cigarette stores. Indiana taxes its citizens differently, so we have cigarette stores and cheap gasoline.
We are in Hammond now, and pass the entrance to the Empress casino, Hammond's marina, and Phil Schmidt's excellent restaurant. We turn at Calumet Avenue, and head south past Wolf Lake. If it's Sunday, turn right at Sibley, go a few blocks, and you can be part of the World's Largest Sunday School, at the First Baptist Church. Here, busses go out to all parts of the earth (so it seems) to pick up children of all ages (some from as far away as the north side of Chicago), and bring them to Sunday School.
The record is ostensibly 25,000, give or take a few hundred. Join in the singing, shake hands and meet a few people, listen to some good preaching, and then, when the invitation is given, go forward and get your soul saved. You can have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven, it says so in the Bible, and all you have to do is believe. Every Sunday, hundreds come forward and are "born-again", they turn their lives over to the Lord, and amazing transformations take place. Alcoholics dry up, druggies go cold turkey, and your ordinary Joe Six-Packs get their lives cleaned up and turn into decent, honest, law-abiding citizens. Considering the benefits, the sidetrip is definitely worth it.
It used to be said that you could not go from one end of Hammond to the other (either north/south nor east/west) without getting stopped by a train.
All the railroads that used to make their way into Chicago and made Chicago the Hog Butcher to the World, all these railroads would congregate together in Hammond as they rounded the corner around the south end of Lake Michigan, coming in from the east and southeast. But these days, getting stopped is unlikely, as most of the railroad track has been torn up, and not just in Hammond.
Since 1960, U.S. railroad trackage has fallen from _______ to _________ in 1999. The lack of track has finally become a problem, witness recent crises in Houston, Texas, where the Union Pacific's big operation became a nightmare bottleneck a few years ago, tying up freight going to all parts of the country and into Mexico.
The massive rail system that we had in the forties was an important part of our defense network, and now that it is gone, one can wonder what would happen in a time of war? How would we move goods and troops around the country, if necessary?
We come back to Calumet Avenue, and then continue south to the expressway, Interstate 80 (which runs from San Francisco to New York), jump on I-80 eastbound, and get off the very next exit, at Indianapolis Blvd.
Route 41 heads south into Highland. We pass Wicker Park, on the right, where they have an eternal flame memorial to the veterans, at the busy corner of Ridge Road and Indianapolis. Kitty-corner, across the street is the Highway of the Flags, with a flag for every state that Route 41 runs through.
Highland is home to the Blue Top Drive-Inn. This is one of those 50's-style drive-in restaurants that has car-hops and those little trays that fit on your car window. The burgers are excellent, and if you come by at the right time, they are always having old classic car hot rod shows, right in the parking lot.
The Highland House Restaurant just down the street is a gathering place for bikers on Sunday mornings during the nice weather.
Down the road a piece, we come to Schererville. (Who was Scherer, how many villes in the U.S.?). Here, in Schererville, Route 41 crosses paths with another famous U.S. route, Route 30. Route 30 makes its way across the country from Atlantic City, New Jersey, all the way across the fruited plains and the mountains, to Astoria, Oregon.
St. John is home to a mass murder at the local K-Mart by a deranged gunman. Perhaps his going berserk had something to do with the Blue Light Special.
Once out of St. John, we leave the city behind for awhile. We are back in the country again. We pass Uncle John's Flea Market, open Saturday and Sunday, and pass miles and miles of farmland.
The big item in Indiana is corn. Corn and pigs. Hogs and pigs amount to 3.15 million critters, and with all them hungry mouths to feed, Indiana produces ____ bushels of corn every year, representing ____ % of all the corn produced in the nation. (Give corn and pig stats).
South of Schneider, we see signs for the LaSalle Fish and Game Preserve. I took my young son down here one weekend for a campout. We set up at the preserve campgrounds, had dinner, played a game, and bedded down for the night in our tent.
There were folks all around us, partying, but we figured they would wrap it up and go to bed at some time or other. At 2 in the morning, they were still going strong, so the next morning, we packed up, and were going to go home.
Coming into LaSalle, I had seen a sign for a private campground across the way, on the other side of Route 41. So we went over to check it out. The name of the campground was Wapiti-Land. Wapiti is Indian for elk.
We spent the weekend there, and fell in love with the place. It was beautiful, and we would end up coming here many times over the years. We would camp on the shore of the little lake that had been created by damming off a section of the river. On hot summer days, we would climb aboard our air mattresses, and float out from the shore, laying on our backs on an air mattress, watching the clouds come and go, slowly guiding ourselves around in circles with gentle movements of a hand in the water.
My son would ask questions about life, questions that he would not normally ask. But here, there was a relaxed atmosphere, and Dad was laying on his back on an air mattress, and so was the he. We were both looking up at the clouds, and not looking at each other, so it was easy to ask those questions.
If you have a boy in your life, find a place where the two of you can talk about life at a fishing hole, or a hiking trail, or even a quiet spot behind the garage. Find a spot where you can touch your boy's heart, and his mind, and maybe, if you are really fortunate, his soul.
The area around the Kankakee river here is known as Sumava Resorts. The local streets have names like Laramie and Blue Island Avenue. These transplanted street names came from the west side of Chicago, and the western suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn, home to a large Bohemian population.
Being Bohemian myself (on my Dad's side), and having been born on the west side of Chicago, I am intrigued by the geography. Seems that most of the folks that used to live in Sumava Resorts came down here from the city, had their own little ethnic getaway, and named the streets of the resort after the streets back in the big city.
Unfortunately, hard times have come to Sumava, and the old crowd has moved away. The new crowd is rough and tumble, a cross of white trash and hillbilly, hippies, drop-outs, and druggies. The decor is post-modern Junque-yardue. The goal is to survive till the next party.
While camping at Wapiti one year, we got a chance to rub shoulders with the locals at a pig roast. It was a whole pig (no, no apple in the mouth). No Weber grill for these folks, they cooked it over the coals in a 55 gallon drum converted to a barbeque grill, complete with rotisserie.
They put it on the rotisserie and let it cook for hours, and then, when it was done, since I was standing around, they offered me a piece: the white meat, sliced right off the thigh, the most delicious piece of pork I have ever tasted. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a little dollop of applesauce on the side.
The Bohemians would have known that, but these new folks, well, I told them what they needed.
Wapiti-Land was beautiful. You could camp on a little spit of land that jutted out into the lake. It wasn't so much a lake as a part of the river that had been dammed up, sectioned off from the main river.
Here you could get in a boat and go up and down tens of little sidestreams. The fishing was good, and there was a small sandy beach off the little peninsula. It was quiet and peaceful, a place where a dad could bond with his kid, where one could sit in the boat and use fishing as an excuse to talk and joke and laugh, and get to know one another.
We need places like Wapiti, where we can get alone with our kids, away from the din of life, where we can touch each other's minds, where we can stop and think straight for maybe a few hours, where we can say to our sons or daughters, "hey, you know, I love you". There should be a Wapiti-Land within driving distance of each major metropolis of America. It should be compulsory that Dads take their kids there at least once a year, at least for a weekend. I'll bet the crime rate would go down, I'd bet our quality of life would go up. A prescription for family health; take two days of Wapiti-Land and call me in the morning.
We are now in an area known as exurbia. See, there is the city, then the band of towns, small cities, and villages that abut the big city, known as "suburbia".
Often the suburbs will encircle the city, giving rise to the term, "Collar Communities".
The exodus of people moving from the inner city to the suburbs has been characterized as a flight to a better quality of life. Nowadays, the flight has taken on a new complexion, with some moving back into the inner city, to "gentrified" neighborhoods where the slums have been razed or rebuilt, and property values have rebounded sharply.
Others are still moving away from the city and the suburbs, to the next "collar", know as exurbia. Beyond the suburbs, small town America is being invaded by entrepreneurs, small businesses that can be run out of a home in the woods, equipped with the latest gadgets, the fax machine, cell phones, computers, and the satellite dish.
These are people who can work from any place on the planet. They are buying old farm houses, sold to them by farmers who are failing, and who are moving to the cities or the suburbs for a "job". These migrants pass each other on the road, moving vans going in two different directions on Route 41, from the farms to the suburbs, and from the suburbs out to the boonies. There is a saying, "the grass is always greener", and we wonder if these people, searching for the greener grass, are ever satisfied?
As we zip south down our quiet, relatively unbusy Route 41, we throw a tape into the cassette player to get us in the mood for our drive through the Indiana countryside.
Lullabye, and good night. Stardust falling, and dreams take flight. Say your prayers, go to sleep, pray to Jesus, your sould he'll keep. Lullabye, lullabye, and good night, and good night.
When the sun is setting slowly, 'neath the cornstalks and the sorghum, And the wind is blowin' kisses on the air;
When I get to sittin' comfy, with my darlin', on the front porch, And she takes to runnin' fingers thru my hair;
With the weepin' willows yawnin', while the crickets slow their chirpin', And the kids all want to go to beddy-bye;
Well, I get out my gee-tar, and bed 'em down until tomorrow, With my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
Lullabye, and good night; Give your dad a hug, squeeze me real tight. Give your mom a kiss, then go to sleep. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
With the crimson shadows creepin', all the cows and pigs are sleepin'; And my melody goes driftin' cross the yard.
It's just me and Ma a-singin', it's just me and her a-swingin'; With our dog, Old Shep, a-standin' there on guard.
Darkness falls across the meadow, where the fireflies are glowin', And the only sound you hear is Baby's cry.
Well, I'll serenade my sweetheart on the front porch with my gee-tar, And my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
Lullabye, and good night; Give your dad a hug, squeeze me real tight. Give your mom a kiss, then go to sleep. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.*
Indiana is a beautiful state. In the northeast, you have your urban center, industry, and the beauty of the Indiana Dunes country. In the northeast, there is lake country. In the center of the state, the capital, Indianapolis, the vibrant heart. Not far south, you have hill country.
We race south past milk cows grazing in pastures of rye grass, and small herds of sheep in front yards, past intersections with signs like 250 North, and 700 South. As we head south out of the Kankakee River area, we start noticing a change in the landscape. At Enos, take a sidetrip to Willow Slough (is that pronounced "slow", or "sluff". We will probably never know).
U.S 41 Dragway is out in the country, where the noise will only disturb the cows. A unique American institution, the drag strip. Do they have drag strips anywhere else on the globe? Morocco, 'Hoosier Hospitality', the sign says, and another slough (or is it the same one)? We come to Kentland, Newton County. In the country, life revolves around the county, and the county seat is ofter the biggest city in the county.
The county building traditionally sat in the middle of a four-block square, with businesses lining these four streets on the north, south, east, and west sides. More recently, with the advent of the shopping center, business moved away from the "square" to the outskirts of town, where these shopping complexes could set up.
Then came the Wal-Marts, that effectively destroyed what was left of the downtown shopping areas AND the shopping centers. Also, in the city, we have skyscrapers, while in the country, the skyscrapers are the town water tower or the local grain elevator.
Coming through Kentland, we pass a no-name motel (literally, the motel sign is without a name). The sign, however, does inform us that this motel has an in-ground pool, and that it is American owned.
Perhaps for some, having an American own the motel you are about to stay at might be important, but the truth is, it is getting more and more difficult to find a motel that does not have an Indian or Pakistani manager or owner.
Now, it may be that most of these folks are American citizens, and we are in no way disparaging their involvement in the hospitality industry. On the contrary, it is quite extraordinary to see an ethnic group make such amazing strides, and these people are to be congratulated.
It also leaves one wondering, why motels and donut shops? You also have to wonder, is there some conscience effort, some guiding light that draws all these folks to these industries? Or is it just word of mouth? Uncle Patel goes to America, falls into a deal with a motel, and everyone back in India wants to come to the U.S. and get into the motel business. The Chinese, after all, that came to America decades ago, opened laundries and restaurants. Other ethnic groups found their niches in likewise fashion. So, more power to them.
It is a shame that we have home-grown ethnic groups that have been in this country for centuries that can't seem to get it together, and here we have foreigners, folks that come here that may not even speak English, and they succeed better than most.
We stop for something to drink, looking for some local beverage, something new, something we've never had before. "Orchard Chill", the bottle says, flavored spring water, all the way from New Hampshire. Oh, well, so much for local. The "Chill" tastes like green apples, and hits the spot. "Ain't America Great?"
We pass a large plant, ICI Garst, and wonder 'what do they make?' Does everybody in town work there? You wonder, if they all work for one company, the company store, what happens when that one company picks up and moves? What happens when they decide to move their operation offshore or down to Mexico? Will the town dry up and blow away?
As we move out of town, we see corn fields with signs that say 'Garst', indicating that maybe the town's big employer is a seed corn company. And who is ICI? Are they some multi-national conglomerate, with headquarters in England, or Holland, or Germany? How many of us work for some international company, with little or no allegiance to this country? OK, so our motel is American owned, but the rest of the town, well...
Contacting one of Indiana's fine universities, Purdue, will later lead us to Tom Jordan, who graciously tells us that ICI stands for Imperial Chemical Company, a multi-national outfit based in Enlgand.
Jordan notes, however, that ICI is about to be bought out by a Swiss company called Syngenta. And Garst, Tom relates, is indeed a local seed company that was bought out by ICI. Which was bought out by Syngenta. Which may be bought out by someone else.
That's what these large multi-national corporations do, they buy and sell. Little fish swallowed up by larger fish, swallowed up by larger fish, until maybe someday, there will just be one. One large corporation that will own everything and everybody. Including little Garst Seed Company in the boonies of Indiana.
We stop for lunch at the ubiquitous McDonald's. This one has one of those Play Places. People don't take their kids to the park to play anymore. They take them to the Play Place at McDonald's. They don't pack a picnic lunch, and take the kids to go play on the swings and the teeter-totter at the local park. They go to McDonald's, where they can eat and play in the Play Place at the same time.
They have Mc Ribs here. Back for a limited time. Mc Ribs are processed pork, a hot item here in pig country.
If you watch the futures market and note that pork prices are low, count on seeing Mc Ribs at the local McDonald's. But if prices for hogs and pork are high, well... We also order something called Mc Flurry. It's a clone of Dairy Queen's Blizzard, a thick ice cream/shake treat with little chunkies of Nestle Crunch.
We don't have Mc Flurries back home in Chicago. Maybe McDonald's test-markets these things in small towns like Kentland. Maybe Mc Flurries will come to the big city in a few months or so. Meanwhile, we'll have to be content with our Blizzards.
We cross U.S. 24 south of Kentland, and wonder where has it come from, and where is it going? We'll have to start doing some research on these crossroads.
Skirting the little town of Earl Park, we wonder what the people in these little towns do for a living?
We cross US 52, which heads east toward Lafayette, and wonder, "where does it start, where does it end?". We see a great barn, a great barn photo opportunity just north of Boswell, but the wife is piloting. She is on a roll, and we need to get to Nashville tonight, soooo, we make a note to catch the barn at Boswell on the way back.
But, it was a great shot, the snow blowing, a red barn, old road signs and hubcaps nailed to the side of the barn, a barn with class, with character.
If you are going south on 41 just north of Boswell, slow down, get the camera ready, and get that shot.
At Boswell, we see llamas. No, we haven't taken a wrong turn, no, we're not in Peru. We're in Indiana, and they are raising llamas. In fact, they are raising llamas all over the place. These animals, related to camels, are raised for their fiber, which is shorn much like one would shear a sheep. The fibers are used to make clothing and excellent felt hats. The animals are docile and well-behaved, we are told, and make great guard animals.
We junction with Indiana 63, which takes the direct route south to Terre Haute, while our Route 41 decides to meander off a little bit to the east. The landscape is slowly changing.
Looking over our shoulder, route 63 is a 4 lane highway, while our route 41 narrows to two. We roller coaster over a hill and settle down, as our two-lane twists and turns its way southward. 63 may be faster, but 41 is more interesting.
Down the hill to the right is a little hollow, an old trailer, a little creek (down here, they call it a 'crick'), with water boiling over the rocks, and we wonder are there any crawdads to be found in the nooks and crannies of the stream?
A light rain falls as we pass a Mexican produce stand and descend the hill toward Attica. Kuri-Tec, the factory says, a division of Kuriyama. Do you have to be Japanese to work here? We think not, but wonder how much of America is owned by foreigners, by the Japanese?
We come to the Paul Dresser Bridge and the Wabash River. Home of the Potawatomi Festival (are these the same Potawotami we first encountered in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?), the Short Stop restaurant, and a thrift shop run by the First Methodist Church.
The local Dairy Queen is called "Johnny Two Shoes", and features mango yogurt. The Attica Lions Club is responsible for cleaning up a local section of the highway under the Adopt-A-Highway program. We wonder how often do they come out and clean it, when was the last time?
Once out of Attica, we pass the Golden Touch Massage Parlor, two old trailers out in the middle of nowhere. Must be some sort of zoning thing.
The thought comes to mind, do they mainly do Swedish massage, or are they into Rolfing? Hah.
The sign says, George Rogers Clark Trail. Clark was a Revolutionary War general who fought the British in these parts back in 1775 through 1779.
As we pass the cornfields, it is early spring, and some of the fields have been turned. But most have not, and are still standing, waiting, the stumps of last year's cornstalks standing gaunt. They don't turn the soil over in the fall like they used to. They leave the stalks standing so it keeps the soil from being eroded over the winter. This saves our precious topsoil from being blown away.
We pass a roadside marker..."Boyhood Home of Daniel Vorhees", and wonder who he was. Diving down into a forest of trees, the trees canopy over the road, and a creek tags alongside the road for a few hundred feet. Then we emerge out into the wide open expanse of farmland and more miles and miles of corn.
Past the home of a Herbalife distributor (should we stop and pick up some herbs?) Whoever this distributor is, they are part of a booming home-based business fad(?) sweeping the nation. In the last 20 years, the number of Home-Based Businesses (HBB) has grown from ____ to _____. (talk about HBB).
Dalles Folle Flea Market. There are signs that say, Stop The Mega-Pig Factories, Pigs Don't Vote. Can you believe, this is farm country and these folks don't want no stinking pigs around! Shame, shame. 'Course they won't mind eating cheap pork sausage. It reminds us of those folks who want to protect the animals, PETA and outfits like that, but these same people don't have a problem eating a McDonald's Big Mac. Hi-pocrisy!
Maple syrup camp ('If you are a good little tree, you'll get to go to camp this summer', the Momma tree said to the sapling). Twisting and turning our way through a forested section of road, we come upon Jungle Park Flea Market. Stop in and pick up some fleas, or some Turkey Run souvenirs.
About 18 miles south of I-74, you come to Turkey Run State Park. This is the jewel of the Indiana State Park system. Stay a night at the lodge, if you can, and then walk the trails and catwalks and stairs (and stairs, and stairs!) that wind their way through the hollows.
We are in covered bridge country, Parke county, home of the covered bridge festival. Nearby are Amish communities, home of the religious group that eschews modern conveniences like automobiles and electricity. Watch out for the horse and buggies that slowly make their way down the country roads. A former railroad bridge used to straddle the highway, but since the railroad is gone, just two piers stand like silent soldiers, silent sentinels, on either side of the road, bearing the words scrawled in two foot high letters, "TRUST JESUS".
Plan to stop and spend some time in Rockville and at the nearby Billie Creek village. If you have time, the Ernie Pyle State Memorial is about 15 miles east, near Pyle's hometown of Dana, Indiana. Pyle was an American journalist who became a famous war correspondent, covering GI exploits during World War II.
Rockville is your typical old-timey small town, complete with a town square bedecked with stores filled with antiques and arts and crafts for the tourists. We are in Parke County, covered bridge country.
The bridges were covered to protect them from the elements, and the plan worked, for many of the covered bridges found throughout the area have weathered the years well.
Give the county a call, and find out when they will be having their yearly "Covered Bridge Festival". They'll send you a map of the 39 covered bridges throughout the county.
In many of the small towns throughout the Midwest, you will find Casey's General Stores, the small town version of 7-11 or White Hen Pantry. Country Convenience, you might call it.
Casey's is featuring Chester's Chicken and taco pizza. We gas up and grab a bag full of tasty chicken, finger food for the road.
The small motels here are $20 a night, a far cry from the $50 and up (way up in the cities) at the national chains. We pass white farm houses with satellite dishes in the backyard, their umbilical cord to the global village. An odd thought, clearly the folks inside the farm house have a selection of over 500 channels to entertain themselves, but what about these farm animals standing about outside? Do cows have a social life? Are pigs social animals, and what do they do for entertainment? Do they talk about the humans in their lives?
We note that oftentimes, there is a wide diversity of home styles in the country, with a beautiful expensive home being found just down the road from a shack.
The sign says 'Roadside Monument'. We zip past the monument to the Ten O'clock Line, and resolve to stop and check that one out if we ever come this way again. Then we jam on the brakes and turn around and go back to the monument because it occurred to us that maybe, just maybe, we would never come this way again.
Life is like that sometimes, we don't get a second chance. So don't let that what-could-be-a-once-in-a-lifetime experience go by. Jam on the brakes, turn around, and go back and savor the moment.
The sign says that the Ten O'clock line was the famous Indian Reserve Line of 1809, which began at the mouth of Big Raccoon Creek, and ended on the Ohio boundary, crossing Route 41 at this point.
We get back in the car and decide that this is one sign we could have afforded to miss. It leaves us with more questions than answers.
Life is like that sometimes, you go out of your way, sure that your detour will be worth your while, only to find that you wasted your time. Or at least, you THINK you wasted your time. Maybe the fact that you took the detour kept you from some grave danger that you might have experienced if you had not detoured. Or at the very least, the detour gives us some TIME to regroup, a little unplanned but necessary R&R that we needed, a diversion that gives us some time for thought, for contemplation.
Well, we can't take any more time with this silly Ten O'Clock sign. It has put us 5 minutes behind schedule, so we have got to trot on down the road to catch up with where we are supposed to be.
Up ahead the sign says "Walk-In Pest Control Store", a concept almost as radical as a motel with an in-ground pool. We note that the map indicates scenic drives with little dots alongside the road. Scenic section down to Lyford. In real life, the signs say 'sharp curves ahead' and 'Dangerous Curves Next 1.8 Miles'. Ah, the cost of scenic drives.
So while we white-knuckle our way down Route 41, through this "scenic" section of the trip, I wonder a little about the "Fun Things In Life That Aren't". Let me give you an example. Once, on a trip out east, we were lured into going on a whitewater raft trip. Sounds like fun, right? NOT! We knew we were in trouble when the guide told us that a particularly dangerous section of our trip had already claimed 3 lives so far that year alone! Shortly thereafter, I had opportunity to lose my grip and fall overboard. While bobbing down the river, I made a vow to the Lord that if He would get me out of my dilemma, I would resolve never again in my life to go on another "Fun" thing.
*copyright - L. Sarsoun - 1998
We are in Hammond now, and pass the entrance to the Empress casino, Hammond's marina, and Phil Schmidt's excellent restaurant. We turn at Calumet Avenue, and head south past Wolf Lake. If it's Sunday, turn right at Sibley, go a few blocks, and you can be part of the World's Largest Sunday School, at the First Baptist Church. Here, busses go out to all parts of the earth (so it seems) to pick up children of all ages (some from as far away as the north side of Chicago), and bring them to Sunday School.
The record is ostensibly 25,000, give or take a few hundred. Join in the singing, shake hands and meet a few people, listen to some good preaching, and then, when the invitation is given, go forward and get your soul saved. You can have eternal life with Jesus in Heaven, it says so in the Bible, and all you have to do is believe. Every Sunday, hundreds come forward and are "born-again", they turn their lives over to the Lord, and amazing transformations take place. Alcoholics dry up, druggies go cold turkey, and your ordinary Joe Six-Packs get their lives cleaned up and turn into decent, honest, law-abiding citizens. Considering the benefits, the sidetrip is definitely worth it.
It used to be said that you could not go from one end of Hammond to the other (either north/south nor east/west) without getting stopped by a train.
All the railroads that used to make their way into Chicago and made Chicago the Hog Butcher to the World, all these railroads would congregate together in Hammond as they rounded the corner around the south end of Lake Michigan, coming in from the east and southeast. But these days, getting stopped is unlikely, as most of the railroad track has been torn up, and not just in Hammond.
Since 1960, U.S. railroad trackage has fallen from _______ to _________ in 1999. The lack of track has finally become a problem, witness recent crises in Houston, Texas, where the Union Pacific's big operation became a nightmare bottleneck a few years ago, tying up freight going to all parts of the country and into Mexico.
The massive rail system that we had in the forties was an important part of our defense network, and now that it is gone, one can wonder what would happen in a time of war? How would we move goods and troops around the country, if necessary?
We come back to Calumet Avenue, and then continue south to the expressway, Interstate 80 (which runs from San Francisco to New York), jump on I-80 eastbound, and get off the very next exit, at Indianapolis Blvd.
Route 41 heads south into Highland. We pass Wicker Park, on the right, where they have an eternal flame memorial to the veterans, at the busy corner of Ridge Road and Indianapolis. Kitty-corner, across the street is the Highway of the Flags, with a flag for every state that Route 41 runs through.
Highland is home to the Blue Top Drive-Inn. This is one of those 50's-style drive-in restaurants that has car-hops and those little trays that fit on your car window. The burgers are excellent, and if you come by at the right time, they are always having old classic car hot rod shows, right in the parking lot.
The Highland House Restaurant just down the street is a gathering place for bikers on Sunday mornings during the nice weather.
Down the road a piece, we come to Schererville. (Who was Scherer, how many villes in the U.S.?). Here, in Schererville, Route 41 crosses paths with another famous U.S. route, Route 30. Route 30 makes its way across the country from Atlantic City, New Jersey, all the way across the fruited plains and the mountains, to Astoria, Oregon.
St. John is home to a mass murder at the local K-Mart by a deranged gunman. Perhaps his going berserk had something to do with the Blue Light Special.
Once out of St. John, we leave the city behind for awhile. We are back in the country again. We pass Uncle John's Flea Market, open Saturday and Sunday, and pass miles and miles of farmland.
The big item in Indiana is corn. Corn and pigs. Hogs and pigs amount to 3.15 million critters, and with all them hungry mouths to feed, Indiana produces ____ bushels of corn every year, representing ____ % of all the corn produced in the nation. (Give corn and pig stats).
South of Schneider, we see signs for the LaSalle Fish and Game Preserve. I took my young son down here one weekend for a campout. We set up at the preserve campgrounds, had dinner, played a game, and bedded down for the night in our tent.
There were folks all around us, partying, but we figured they would wrap it up and go to bed at some time or other. At 2 in the morning, they were still going strong, so the next morning, we packed up, and were going to go home.
Coming into LaSalle, I had seen a sign for a private campground across the way, on the other side of Route 41. So we went over to check it out. The name of the campground was Wapiti-Land. Wapiti is Indian for elk.
We spent the weekend there, and fell in love with the place. It was beautiful, and we would end up coming here many times over the years. We would camp on the shore of the little lake that had been created by damming off a section of the river. On hot summer days, we would climb aboard our air mattresses, and float out from the shore, laying on our backs on an air mattress, watching the clouds come and go, slowly guiding ourselves around in circles with gentle movements of a hand in the water.
My son would ask questions about life, questions that he would not normally ask. But here, there was a relaxed atmosphere, and Dad was laying on his back on an air mattress, and so was the he. We were both looking up at the clouds, and not looking at each other, so it was easy to ask those questions.
If you have a boy in your life, find a place where the two of you can talk about life at a fishing hole, or a hiking trail, or even a quiet spot behind the garage. Find a spot where you can touch your boy's heart, and his mind, and maybe, if you are really fortunate, his soul.
The area around the Kankakee river here is known as Sumava Resorts. The local streets have names like Laramie and Blue Island Avenue. These transplanted street names came from the west side of Chicago, and the western suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn, home to a large Bohemian population.
Being Bohemian myself (on my Dad's side), and having been born on the west side of Chicago, I am intrigued by the geography. Seems that most of the folks that used to live in Sumava Resorts came down here from the city, had their own little ethnic getaway, and named the streets of the resort after the streets back in the big city.
Unfortunately, hard times have come to Sumava, and the old crowd has moved away. The new crowd is rough and tumble, a cross of white trash and hillbilly, hippies, drop-outs, and druggies. The decor is post-modern Junque-yardue. The goal is to survive till the next party.
While camping at Wapiti one year, we got a chance to rub shoulders with the locals at a pig roast. It was a whole pig (no, no apple in the mouth). No Weber grill for these folks, they cooked it over the coals in a 55 gallon drum converted to a barbeque grill, complete with rotisserie.
They put it on the rotisserie and let it cook for hours, and then, when it was done, since I was standing around, they offered me a piece: the white meat, sliced right off the thigh, the most delicious piece of pork I have ever tasted. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a little dollop of applesauce on the side.
The Bohemians would have known that, but these new folks, well, I told them what they needed.
Wapiti-Land was beautiful. You could camp on a little spit of land that jutted out into the lake. It wasn't so much a lake as a part of the river that had been dammed up, sectioned off from the main river.
Here you could get in a boat and go up and down tens of little sidestreams. The fishing was good, and there was a small sandy beach off the little peninsula. It was quiet and peaceful, a place where a dad could bond with his kid, where one could sit in the boat and use fishing as an excuse to talk and joke and laugh, and get to know one another.
We need places like Wapiti, where we can get alone with our kids, away from the din of life, where we can touch each other's minds, where we can stop and think straight for maybe a few hours, where we can say to our sons or daughters, "hey, you know, I love you". There should be a Wapiti-Land within driving distance of each major metropolis of America. It should be compulsory that Dads take their kids there at least once a year, at least for a weekend. I'll bet the crime rate would go down, I'd bet our quality of life would go up. A prescription for family health; take two days of Wapiti-Land and call me in the morning.
We are now in an area known as exurbia. See, there is the city, then the band of towns, small cities, and villages that abut the big city, known as "suburbia". Often the suburbs will encircle the city, giving rise to the term, "Collar Communities".
The exodus of people moving from the inner city to the suburbs has been characterized as a flight to a better quality of life. Nowadays, the flight has taken on a new complexion, with some moving back into the inner city, to "gentrified" neighborhoods where the slums have been razed or rebuilt, and property values have rebounded sharply.
Others are still moving away from the city and the suburbs, to the next "collar", know as exurbia. Beyond the suburbs, small town America is being invaded by entrepreneurs, small businesses that can be run out of a home in the woods, equipped with the latest gadgets, the fax machine, cell phones, computers, and the satellite dish.
These are people who can work from any place on the planet. They are buying old farm houses, sold to them by farmers who are failing, and who are moving to the cities or the suburbs for a "job". These migrants pass each other on the road, moving vans going in two different directions on Route 41, from the farms to the suburbs, and from the suburbs out to the boonies. There is a saying, "the grass is always greener", and we wonder if these people, searching for the greener grass, are ever satisfied?
As we zip south down our quiet, relatively unbusy Route 41, we throw a tape into the cassette player to get us in the mood for our drive through the Indiana countryside.
Lullabye, and good night. Stardust falling, and dreams take flight. Say your prayers, go to sleep, pray to Jesus, your sould he'll keep. Lullabye, lullabye, and good night, and good night.
When the sun is setting slowly, 'neath the cornstalks and the sorghum, And the wind is blowin' kisses on the air;
When I get to sittin' comfy, with my darlin', on the front porch, And she takes to runnin' fingers thru my hair;
With the weepin' willows yawnin', while the crickets slow their chirpin', And the kids all want to go to beddy-bye;
Well, I get out my gee-tar, and bed 'em down until tomorrow, With my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
Lullabye, and good night; Give your dad a hug, squeeze me real tight. Give your mom a kiss, then go to sleep. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
With the crimson shadows creepin', all the cows and pigs are sleepin'; And my melody goes driftin' cross the yard.
It's just me and Ma a-singin', it's just me and her a-swingin'; With our dog, Old Shep, a-standin' there on guard.
Darkness falls across the meadow, where the fireflies are glowin', And the only sound you hear is Baby's cry.
Well, I'll serenade my sweetheart on the front porch with my gee-tar, And my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.
Lullabye, and good night; Give your dad a hug, squeeze me real tight. Give your mom a kiss, then go to sleep. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye. To my Indiana Hoosier Lullabye.*
Indiana is a beautiful state. In the northeast, you have your urban center, industry, and the beauty of the Indiana Dunes country. In the northeast, there is lake country. In the center of the state, the capital, Indianapolis, the vibrant heart. Not far south, you have hill country.
We race south past milk cows grazing in pastures of rye grass, and small herds of sheep in front yards, past intersections with signs like 250 North, and 700 South. As we head south out of the Kankakee River area, we start noticing a change in the landscape. At Enos, take a sidetrip to Willow Slough (is that pronounced "slow", or "sluff". We will probably never know).
U.S 41 Dragway is out in the country, where the noise will only disturb the cows. A unique American institution, the drag strip. Do they have drag strips anywhere else on the globe? Morocco, 'Hoosier Hospitality', the sign says, and another slough (or is it the same one)? We come to Kentland, Newton County. In the country, life revolves around the county, and the county seat is ofter the biggest city in the county.
The county building traditionally sat in the middle of a four-block square, with businesses lining these four streets on the north, south, east, and west sides. More recently, with the advent of the shopping center, business moved away from the "square" to the outskirts of town, where these shopping complexes could set up.
Then came the Wal-Marts, that effectively destroyed what was left of the downtown shopping areas AND the shopping centers. Also, in the city, we have skyscrapers, while in the country, the skyscrapers are the town water tower or the local grain elevator.
Coming through Kentland, we pass a no-name motel (literally, the motel sign is without a name). The sign, however, does inform us that this motel has an in-ground pool, and that it is American owned.
Perhaps for some, having an American own the motel you are about to stay at might be important, but the truth is, it is getting more and more difficult to find a motel that does not have an Indian or Pakistani manager or owner.
Now, it may be that most of these folks are American citizens, and we are in no way disparaging their involvement in the hospitality industry. On the contrary, it is quite extraordinary to see an ethnic group make such amazing strides, and these people are to be congratulated.
It also leaves one wondering, why motels and donut shops? You also have to wonder, is there some conscience effort, some guiding light that draws all these folks to these industries? Or is it just word of mouth? Uncle Patel goes to America, falls into a deal with a motel, and everyone back in India wants to come to the U.S. and get into the motel business. The Chinese, after all, that came to America decades ago, opened laundries and restaurants. Other ethnic groups found their niches in likewise fashion. So, more power to them.
It is a shame that we have home-grown ethnic groups that have been in this country for centuries that can't seem to get it together, and here we have foreigners, folks that come here that may not even speak English, and they succeed better than most.
We stop for something to drink, looking for some local beverage, something new, something we've never had before. "Orchard Chill", the bottle says, flavored spring water, all the way from New Hampshire. Oh, well, so much for local. The "Chill" tastes like green apples, and hits the spot. "Ain't America Great?"
We pass a large plant, ICI Garst, and wonder 'what do they make?' Does everybody in town work there? You wonder, if they all work for one company, the company store, what happens when that one company picks up and moves? What happens when they decide to move their operation offshore or down to Mexico? Will the town dry up and blow away?
As we move out of town, we see corn fields with signs that say 'Garst', indicating that maybe the town's big employer is a seed corn company. And who is ICI? Are they some multi-national conglomerate, with headquarters in England, or Holland, or Germany? How many of us work for some international company, with little or no allegiance to this country? OK, so our motel is American owned, but the rest of the town, well...
Contacting one of Indiana's fine universities, Purdue, will later lead us to Tom Jordan, who graciously tells us that ICI stands for Imperial Chemical Company, a multi-national outfit based in Enlgand.
Jordan notes, however, that ICI is about to be bought out by a Swiss company called Syngenta. And Garst, Tom relates, is indeed a local seed company that was bought out by ICI. Which was bought out by Syngenta. Which may be bought out by someone else.
That's what these large multi-national corporations do, they buy and sell. Little fish swallowed up by larger fish, swallowed up by larger fish, until maybe someday, there will just be one. One large corporation that will own everything and everybody. Including little Garst Seed Company in the boonies of Indiana.
We stop for lunch at the ubiquitous McDonald's. This one has one of those Play Places. People don't take their kids to the park to play anymore. They take them to the Play Place at McDonald's. They don't pack a picnic lunch, and take the kids to go play on the swings and the teeter-totter at the local park. They go to McDonald's, where they can eat and play in the Play Place at the same time.
They have Mc Ribs here. Back for a limited time. Mc Ribs are processed pork, a hot item here in pig country.
If you watch the futures market and note that pork prices are low, count on seeing Mc Ribs at the local McDonald's. But if prices for hogs and pork are high, well... We also order something called Mc Flurry. It's a clone of Dairy Queen's Blizzard, a thick ice cream/shake treat with little chunkies of Nestle Crunch.
We don't have Mc Flurries back home in Chicago. Maybe McDonald's test-markets these things in small towns like Kentland. Maybe Mc Flurries will come to the big city in a few months or so. Meanwhile, we'll have to be content with our Blizzards.
We cross U.S. 24 south of Kentland, and wonder where has it come from, and where is it going? We'll have to start doing some research on these crossroads.
Skirting the little town of Earl Park, we wonder what the people in these little towns do for a living?
We cross US 52, which heads east toward Lafayette, and wonder, "where does it start, where does it end?". We see a great barn, a great barn photo opportunity just north of Boswell, but the wife is piloting. She is on a roll, and we need to get to Nashville tonight, soooo, we make a note to catch the barn at Boswell on the way back.
But, it was a great shot, the snow blowing, a red barn, old road signs and hubcaps nailed to the side of the barn, a barn with class, with character.
If you are going south on 41 just north of Boswell, slow down, get the camera ready, and get that shot.
At Boswell, we see llamas. No, we haven't taken a wrong turn, no, we're not in Peru. We're in Indiana, and they are raising llamas. In fact, they are raising llamas all over the place. These animals, related to camels, are raised for their fiber, which is shorn much like one would shear a sheep. The fibers are used to make clothing and excellent felt hats. The animals are docile and well-behaved, we are told, and make great guard animals.
We junction with Indiana 63, which takes the direct route south to Terre Haute, while our Route 41 decides to meander off a little bit to the east. The landscape is slowly changing.
Looking over our shoulder, route 63 is a 4 lane highway, while our route 41 narrows to two. We roller coaster over a hill and settle down, as our two-lane twists and turns its way southward. 63 may be faster, but 41 is more interesting.
Down the hill to the right is a little hollow, an old trailer, a little creek (down here, they call it a 'crick'), with water boiling over the rocks, and we wonder are there any crawdads to be found in the nooks and crannies of the stream?
A light rain falls as we pass a Mexican produce stand and descend the hill toward Attica. Kuri-Tec, the factory says, a division of Kuriyama. Do you have to be Japanese to work here? We think not, but wonder how much of America is owned by foreigners, by the Japanese?
We come to the Paul Dresser Bridge and the Wabash River. Home of the Potawatomi Festival (are these the same Potawotami we first encountered in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?), the Short Stop restaurant, and a thrift shop run by the First Methodist Church.
The local Dairy Queen is called "Johnny Two Shoes", and features mango yogurt. The Attica Lions Club is responsible for cleaning up a local section of the highway under the Adopt-A-Highway program. We wonder how often do they come out and clean it, when was the last time?
Once out of Attica, we pass the Golden Touch Massage Parlor, two old trailers out in the middle of nowhere. Must be some sort of zoning thing.
The thought comes to mind, do they mainly do Swedish massage, or are they into Rolfing? Hah.
The sign says, George Rogers Clark Trail. Clark was a Revolutionary War general who fought the British in these parts back in 1775 through 1779.
As we pass the cornfields, it is early spring, and some of the fields have been turned. But most have not, and are still standing, waiting, the stumps of last year's cornstalks standing gaunt. They don't turn the soil over in the fall like they used to. They leave the stalks standing so it keeps the soil from being eroded over the winter. This saves our precious topsoil from being blown away.
We pass a roadside marker..."Boyhood Home of Daniel Vorhees", and wonder who he was. Diving down into a forest of trees, the trees canopy over the road, and a creek tags alongside the road for a few hundred feet. Then we emerge out into the wide open expanse of farmland and more miles and miles of corn.
Past the home of a Herbalife distributor (should we stop and pick up some herbs?) Whoever this distributor is, they are part of a booming home-based business fad(?) sweeping the nation. In the last 20 years, the number of Home-Based Businesses (HBB) has grown from ____ to _____. (talk about HBB).
Dalles Folle Flea Market. There are signs that say, Stop The Mega-Pig Factories, Pigs Don't Vote. Can you believe, this is farm country and these folks don't want no stinking pigs around! Shame, shame. 'Course they won't mind eating cheap pork sausage. It reminds us of those folks who want to protect the animals, PETA and outfits like that, but these same people don't have a problem eating a McDonald's Big Mac. Hi-pocrisy!
Maple syrup camp ('If you are a good little tree, you'll get to go to camp this summer', the Momma tree said to the sapling). Twisting and turning our way through a forested section of road, we come upon Jungle Park Flea Market. Stop in and pick up some fleas, or some Turkey Run souvenirs.
About 18 miles south of I-74, you come to Turkey Run State Park. This is the jewel of the Indiana State Park system. Stay a night at the lodge, if you can, and then walk the trails and catwalks and stairs (and stairs, and stairs!) that wind their way through the hollows.
We are in covered bridge country, Parke county, home of the covered bridge festival. Nearby are Amish communities, home of the religious group that eschews modern conveniences like automobiles and electricity. Watch out for the horse and buggies that slowly make their way down the country roads. A former railroad bridge used to straddle the highway, but since the railroad is gone, just two piers stand like silent soldiers, silent sentinels, on either side of the road, bearing the words scrawled in two foot high letters, "TRUST JESUS".
Plan to stop and spend some time in Rockville and at the nearby Billie Creek village. If you have time, the Ernie Pyle State Memorial is about 15 miles east, near Pyle's hometown of Dana, Indiana. Pyle was an American journalist who became a famous war correspondent, covering GI exploits during World War II.
Rockville is your typical old-timey small town, complete with a town square bedecked with stores filled with antiques and arts and crafts for the tourists. We are in Parke County, covered bridge country.
The bridges were covered to protect them from the elements, and the plan worked, for many of the covered bridges found throughout the area have weathered the years well.
Give the county a call, and find out when they will be having their yearly "Covered Bridge Festival". They'll send you a map of the 39 covered bridges throughout the county.
In many of the small towns throughout the Midwest, you will find Casey's General Stores, the small town version of 7-11 or White Hen Pantry. Country Convenience, you might call it.
Casey's is featuring Chester's Chicken and taco pizza. We gas up and grab a bag full of tasty chicken, finger food for the road.
The small motels here are $20 a night, a far cry from the $50 and up (way up in the cities) at the national chains. We pass white farm houses with satellite dishes in the backyard, their umbilical cord to the global village. An odd thought, clearly the folks inside the farm house have a selection of over 500 channels to entertain themselves, but what about these farm animals standing about outside? Do cows have a social life? Are pigs social animals, and what do they do for entertainment? Do they talk about the humans in their lives?
We note that oftentimes, there is a wide diversity of home styles in the country, with a beautiful expensive home being found just down the road from a shack.
The sign says 'Roadside Monument'. We zip past the monument to the Ten O'clock Line, and resolve to stop and check that one out if we ever come this way again. Then we jam on the brakes and turn around and go back to the monument because it occurred to us that maybe, just maybe, we would never come this way again.
Life is like that sometimes, we don't get a second chance. So don't let that what-could-be-a-once-in-a-lifetime experience go by. Jam on the brakes, turn around, and go back and savor the moment.
The sign says that the Ten O'clock line was the famous Indian Reserve Line of 1809, which began at the mouth of Big Raccoon Creek, and ended on the Ohio boundary, crossing Route 41 at this point.
We get back in the car and decide that this is one sign we could have afforded to miss. It leaves us with more questions than answers.
Life is like that sometimes, you go out of your way, sure that your detour will be worth your while, only to find that you wasted your time. Or at least, you THINK you wasted your time. Maybe the fact that you took the detour kept you from some grave danger that you might have experienced if you had not detoured. Or at the very least, the detour gives us some TIME to regroup, a little unplanned but necessary R&R that we needed, a diversion that gives us some time for thought, for contemplation.
Well, we can't take any more time with this silly Ten O'Clock sign. It has put us 5 minutes behind schedule, so we have got to trot on down the road to catch up with where we are supposed to be. Up ahead the sign says "Walk-In Pest Control Store", a concept almost as radical as a motel with an in-ground pool. We note that the map indicates scenic drives with little dots alongside the road. Scenic section down to Lyford. In real life, the signs say 'sharp curves ahead' and 'Dangerous Curves Next 1.8 Miles'. Ah, the cost of scenic drives.
So while we white-knuckle our way down Route 41, through this "scenic" section of the trip, I wonder a little about the "Fun Things In Life That Aren't". Let me give you an example. Once, on a trip out east, we were lured into going on a whitewater raft trip. Sounds like fun, right? NOT! We knew we were in trouble when the guide told us that a particularly dangerous section of our trip had already claimed 3 lives so far that year alone! Shortly thereafter, I had opportunity to lose my grip and fall overboard. While bobbing down the river, I made a vow to the Lord that if He would get me out of my dilemma, I would resolve never again in my life to go on another "Fun" thing.
*copyright - L. Sarsoun - 1998