Take Me Home............

It has always been difficult to impress on people just how "country" the area of Southern Indiana where my Mother grew up really is.
When we visited there in my childhood I would come back with tales of kerosene lamps and outhouses and wood cookstoves...........of chopping wood and carrying water back to the house from "Uncle John's Spring" (I never did quite figure out whose Uncle, exactly, he was), of tobacco drying in the barn and coonskins and ginseng drying in the fur shed.
I'm not so sure the kids in my class didn't picture me as having spent two weeks at New Salem or someplace like that.
As I went through the pictures I took and mulled over what I was going to write, I understand that nothing is going to impact the mind with that sense of having stepped out of time short of going there and seeing for yourself.

Most of the roads are paved now,

but you still have to take it easy on the curves and hills and keep to your side of the road......and it is still like driving through a green tunnel most of the year.


..........and yes, there be some hills here. Most of the uphill portions of the road level off around mid-hill for about 20 ft or so and then continue upward. That is so you can give the horses a break before taking on the rest of the hill.

Wesley Chapel looks much the same.........

but it has a lady Pastor, indoor plumbing and central heat now.

New Amsterdam has a new town hall and a general store (where the cognoscenti gather for strong coffee in the morning) in the old Odd Fellows Lodge (seen here sporting the new paint job and looking quite spry for a century and a half........)

Grandma's house sits empty and Grandpa's fur shed is immortalized..............



The view down to the river from the side yard is pretty much unchanged.


As I drove into and around and by and through these familiar places, two songs came unbidden to my mind and echoed off and on through most of my stay. One was (irritatingly enough) John Denver's "Country Roads".......more oddly, the other was an old hymn that I probably haven't heard since I was a kid; "This is My Father's World". (These were joined by the fourth movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony and "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman" by Whistlin' Jack Smith.......but that is not so odd.) I am a slightly less than enthusiastic, "pick and choose" Denver fan and in no circumstances inclined to be churchy ..........but the two songs seemed to fit appropriately enough so I let them serve as my background "score".

Of all the Bus Stations....

A few days before I left for my trip, I stopped by the Mall for something or other (either gummi worms or flying spaghetti monsters.........don't ask) and spotted this......
(if you spot a flaw in pretty Ingrid's chin, it is my reflection in the glass getting a photo to post....this measures about 12 x 18)

Did I absolutely have to have it or what, eh?

Yeah...........I thought so too.

Thus endeth the entry............