Midwest
Exploring…or Churches and Beer! July 4 to August 7
The Fourth of July found us parked in Fairview and glad to be
here! We hunted high and low for a
Fourth of July parade to attend and chose the one in nearby Farmington. Probably not our best decision, since it was
rather small and had no bands or baton twirlers!
These twins and their mom were pretty cute as
they tried to catch candy tossed from the floats.
This little Fourth of July cutie on the right
was in the bicycle brigade and holding her own quite nicely!
Fairview had a great fireworks display for such a small town
and we were sure to find good seats on the outfield of the ball diamond. As we sat and waited for darkness to come a
voice from behind says, “Well, who are these two old folks?” It was Mark Meyer! He’s a classmate of ours and we hadn’t seen
him since high school. He and I rode the
same school bus for 12 years. We had a
delightful conversation and met his wife and 6 year old son. Yep, quite a guy!
Sunday, July 5, we went to the Methodist Church in London
Mills. My parents worshipped here after
they moved to town and were members here for many years. When my brother Roger died in 1989 we donated
the cross in front of the organ pipes in his memory. Attending church here brings back a lot of
memories, as I sat in the congregation surrounded by people I’ve known all my
life. During my 4-H years, we had our
meetings in the basement of this church.
During high school, my best friend Ardith and I helped with Bible School
here. Good stuff!
While we were parked in Fairview, helping Jim and Maxine,
Jerry’s folks, we also helped a friend demolish the inside of an old
house. Built in 1920, it had plaster and
lathe walls which all had to come down.
Our friend had dreams of insulation, modern wiring, and new
plumbing...all still to come. It’s been quite a process with
a lot of work yet to be done. The photo
above shows only one of the many truck load of trash that were hauled off. Fortunately we tossed stuff right out the
second story window. As you might guess,
we did this on some very hot and humid days and found falling asleep at night
absolutely no problem at all!
When we pulled out the fiberglass tub/shower combination in
the upstairs bathroom, we uncovered some poor squirrel’s stash of hickory
nuts. When we pulled down walls and
ceilings we found hundreds more! About a
block away in the park there was a huge hickory tree and some squirrel had been
very diligent about laying in a winter’s supply.
One evening, our farmer friend Alfie Morey invited us out to
his farm pond to catch some catfish for an upcoming fish fry. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel! These fish were routinely fed and when Alfie
wanted to do some catching, he simply didn’t feed the fish for a day or
two. Alfie had a little pontoon boat
from which the seven of us fished. We caught
two 5-gallon buckets of lovely catfish in about an hour. Everyone caught nice big fish but 8 year old
Caleb was the winner with the biggest catch! A week or so later we were back at Alfie’s for fried catfish,
corn and tomatoes out of the garden, and yummy gooey deserts. Life doesn’t get much better here in the
wilds of Illinois!
I won’t bore you with the details of our visits to Jim’s
doctors in Peoria, but we were in Fairview most of July to be chauffeurs. Recovery from the permanent pacemaker insertion
was a slow process and I think Jim had been discouraged at the slow recovery. During July he was also hospitalized for
dehydration and a UTI. Those events took
their toll as well. The health care
system, vast and confusing for anyone, was quite daunting indeed to an 88 year
old. We were glad to be here to help the
folks navigate these murky waters!
Sunday July 19, we joined my aunt and uncle, Lowell and
Marilyn Rask, at their church service in Victoria, IL. They attended the Swedish Methodist Church
there – the same church where they were married in 1952. Their descent down the church stairs after
their wedding ceremony was one of my earliest memories, and they graciously recreated it
for me. This beautiful old church, full of gorgeous stained glass, a
hand carved pulpit, and a small congregation of mostly white-haired ladies was
probably on the demise. Like many other
churches we had visited in the Midwest, very few from the community attend the
service. Sad.
The next Sunday found us attending the Dutch Reform Church in
Fairview. This was the oldest Dutch
Reform Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. The church was built in 1838 and
still stands as a center of worship for people in the Fairview Community. We had been invited to attend by a high school
classmate, Jack Schleich and his wife Connie.
In the photo you can see Jack and Jerry visiting after church. As luck would have it, a potluck was held
after the service and we got to go!
Yay! Another opportunity to visit
with many old friends and high school acquaintances.
Toward the end of July Jim and Maxine were back on an “even
keel” (as my mom used to say!) so we thought we could go exploring for a few
days. I had wanted to explore Henry
County, where my maternal grandmother grew up, and all the small towns
there. On July 28 we departed for a
campground in Geneseo on the north bank of the Hennepin Canal. What an interesting spot! In the photo, I’m standing just downstream
from a lock and you can see that the gate no longer closed. Lots of deferred maintenance here.
According to Wipedia:
The Hennepin
Canal Parkway State Park, also just called the Hennepin Canal, is an abandoned
waterway in northwest Illinois, between the Mississippi River at Rock Island and the Illinois River near Hennepin. The entire canal is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Opened in 1907, the canal was soon abandoned
because of railroad competition. It was resurrected in the late 20th century as
a recreational waterway. The main canal length is 75.2 miles, and its feeder
canal is 29.3 miles long. The Hennepin
was the first American canal built of concrete without stone cut facings.
Although the Hennepin enjoyed only limited success as a waterway, engineering
innovations used in its construction were a bonus to the construction industry.
The canal was used as a training ground for engineers that later worked on the
Panama Canal. Both the Hennepin and
Panama Canals used concrete lock chambers and both used a feeder canal from a
man made lake to water the canals because both needed water to flow ‘uphill.’
The other reason to explore Henry County was to meet my first
cousin once removed, Matt Nelson, his wife Faith and their three children,
Hayley, Drew, and Sydney. Matt is the
son of my first cousin Doug Nelson. Matt
and Faith invited us for dinner, along with his mom and dad, cousin Doug and his wife Chris. Needless to say, we had a delightful time with them! What a great family…obviously they come from
good genes.
We stayed two nights at the Geneseo Campground so we could
explore the small towns of Henry County.
Geneseo is delightful and would be a great place to live. We toured their historical museum and learned
that the building was originally two separate homes with individual
entrances. The interior was very well
preserved, including a chandelier in the south dining room from Chicago’s Hull
House with 191 glass prisms. The house was a stop on the Underground Railway and we saw
the “hidey-holes” in which runaway slaves were hidden. The story was told of one such family who had
to remain hidden and quiet during a particularly diligent search of the
property. A garden herb was mashed and
given to the family’s infant and the baby was able to remain “quiet” for a day
and a half. No one seems to know what
the herb was…strong stuff!
We wanted to visit the little village of Andover, where my maternal grandmother, Ada Peterson Adams, grew up on a
farm near the Edwards River. She told the story of ice-skating to school
on the river during the winter months, and seeing wolves running along the
banks following the children home from school
Yikes!!
Andover was an early Swedish settlement in west central Illinois and home
to the Jenny Lind Chapel. This little
church was named for the “Swedish Nightengale”, because she gave the founders $1500
for its construction. The first Swedish
immigrants arrived on the unbroken prairie in September and many of them died
of cholera. Lumber, which was to have
been used for the church steeple was used instead to make coffins. The chapel still didn’t have a steeple. So many people died of cholera in Andover
between 1849 and 1850 that hundreds are buried in mass graves in the Chapel
Cemetery and in the blocks south and north of there.
The Swedish Lutheran Church grew in
membership to such an extent that within less than a decade a new structure was
planned nearby, seating 1,000 worshippers.
Named Augustana Lutheran Church, it was built as the mother church of
the Augustana Lutheran Synod. It had a
huge sanctuary and was impressively decorated.
As so many churches in the area, though, its congregation was shrinking
and we could see lots of sad, deferred maintenance.
After two fascinating days in Henry County it was time to
move on. The next stop was the home of
Jerry’s fraternity brother, Jerry Hipple, and his wife Sue. (You may remember, we met them in eastern
Indiana in June). Jerry and Sue had
finally finished their new home and were in the process of moving out of this
lovely old farm house. We had three busy
days helping pack boxes, dig and lay tile for the house drains, and even
shopping at the Apple Store in Oakbrook Mall!
Ahhhhh, the wonders of 21st century
technology! Jerry and Sue had received
an iPad from their son Aaron, but Jerry decided he needed his own. Not bad for a guy who says he likes to watch
“Amish” TV!
Jerry and Jerry found yet another way to spend a Saturday
morning…trenching and laying tile for the house drainage. How did people do this before backhoes?
Jerry and Sue’s new home was beautiful. Their new kitchen was well-designed and we
loved “eating in”!
My sister-in-law Becky Yurkovich has a new “fella” near the
Hipples so we got a morning’s tour of the area with her. She and Mike made a handsome couple! I am sure she wouldn’t mind me telling you
that they met on “Farmers Only.com” and that was a very good thing.
After church with Jerry and Sue on Sunday, we were off again,
ready to brave the wilds of Wisconsin. Rather than using our cupboard full of maps, I used my iPad and Google Maps to navigate to our next stop. This was the first time that Google let me down. We were on county roads, narrow lanes and goat paths! Abe struggled to dodge the low hanging branches and Jerry was worried we meet a milk truck careening over the hill on a narrow road. We finally arrived safely at a lovely RV park in Spring Green, WI, right on the Wisconsin
River, about 40 miles west of Madison.
On Monday, August 3rd, we chose to brave the big
city of Madison first. We set our biases
aside and wandered through the University of Wisconsin campus. Quite a challenge since U of W is University
of Illinois’ arch rival! We also toured the capitol building…one of the nicest we’ve
seen. As a bonus, we were there at lunch
time to hear the protesters in the central rotunda, railing against their
governor.
As you probably know, Wisconsin is famous for cheese and
beer, and we did our best to sample the local products. Jerry got a chuckle out of this bench outside
one of the microbreweries we found in Madison.
Tuesday, August 4, we toured the small towns around Spring
Green. Just to the north, in Plains, WI,
was St. Luke’s, a beautiful old Catholic Church. The parishioners had built a path for the
Stations of the Cross up the hillside above the town to St. Anne’s chapel. We loved this hike and the spectacular views
of the countryside.
The chapel was amazing.
Construction began in 1923 and was it was built by hand out of stones
that were carried up to the hilltop from the valley below. The hilltop on which the chapel stood was the
tallest in the area and many many years ago was a meeting place for the local
Indian tribes, the Winnebago, Fox, Sauk, and Sioux. They called it Council
Bluff and sent smoke signals from its summit. Nearby Camel Hill was used as an
Indian burying ground.
Our morning here combined some interesting local history, a
great hike, and beautiful views of the countryside. Life doesn’t get much better!!!
Our day had only begun…there was much more to see. We planned to find a local brewery in Mount
Horeb and were delightfully successful…Voila!
The Grumpy Troll Restaurant and Brewery.
After a burger for Jerry, a salad for me, and yummy beer for each of us,
we were revived and ready to check out this little town.
Mount Horeb was known as the troll capital of the world…a
dubious distinction at best!...was quite proud of its Norwegian heritage. The main street through town was called
“Troll Way” and we saw little trolls peeking out of flowers, around corners,
and standing brazenly right in front of the Chamber of Commerce! Mount Horeb was on the Military Ridge State
Trail. The 40-mile trail connected
Dodgeville and Madison by way of an 1855 military route. The trail ran along
the southern borders of Governor Dodge and Blue Mound state parks following the
Chicago and North Western Railroad corridor.
Today it’s a popular biking and hiking trail.
New Glarus, WI, was our next stop and, even though we found
this town a little too touristy for our taste, it was interesting to see the
evidence of their Swiss heritage in their architecture. Our main objective was New Glarus
brewing. A couple of nights previously,
we had discovered “Spotted Cow”, a belgian style beer made here and wanted to
try some more of their wares. As you can
see from the signs at the beer-tasting counter, they were very creative in the
naming of their brews. The final one was
difficulty to read…”Raspberry Tart”…a beer with a sweet, fruity flavor….YEEEEWWWW! Not for us!
Wednesday, August 4, we drove south to tour House on the
Rock. The House on the Rock, originally
opened in 1959 was a complex of architecturally unique rooms, streets, gardens
and shops designed by Alex Jordan, Jr. We had toured the house in the mid 70’s during
a motorcycle trip with my brother Roger and his friend Verne.
The "house" itself was atop Deer Shelter Rock, a
column of rock approximately 60 feet, 70 feet by 200 feet on the top, which
stands in a forest nearby. Additions
were made to the original structure and other buildings added over the course
of several decades. The complex now features "The Streets of
Yesterday", a re-creation of an early twentieth century American town;
"The Heritage of the Sea", featuring nautical exhibits and a 200-foot
model of a fanciful whale-like sea creature; "The Music of
Yesterday", a huge collection of automatic music machines; and what the
management bills as "the world's largest indoor
carousel", among other attractions. I told Jerry I thought it was like
a visit to Hogwarts (from “Harry Potter”)!
We figured we walked about 4 miles during the four-hour tour.
One of the coolest rooms was the infinity room which just out
218 feet from the house without supports underneath. The room had more than 3,000 windows! No
longer do they let anyone go clear to the end…not that most people would.
A painting of the outside of this room gave
us a better feel for the structure.
Just one more photo of this strangely intriguing place with
one of the spookier inhabitants.
Thursday, August 7, we returned to Fairview. What a great trip we had! We are looking forward to many more.
Meanwhile, out in San Jose, CA, our sweet little
granddaughter Lauren, age 2 ½, was busy learning to roller skate! Jill, our daughter and her mom, said they were
able to tighten her wheels so that they didn’t go zooming out from under
her. Sorry…just had to share this photo...it's a Grandma thing.
