Where I grew up.

In a few weeks, I will spend the days before my 37th birthday back where it all began . . . in Central Illinois in the little town where I grew up. I find myself thinking about home tonight, maybe because I need to actually let my mother know that I am coming to visit. I thought about waiting to write this until I visit home, but now I've written it and, by golly, I'm going to share it with you! Here are some things I remember about my home:



It was a town of 5000 people (which now claims to have 5600 residents), divided in two by a two-lane "highway." When I was living there, the town did not have any stoplights. It now has two or three, depending on where you believe the city ends. The highway through town was the dividing line for us kids, as in, "don't cross the highway!" When I was in high school, the highway was where we went "cruising," meaning that we would drive up and down it, with the turnaround points being the loop of the Tastee Freeze parking lot on one end and a loop created by a triangle of streets on the other end.

My town had no fast food places of any kind. The nearest fast food was a McDonald's in the next town over, which was five miles away. We ate at the Tastee Freeze, which was also where the annual Easter egg hunt took place, in the grassy area behind the parking lot. I have fond memories of going to the "Freeze" after softball games as a team . . . I usually chose a chocolate and vanilla twist in a small cone.

When I was very young, my town still had a downtown movie theater. I remember watching movies there when the Cooper boys and their parents (whom I will visit next weekend in Missouri) came to town. The only specific movie I remember seeing was a Frankenstein movie that I found really creepy. That movie theater didn't make it past my grade school years. I'm not sure what happened to it, but want to find out while I'm home this time.

Across the street from the movie theater was the library. It was a two-story, brown brick building, with the children's section downstairs and the rest of the holdings upstairs. For me, the library was the cultural and entertainment center that many kids today find in the mall. I spent hours and hours there, choosing books to borrow, reading books, flipping through magazines, and otherwise exploring the world through what I could find on the shelves and read on the comfortable chairs on the second floor. There was no coffee and they didn't sell picture frames or notebooks or small candy items at the checkout. But they ran a summer reading program that combined by love of reading with my love of measurable accomplishment. resulting in ridiculously long lists of books read, which I wish I still had. My town has a new library now, but they still use the "old" part of the library I remember, which has been remodeled. I was excited to find these pictures, which include the old checkout desk and tables and chairs that I remember.

We did not have a swimming pool, but instead went swimming at Foli Park (which I think was an old gravel quarry) or at the PNA (short for Polish National Association) pool. We would take a picnic with us and swim the day away, enjoying the fruits of our swimming lesson labors. At that time, our YMCA did not actually have a pool, so lessons took place at the homes of people willing to loan out their pools. One was an outdoor concrete pool that looked like something out of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.



Another was an indoor pool in a neighboring town . . . I was always amazed to think of a family just like ours having an indoor pool.

My best friend Amy lived out in the country, and we liked to ride our bikes together and have adventures. These included swimming pool games with her brother and his friends when I had a broken nose and wasn't supposed to be in the pool at all. Another adventure was when we tried to explore a haunted, deserted farm house, only to be chased away by a farmer who drove his tractor cross-ways across his field just to scare us off. We were surprised and excited to find a busy creek in the woods just down the street from my house, and spent a happy afternoon sliding down its waterfall, only to discover we had turned our shorts green with algae.

My parents' friends lived at the first farm on the road out of town. We visited them often and my brother and I even stayed with them while by grandfather was sick. I liked exploring their big, drafty farm house and their barns full of kittens and horses. Even though they only lived five minutes away from us, their world was vastly different than that we inhabited in town.

I plan to have my camera along (of course!) when I visit home in a few weeks. But for now, you may wish to check out the work of the Farmer's Wife, who is a really excellent photographer. She appears to live very near where I grew up and shows the beauty in that part of the world.