Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Storied Visit to Elgin, Illinois

May, 2017




Once upon a time on Randall Road in northern Illinois, there were farms.  Many farms.  Many farms with fields touching, boundaried by oak trees and creeks.  In one field, black and white cows strolled, dropping their faces to nudge the green grass.  In another field, children climbed trees, ran through a forest of wild mustard and white flowers.


In the nearby town, known for many decades as “the city of churches”, the river hills included a synagogue and Mason’s Hall.  In the downtown, two major department stores, locally owned banks and restaurants, two theaters, a YMCA and YWCA, and a public library formed the safe circles of friendship for the town’s adults and younger members.

For those growing up in the town, summer morning music or academic programs at the junior high and high school were followed by afternoons of swimming at a public park pool.  At the same park in the evenings, twice a week, music concerts beckoned families and romancing couples to lie on blankets and study the stars or gather fireflies in glass jars.  Also on summer nights, before air-conditioning would entice them to watch television inside, families ended the evenings with a visit to Dairy Queen or A&W, momentarily freezing their memories.  Winters brought dark days and storms with weekends of ice skating by the white pavilion in the second public park, hot cocoa and marsh mellows served by Methodist ladies in woolen coats and mufflers. On particular occasions, the white pavilion, its stained glass windows gleaming like colored silk, welcomed little girls who pointed their toes on the wooden floor and swirled in pink and blue tutus made of netting.


While the farms flourished, so did the town.  But in the rooms of commerce, engineers planned and later built a widened Randall Road that tore down the farmhouses, barns, and silos and buried the lives of the farmers and their families.  The children grew, partied, kissed and some lost their innocence in the back seat of their parents’ cars.  Others maintained an intricate balance of studiousness and shyness through adolescence to high school graduation.

Upon graduation, the children’s waters parted.  The built road became a commercial corridor dotted with chain stores, soulless centers of merchandise.  Perhaps as a counterbalance, windowless mega churches arose with concrete parking lots and thin borders of bushes.


Time passes....


Fifty years later, a few of those children--now carrying stories of retirement, grandchildren, and spouses’ deaths gather in a backyard that was once a farm field.  Here the ghosts of the Fox and Sauk Tribes linger with the ghosts of white settlers and farmers.  Now, the ghosts rise up in the late afternoon shadows and touch the shoulders of the grown children.  A windmill in the yard twirls in the breeze as a recognition of time turns down the smiles of those who were once entwined like leaves of morning glory vines.




  



SLim's story Part 3.

SLim’s story continues 6.17



In the few months after SLim reunited with George (the boy who partially tamed him), both had been in new adventures, sometimes together, sometimes on separate occasions.

Together, they roamed the desert, settling in on warm afternoons at the corner convenience store and sharing a Thrifty ice cream cone.  George licked the ice cream down to the cone and then SLim chomped on the remains.

“You like the bottom end, don’t you, fella.  Works good for both of us since I like the top.”  George brushed the dust from his over-the-ankles pants he inherited from his older brother, Tom.  “Looks like it’s time for us to head on home since I have homework to do before I can play baseball.”

SLim heard the word “ball” and his ears perked up.  He liked certain kinds of balls: cheese balls scattered across the park grass were his favorite.  He trotted after George, keeping his eyes open for rabbits and birds.  Not very hungry, the glances were mostly just for practice. 

“Life’s pretty cheery right now with George, but I know the happy days can’t be counted on,” SLim reflected as he spotted a young quail under a mesquite bush.  “Huh, that young ‘un ain’t goin’ to last long if he doesn’t know enough to scatter when I come by.”

So that’s how the days often passed as they two hung out together.  On their own was another story.
George tore his paints on barbed wire as he and his best friend, Charlie, chased bats from under the arroyo bridge.  For that he got a few hits on his bottom from his stepdad, Marty.  George didn’t like Marty much and the feeling was mutual.

SLim tore a toenail trying to scrape the dry skin of a tomato off a park bench.  He also was chased by a man on a golf cart and had to hide behind a bush near the zoo.  SLim heard a lion roar and his scrawny legs trembled.  Not much scared SLim, but the sound of a big cat did. Bobcats could be a mean adversary and mountain lions, well, SLim stayed scarce from their territory.


For now, sticking close to George’s regular meals worked pretty well.  As dusk settled in, George came out of the house and squeezed a couple of handfuls of dinner leftovers through the backyard fence.  SLim watched George sit down on the dirt and wait for SLim to come out of the high grasses.  Together, they enjoyed the moonlight and stars and imagined another day of adventures.