Today’s column will be a departure from my usual ramblings about politics and other ridiculousness, because I’ve been in a news blackout – or at least a brown-out – while I’ve been on my annual trip with two of my cousins.
Regular readers may remember that two years ago one cousin bought a 1976 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, and that May the three of us took it on a trip on Route 66, starting in Chicago and ending up at the Santa Monica Pier. Then last May we took it on a “Lap the Lake” ride around Lake Michigan, starting in Chicago, and going up through Wisconsin and Michigan, and then back down through Indiana.
We had some logical concerns about whether the old Caddy would make those trips, but she performed like a champ. So we decided that we’d press our luck and try another trip this year. We left on Friday 5/19, for a six-day trip down to Kentucky to see where the Simpson side of our family lived before moving up to Illinois.
We left home in north central Illinois on Friday morning under low skies and a light rain. Our plan for that day was to wander south and east through the state, mostly on country roads, towards Vincennes, Indiana. We had breakfast in Dwight – a small spot on Route 66 that we’d passed through in ’21. By the time we got to Champagne the sun was out, so we put the top down and headed east under blue skies that held up the rest of the day.
If you’re wondering whether the political tough times in Illinois have kept the farmers there from doing their work, worry no longer. Because we ended up driving behind one piece of farm equipment after another for what felt like the better part of 100 miles. Those things take up a little more than half of the crowned roads they run on, and with the Caddy floating gently in a slight breeze, passing them can be an adventure.
The only other adventure that morning came when I pulled up to a country railroad crossing that was being crossed – slowly – from west to east by a train that appeared to stretch to Iowa. After five minutes of boxcars ambling by, the train stopped. And sat there. For a long time.
The guy hauling a tank of fertilizer in front of me finally gave up and turned around. So we turned the Caddy around – in only six back-and-forth maneuvers! – and headed back the way we came. By the time we reached a side-road heading east, I noticed that the train was moving again. Because of course it was.
Now we’re in a parallel race with a train that’s picking up speed, and we don’t know how far the next crossing is, or how many farmers driving 30-foot-wide combines are between us and that crossing. So it’s a Thelma and Louise situation, only with toxic masculinity instead of annoying Susan Sarandon.
I’m not going to say that we went airborne over the crossing when we reached it. But the lights were on and the gates were just starting to come down when we made it across. And we all raised both arms above the windshield in celebration, with a single finger on each right hand raised in salute to the train. Because we’re essentially children.
We reached the Wabash River in the late afternoon and crossed into Indiana, where we immediately stopped at a monument to George Rogers Clark, a Revolutionary War soldier who took back Fort Sackville from the British in a strategic victory that secured the land that would later make up 5 states.
Sure, the Brits went wrong when they named the fort “Sackville.” Because come on: you’re literally asking for the fort to be sacked. (My free advice to future military planners? Give your forts scary names, like “Fort Razor Wire and Land Mines,” or “Fort Death to the Enemy!”)
We had expected a statue and a few plaques, but we found out that the site is actually a small national park, and it was way more impressive than we’d anticipated. The monument itself is a round building of granite and limestone, the size of the Jefferson monument in DC. A statue inside of Clark is surrounded by huge paintings of important events in the fort’s history.
The one that depicts the British general giving his sword to Clark at the surrender was my favorite. Clark had taken 170 men on a 4-mile slog through chest-high, near freezing water to catch the Brits by surprise, and when their commander believed that the besieging force was much larger than it was, he surrendered after two days of fighting.
In the painting, he looks p*ssed!
At the foot of the pedestal on which Clark’s statue stands, the following quote appears: “If a country is not worth protecting, it is not worth claiming.” Stirring words. I don’t know how anyone can read that and not think of the chaos on our southern border, and not wish for a congressional delegation to confront Biden, and make him hand over his sword.
Except that he’d probably cut one of his spindly legs off trying to get it out of its scabbard. Which would be fine with me.
Afterwards we drove around Vincennes. There’s a college there, and the home of president William Henry Harrison, who died after only one month in office. (Those were the days!) They’ve got a cool old downtown, and a restaurant serving some good Italian food.
We left Vincennes with full bellies and a plan to stop for the night at around 7:30 in Jasper, Indiana. But the landscape and roads were hilly and pretty, the early evening sunset bathed everything in a warm glow, and the Caddy floated like a cloud, so we continued on until we reached Owensboro KY just as darkness was falling around 8:30.
Our only disappointment that day was that Darryll didn’t get to try the mutton BBQ that Owensboro is known for.
Day 2 –
Saturday the 20th was another day that started out with some overcast and rain, but then turned sunny. We were up early, and during breakfast we decided to backtrack a short distance to Indiana to see Lincoln’s boyhood home. Because organized planning is not our strong suit.
The Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is in the middle of nowhere, as it was in Lincoln’s day. By the time we got there, the morning was crisp and cool, and the site made a strong first impression. The area surrounding it is heavily wooded, and the memorial has an impressive, crescent-shaped visitor’s center.
Outside we stood in the center of a semi-circle, surrounded by bas-relief carvings of moments in Lincoln’s life. Inside, we walked through several rooms of displays of life during Lincoln’s youth. From there we walked up a small hill to a cemetery where Lincoln’s mother Nancy is buried, having died when he was only 9. Then we followed trails to a small collection of recreated buildings from Thomas Lincoln’s life: a small one-room cabin, a barn, and a workshop.
A woman inside the cabin answered questions about the primitive living conditions, and a young man was hand sawing a large piece of oak outside. We had a mile or more of some good hiking along trails that had stones associated with Lincoln’s life, along with signs explaining them.
Some of the stones seemed pretty spurious – a stone taken from a mile away from Thomas Lincoln’s farm that Abe could have stepped on, one from a store three miles away, etc. – but there was also a stone from the White House, and one he had stood on to deliver the Gettysburg Address. Darryll stood on that one and delivered the first paragraph or so that he remembered.
And we booed him off the stage, as it were.
I came away from the site with a renewed appreciation for one of my boyhood heroes, and an appreciation for how insanely difficult life was on the frontier back then, and how much better we have it today, where we take most things for granted.
From there we headed back into Kentucky with the top down, seeing a lot of rolling and beautiful countryside, along with many small and sometimes neglected houses or groups of houses. We ended up taking a short detour to see Mammoth Cave, despite its website reporting that its guided tours had been sold out for weeks. But we serendipitously got to take the shorter, self-guided tour, and it was great.
Finally we drove to the Campbellsville area, which is where the Simpsons on dad’s side came from. After a quick supper, we drove a series of small, winding and hilly roads to see several cemeteries. Jones Chapel Cemetery is on a small hilltop beside a brick church, and we found the stones of Moses and Mary Mann, my grandma Rose’s grandparents.
Sidebar: When I was a small kid, my dad told me that Grandma was a Mann before she married grandpa. Which may have been the first recorded case of gender dysphoria in Kentucky, and which scarred me in a way that triggered PTSD when I later saw “Admiral” “Rachel” Levine, and the nuclear waste bigshot who wore dresses and lipstick at the office, and moonlighted as a luggage thief.
Oh how I miss the days when saying that “grandma was a man” was a harmless joke!
Walking through that cemetery, I was surrounded by many familiar names from my boyhood. Half of my hometown was made up of Italians who immigrated to the Illinois River valley in the late 19th century, and the other half came north from Kentucky in a wave in the 1920s and 30s. (Hence the nickname for Marseilles, IL: Martucky.)
The peaceful grounds of Jones Chapel were thick with names of the kids I went to school and church with. There were Gabehearts and Coxes and Farmers, along with the requisite number of Simpsons and Manns. The oldest stones were barely legible, and some of the newest had photos of the deceased, and in a few cases the truck or car that the departed had loved.
The inscriptions included sentimental poems and expressions of hope for future reunions. One that really touched me appeared on the marker of a mother who died in the 1930s: “She was the sunshine of our home.” I’ll bet she was, and God bless her memory.
From there we drove through more green, hilly landscape, until we came to the tiny spots in the road that had once been tiny towns from which many Kentuckians left for the north. We saw Speck (perfectly named!), and Knifley, and Casey Creek, all three of which combined couldn’t have more than several dozen residents.
My paternal grandpa Zack was born in Casey Creek, in a house that is no longer there, on Feathersburg Road. Which is supposedly a county road, even though it is basically two wheel-ruts that wind through the backyard of a barn and cow pasture, and then go down into a section of the creek (proper pronunciation: “crick”) that cannot be forded by many vehicles. Including a 47-year-old El Dorado.
From Casey Creek we drove about a mile to the Roley Cemetery, where a herd of cattle grazed in a field next door. We found the same range of familiar names, plus the stones of William Lee and Nancy Simpson, my grandpa’s parents.
By then it was the golden hour, and we drove through some more hills and into Campbellsville, arriving just as a huge orange sun was sinking below the horizon.
Next: More Kentucky Simpsonania, the etymology of “holler,” and then on into Tennessee…
Biden delenda est!
Martin Simpson 