Friday Night Lights

I think, if any of my friends from overseas were to come to visit, I would want them to see the Sandwich Fair.

Chicago and all its qualities would be the primary focus of the visit, just as most big cities are for foriegners traveling abroad. And of course I would show them shiny Naperville in all its newness and suburbanness.

But if I wanted something that would sum up what the Midwest is to me, or at least my impression of it, you could do worse than submit a county or state fair for consideration.

You have your carnival rides and deep-fried food, of course, along with the other fair, the one people forget about sometimes. The one with show animals and horses and dairy farmers from downstate, and who are usually the nicest guys in the world to talk to, the downstate farmers.

I imagine that Ireland and the U.K. and other parts of the world have their equivalent carnival or festival, where everyone gathers to eat bad food and fight the crowds and see the same booths advertising space-age cleansers and graveyard headstones, while the classic-rock shout of the midway echoes through the grounds.

At the Sandwich Fair, though, I could point out the exhibit hall where my grandmother enters cross-stitching works for judgment (Issy would like that, perhaps.) We could wander past the small stage where a band is playing, and point out that the two guys onstage who are dressed as the Blues Brothers used to be my managers at the local grocery store I worked at a long time ago.

That guy I just said hello to? Taught elementary school for 35 years in the next town over. The Sandwich Sports Boosters booth, with its microwaved pizza logs? Ground Zero for kids from my old high school, same as it was 20 years ago. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone in orange and black.


That's the Lions Club booth, where I used to always see Jim and Walt from Salem Lutheran Church; here's where kids from the high school band serve food to raise money for uniforms and field trips; here's where the crusty carny told Chad the joke with the punchline, "No, but the last guy was!"

And even though I haven't lived in Sandwich for a long time, and don't really consider myself a small-town kid anymore, it's still the place that my friend Jeff and I (and various other members of his family or our friends) come every year, to have a Pronto Pup from the same exact spot it was last year, and to stroll around and say hello to people and have a good time.

It would be the best possible place to tell a part of the story of who I am and where I come from.

It's been rainy here lately, and for the past couple of nights we've had some good drenches, and it was looking like we weren't going to make it to the fair this year. But Friday evening the clouds rolled away and the late sun came out and we packed everyone in the car and headed west to the fair.

And everyone there seemed so happy, so cheerful. The crowds were light and there weren't any lines for the rides, which made young Ben so happy. And I even went on a ride with him, for the first time in probably 15 years. Some big metal contraption that sling-shot you in a wide arc over the grounds, and a few times you feel like you're going to just break away and sail out over the people.

But of course you don't, and you come back down, and go up again, and as you got up to the highest point, where the ride stopped for a moment so you could look out at the entirety of the thing as the evening faded away, everywhere you looked, you saw people happy to be out of the house, happy to be enjoying such a lovely evening, and happy to be amongst the people at the fair.

Variations on a Sunset, Central Illinois Back Roads

Spent a Sunday driving from the north side of rapid Chicago down to the quiet pace of central Illinois. Listened to music, stopped every once in a while to scribble down ideas in a notebook, and wished my cousin Jake a Happy Graduation.

Ate beef sandwiches hunched over the kitchen table, which is where my family always feels most at home. It's where we celebrate birthdays, mourn deaths, and hunker down during times of crisis or calamity. A bag of Fritos and a couple of beer bottles and the creak of old wooden chairs passed down through families.

Sat for a long while with my cousin Ben in his dark bedroom, cracking jokes and talking of Japan and life and books, and before I knew it the time had slipped away along with the rest of the northern Illinois contingent of my family.

Said my goodbyes to everyone, including a couple of distant middle-aged cousins that I had never met before but could have talked to for hours. They just had that easy familiarity that apparently comes with being of the same ancestry. Scots-German-Pennsylvania Dutch farmers spending the early part of the 21st century trying to hold on to that sense of land and family and tending to something.

Spent the car ride home listening to the same song over and over again, sculpting Caesar's assassination in my head as the sun set on my left. By the time the sky grew black I was back in the suburbs and the stoplights, and you couldn't see a goddamn star in the sky.

Wye

I'm dying for something like this...

The deep green forest along the Wye River Valley in SE Wales, August 2006...

Unfortunately it's March in Illinois, and so the forests are brown and bare, and the ground is soft beneath your feet as you march along the trails. Not much green around, except for the Spruce Plot on the far eastern edge of the Arboretum, where I was rambling the other day. After walking through these empty woods for a while I suddenly came upon a wall of towering Spruce trees, the green barely visible in the pale light.


Moss grows on the base of the trees, and a few plants have started to sprout from the ground. Spring is here, but barely. Give me some green, soon.

Routes, Highways, and Back Roads

It feels like I have been on every single damn road Illinois has to offer.

Last week was the road to the Quad Cities, I-88 west from Naperville to Rock Island and back again. This weekend it was another tour of roads and the small towns of northern and central Illinois.

Friday was a trip out to Leland, an hour's drive west of my home. Leland's a town of less than a thousand that is typical of the north Midwestern Scandinavian diaspora. I was attending the funeral of my Aunt Darla's mother, another Good Lutheran laid to rest. Looking at the names at the cemetery and on the church walls and it's all Larsons and Larsens and Gundersons.

Doubled back to Naperville and then down to Colfax, north of Bloomington, home of Hamish and his clan. My cousin Chris grew up in this very small town where the only neon sign is the Casey's gas station. Chris has returned to his high school to teach high school English and to direct the fall drama production, also featuring cousin Jake in his final performance before he graduates and heads off in his own direction.

Ridgeview High does their productions in one of those gymnasiums that has a stage tucked behind one of the basketball hoops, horrible for acoustics and one of those places where you do the best you can with what you have. Most of the kids are quiet, unassuming farm kids that stick together and whose drama ambitions are limited to the final performance on Saturday night.

I was damn proud of Chris and his efforts. I can relate all too well to what it's like to direct kids from the high school where you yourself graduated, on a stage that isn't really a stage. It is a good thing to return from where you were taught, to contribute, to teach, to direct. I did it myself, and while I'm glad I moved on, it was still the most rewarding experience I have had in my directing career.

Afterwards I drove north on country roads with poor lighting and very few cars passing me by, with my grandmother next to me. Talked about this and that in the middle of the night, opening up to her like I can to very few people, about the joys and burdens of being The Guy Who Stayed Close to Home, about family, and about how I missed being able to talk to Grandpa as a mature adult. It seems like at this point in my life I understand him so much better, and could have had such a great relationship with him.

Those long flat Illinois roads are a great way to clear your head and to listen to music and to do all that contemplating. You can go on and on and on in a straight line that only corrects itself for the curvature of the earth (or so Grandpa says), never hitting a stoplight or stop sign for miles and miles and miles. Those seductive flat highways, always taking you somewhere that wakes you up and slaps you in the face and reminds you that there is so much World out there.