Bond County
Bond County, Illinois.
How do we know the toothbrush was invented in Bond County?
Because if it had been invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
For years, that is all I knew about Bond County. Then last weekend, a new picture took over the task of reminding me of Bond County’s uniqueness.
Driving through the county seat where the courthouse sits in the center of the town square, there were tents, canvas booths, and a petting zoo on the courthouse lawn. On the street north of the courthouse, there was a large trailer, as in tractor-trailer, to be used as a stage. Folding chairs sat in rows in front of the stage and anticipated a small crowd wanting to be entertained later in the day. Something festive was going on!
I assumed the festivities were either a celebration of some civic event or local holiday or marketing ploy sponsored by the courthouse square businesses to attract weekend shoppers. Regardless of its origin or sponsorship, a community event was drawing a crowd from throughout the county.
For a moment, I was not just driving through a small town in Bond County, but every rural town and county south of the B & O in Southern Illinois. I was emotionally back in my childhood, living in another small, rural community, my hometown, in the bottom third of the state of Illinois.
Instead of sitting in a 2004 Buick, I was bouncing along in a 1950, International ¾ ton pick-up truck, affectionately known as the “Flying Blue Goose.” (Yes, it was blue; if goosed, it could hit 80 mph on a flat stretch; but it never could fly unless you count the two-wheels-up when ‘flying over’ the humpback railroad crossing on East Main Street.)
The people milling around the booths and tents could have been my grandparents or the grandparents of my schoolmates, neighbors from Church Street, or all the people that helped my parents keep their mischievous son in check back in the 1940s and ’50s.
One sight that day stands out above all the rest. Right there on the courthouse lawn, a Holstein cow waited for a line of small children to pull up a stool and learn how to milk a cow one at a time. The teacher was a man in bib overalls and a straw hat. An older man, perhaps the teacher’s father, stood by with a smile on his face that displayed his fond approval.
Where else but a small town would the grownups think knowing how to milk a cow is worthwhile knowledge? Where else but in rural America, would the youngest generation learn that milk doesn’t begin its journey to the breakfast table in a plastic jug? Where else but in a county like Bond, would a child learn by seeing and touching that the present owes a debt to the past? In what city or urban sprawl in this technological world and information age offer a child access to a vanishing world of self-reliance and close connection with nature?
WIth the courthouse in the rearview mirror, at the edge of town, I began reciting to Carrol the benefits I had gained from a childhood spent in a small, rural community. Not until I was a teenager did I ever learn an adult would lie to a state trooper to escape responsibility. I thought about how I had to go away to college to learn that for some, cheating on an exam was as natural to them as driving to the coal mine to buy a load of coal was for me.
The picture of a kid learning to milk a cow and my reflections on my own growing up made me realize that I created a hole in my life when I walked away from my hometown more than 50 years ago. I now see that that hole is about the size of a small town and shaped a lot like Southern Illinois.
So, I’ve come to realize that only two places make me homesick: the heaven I have never seen and the small town I can’t forget.
How do we know the toothbrush was invented in Bond County?
Because if it had been invented anywhere else it would have been called a teethbrush.
For years, that is all I knew about Bond County. Then last weekend, a new picture took over the task of reminding me of Bond County’s uniqueness.
Driving through the county seat where the courthouse sits in the center of the town square, there were tents, canvas booths, and a petting zoo on the courthouse lawn. On the street north of the courthouse, there was a large trailer, as in tractor-trailer, to be used as a stage. Folding chairs sat in rows in front of the stage and anticipated a small crowd wanting to be entertained later in the day. Something festive was going on!
I assumed the festivities were either a celebration of some civic event or local holiday or marketing ploy sponsored by the courthouse square businesses to attract weekend shoppers. Regardless of its origin or sponsorship, a community event was drawing a crowd from throughout the county.
For a moment, I was not just driving through a small town in Bond County, but every rural town and county south of the B & O in Southern Illinois. I was emotionally back in my childhood, living in another small, rural community, my hometown, in the bottom third of the state of Illinois.
Instead of sitting in a 2004 Buick, I was bouncing along in a 1950, International ¾ ton pick-up truck, affectionately known as the “Flying Blue Goose.” (Yes, it was blue; if goosed, it could hit 80 mph on a flat stretch; but it never could fly unless you count the two-wheels-up when ‘flying over’ the humpback railroad crossing on East Main Street.)
The people milling around the booths and tents could have been my grandparents or the grandparents of my schoolmates, neighbors from Church Street, or all the people that helped my parents keep their mischievous son in check back in the 1940s and ’50s.
One sight that day stands out above all the rest. Right there on the courthouse lawn, a Holstein cow waited for a line of small children to pull up a stool and learn how to milk a cow one at a time. The teacher was a man in bib overalls and a straw hat. An older man, perhaps the teacher’s father, stood by with a smile on his face that displayed his fond approval.
Where else but a small town would the grownups think knowing how to milk a cow is worthwhile knowledge? Where else but in rural America, would the youngest generation learn that milk doesn’t begin its journey to the breakfast table in a plastic jug? Where else but in a county like Bond, would a child learn by seeing and touching that the present owes a debt to the past? In what city or urban sprawl in this technological world and information age offer a child access to a vanishing world of self-reliance and close connection with nature?
WIth the courthouse in the rearview mirror, at the edge of town, I began reciting to Carrol the benefits I had gained from a childhood spent in a small, rural community. Not until I was a teenager did I ever learn an adult would lie to a state trooper to escape responsibility. I thought about how I had to go away to college to learn that for some, cheating on an exam was as natural to them as driving to the coal mine to buy a load of coal was for me.
The picture of a kid learning to milk a cow and my reflections on my own growing up made me realize that I created a hole in my life when I walked away from my hometown more than 50 years ago. I now see that that hole is about the size of a small town and shaped a lot like Southern Illinois.
So, I’ve come to realize that only two places make me homesick: the heaven I have never seen and the small town I can’t forget.
posted by John | 12:30 PM
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