Last Year's Tree

We drove the same long, diagonal two-lane road this year that we traveled last year, and, once again, the prairie's dominant daytime colors were dun, brown, and black. Not a cloud in the sky. And this year no sparkling frost. But once again, after the sun went down below the horizon, the prairie played its ace in the hole, silhouettes, and I recognized several individual trees along the way from last year -- and so, searched out this old photo, as I was at the wheel yesterday and could not be driver and photographer simultaneously. Imagine the tree drawn in blackest ink, every branch faithfully reproduced and presented against a surreal watercolor sky whose rainbow hues fade imperceptibly and seamlessly into one another. I called last year's Books in Northport post "Its Own Kind of Beauty." Other than trees, the prairie offers stark groupings of farm buildings, clean geometrical shapes connected by elaborate systems of chutes and pipes. Farmhouses themselves are often surrounded by sheltering evergreens planted long ago. But it is the lone trees along the highway that speak to me most clearly of beauty, and "I think that I have never seen" a tree until I see it against the evening prairie sky.

Did Time Forget This Prairie Town? Will Anyone Remember?

Once again, not far from our day's destination, we left the big road to  visit briefly a small town, and once again we found a place that had clearly known past glories (if only in a small, rural way) and had since fallen on hard times. We enjoyed a walking tour of the central square. The search for a cafe was a failure, but the dogwoods in bloom were cheery, and I felt the statue of Stephen Douglas and the story of Douglas and Lincoln made our detour worthwhile. What first excited me, I must admit, was that I recognized Stephen Douglas from my first sight of him, face and name hidden from my view!

Do you know this prairie town? Hint: Stephen Douglas taught school and began his legal career here.

What you see in the photo above is not the original county courthouse. The original used to stand in the middle of the square (I can't tell you what happened to it) but the ornate replacement pictured here is on a corner diagonal to the square. Other buildings facing the square and off on streets branching away in different directions show the past glory of the little town and the contrast with its present sad state.

The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates were not held in this little town but in Chicago, Springfield, and seven other Congressional districts in the state of Illinois. Douglas, however, from this town is largely responsible for Lincoln's return to politics after he had run for senator twice, on two different tickets, and been defeated. Lincoln's famous "house divided" speech came out of his debates with Douglas and catapulted him to national fame and his successful run for the presidency. 

We looked around the empty streets and closely inspected architectural details of some well-preserved and other decaying buildings and thought about how vibrant the town must have been in the mid-nineteenth century. 

All across the United States, towns like this can be found -- towns with beautiful old buildings, towns bypassed by interstate highways, even locals having deserted the small shops to buy online. What is the future of these little old American communities? So many of them, to my eye, have the potential to be much more charming, friendly, and comfortable places to live than crowded cities and acres of cookie-cutter suburbs. Will they be rediscovered and revitalized, or will they fall into ruin?

Crossing the Prairie

It was a cold, crisp, sunny day. Hard to snap much while in motion down the expressway, but here are a couple. The second is near Springfield, Illinois.