Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2000 7:43 PM
Subject: Indiana roots tour
Revisiting old family memories gets it’s own post.
Friday 9/29 — The new English Indiana
So far the only difference between getting here and being here is that I’ve been driving for four solid days, but today cousin Doug is doing the driving! That IS a very big difference truth be told!!
On today’s agenda we are driving from Indianapolis to the ancestral homeland to southern Indiana, Where Doug’s dad Omer and my mom Mildred and their six brothers and two sisters all grew up. It turns out to be another five-ish hours of pick-up truck driving, in his black GMC truck rather than my white Tacoma. So it’s a salt to pepper, Japanese to American, indie/punk to country. The best part is I get to watch the countryside go by, but it’s still more hard core pick-up truck time…
I guess I never explained what the big whoop was about getting to Indianapolis by Thursday night. Half of the nominal reason to rip myself out of my normal life to take this trip was to stop at Doug’s house in Indiana to visit relatives and go to places that I haven’t seen since I I left the East coast for the West coast. Most I hadn’t seen since was a young ‘un!
I had seen Doug this summer when Martha and I visited Florida. He visits my sister and and Patty’s mom in the St Pete area every year. By pure serendipity they were here at the same time we were! I made loose talk about visiting him in Indy if I actually did make this reunion trip, which I was semi-planning even then.
So when I called him a couple of weeks ago with a notion of showing up Saturday or Sunday and staying a day or two, he called back with a much more ambitious agenda, namely to
- drive down to the old family homestead on Friday,
- visit a recently widowed aunt on Saturday, and
- receive yet another passel of cousins at Doug’s house on Sunday.
So after a surprisingly restful night on Uncle Omer and Aunt Dolly’s 60 year old bed (and its 30 year old mattress :), off we go to the town of English, where everyone grew up.
First up was the only restaurant in town, in the “new English” as opposed to the mostly non-existent old English (more about that later). I had the special — fried fish (in the recognizable shape of a fish!), baked beans and scalloped potatoes, served to us by a happy newcomer who just loved escaping the city for his 40 acre farm with pigs and chickens and dogs and cats. Doug could not believe that anyone would actually move TO here!
Then we took the back road ‘down the holler’ to the house where Doug grew up, and where I spent about a week each summer as a kid. There was nobody home and no dogs, so we got out and wandered around for a while. There were six geese wandering around and a horse in the back behind an electric fence. The horse was taking much better care of his yard than the people were of theirs.
There was the old three-seater outhouse in an advanced state of decay. The smaller kid-sized seat in the middle makes sense I guess, but that third seat? I’ve been trying out scenarios for when one would have occasion to use that third seat, but I just can’t come up with anything… 🙂
Doug didn’t live in a house with plumbing until the family moved to Indianapolis in about 1960. Which means I used that outhouse when I visited them in the 50’s!
The root cellar (rhymes with ‘foot’) was still there, as was the bridge across the little creek (rhymes with ‘prick’) to get to it. I used to love the root cellar ‘cuz it was cool and dry in the heat of summer. The big persimmon tree that Doug used to whomp with a sledgehammer to get the persimmons to fall was gone, as were the chicken coop and the hog pen.
Next stop was the tiny town of Temple (for scale, know that English, the biggest town in the county, had less than a thousand people in its heyday). We looked at the headstones in the little graveyard, and I took some pics of the burned out community church.
Then we checked out the ruins of the old family homestead. This required a tricky little jaunt across the big creek (I hope you’re hearing that as “crick” by now 🙂 in 4 wheel drive low. I would not have had the guts to try it in my Tacoma, so it was educational to me to see what one can do with 4WD if one is willing!.
Picking through the ruins was really exciting to me. I have seen that house from the road across the creek many, many times, but had never in my life actually been in it. The thought that this is where little Mildred Real (my mom) grew up, was teased to death by her six brothers etc., was very moving. I brought back a piece of 1938 Louisville Times newspaper from the wallpaper backing and a small flagstone from the collapsed fireplace, and I’m very happy to have these keepsakes.
Next stop was Uncle Temple’s house, the only house left in old English! Temple just died this winter at the age of 91. He was named for the town of Temple just up the road. He was I think, the most together of the Real brothers, although Omer and Wayne have had pretty solid lives also.
Most of Temple’s grandkids are a pretty sorry lot, destined to be a burden on you and I, the taxpayers of America, now that he’s not around to bail them out of jail or provide them housing anymore.
Until he was in his late 80’s he would drive his tractor down the road and across the creek to the family house and mow the field around the house, just to keep the weeds down. The house was already falling down and worth nothing to nobody, but he did it anyway.
So you might be asking, what’s up with this New English, Old English thing?
Well, it turns out that this harmless little old creek floods pretty bad about every decade or so. So some way some how, the local nabobs got federal funding to move the town to higher ground! How weird is that? Crusty old codger that he was, Temple refused to move, so as a result his house is the only one left in the flood plain. The rest of what used to be main street is nothing but grassy fields. The town never was much, but the old drug store, the Green Lantern Tavern, the English Hotel, the movie theater where Omer took Doug every Saturday night (and then disappeared to the Green Lantern 🙂 are all completely obliterated without a trace. It made Doug real sad.
They left the statue of “Old Man English” in place in the little city park, which just makes the whole scene a little more surreal — a town square with the town removed. He looks just like General Jebediah Springfield on the Simpsons! I am sorry to report that I do not know what Mr. (or General!) English’s claim to fame was.
Last stop in the area was the bigger local cemetery, off the main highway. My mom was most extremely definite that she did NOT want to have her remains flown back to be interred here. She had always found to be a very depressing place and did not want to spend forever here. But her parents and four or five siblings are here (including Doug’s folks), as are most of the parents of the various second cousins and other kids I used to know. And on a beautiful fall afternoon it wasn’t too depressing… as graveyards go …
There was this one really sad thing. The caretaker was there, and he came over to talk. Turns out his 19 year old son was killed accidentally with a gun (hello NRA???) and he was spending so much time at the grave they gave him a job there. He clearly has no life other than re-living his son’s death. The gravesite had a ton of flowers, a big wind chime, a bunch of those little garden cherubs all facing so that they were staring at the grave — pretty spooky.
We visited Doug’s sister Mildred. She was named for my mom, and is a great namesake. Good natured and kind-hearted just like her namesake. Mildred was always one of my favorite relatives. We had some of the too bitter, too much artificial sweetener iced tea that I remember very well from just about everyone’s house in the old days. We had a nice visit, exchanged yet more stories about Temples grandkids (in the “what have they done now?” vein), then headed out into the night. We ate at the local Big Boy and got back to Doug’s house in Indianapolis a little after midnight.
Saturday – Aunt Wanda in Marion
No rest for the weary. On today’s agenda is driving north about an hour to visit Aunt Wanda in Marion IN. She was married to Wayne Real, the youngest brother of the brood, who died last June. They’d been married forever so she’s pretty lost and lonely in her house by herself. But we had a nice visit. I really liked her house. It was nicely decorated and had a feeling of calmness about it – I think it reminded me of my Mom’s house.
Sunday at Doug’s
Doug’s other three sisters and their hubs, plus one of Doug’s two sons and his wife and kid all came over to visit. Apparently they don’t all get together that often, so I felt honored! Until his son came over, I was the youngest person in the party, certainly an unusual experience for me 🙂
Omer and Dolly raised a family-oriented brood (Doug and I are convinced that the bad genes evident in other parts of the family come from the other spouse :). All four couples (Doug and Patty, Nancy and Ronny, Geneva and Elbert, and Edith and Fred) as well as Mildred and Estel Lee who I saw on Friday have been married since they were 20 or younger, which means anywhere from 38 to >60 years. The three sisters sitting on the couch together looking at the old albums were totally cute!
I come to find out after they left that this cute little blond boy that was all over Nancy’s photo album was their son that died of aids last year, which was my reminder that even these lovely country folks have had their share of ‘big city’ family tragedy, just like everyone else.
One more story and I’ll let you go. We got to talking about when their family moved from the deep country to Indianapolis and how much he (Doug) hated it. He went from being just about the coolest guy in the English school where all twelve grades were in the same building, to being an absolute nobody in a school of about 2000 students. I asked why did they move, and he said:
His dad had worked on the county road crew for years (because it paid better than the railroad). But he had always been a vocal Republican, working the polling places most elections, and when “the Democrats came in”, they fired him. Blame it on those darned Democrats!
One of the son-in-laws was doing pretty well up in Indy, and offered him a job driving a dump truck. So at about 58 years old and a complete hick, he sold the farm and moved the family to Indy to drive a truck for another 6-8 years until retirement.
So that’s the dark side of politics for ya. (or serves him right for being a Republican, take your choice 🙂