The church signs in Northern Indiana are choice: "No you haven't missed the rapture. We've moved to 10000 Goshen Road". You'll find that beautiful if small steppled church on a hillock corner of Indiana Route 4 and County Road 23, within sight of the railroad trackside town of Hudson.
People do disappear easily in Northern Indiana. In the earlier 1930's, John Dillinger and his cohort eluded police capture on these narrow roads, even though the local forces had setup road blocks and searched cars wanting to pass. When Dillinger and gang did materialize, as he did at the Farmer's bank in Hudson, he came to pull a bloodless heist. At the Farmer's bank, where the locals could sell their crops for bank deposits, Dillinger asked the staff to open the safe, prostrate themselves on the floor, and remember that the insurance company would make up the loss. So why be heroic?
Nowadays, the corner building of a row of brick storefronts serves standard short order fair with imaginative names: The Lady in Red is a fairly tasty prime rib sandwich and the Pretty Boy Nelson is reuben sandwich.
Not so long after the heist in Hudson, Hoover's FBI boys finally tagged Dillinger with a hail of lead outside the Biograph Theatre on Lincoln Boulevard, Chicago, after promising Dillinger's woman-friend a five-grand reward to betray his location. She also was promised immunity against deportation, and promise that went unfufilled. As Dillinger proved early, and Saddam Hussein proved later, American criminology could learn a few tricks from the Canadian Mounties, who always get their man.
I had dinner in Avilla, Indiana, which is closer to Fort Wayne than Hudson, at the oldest restaurant in Northern Indiana, the Saint James. The Saint James Hotel opened its doors as a hotel 125 years ago, in 1878. If 1934 was the last year of Dillinger's life, then the hotel had five decades in operation when John and a moll might have needed rest and privacy somewhere quiet between Indianapolis and Chicago. One certainly wonders if John had a drink at the splendid ornate oak bar, with the title of St James emblazoned above the mirror.
One wonders if he had ascended the long staircase to where the well - appointed sleeping rooms awaited, and if so, for what motivation and with whom? With whom did he ascend the stairs and for what consideration did she ascend?
I asked the waitress, as I tucked into my splendid Lobster and New York Strip feast, to dish me the Dillinger lore, but she professed no knowledge. My question found the man across the aisle eager to answer, a villager who knew the lore.
According to the local man, Dillinger and his gang had stopped at a gun shop just up the street, where a man by the last name of Riley had a firearm under the counter but didn't raise it. That Riley lived to have a son and a grandson, a dynasty that remained in the town. The man laughed with delight when I quipped, "Great, Avilla is the town where Dillinger reloaded."
The gun shop on main street Avilla still exists, but as the man reflected mistily, its business is entirely mail order now. "I don't often discuss it because it's a sure sign of going to seed", he added cryptically.
I like to visit the historical places along Presidential trails, such as the Ronald Reagan Trail that passes through Illinois and the Lincoln Trail that tracks through Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Isn't it time now to at least faintly praise infamous men, and give John Dillinger his own trail, supported by the re-manufacturers of replacement parts for classic autos, retro-clothing designers and local chambers of commerce happy to fill hotel beds and sell restaurant dinners? If Civil War renactments are popular enough to bring men out to play battlefield in authentic uniforms, think of all the women who will happily dress up as a gun moll to drive with their boyfriends upon these still too narrow Indiana roads?
Finally, tired after driving my S10 over these slick roads in the dark of November, roads that are not illuminated at night, I stopped at the Inn at Amish Acres, Nappanee for the night. It was after Midnight, but the well - hung doors swung inward easily, and a woman with an Amish head scarf and Amish blue blouse gave me the corporate rate of 70 dollars for a full suite to keep me from driving US Highway 6 to the Holiday Inn Express in Kendallville, the next hotel 43 miles east. As I entered the room, I noticed the beautiful Amish quilt spread over the king size bed, but I was too tired to look for the hidden stitching. I did lift the handmade chair at the wood desk with my pinky finger, just to test the legend of those chairs.
Update, 5/24/2007
Note: I have since learned that Hudson, Indiana is not on the list of Dillinger's bank heists. Bank heists in the early thirties were common, and people often mistook any robber for Dillinger. So the story of Dillinger in Avillia is probably also more lore than history. I have not confirmed that farmer's could sell produce for bank deposits, but the deposit slips in Dillinger's restaurant of Hudson, Indiana led me to make this conclusion.
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