March 18th, 2020 at 9:41 AM
Redding Township, Illinois
On Tuesday, I went for a walkabout. I walked
south on Tuesday after walking north on Monday. I'm staying just south of the
city limit of Streator Illinois, so walking south I didn't expect to see
anything more than the Vermillion River. Life awaits in all places if we have
the eyes to see it. Voting for the Illinois primary hadn't been cancelled. The
state issued cans of disinfectant spray and cases of hand sanitizer. Voters
sanitized hands before voting and after, literally washing their hands of
voting for Berne or Biden. Electors sprayed down the booths after each use. It
might have been the cleanest election run in Illinois history. The line at the
Redding Township Fire Department wasn't a line at all. A sign warned against electioneering.
No one was around holding signs for Berne or Biden or Trump.
I tried to use the Wi-Fi at Dollar General, but
the connection took forever to load email. I bought a jar of unsalted dry
roasted peanuts, a good source of protein, a high source of fat. Shoppers lined
up with big packages of toilet paper, hugging them to their chest like
blankies. I wondered if I should buy a big package while the shelves remained
full.
A manager talked on a phone, saying, "We
have to close an hour early so we can refill the shelves completely. Plenty of
merchandise coming in but so little time to restock". A clerk fielded a
call between checking out customers. "Yes, we have received a truckload.
Yes, the toilet paper has made it to our store. It's going to take a few hours
to put it on the shelves. Come first thing tomorrow morning. Yes, eight AM
doors open". Maybe I should have cleaned out the shelves of peanuts and
beans, all I really eat these days.
The South Post Gun Shop stood next door to the
Dollar General, the addition of what looked to be a fancy rustic brew pub
halted for the day. I walked into the shop, warned by a sign that country music
and Jesus fearing clerks awaited. "Nice man purse", said the strong
looking man with the baronic grey beard behind the glass counter. He presided
over a collection of handguns, all polished and gleaming in the light.
"Oh, I just carry my computer and my camera in this torn up thing".
"Relax, dude, I carry a man purse, too". I admired the taxidermy,
rattlesnakes ready to bite and cougars ready to pounce. "Very nice. This
makes me think of Call of the Wild museum in Grayling, Michigan".
"Don't compliment us. We didn't do the work". "Yeah, but you put
it on display".
Pizza Planet on the corner had closed for the
day, a sad fact. A sign on the wall pointed the way to the Vactor factory, a
sign that could use a refresh. I decided to walk south for the Vermillion
River. I had noticed the river on the map and I was close. I loved growing up
on the Shiawassee River, so this looked to me to be a calm, placid midwestern
river. I reached a dead end and looked down at the river fifty feet below.
astounded at the drop! Across the wide river flowing with bluish green water, I
saw a flat and low floodplain covered with oak leaves. The green belt of oaks
made me wonder if I were on the edge of a druidic forest. I could have
navigated a way down the bluff to the water but saved that adventure for
another day. It might be easier to put a kayak on the river downtown Streator
where the bridge crosses the swollen water.
The small churches with devoted parishioners
make me muse the most when I photograph them. This Tuesday afternoon, a sign
pointed the way to a Lutheran Church south of Streator Illinois. I
followed.
A small church with a steeple three stories high
awaited eternity behind a chain link fence. The fence encompassed three acres
of ground without visible markers for interred faithful. A bronze marker
erected in 1984 explained that Lutherans from Slovakia raised the church, the
first but not the last Slovakian Lutheran Church in America. The year on the
marker read 1884.
A mining company found seams of coal under the
prairie Earth and unearthed the black, burnable stone until deeper, richer
lodes were found. I wonder if the Slovaks came for the mining and stayed for
the boom when Owens brought his bottle making machine to town?
Owens came for the silica sand found upon the
prairie, a primary ingredient of glass. That industry stayed.
Bottle making stayed in town. The O+I factory
turns out thousands of bottles a day from a much smaller footprint on the east
side of town. The O stands for Owens. The I stands for Illinois. Proctor &
Gamble became P&G, right? Initials work better internationally.
I didn't see services advertised outside the
tidy church. I didn't see it on the Google map. I wonder if the church opens
for weddings or funerals. I was glad I found the chapel on my walk.
In my search for wireless, I walked up to the
hospital, once named Saint Mary's Hospital before OSF acquired the tall
building of ten floors, Streator's highest building. The clerk at the Emergency
Room allowed me to sit in the waiting room and charge up my laptop, but I couldn’t
connect to the guest signal. I wondered if the IT staff bounced the routers daily.
I tried not to eavesdrop on the patient who checked in; thus, I won't write
down what I overhead. Maybe I didn't hear what I thought I heard.
Downtown awaited only five minutes north of the
hospital. The sun was going down on the west horizon, an over rich star, a
phrase from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The library had a wireless signal that I
could find outside the closed brick exterior of the library donated by Carnegie
himself. The connection requires a single use code and no clerk awaited to give
me one. I knew the liquor stores would be open, maybe the Walgreens pharmacy.
Maybe a bar on a side street had defied the order of the Illinois governor to
close up shop. I shivered a little and turned on my heel south, hoping to make
it home before dark.
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