I stayed at my sister's house for a few days after St.Louis, then I rented a small house two doors down from my brother, Tom and his wife. Illinois is full of coal mines and Peabody number ten was once the world's largest coal mine. It runs under much of the area in and around Taylorville. The house I rented was probably once a marshy area, mostly inhabited by people who built functional tiny homes on crawl spaces with big yards because they outhouses in the old days. There was a small sink hole by my back stoop that was swarming with slugs. They were everywhere around that neighborhood. They crawled up the sides of houses and you had to be careful because they might be right on the door handle of your screen door. They could get in through the tiniest crack or hole, so they would show up on an inside wall, or floor once in a while too. If I opened the trap door in the second bedroom floor I would be looking down at a floor almost moving with slugs, except they don't move a lot. My landlord had a man put something under the house to get rid of them, but it only worked for a while and not very good then. I finally put the lids of jars, filled with rock salt under all the legs of my bed and sprinkled rock salt around the edges of all the rooms.
I actually sprinkled it around the outside edge of the house too and one of my neighbors came over to ask if it was to keep away bad spirits! These same neighbors had a teenage son who eventually stole two bicycles from me, but I could not prove it.
The neighbors across the street used to comment on how pretty the little gardens that ran around the sides of the house were. They said no one else had ever grown flowers that they could remember. I didn't bother to tell them were just select weeds I left and let grow. Then I went to Walmart and bought bunches of small pretty flowers. I cut single stalks off and placed them strategically throughout the weeds!
I bought a modern version of the old push mower and mowed the yard. It didn't cut as evenly as I might have liked, but it got the job done. This was how I met my other neighbors. Mr. Dilley was the 98 year man next door. He used to watch me out his kitchen window and sometimes invited me in for iced tea. He would tell me stories of how, as a teenager, his job in Nokomis was to go around to the street corners and write the time and name of the local movie that was showing on the sidewalk with chalk. Later he was in the Civilian Conservation Corps and sent money home to his mother. He originally lived in my house, but when his came up for sale he moved because it was slightly bigger. He paid $5000 back then! Mr. Dilley was a hoot. He used to make his own homemade hooch, but one day there was an explosion followed by a bunch more and all his work came pouring out of the cabinet he stored the jars in. It was such a mess his wife told him no more. His wife died just before I met him and his son bought him a new television. Mr. Dilley loved that tv. He told me this television was not only in color, but it got basketball games! I don't think he understood his son got him cable.
Then there was Natalie who lived across the alley from me. Natalie was a short, red haired woman of probably 80 who drove a low slung purple sports car with a convertible roof. I would look out and she would be walking around the steep roof on her garage cleaning gutters, or pulling a wagon load of trash out to the alley. Natalie was independence plus!
My brother's house was the place to gather if you were up at 6 am. A motley assortment of people would already be there smoking cigarettes and drinking pot after pot of coffee. Tom was disabled from a rather wild and free life that ended when he attempted to move a five hundred pound stove by himself. He had a wife and two step daughters who lived with him along with two little dachshunds called, Sadie and Sophie. His best friend left him a farm where he could go and be alone if he wanted to and he loved that place. One day I drove out to see him and there was a large bird eating a rabbit in the middle of the drive. As I got closer, the bird rose up and flew directly over my windshield. It was so big its wings completely blocked my view! Tom said it was a golden eagle that had been hanging out there for a week or so. Animals loved him He could walk right up to most wild animals for some reason. They seemed to sense that he was safe. I used to go with him to feed the geese at SangChris Park. As his little blue car pulled into the lake area, the geese rose up and flew behind the car until it stopped. Then we got out and fed them. They knew who it was! He took me to a town on the Mississippi river to see the bald eagles two different years. They go there in February because with the dam the water isn't frozen and they can fish. It is amazing to watch one fly over the water, dip down and come up with a fish in its talons. It is also amazing to see that many bald eagles in one place. The trees are literally alive with them. The second year there were fewer bald eagles, but tons of pelicans. When Tom died his daughter had one of the most meaningful funerals I've ever been to. We met at his favorite fishing spot where a little bird chose to fly in and sit on the cooler beside his children while his daughter spoke and read the twenty third psalm. Then we all drove out to the farm where everyone participated in sharing his ashes over the ground he loved so much. I have a photo of his four children throwing his ashes up to start everyone off. Each one has a cloud of their father's ashes hovering over them. It felt both significant and heart rending to me.
Years ago I would put Ninna, my first dog, in a basket on the front of my bike and I could ride anywhere. She never tried to jump out and she loved the wind in her face. Here I tried to teach my new puppy, Chauncey, a shih tzu, to do the same. In the beginning I put a harness on him and hooked it to the basket. I'd never done that with Ninna, but I was being extra careful. He seemed to be really comfortable so I got a little less worried over time and would just stuff the leash in the basket with him. That worked great. Until it didn't. One Sunday afternoon as we approached a corner, some jogger ran past and Chauncey threw himself out of the basket. It caught me completely off guard and his leash caught in the wheel so that I ended up riding my bike right over him. I will never forget his scream! I thought I had killed him. Someone put my bike in his truck and drove us back to my house where I called the vet at home and she met me at the office. I will never understand how, but he seemed totally unscathed. She said he might be a little sore but he never even acted like that. However, he was now afraid of all bumps in the road, whether on a bike or in a car and he never really got over it. We gave up bike riding and I bought him a screened in cube type doggie seat to ride in in the car. It hooked with a seat belt and was high enough that he could look out the window. It took a long time, but he eventually got used to that, because I took him everywhere. I would put him in his bag that was disguised as a purse, by asking, "Want to go bye bye?" He'd leap in and wait for me to zip it. Or I was push him in a doggie stroller and just throw a baby blanket over the screen when we went into restaurants or stores. He never barked and people just assumed it was a child.
Before I got Chauncey I tried adopting a five week old mixed breed Australian cattle dog. Someone had dumped the whole litter at the pound. He had the bluest eyes and he was the smartest puppy I've ever met. I took him out once and he was housebroken. I threw a tiny ball and he instantly knew to retrieve it, but he had a nasty growl when I tried to pick him up and bring him in if he didn't want to come in and he was snappy about anything that didn't go just his way. My brother's wife, Cheryl, teased me about this a lot. "Awwww, did the whittle bitty puppy scare winda?" One day when she said that she picked him up and he bit right through her lip! He was barely six weeks old, but I realized I was out of my depth here. I found him a new home with a farmer on a big farm. I saw him many times after that and he seemed totally happy. He was always totally engrossed in whatever that man was doing. I asked him how hard it had been to train him and he said, "Oh I just slapped the ____ out of him a couple times and he stopped biting right away!" I could never have done that. It just wasn't my style, but there was no denying how happy that dog was, on the farm, in town, in a truck, off leash, he was perfect.
My sister would come over from her house and we would take Chauncey on a leash and my cat, Nijinkski, in the stroller, for walks around that neighborhood. She and I also use to ride bicycles on the trail out towards Pana, Illinois. It was made from the old railroad tracks and ran alongside the highway. One time there was a big snake lying right in the middle of the trail and instead of just letting us both ride around it, she grabbed my bicycle in a panic, knocking me off almost on the thing! I was so angry. Another time I was riding alone out there just before dusk and a big old coyote came out and stood in the middle of the trail staring at me. I immediately turned my bike around and went the other way.
One night I woke up because my bed was shaking! Then the whole house shook and my first thought was oh my God we are going to fall into one of the coal mines! Growing up I had seen semis that had fallen through the streets like that in Springfield, but this turned out to be a real earthquake! One of the rarest things we ever experienced in prairie country. By the time I thought to get up and stand under the door frame, it was all over.
I lived here about three years, alternately seeing Eman8tions and thinking that we were not really good for each other when my youngest son offered to let me come back out to North Carolina and live in the mother-in-law apartment below their house. My nephews loaded all my furniture, including the piano, into a moving van. We put my Honda on a trailer to be towed behind it and one of my brother's ex-wives drove her car with me and one of my nephews behind this while my brother and his youngest son drove the truck. We were on our way to North Carolina.
It was not a perfect solution, but it seemed like the thing to do.
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