Dana, Indiana

July 21, 2015

I’ve only been on the road three days and already a routine is settling in – we humans (and dogs) crave routine. The first day was a lot of driving with about the only interesting thing to observe being a burly truck driver walking his gray-faced chocolate lab at a truck stop where Lyla and I were having lunch in the van. He walked her off-lead so must have thought she would obey when he called her back, but she didn’t. Daisy, the rough-looking driver, who surely was named Butch, called her.

I was eager to get to Dana the second day to visit not only the Ernie Pyle museum and his birth home, but also to walk the lonely land where Ernie grew from a child to a young man who wanted to leave his Indiana farm and travel. But trying to get through Clinton proved difficult, as several blocks of the downtown Main Street were blocked off. Looked like a fireman’s festival there were so many emergency vehicles and fire trucks to dodge as I backtracked looking for a way out.

As I finally found the way to exit town I saw a novel (to me) sight. Dozens of people were pushing very small cars (go-carts it turned out) on little wheeled carts. Intrigued, I stopped and Lyla and I approached a group of three men working on one of the go-carts. The wheels, which were about as big as three donuts, were being pulled off at a rapid rate and replaced. The men glanced at the thickening clouds and declared they would need to put on the rain tires. A fellow who looked like a good-sized sedan would be an appropriate fit for him seemed to be in charge, but it turned out that a much smaller man was the actual driver. Lyla and I stayed for one incredibly noisy race, which took place around several blocks downtown, so as to have a circular track. Someone said the tiny vehicles, which were only inches high, could go as fast as 80 miles-an-hour or more. 

Folks lined the sidewalks just mere feet from the speeding vehicles, which seemed bent on taking the corners at the fastest possible speeds. Portable barriers about two feet high were flanked by orange snow fencing to keep any wreckage at least a foot from spectators. Within five minutes of warm-ups we got to witness why so many emergency personnel attended – a black cart spun out at a corner and banged into the barriers, which miraculously held it from the crowd. The driver was helped off the track and two men lifted his cart off and as they say, the race went on. So did we.

We made a small detour because we saw a sign that said “Ernie Pyle School.” I expected an old one-room affair with a memorial sign out front, but it is actually the real school used by today’s young Indianan farm kids. It’s nice that they named it after Ernie. I hope those who want to go to college get to, but I also hope some stay on the farm, because without them we would get very hungry.

Finally, down the lonesome road so accurately described to me, I found what the locals call “the mound.” It’s a slight rise in the otherwise pancake-flat land with the ruler-straight roads, and on it is a lovely group of very old and some younger trees. Two ancient outbuildings whose window-less windows frame the pretty trees, lean in on themselves. It was very easy to imagine the blacksnakes and the hornet’s nest waiting inside the buildings to startle intruders (which I was not).

Mosquitoes buzzed my ears and I anointed myself with repellent, but they still followed, creating a small haze around my head. Then as I approached the bare area where I knew the house had to have been (they say it burned down), the insects mysteriously disappeared. It was about that time that I began to feel watched over in a good way, as if Ernie appreciated my appreciation. I hope I am correct that his mother is the one who planted all the flowers that lined the edges of the house site – of course they are still there, reappearing year after year. Day lilies, a rose of some sort (pin rose?), lacy blue and white flowers.

A huge tree near the end of the drive was forked part way up and I could imagine a young boy climbing that same tree a hundred years ago. The boy would have looked down on the ancestors of the Queen Ann’s Lace that festoons the ground at the base of the tree and out at the acres and acres of corn, soybeans and other crops that grew in all directions then and today. And he would have appreciated them and he would have growing in his mind the thought that the world is big and that in it were stories to tell.

Your observer,

Joy MillerUpton