Today I am mourning for the lost U.S. Senate and the dashed hopes of a Maine without a bully in the governor’s pulpit. NPR details the grim news as I drive from Galena, Illinois, to Urbana, Indiana. I voted a month ago and have been removed from the political posturing and campaign shenanigans, but the election results forced me to reenter the real world. After the analysis and editorializing of Monday (Wednesday?) morning quarterbacks, Diane Rehm hosted an uplifting show with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, who sang and talked about their 50 years of music and protest (along with Mary Travers). And their commitment to carrying on the good fight. The day got better as I belted out along with them, “If I Had a Hammer.”
I arrived in Galena, Illinois, late the previous night, about 7:30 p.m. after a near-miss with a beautiful, antlered deer. I saw what I thought was a person on the side of the road, swerved and just brushed against the big buck. I could see his face and feel his presence close to me. I felt a link to him—both of us happy our encounter ended well. Not long afterward, a skunk scuttled across the road in front of me. Again, I just missed him and was equally happy to have come away unscathed. John has plenty of skunk de-scenter, but it wouldn’t have done me any good.
Driving across Iowa again after leaving Minneapolis, I had to train myself not to react to the tumbleweed as it rolled into my path and onto the other side of the road. Big balls of what looked like twine tumbled into the road and beyond, carried by the winds that blow steadily across the plains. The Mississippi River made its appearance again in Illinois. Hard to believe its mighty waters reach from Minnesota to Illinois and all the way to New Orleans.
Steve, a former VISTA who volunteered to put me up for the night in Galena, had been working at the polls all day and had not returned when I arrived. Marlin, a handyman who works with him on his house, greeted me instead. We had an interesting chat about his travels and his work delivering supplies to food pantries in the area. When I told him I was from Maine, he asked (kiddingly) if that was in Canada, since it was “waaaay up there.” (Of course, Illinois is 40 degrees North latitude and the southern part of Maine is only 43.4 degrees North).
When Steve arrived home, he told me about his service in AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps (he served for eight months in Jordan), and his VISTA assignment with the food bank where Marlin works. Instead of taking the stipend as I did, he opted for the educational benefit and studied Spanish in Honduras and Argentina. Now that his VISTA stint has ended, he’s focusing on finishing his house. Located on a country hillside, the house is open concept with a loft, beautiful tiled floors upstairs and down, and huge windows and skylights with views of fields and sky. He said that now that the corn crops have been cut, he often sees deer grazing in the fields. I slept in a downstairs bedroom on a wonderfully comfortable bed.
John would have envied the huge ladder in the entryway, which Steve purchased in order to work on the skylight trim. As big as it was, however, the ladder didn’t quite reach. Steve wasn’t sure what his next step would be. Meanwhile, the ladder rests on the wall below the skylight, the ends covered with a pair of socks to protect the finish.
Before I left for Indiana, Steve provided a delicious breakfast of nuts and dried fruit mixed with cereal, orange juice, and strong coffee. He told me about his life and the twists and turns it had taken from graduate school to his work as a driver (including a brief stint as a fork lift operator), various other jobs, and as a security guard at high-end stores over the past decades. A self-described gambler, he has visited casinos throughout the world. He gave me a magnet from a casino in Reno as a keepsake and a book and sent me off with a yogurt drink and a map of Illinois, after outlining an alternate route, which I took, to avoid Chicago traffic.
The traffic into Indiana, however, held me up for at least a half-hour. A huge line of trucks loomed over my little car as we waited for who-knows-what to clear so we could continue on our way.
I finally arrived at Sherilyn and Phil’s in Urbana at around 5 pm after losing an hour when I crossed another time zone somewhere within Indiana. Now I’m on Maine time, so I should be used to it by the time I arrive home. I hadn’t seen Sherilyn since 1978 and yet she looked just as I remembered her. It was so good to see her again! We’ve already begun the recitation of stories our families shared during our long association. Her father and mine were Army buddies, and the two families became close friends. Every two or three years, one family would travel to Indiana or Maine for a visit. There’s a lot of history there.