LOVE LETTER TO RUSHVILLE

I spent my very first Christmas in the small town of Rushville, Illinois. I was a month old and my mother, Marijane Dill Duncan, was a Rushville girl, a 1938 graduate of Rushville High (at that nice old school torn down a few years ago). Two years before, in 1942, Marijane had married the handsome navy cadet Robert B. Duncan. And then, in the spring of 1945, my mother, believing her husband was going to be shipped to the Asian front, decided to accompany him to the West Coast leaving her six month old daughter—me—with her maternal grandparents, Charles and Florence Dill of 149 E. Washington Street, Rushville. And then the whole family was together again that November to celebrate my first birthday.

I believe my love affair with that little Illinois town of Rushville—and with my grandparents—began in those early formative years—and it has never waned. Though I never actually lived in Rushville—never went to school there, I have always considered it my hometown. I came visiting as a child at six, at twelve—swimming in Scripps Park, walking down to the drugstore for sodas, bicycling around the square, and spent almost my whole 16^th summer there, getting to know grandparents, my aunts and uncles and cousins in Peoria and the town of Rushville. I was never bored: biking, going down to the square, learning to drive with Grandpa, teasing Grandpa, taking sunbaths, gardening with Grandma, talking to Grandma about the family past, meeting her friends, reading up in the middle bedroom papered with little roses, bedroom that had been my mother’s.

After that, there was a succession of summers, Christmases, summers, Christmases. In 1968 however my wonderful fun-loving grandfather Charlie Dill died. It was my first real loss—I was nineteen and I deeply mourned that grandpa of mine and do to this day.

Visits continued to Grandma Dill, to her Victorian house, by then painted blue. Year after year I would come, sometimes alone, often with other members of my family, all of whom loved Rushville too. As soon as the car bringing me “home” would reach the Rushville city limits, my heart would start beating, and  I would start to pick out all the familiar landmarks: the square, the bandstand, the courthouse, Penny’s, Vedder’s drugstore (Morland and Devitt later) and then, turning down Washington street, my grandparents’ house!

But life is change and grandmothers are as fragile as mimosa blossoms—one day they are with you and then, they are gone. I was lucky enough to have my grandmother for nearly fifty years of my existence—but she died in 1993, and the house was sold, and it seemed my life in Rushville and the life of my family there was over. At that time, I wrote an “Elegy to Rushville” published in the Rushville Times the week of my grandmother’s memorial service at the Methodist Church.

But my French husband François and myself are travelers. We live in France and every year we head somewhere in the world, east or south or north or west, and 1997 saw us crossing the USA from West to East and once we got close to Illinois, I knew I just had to stop in Rushville! We stayed a couple nights, and during that time visited my grandmother’s house, bought by the Cox family and entirely renovated to its original design (my grandmother had made many changes, not all of them exactly in keeping with the nature of a Victorian house!), and it was gratifying to see the house so lovingly restored. I also visited all my old haunts: the drugstores, Baker’s jewelry (every time I would come to Rushville, this was a favorite place to go, to buy a few things but also to get such fine repair from Jack Baker), visiting friends, putting flowers on the family graves, having a steam-burger and soda at the drugstore etc.

A second trip took place in 2001 just after Christmas when I came for a couple days with one of my cousins, daughter of my mother’s sister Betty. That time we saw Rushville blanketed in snow, recalling some of our happiest memories when we visited Grandma at Christmas. (We recalled in particular one time, when that same cousin, myself and my brother drove from the East Coast to spend Christmas in Rushville. During the long car trip, we formed a little Christmas carol trio! We arrived about 2 am and decided to awake our grandparents by singing to them—and so we did, positioning ourselves just at their bedroom window and bellowing out a few rousing carols. The shutters flew up and our grandparents thrilled but also alarmed faces appeared with their simultaneous thoughts: our grandchildren! the neighbors! And indeed, the wonderful Gertie who had the house next door at that time threw up her shutters too, shouting to us, “Merry Christmas, Kids.”)

François and I were back again in the States in the summer of 2007, on a quick road trip from SF to Chicago for my husband’s photography projects. Once in Chicago, of course we had to head down to Peoria and then to Rushville, though that visit was very brief, just an afternoon.

And now, in this summer of 2012 I’ve just made a fourth trip back to Rushville since our family closed up the house definitively in 1993. It seems I can’t stay away. We’re on another road trip, this one from East (we started in Washington DC) to West where we will end up in my “other” home of Oregon for my 50^th high school reunion. (I remember attending with my mother her 40^th in Rushville in 1978!) As we drove into the town from Peoria this time, I felt rising up within me the same excitement I’ve always felt—though accompanied with a little painful twist of my heart.  Such a visit back is always bittersweet, reminding me of happy memories but memories that are firmly in the past. I cannot just open the door to that blue Victorian house of my grandmother’s and go back in—I must forever remain on the outside.

We reached the square. It looked beautiful. I had read in the Rushville Times that the good people of Rushville had voted to retain the lovely brick streets though more expensive to maintain. I expected no less of Rushville, a town which cares about past and its heritage!

It was about 3:30 pm, the shops still open, among them Baker’s jewelry. I knew this shop when it was Jones’s—my grandmother worked part-time there in her younger days and my Christmas and birthday gifts were often jewelry when I was growing up. Then, 37 years ago, Jack Baker and his wife took it over—and I got into the habit of bringing jewelry to be fixed to him—all the way from France when I moved there! This time was no exception. I had two rings needing work and a silver chain. I was only going to be in Rushville a day or so but in I went. Jack was as usual just where I’d left him five years ago—behind his counter.

He saw me come in. “Nancy!” he exclaimed.

He couldn’t know how that pleased me. To be recognized immediately. I’m back in “my” town and the first person I see knows my name..

Next—we called on Marian Kindhart, with whom we would stay that night. Marian was for many years my grandmother’s guardian angel and with her cheerful open nature and news “from the outside” Marian’s daily visits to Grandma were a tonic for her—and for us as well when we were visiting. She and her husband Wilbur took us on a little tour of the town and surrounding countryside: first going by Grandma’s house. Marian, who knows everyone in town, didn’t know who was living there since the Coxes, purchasers from Grandma and restorers of the house, had sold it—but whoever it was (I would learn their names later) had repainted the house a lovely green with red trim—and had added two porches, one on the side, one on the back. Were they original to the house? I don’t know. But I had often said to Grandma how I regretted her taking off the front porch—now there were three to sit on! (And the next day, when I took a tour around the house I took the opportunity to sit—for the first, and last time—on Grandma’s restored front porch.) We then drove out past Scripp’s park, past the home where our good friend Elizabeth Stiver had lived—that gutsy independent art teacher who made the best butter from her cow Rachel and had the best eggs from her chickens. We drove on into the countryside where we sited a deer crossing a field. The sun was descending by then, turning everything golden—the end of day had always been my favorite time in Rushville, I loved to take my bike and ride out into the fields just at that time of day when things had cooled off a bit.

Marian had told me about some of our family’s friends in Rushville, all in their nineties, all still in their own homes and the next day, François and I went visiting! In the morning we stopped by Don Boehm’s big house with its pillared porch to say hello. Don’s wife Liz was my mother’s closest friend growing up, and they remained friends all their lives. I too came to be friends with Liz and would always see her on my visits to Rushville, loving to hear about her family but also about her work for her town of Rushville and the organization PRIDE that she founded. I knew Don well too—he was “my” banker in the town and I knew that I could always go into the bank on the corner of the square with a check from wherever (often Oregon) and could cash it with no problem there, for everyone knew me.

Don looked much the same only a little frailer, not quite so much the substantial banker as before. He was surprised of course to find us at his front door, but kindly invited us in and we chatted a little in his shadowy living room with curtains muffling the outside. The impression I had was of lots of imposing furniture, the three of us a little dwarfed by it, and especially Don, sunk into a huge armchair. He lives alone now—Liz died of Alzheimer’s a few years after my mother died. He and Liz once visited my parents out on the Oregon coast—I have the picture of the four of them, probably the age I am now, all looking healthy and happy. He is the only one left of them now. We talked a little of our trip, and of my past visits, how I loved to come to his bank, and he smiled at that, but throughout our visit,  I could feel the loneliness and the solitude of a house once lively with Liz’s presence. A house of shadows.

The second person we visited, after lunch, was Bill Tyree. Bill had been a special friend of my mother’s—they were in school together—and also of my grandmother’s. A visit from Bill to the house on Washington Street was always an event. Grandma would get out her best coffee and tea service, we would have goodies from Roger’s Bakery or Grandma would bake something herself, and we would sit out in the living room (instead of the back TV room!). I loved those visits too because of our great compatibility of spirit and thought with Bill in so many domains, and because of the liveliness and far-ranging scope of our conversations. Bill opened the door as soon as we knocked (we had called earlier and told the caretaker we’d stop by in the early afternoon), as dapper and elegant, in brown jacket and scarf, as I always have remembered him. Ninety-six years old and looking wonderful! And our conversation, joined by François, was as animated and far-reaching as ever, how many subjects we covered in our visit, from politics to family to writing to philosophy to literature and reading—and there was a special moment when Bill confessed to me, Marijane’s daughter, all these years later, about his high school crush on my mother, affection that did not wan with the years. How could I not love him for that even if I didn’t already love him for himself alone!

We talked too of my father, Bill had known him well and as a good Democrat, appreciated my father’s political accomplishments. He told me what a great admirer he had been of my father, yes, he repeated, a great great admirer. We were seated in Bill’s living room, full of shadows too, blinds down against the summer sun. I reminded Bill of how I had come there one day with Grandmother when his mother was still alive, how she had given us the best fudge I had ever tasted! Bill got up then to show me a photograph of his mother on the wall. We talked and we talked and we filled an hour, an hour and a half, and I didn’t want our time to be over, wanted our conversation to go on and on, I was so happy because being with Bill was as if I’d recovered, for that time, my whole life in Rushville: my mother, my grandmother, my own youth. I was bathed in the memories of that past, cherishing the illusion (while knowing it was illusion) that when I left Bill, I would just walk one block down St. Louis, turn left on Washington Street, go right into the big blue house and tell Grandma all about my visit.

But we actually left all together and in our car after taking some photographs of Bill and me on  his front porch. Bill and his companion had appointments to get their hair cut and asked if we could take them down to the square. We were only too happy to oblige (I used to drive Grandma to her hair appointment every week when I was visiting)—so our farewells were said in the hairdresser’s salon—making it just a little easier (but not much) to say goodbye to Bill. I knew he hated to say it as much as I did, and I knew we both had the same thought: we shall never have another such conversation. We shall never see each other again, and yet there is such love and tenderness between us. I have had other such poignant last moments with beloved friends, and they are always heart-breaking, imbibed with the knowledge you shall not meet again. How do we bear it? Yet at the same time this meeting between Bill and me was so miraculous, so unexpected for both of us, a divine gift. Nearly all my parents’ generation is already gone, and I had been sure Bill, even older than my parents, would not still be here. But he was! And we had our brief yet so precious time together, moments for both of us to cherish in memory. (And it would be recorded by a slightly altered text from this one that I would send to the Rushville Times, with a photo of Bill and myself, and that would be published on the front page a couple weeks after my visit. Thus Bill would see in black and white just how much I treasured our time together.)

We had a third very moving visit later that afternoon. Marian drove us to see Harold Davis, who was also in the class of  1938 with my mother and I had the pleasure of hearing a second admission about Mom—Harold had a crush on her in 6^th grade! Harold was a medic in France during WW II, he spent two years there, and so whenever I would come back to Rushville, I would always be greeted with a “Bonjour, comment ça va!” from Harold. And so it was on this visit—Harold greeting me in French with a delighted and cheerful welcome. I used to see Harold walking downtown—we’d stop and talk awhile—or taking collection at the Methodist church, but time has laid its heavy hand too on this most friendly and active of fellows. His feet and legs are giving out on him—he must use a walker to get around, though he’s pretty dexterous with it. This made me sad. And then right away he talked of his wife Martha—her absence, like Liz’s, loomed immense in this unpretentious ranch house. She has Altzeimer’s as Liz did and she’s now in the local retirement home—and Harold asks, “Did I do right to put her there?” with unusual anxiety in his voice? We all try to reassures him. He goes everyday to see his wife, and every day she asks him about coming home.

We recall happier times: his visit to Paris some years ago—he and his wife Martha came to our little fourth floor walk-up in Montmartre!

This is a sunny room, and I look around it. I thought I put up a lot of family pictures on my wall—and Grandma had a wonderful wall of photos going up the grand staircase, and another later (that I added for her) in the TV room—but Harold (and presumably Martha) have used family photos as their primary decoration—children and grandchildren hang everywhere in their house. Harold lifts himself up from his chair, grabs his walker, and he’s off to take me on a tour, to show me his family. Three very large color photos of three pretty girls hang in the place of honor in the living room. These are his three daughters. But when he says the name of the second one, his voice falters, tears come to his eyes. This daughter died of MS. And in the place of the cheerful Harold I’d always known is a mourning father with a breaking heart, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, certainly none of us here witnessing it. Sorrow lives in this house of the many photographs. (And I learn later from Marian that a second daughter is also ill with MS.) But I ask about other photos and Harold wipes away his tears and tells me proudly about each of his grandchildren. They are clearly the joy of his life. He would like to show me every single photo—we go into two other rooms including one where he eats his solitary meals in front of the TV—all the rooms are covered with framed photos. In a little back room he shows me something different however—a photo of a big black snake that he caught not long ago in a barn!

It’s now late afternoon, and yes, as with the other visits today, it’s time to go and it’s hard to leave. My heart feels sore and battered—I couldn’t take another such visit and with its accompanying goodbye. 

We all go outside for some photos. Harold has a big American flag hanging on his wall and he and I pose in front of it. He has recovered his cheerful demeanor—this is the fellow I would meet on every visit to Rushville with his bigger than life smile, this wonderful friendly man who has always been so kind to me and who was my mother’s schoolmate. Though I live in a county of “bonjours”, I believe his is the one I’ve most loved and will most miss.

The long day ended in returning to Baker’s jewelry shop on the town square where Jack had most kindly worked most of the day to repair my rings. We had also visited during the day the Rushville cemetery with a few sprigs of berries and flowers for my grandparents’ tomb, and I had gone into the Jail Museum as well (a wonderful museum that just keeps growing) where kind volunteers found information for me about the present owners of “Grandma’s house.” And then, as I was getting a few things in the grocery store, there was someone else I knew, Vic Jackson who formerly had Jackson’s shoe shop where my sister Bonnie worked for awhile. Yes, I was even running into people I knew in Rushville—is that not proof I still belong?!

All day long, my photographer husband recorded my encounters with my friends in Rushville so I would have those photo memories of the visit for my own walls, so far away in France. The last photo we took before we left the next morning was one of me at one of the entrances to the town, posing with the Rushville town signpost. I had my arms around it, a farewell embrace. Goodbye Rushville, little town of my heart.