Frank Hartzell visits the ancestral farm in Illinois, October 2004

Henry from Highway 29

The new lights of Henry that greet the traveler from the north might have impressed my grandparents, for about five seconds.
After a trip down I-180 and along Highway 29 on the winding road that follows the Illinois river and through the sleeping and darkened town of Putnam, these lights lured me. When I stopped , I found only the usual bored clerk, gasoline for $1.99 per gallon and hot dogs that have been spinning and spinning and spinning. These gaggles of gas station light bulbs are rare commodities in Henry in that they have both gotten brighter and more plentiful in the last 50 years.

Behind the curtain of lights, all else seems to be as dull and flat as when John C. Ernst and Bessie Sturm Ernst died in the 1970s. There are now two ultramodern, extra tall overhead light pollution special gas stations at the entrance to the sleepy town (as there are everywhere in America now.) Has anyone ever studied the changes to nocturnal biology of animals and humans caused by the glare plague of these stations, which originated in the 1990s? These changes now come with no discussion, no thought by anyone. All that matters is the bottom line and private property rights. How idiotic and how we have gone backwards in this country.

Another change to Henry I saw is the town no longer boasts "best town in Central Illinois by a dam site" The new sign offers no slogan whatsoever for humble old Henry. The dam "joke" was made even funnier by the fact that the Henry dam wasn't really a dam but a lock and was nearly impossible to find, even when standing on it fishing for alligator gar, carp, channel catfish and other Illinois River mud bombers. Dam it, we need such eccentricities now, on a trip across country where everything and everyone seems to be in search of blandness, bland food, bland architecture, and a nauseating sameness. I hope we didn't make too much fun of Henry's eccentric little dam joke! Bring it back!

A Bible church is the last site of urban salvation on the road to the farm and the only new development there since my childhood.

Rural Route 1

At the corner of the nameless road designated as Rural Route I by the post office, there is no name on the street sign, only survey numbers posted. The corner remains dominated by the massive Schneider's Orchard sign, now decorated in colored flags. This sign impressed me as a child, (I thought this must be a really cool orchard to have a sign nearly the size of the Golden Arches) but awe turned to bafflement when I followed the sign to the orchard and discovered it to a farmhouse with a little old lady baking pies, her husband selling apples. In a day of grandiose and garish signs, Schneider's is still impressive. Gone is Taylor's Orchard, the competitor next door and even the towering Taylor sign, which was also at the top of his driveway, on the hill on Rural Route number one above the farm. As I make the familiar right turn onto Rural Route I, a view a great heresy has been perpetuated by the people now farming "the Old Paul Fry place" (I say that to Sturmz knowingly as we pass by and see it out our right side window about 100 yards along).

These heretics are not growing soybeans, nor even corn, nor even wheat or oats but PUMPKINS, big beautiful brown colored ones. Steve tells me this is the color of the true commercial pumpkin, not that silly, modern yellow.

Why don't people in Illinois grow other cash crops? I have long believed the answer to this question is a painful Duh! With modern hybrids farmers could grow just about anything, save citrus crops. Yet there is no local market for anything else but endless miles of corn the world hasn't needed for 20 years (the price is the same as in 1970 according to no less of an authority than Bill Hawley). They have water in the summer here and tomatoes could be grown very cheaply, especially for ketchup. The land beckons but the people are the problem. There is no local imagination for change (challenging conventional "progress" and ideas is the ultimate sin in the reactionary thinkers that stalk the churches and even universities). Headed toward the farm, the huge pile of washing machines, refrigerators and dryers that awed me as a 9 year old are about 3/4 gone. Sad. Next, the Old Neuhalfen place, which had a vibrant chicken coop when I was 9, was left long ago by the Neuhalfens whom I understand fled for the splendor of Henry living. The place is rented, making it one of the few occupied homes I have seen in the countryside.

Topping the hill with a mile to go to the barn (timed long ago on my friend Sean's motorcycle) an idyllic farmhouse still sits on the left, empty, farmed up to the door and slowly crumbling as so many big, lovely Midwestern farmsteads now do. In a nation with a housing shortage these farmsteads sit empty by the hundreds. "Full of asbestos and lead piping" Steve says when I say how appealing the empty houses look. Having lived here and seen so many old houses he isn't as charmed by them as I am, I think. I still remember the house on the other side of RRI, bulldozed one day by Lawrence Rowe after the PWT family moved out, supposedly leaving an awful mess.

The slope above Crowe Creek reveals an apparently changeless scene. I see light in the 19th century Rowe homestead to the right. How could Lawrence still be way out here after all these decades? The tableau of fields runs from Crowe creek to the line of timber and I can see the field that Steve once used to grow his Indian corn on the left. Steve has always loved the farm and tried to preserve its traditions. He found some Indian corn, which is closer to the original corn ancestor and used to keep one row of it planted and seeds in the barn. He had to give this up and the hedge row, carefully guarded by grammie, was ripped out by the tenant for the sake of one or two more rows of crops.

Crowe Creek itself is drastically changed. There is no water in this creek which once used to be more like a river and used to run year round. Steve blames environmental agencies and the inability to dredge this creek. This seems bizarre to me. Someone has been using the creek as a road for four wheeler drive vehicles and it appears to have been bulldozed flat.

When I get to the road that leads to the farm I am startled by a new and incongruous sign. A green official street sign announces "Riverside Drive". There is of course, no river and not much of a creek and none alongside. Why would the big asphalt road have no sign and the gravel road have one? Is someone about to develop something?

Aromas of the Farm

Where Ruby's trailer used to be ( I would love the chance to give directions to someone out here and say that) the vegetation is dense and thick. Through my open window I inhale the potpourri of tree aromas. The sycamores, catalpas, black locust, cottonwoods, Osage orange and other bottomland trees combine to create a musky but clean smell that is truly unique to the farm, especially when the air is cold It is about 50 degrees in the morning when I arrive in early October. The air has flavor but not many allergens. The leaves have just begun to change on the farm the first time when I arrive. I feel sad when I see the big Buckeye tree just inside the gate has died, apparently of old age. Huge rouge brown grapevines and poison ivy vines are in every tree some as big as my leg, all snaking and twisting to create something like a fence that Frodo and Bilbo might encounter in middle earth.

Music of the Farm

Nothing is more amazing about the farm than the sounds one hears. This land looks full of life and color in the daytime. But the audible world comes alive at dusk.

Let's talk about the strangest noise on the farm; big rigs. Yes, tractor trailers. When I was a kid I walked up on the hill at night and heard the sound of one big rig after another. This whining and whooshing sound is eerie and sounded both far off and nearby. The roar of the big trucks is flattened to a whine by distance but somehow they also whoosh, which is a sound you only hear when you are right next to a big rig.

This was a mystery to the youthful me because of the oddity of the whine-whoosh noise and because even then I didn't think it possible that this many big rigs could be on Highway 29, located about four miles from the farm gate. The sound is clearly much more distant than that. Errreeeeerrrissshh. I hear the faint sound of the big trucks once again halfway up the hill the first night I arrive. The big hill out front is now covered with thorns and vegetation "just like when grammie and grampy came here in the 1950s and before the goats went to work" says Steve.

Now I know for sure there are not this many big rigs on Highway 29. Steve, too has heard the mysterious big rigs, and the many other sounds that reach the farm hilltop from far away. (It would be fun to get his version of this phenomenon.) Indians clearly inhabited this hilltop for generations and could probably hear their enemies coming from miles away. (If they had enemies.) This witchery of sound and space has many more facets. A familiar one is when a dog barks in the night, sounding a few hundred feet away but being no closer than a mile away. When I was a kid I heard several different dogs barking, sounding as if they were just up the draw. But when I left the barnyard and headed up the creek to investigate, there would be no more dog barking. Return to the barnyard and it might still be there.

Or it might not. All these sounds are intermittent. The big rigs are only there on some nights. There are also sounds of distant trains which sound really eerie. There is a train track along Highway 29 but some of the trains come from further away, I think. While the trains are hard to pin down, I concluded long ago that the big rigs MUST be on Interstate 80, which is 25 miles to the north. This sound would not be heard one mile from Interstate 80, yet can be heard clearly for hours on many a night on the farm. Seemingly impossible but I can think of no other explanation for the delicate sound. The big rigs are clearly driving at full speed from the sound and the rare big rig that does drive down Highway 29 usually does not go at that speed, nor make that whoosh. As I hear the distant echo whine-whosh again, my spine tingles, this memory not being exaggerated in my mind or any less mysterious after all these years.

There are also many natural noises on the farm to intrigue any listener. The first night of camping on the farm was when I heard the howl. Before this howl stopped me in my tracks I had heard the screech owl several times, a spooky and humorous sound.

Eeeeaaayyy..wwhoowhowhowhowho (forcefully). There is no mistaking a screech owl. I heard the familiar farm sound of the distant dog barking and then just up the hill came the sound of a bloodcurdling howl. What I heard sounded like a werewolf, a human sounding inflection to a howl that started low, bass gurfling and rose to a haunting and melodious but not too high climax. aaaarraagggaaaowwwwoooo. The howl came four times and was shocking and quite frankly scary. The barnyard was lit by a blazing full moon. Then came the most incredible moment of the trip, the big surprise, the shocker, the stunner. Sturmz, who had perked up and run out toward the howl upon the first note THEN BEAT a quick retreat into the van and was hiding inside with Ruby (who was trembling in terror but that is nothing new) Sturmz would not come back out when I called him. This compelled me to climb in and grasp him. He wasn't moving from his bed and was trembling. The black boy with the sometimes wolf-like eyes who grabs raccoons and tosses them into the air was scared by a howl. Where was my wild Sturmz?

Stunned.

I was too, actually.

One sound missing from the farm is the constant buzzing of mosquitos and flies. Steve attributes this to the frogs, which are everywhere, tiny bright green ones, bigger spotted light green ones and toads too. This is a renaissance year for amphibians. There never were so many when I was a kid here. But I always caught frogs in the creek and put them in the horse trough.

There are no frog sounds this late in the year.

Sadly missing are the nighttime calls of the Bobwhite BBBBBWHTTTTTTEEEE and the Whiporwhil, whhhhhppppwwwllllwwwllwwhlllwhhhhhwll which I always loved to hear by their namesake sounds. I strain for even a distant one but hear none of these birds. I also did not hear them in the 1980s and hoped they would be back. I do hear a hoot owl in the far distance but no other birds. An hour after the low howls I heard my first coyote, far away, ayayayayayayouuuuuu. The coyotes are out every night, but never again the werewolf sound.

The cacophony stopped before midnight and eerie silence followed. The scary howling sound of the night was actually the second most spectacular sound I ever heard on the farm. When I was 25 and fooling with antique cars by myself late at night, a lion roared at me late one evening, causing me to jerk upward and knock the hood closed on the 1950 Chevrolet we had purchased from Paul Fry. This backwards lunge disloged the stick holding up the hood and I heard with terror the sign of the bulb bursting on the drop cord light. The huge bulbous slamming hood made a sound like a double barrel shotgun going off when it hit. It didn't occur to me later that this sound surely scared the lion more than me. But that is a story for another day. I tell it now because I actually wondered if creatures on the farm howl only for me, if both were something not of this world. I didn't think too seriously of that but it did enter my mind because these two very strange noises both occurred in this place. As a tented worker in nighttime remote Alaska I never heard any such unidentifiable sounds.

During those first two nights on the farm there were creatures crashing in the bushes, sounding like a herd of cows. I can only imagine it was deer. Sturmz had no interest. He has little interest in deer at home but will usually chase them.

The Flora

While the fauna provided a glorious cacophony and were invisible, the flora were spectacular if soundless.

The variety of trees on the farm is splendid and unique. The huge scented cedars in the front yard of the house are surviving despite the death grip of the huge poison ivy and grapevines. The lowlands are full of large softwoods, catalapa, the snowy and massive sycamore, cottonwoods, osage orange and the most prevalent tree on the farm, maple (a hardwood) There is also the black, locust with the deadly spikes, three to six inch long toothpicks, razor sharp and hard. (see photo) Maples have taken over the top of the hill where Kirk set the fire. On the slopes and higher places are inhabitated by white oak, green ash, black oak, other oak varieties, chestnut rough bark hickory, wild black cherry, walnut, chestnut and the occasional rare butternut. The basswood is the only softwood in the higher parts of the farm.

Farm Hydrology

There are two creeks on the farm, both of which have water in them this October. The larger creek flows north-south along the length of the property, never changing much in altitude. It has cut a bed that is a consistent eight to 14 feet across. The little creek runs west to east, dropping fast in altitude. It is just two to five feet wide but is in very tall canyons and is fed by other little creeks which also capture runoff from steep and high hills. The current wet hydrology much like when the grandparents were alive. While Crowe Creek has dried up for whatever reason, both farm creeks and now two natural springs are alive. Since their deaths, the creek has usually dried up by Mid-summer and floods have occurred along the waterway. Steve told mom he had to swim across the barnyard at some point in the past. The hydrology was all wacky when mom and dad tried to relocate there. Now the creeks have natural pools, even the little creek, which at one time dried up in SPRING.

I find a new (in the past 10 years) spring, a tennis ball-sized hole in the rock at the northeastern corner of the property along the creek. The jagged little fountain in the hard clay about five feet above the creek bed. The spring (see photos) bubbles out ice cold and clear water. The old spring (which was really a creek fed by a spring at the top of a hill) is also running, although I do not go to the source.

Humanity Losing Battle on Farm

I visited the farm five times on my trip, counting back and forths to Steve's house. That first time, I arrived from Dubuque at night and removed all the stuff from inside my van. The next morning, I walked up to the porch of the old house and found Aunt Ruby's BBQ still there, with mice nests in it . I pulled it out and started a fire. I made coffee which was bliss, then realized I need an outhouse and I did thank mom for packing toilet paper. It was amazing to see how nature is taking back the house, both garages and all the outbuildings but not the big old barn or Steve's big steel building.

I hope to see the giant white oak on the northern (Rowe) side of the property and the giant basswood tree on the opposite end of the property. The white oak has died, Steve says. Strangely it is also gone and we can't find a stump. Old Backbone he named it. The kids took their pictures with the giant, redwood like but now it is gone? I am enchanted by the other large white oaks we find during our search of the north rim of the property but then I get mad. The preacher or some deer hunter in his club has built a deer stand in the largest and healthiest white oak on the place, sinking nails into priceless hardwood. The preacher and the hunters also started trails through the wood to drive ATV's on. We find these in several places on the property. Easy walking but also easy access.

I fail to find the time to visit the Basswood tree, which could be the state tree of that species, meaning the largest Basswood in Illinois. It is six to seven feet in diameter, or was when I last saw it. Steve hopes to save an enormous hedge (osage orange) tree that dwells along the creek (see picture) The revitalized creek is ripping it away, exposing the bright orange roots of the giant. There are so many of whatever creatures eat the hedge apples of the osage orange that we find only one on the farm, but lots oft chewed residue of apples that have been devoured. We see only one squirrel and I take it that some nocturnal creature such as a raccoon may be eating the hedge apples.. The deer may be the creature doing this. Their tracks are everywhere, as thick as human tracks on a "secret" Marin County back trail.

I am fascinated by the enormous number of flat rocks, especially in little creek. These seem to be river rock, worn by the creek but all flat rather than round. A slate-like strata must have caused this Along little creek are numerous old iron farm implements and I find some black rubber hoses and the collapsed old horse barn that dwelt up there when I was a kid.

Grampy's old tool shed has lost its roof. I helped put a new roof on in the 1970s but the wood has collapsed now. All the buildings are being consumed by vegetation and decay.

The Barn Prevails

The 19th century barn is the building in the best shape, looking much as it did thirty years ago. Steve replaced the roof 25 years ago, grampie 50 years ago. The roof is still in good shape, with darkness total inside the hay mow in the middle of the day. There are six cars on the farm, including grampies 1947 International truck, which sits complete in its usual spot a few hundred feet into the woods along the creek.

The rich white paint job on the house has held up, affording the house an external dignity that belies the collapsed floor of the living room inside and the crumbling state of the building. I find a basketball sized hole in the room I used to sleep in upstairs. Steve fixes this, incredibly, the next week. Steve loves the farm and does his best to preserve the old place. Steve and I remove about 20 trees which have grown up around the house, gobbling it and keeping it wet. We cut some away from his shed, too.

Who let the dogs in?

Most fascinating about the house is the fact a canine creature (or creatures) at least the size of Sturmz has been living inside, or was until a few months ago. There are literally thousands of whitened dog poops inside the house in piles up to two feet high, plus the skeletons of small animals including a distinctive weasel and other bones of what appear to be rabbits and possibly raccoons. The upstairs window is lined with gray hair. The wild dog-wolf creature must have laid upstairs looking out the window. The poops are all in the huge piles away from the window and the bed of the creature or creatures. The poops are now petrified and turned white by algae. There is no smell. I think the creature may have been gone for a year or more. What a den! I wonder if it had puppies in there.

The Farm and Frank

The farm is still a happy place to me. To me the farm is mostly the wild and diverse outdoors. The demise of the house and other buildings doesn't seem so sad to me, more of a natural process. The farm is the only location that has remained consistent in my life and while I miss the folks, the land and I can still talk. I can still sit at the ancient Indian fire pit on top of the hill on the big rock where Indians carved arrowheads and kept warm, and imagine what the distant sounds must have been then. I can walk the old coal mine and the fences that grampie built. I took pictures of the fruitless efforts of Sturmz to wriggle under one particularly sturdy section of fence. I love this durability, this lack of change. The creek is still loaded with a greater diversity of rocks than anywhere in California.

I show Joel my favorite path, along the top of the "invincible cliff" (named by Steve) and along a ridge that has a fence on one side and a leaf-covered hillside that drops off like a cliff. Joel seems to enjoy this walk and I not only remember just where it is but get to be the one to show the route to him. I am amazed that this path has not eroded and the leaves still are mounded up to a foot deep all down the slide to the creek bank. This is a place that I always thought was in transition and which I expected to have been destroyed by natural erosion forces.

Stone axe

I find a real nice double clam fossil in the creek and take two big stepping stone rocks for Fort Bragg and find a plant stem fossil in little creek. Eric still holds the all time prize for the most incredible find on the farm, a mastodon tooth. Joel and I both hope to find one but don't. No arrowheads for a while on the farm but pieces of flint. We found a carved stone axe once. I also refind some Indian pottery, buried right where I hid it many years ago. There is a place on the front porch where Eric, Frank, Steve and my friend James Gay signed their names after we poured the concrete.

The farm is a special place, not having been spoiled, logged and the timber intact, diverse. The Indians could come back here and recognize their home. Grammie and Grampy could come back as young people and clean it all up and start over and have more chickens, donkeys, horses (and NO pigs). I leave the farm reluctantly; always thinking the day is close when I won't see it again.

I close the big gate, turn left, drive over the creek and go to the end of Riverside Drive and cross into the Rowe driveway. The Rowe homestead is still as neat and junk free as ever, with the polished, perfect lawn that nobody ever seems to be mowing.

Effie died almost two years ago. Lawrence is as honest, smiling and brusk as ever. He frankly says he doesn't remember Frank, other than that I have red hair. Later, he does remember the hunting trip we took together when I was 12 and he was 62, I somehow remember. The ages are exactly right in my memory. Now I am 40 and he is 90. We hunted all night. Not all night, he corrects me. The raccoons don't stay up all night and neither did we, he informs me. Lawrence recalls the exploits of his dog, recalls the death of the dog and says he never got another dog because he and Effie planned to move to town but she died and he didn't go. Now he may be forced to, another winter coming.

Lawrence perks up when I tell him about the howling sound. He asks if it was too low for a coyote. Yes. And no barking? None.

"That's a wolf" he says, nodding.

Lawrence has heard the howling, meaning this is not my own creature. I feel a sense of let down and feel a bit foolish also Lawrence wouldn't be concerned about what experts might say about his place and the likelihood of a real timber wolf on it. Thank goodness somebody can think straight.

He also doesn't offer any spectacular explanation of the Crowe Creek dryup. Maybe people do drive on it now. It is just how it is. He frowns at me. For change to stay away so long, it requires bulwarks who are not fazed by much of anything, such as Lawrence Rowe.

Lawrence and the farm seem indestructible and changeless, bulwarks to progress for half a century. But up the creek I saw a rock with oil on it. And Lawrence is getting to be deaf and isn't sure he can stand another winter alone, the bulwark and the land are much more fragile than they seem. The little red-headed boy who loved the farm so much is gone too, another wandering muse with the Indians, the Ernsts, the Dalmatian Duke, the mongrel Leroy, the Airedale Tiny, the horse thieves who lived on the farm in the 19th century and were hung, the horse Charlie and even my old rooster, Thomas. Who will live here a 100 years from now? Will the 150 acres stay together? How long will the ridiculous forces that produced the glaring gas station hold off from turning the farm into something equally hideous? In a backward place only the worst kind of progress can take hold.

Will humanity ever grow up, or at least be as mature as those who lived out here 100 years ago and actually crafted with style their homes, their lives, their farms? Those silly people didn't realize the modern Republican ethic- that nothing counts in the universe but the bottom line. Why make anything look nice? Why be considerate of your neighbor? These are questions that come to mind when viewing the relics of the recent past after traveling 2500 miles through the modern shrines to the cheapest, the most unfettered and worst of everything (such as McDonalds). Something unique like the farm stands in defiance of cowardly sameness, of blind obedience to myths and all the modern thinking of the corporate age. Grammie resisted spraying, resisted overuse of the soil, ideas that are 100 percent correct but ideas which have no validity with the ethic our culture forces. The hedgerows were of course ripped out after she died. Someday the error of living for the bottom line and the psychotic myth of "free enterprise" will be recognized and society will grow up. Until this shift happens, the farm, along with all places and people who chose to be different can only be allowed to survive as long as it can be ignored.

The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art, or sat slothfully by while they were destroyed. We have passed that stage. We treasure pictures and sculptures. We regard Aztec temples and Roman triumphal arches and Gothic cathedrals as of priceless value, but, we are, as a whole, still in that low state of civilization where we do not understand that it is also vandalism to wantonly destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird.
---Theodore Roosevelt

Some artifacts and fossils from the farm, click for larger image. The "celt" is a kind of stone axe.

 

One side of the celt

Other side

Thickness

Fossil clam

Trilobite