Since I grew up in a rural area that boasts a national interstate,
three state highways, and a river, canal and various rail lines that were of
monumental importance to the open settling of the rest of the United States, I
take it for granted that travel culture is a part of all Americans’ experience.
Fayette County, Indiana is home to Connersville, once dubbed “Little Detroit.” (
The Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg, Ansted, Empire, Lexington and McFarlan were all manufactured there.) Within about
an hour in every direction is a major airfield, as well as smaller municipal air
fields here and there in the Whitewater Valley. The “Planes, Trains, and
Automobiles” theme has been a very familiar one to me all my life.
The time I spent living in the St Louis area was very good.
All the river culture and the spirit of exploration and adventure were just
natural to me. I suppose it was very similar to living with a deep attachment
to the past and how it shaped the present here in Indiana. I loved the history
of the Louis and Clark Expedition. It was not lost on me how that expedition
was being mirrored all over the United States at that early time in our
history. I loved how the various St Charles County, Missouri museums would
display artifacts of river travel of that time. I was surprised to see many
things that I had grown up seeing as a matter of fact in the Reynolds’ Museum
in Connersville Indiana and Conner Prairie in Fishers Indiana. Of course this
is what they would have used and carried along with them. Of course these would
have been the journal entries in the leather covered precious pages saved
through time.
How did I know this in my heart, not just in my mind? I had
grown up in the 1970’s in rural East Central Indiana, after all.
It was BECAUSE I had grown up in East Central Indiana in the
1970’s that I could know. There was so much heritage still standing all around
me - towns that John Conner and his brother
William had started (all before 1813) were still conducting small trade along
the Whitewater River. I guess the Conners were always my Louis and Clark. Take
a look at any books written about the years that “the new west” that was
Indiana was opened for settlement. Most of what took place in Indiana became an
unofficial model of how to shape the rest of the United States. It certainly
became a model of how to civilize the rest of the United States, be that good
or bad.
The small store that my father took me to, Nulltown Store,
had the feel and look of a place that had been there much longer than logic
would have allowed. That building is still there and now and then there is a
business that makes a go of it for a while. That store has become,
unconsciously, the measure I have held every business to in my life. It not
only offered things for sale, it offered a constant in culture. There is
something about a tall lean wood frame structure that has stood next to a
canal, railroad track, and raging river longer than the oldest resident can
even remember. There is something about a structure that beckons you to stop
even though it is in a dangerous curve on an over travelled state road. Literally,
it is but mere FEET from the road. There is something about a place that you
walk into that smells old, warm, and inviting, making you want to sit on an a
stack of feed sacks in the corner while the old men sit around the iron pot-
bellied stove telling lies and gossip, spitting tobacco juice and whittling’
sticks into nothing at all. There is
something about a place where the ladies behind the counter slip you the
occasional off limits candy if you are very young. There is something about a
place that becomes the unofficial town hall and cultural center. There is
something about a place that you talk about 45 years after the fact and there
are hundreds of people who know just what you are talking about…..
Stone arch and covered
wooden bridges, millraces and mills, barns that were constructed with German
settler hand tools over 150 years ago still being used, almost undisturbed
forests to get gloriously lost in, waterfalls and cliffs hiding small caves alongside
rolling fields of corn – these are the images of East Central Indiana that are
mine.
Funny how I had never thought of this before. When I reached
my teen years I had a deep sense (as many do) that life was passing me by. I
never once stopped to think that it could have been a consequence of living in
a place that was steeped in history and also was on the cusp of industry and
innovation. Here in East Central Indiana we wrestle with the angst of being
proud of our heritage and wanting to encourage progress.
I think at times we will be the ones – as in the past – to show
the rest of the country how to navigate the new and sometime scary paths we
will take in the years ahead.
All this I am thinking of before I start my new installment of
“OH, Suzanna! What Settler’s Said – Inns and Travel”
-Suzanna
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