The Back 40: Reflections

By Joseph M. Nixon

Recalling an early upbringing in rural Illinois, the author relates the natural and academic influences on his philosophy beginning as a boy, including hunting, trapping, farming, and living in a small Midwestern community. The people, places, and events characteristic of small town life are recalled with a flair toward humor and an appreciation of times less hectic. Saturday night fish-fry gatherings, oiling the local streets, hunting, gathering natural resources, a myriad of other events comprising the fabric of small-town life intertwine in a story of individual development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524650421

Joseph M. Nixon

A retired anthropologist, Dr. Nixon lives and writes in Southern California, a region known for cultural and linguistic variation. Vocational interests include history, archaeology, linguistics, and the Old West. His approach to writing includes humanistic elements imbedded by a strong education and an occasional professional venture into local history. In The Back 40, he returns to his roots in Central Illinois to tell the story of his small hometown during the 1950s.

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© 2016 Joseph M. Nixon, Ph. D. All rights reserved.

Introduction: Linda Nelson, B. A., M. Ed.

Illustrator: H. Murphy, B. A.

Frontispiece: Clara’s clock. Seth-Thomas Kitchen Mantle Clock, No. 484, late 1800s.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/05/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5043-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5044-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5042-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919012

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Table of Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

FAMILY REUNIONS

421 MAIN ST, CHESTERFIELD

Friends & Neighbors

All around Town

The Suburbs

A VERY FINE HOUSE

Don’t Fence Me In

Our Back Yard

Compass Corn

Mother’s Kitchen

Technology Comes to Town

LIFE ON MAIN STREET

Chesterfield Grade School

Carlinville Consolidated High School (CCHS)

Summertime

Reflections: Our Homestead

THE BACK 40

Clearing Brush

Life among the Hickories

King Tut’s Shed

BEYOND OUR HOMESTEAD

TIME TO RELEASE THE BIRDS

Undergrad I: General Studies

The Bag Man

The Teamster

Undergrad II: Playing with Bugs

MEDIC!

CARDINAL GLENNON CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL

THE GRAD STUDENT

Back to the Lab

Anthropology

SCHOOL’S OUT! THE PRIVATE SECTOR

THE PROFESSOR

DINÉTAH: LIFE AMONG THE PEOPLE

COMES AN ECHO ON THE BREEZE

CALIFORNIA HERE WE COME

REFLECTIONS

ANNOTATED ARCHIVE

Illustrations

Figure 1. Chesterfield & Environs ca. 1950

Figure 2. Homestead, 421 Main Street

Figure 3. First Floor Plan, Alton Way Hotel

Figure 4. Please Stand By

Figure 5. Chesterfield Grade School ca. 1955

Figure 6. Author & Father, January 1970

Had I a final wish to be anywhere

I’d choose a hickory wood during the first snowfall

to meet Mother and Father there waiting.

June 2015

DEDICATION

Family first. A commitment Mother and Father instilled into my Sister and me. What follows is their story entwined with that of a daughter and son into which they planted themselves. This is to their remembrance, to add color to grandchildren’s stories they tell their children. Different times prevailed when Mother and Father raised the two of us, but commitments do not change. Family first.

But a family cannot be isolated; it depends on friends and neighbors. We had many in Chesterfield: Avis at the bank, ‘Bear’ helping raise us as an older Brother and occasional Father substitute, Clara providing guidance and direction beyond parenting, Beth who taught 4th grade at Chesterfield Grade School, Ross the hermit who lived alone in his shack, Willard whose recipe for elephant stew hallmarked his sense of humor, and other Chesterfieldites who helped sculpt the adults my Sister and I became. This is dedicated to all citizens of Chesterfield. I trust it approximates accuracy, considering the uncompromising demeanor of time.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & FOREWORD

Many helped assemble these memories. Some augmented forgotten detail or entendre. Others recalled humor worthy of repetition. Many just took the time to talk. Historical accuracy is courtesy MCH and her commendable doggedness for timelines. HM fretted over illustrative details and LN provided editorial input and penned the introduction. To those who helped, to family, friends, neighbors, citizens of Chesterfield, you might see a little of yourself imbedded in anecdote or recollection. I appreciate your individual and cumulative input and entreat indulgence in what follows.

The designation EP appears frequently below, a reference to the estate papers of Myron S. Nixon, our Father. Some of these documents are with my Sister who graciously supplied them for inclusion. Prominent among his papers is a lengthy document with no title page, introduction, or indication of source(s). Reproduced on a Mimeograph machine, someone obviously typed individual pieces onto Ditto Masters, cranked them through a Mimeo duplicator, and delivered one copy to Father. The notation In this year of 1970 appears within one section titled August 20, 1915. New Items. Chesterfield. Possibly someone duplicated this section in 1970. If it can be assumed someone assembled this collection at one time, perhaps this dates the otherwise time floating segments.

The pages not numbered, I cannot affirm they are in their original order. Further, no effort to sequence them is evident, rather they seem to be a collection of independent pieces from disparate sources. Because it is a product of Mimeography, I assume someone made other copies before the ditto masters blurred; I do not know how many, if any, or their final distribution. I located the document inside a 12x15" manila envelope addressed to,

Myron Nixon

Chesterfield, Illinois 62630

with the return address,

[P]rairie Farm Dairy, Inc.

[?]200 No. 9th St.

Springfield, Ill 62701

Based on physical characteristics, the delivery postdates both Mimeograph technology (late 1960s) and zip codes (1963). Possibly Father requested historical information from an acquaintance at [P]rairie Farms Dairy in Springfield who researched the topic, creating and assembling these excerpts. Alternatively, the envelope might not be the original delivery mechanism, simply an expedient holder Father used to store the pages in a single location.

The overall document is divided into small sections addressing particular but disjointed aspects of the history of Chesterfield. It appears to be a composite of various materials rather than a single, continuous, document produced by a solitary author. There is no attempt to order the standalone pieces chronologically, topically, or developmentally.

Some of the material is credited. Where a reasonable estimation of source could be reconstructed, the original is cited. Most segments suffer from anonymity and where employed herein they are referenced simply as EP n. d. My Sister and I retain the originals(?).

INTRODUCTION

L. Nelson, BA, M-Ed.

In this book the quintessential self-reflection process unfolds as the author reviews his life honestly and genuinely, embracing it all – good times, bad times; times with, and times without. It tells of an amazing and successful lifework involving both learning and teaching the hard and soft sciences, while mastering multiple languages. The family values he didn’t at first recognize, but later embraced, have nourished his entire life and made lasting relationships.

He loves language and it must love him, because his way with words brought his life to life. I recognized familiar thoughts, feelings, and growing-up experiences. The Back 40 not only shows us the value of self-reflection, but also gives us a roadmap for doing so. I hope you enjoy this offering as much as I have. Thank you and bless you, Joe Nixon!

Hemet, California

August 2016

FAMILY REUNIONS

My birthday. Not a special occasion once a year. Rather, something occurring the day following Christmas, a much more celebrated day in almost everyone’s opinion. Certainly more likely to attract a crowd. Mother – sharing Father’s enthusiastic support – claimed my birth should have been on Christmas but the Doctor dispensed an anesthetic delaying her - and me. Both swore he went home for his family celebration. Perhaps he did.

Families gather at Christmas to celebrate holidays and recite stories of ancestors. Dinner shared, gifts opened, carols sung, weather willing kids throw some snowballs. But come evening when guests return home and kids tire of counting gifts, the family rests. Everyone weary, holidays over, complete. Then it’s my birthday, precisely when everyone is exhausted of celebratory cheer.

Younger, I blamed the Doctor for relegating me to a lifetime of combined birthday and Christmas gifts (CBCGs), at one point blaming him for the timing of my birth. I reasoned his birthday could not be near a holiday because experiencing the consequences he never would have relegated me to a lifetime of tired, day after, celebrations. I could have tagged onto Christmas. Had he two children, I wished them born the day after Easter and July 5. In reality he did not determine the time of my birth, he just tweaked the inevitable by a day, according to Mother and Father.

To reconcile my annual disappointment Mother and Father decided I should have an alternative birthday, sometime summer they imagined. Forgotten by February, come my estranged July birthday I longed for one of those CBCGs.

I am not alone in this predicament. My niece opened her eyes to this world on January 1, the annual first born in the hospital of her origin. We sometimes share stories about unfortunately timed birthdays, on occasions we get together, like at Christmas.

Much time passed since boyhood. Since days when responsibilities fueled conversations among adults at family reunions, those slow motion, shiny shoe, bow-tie wearing, occasions when conversations about long gone ancestors eventually exhaust everyone’s memories. Soon the pot luck buffet becomes so picked over even a vegan would skulk away hungry. At the appointed hour, the American Legion groundskeeper announces building closure and this year’s genealogical regurgitation adjourns. Time, I suppose, has brought something akin to wisdom or at least close enough to pretend and claim age as recompense. Hence my opinion about family reunions.

In retrospect, I enjoyed childhood. The important parts of it, to me, I spent in solitude. Learning to walk appreciably well and finishing a rigorous training program in firearm safety at the uncompromising hands of Father, I achieved my position in our family food chain, hunting each day after school, continuing until dark. My mission: bring home dinner. Not always successful, we sometimes feasted on Wonder Bread sandwiches with ketchup and a steaming bowl of Mother’s track soup. For me hunting constituted no exercise in weekend recreation, no outing in the country to escape city life, it merely augmented Father’s parallel effort.

Mother, using what we supplied, performed ingenious tricks on her old stove turning frequently meagre spoils from the hunt into something delicious and elastic, stretching to feed four mouths on the fastidious rations of one.

Pockets galore lined my oversized hunting coat, ostensibly to hold the day’s take. Often unfilled, I now realize they also harbored memories which nurture the soul as surely as a squirrel or a couple of quail might the body. It is them I revisit here, turning out long ago filled game pouches, finding a treasury of personal recollections I did not realize fomented until stimulated to reflect.

I do not attend reunions. Small to begin with, the family shrinks before the Grim Reaper as surely as a covey of quail might a boy. I make no apologies for sometimes charismatic memories, for images and remembrances set forth here do not tarnish with time. Their clarity on the day experienced is integral to their fabric, as tightly stitched as the game pouches in my old canvas coat. Until now I did not realize those recesses filled with the simplistically beautiful face of Mother Nature, she implanting her spirit, perhaps understanding resurrection would come before time nudged them - and me - into extinction.

I embrace these shreds of youth not in anticipation of any charitable extension of days but hoping grammar and syntax cooperate to preserve memories. Few in the future will have an opportunity to directly experience growing under the guiding hand of Mother Nature but might, if lexicon allows, experience them indirectly courtesy overflowing game pouches.

421 MAIN ST, CHESTERFIELD

While in the military I completed many forms, some of which Sergeants handed back as incomplete: ‘You need a street address, Troop.’ Chesterfield had no street names then so I adopted 421 Main Street, Chesterfield, Ill. to placate military insistence. My selection of street name and number probably reflected homogenized, appease all, early family TV where everyone lived on Main Street. I chose 4 to start (four in our family), half is 2, half again 1 - 421 – easy to remember. Because Father worked as Mailman, I anticipated no confusion there. Seeing no harm, I used it.

Mid-century - 1950 - heralded my 4th birthday. Many things occurred in my life to that point, most of which I remember piecemeal. My mind just beginning to sort the world into usable categories, contiguous memories began when Mother and Father bought a home.

The farmhouse they chose occupied undulating topography on the prairies of central Illinois, between flat agricultural fields and hills incised through them by waterways. We had a little of both. The house rested on a ridge finger, a hilltop, ultimately draining into the Mississippi. We lived in the headwaters of the murky river.

Long ago agriculturalists cleared hickory timber from flat portions of the landscape beyond our property. This enabled sowing and harvesting of beans, corn, alfalfa, wheat, fescue, and a few others to sustain existence based on the land. Despite scattered, stubbornly entrenched hedgerows left over from horse drawn implement days, nothing deflected winter wind as it whistled around and into the porous structure we called home.

Highway 111, completed in 1930-1931 (EP n. d.), enters Chesterfield from the south, meandering through town before trending northeast (Figure 1). Approaching town, on the left it passes Dean Ramel’s welding shop and Red Wallner’s Filling Station, continuing beyond parallel streets striking west (left). The town square – technically Chesterfield Square Park - is between the central two (EP n. d.).

Image1.jpg

Figure 1. Chesterfield & Environs ca. 1950

The primary north-south road, Main Street by my reckoning, strikes north from the northwest corner of Town Square, turning left (west) a couple country blocks ahead. It passes a second N/S trending street one block before cultivated farmland.

Opposite the first field lay our property. Looking closely at the southwest-northeast alley to the west (Pig Alley to us kids) shows remnant construction roughly parallel to it. This is the old RR grade intersecting Main Street, continuing NE as a ribbon of overgrown vegetation. This once serviced the Chicago-Peoria-St. Louis line built in 1880-1881 (EP n. d.). It provided transportation for the product of a local coal mining operation, noted on Figure 1 as ‘Mine Spoils.’ It also moved livestock and grain produced locally to distant markets. Beginning in 1883 (EP n. d.) groundwater seepage hampered removal of coal forcing closure of the mine and its service line in 1939, ≈7 years before my birth. I remember playing on the spoil pile as a boy wondering about its origin.

In addition to moving goods, the RR provided passenger service into Chesterfield from distant points. The station staff included Sam Malone, Henry Lee, and Anna Hubbard (EP n. d.). During the 1920s, the RR experienced financial problems leading to establishment of a local loan fund to keep it operational (EP n. d.). Despite individual contributions to keep it afloat, by late 1930s it ceased operation, shareholders losing their investments. Portions of its former route became the abandoned railroad grade marking the western boundary of our homestead.

On the Prairie edge, fall season rain storms occasionally become trapped by overhead cold air resulting in a covering of ice atop everything. Trees, utility lines, vehicles, buildings, sometimes livestock, wore a clear coat glinting like the ax of an executioner who loves his job too well. As winter’s merciless grip strengthened, snow falling on top of ice filled the Chesterfield snow globe with a blanket of white. Mother Nature imbues the results of these storms with beauty if seen from a distance, or on the evening news. Ice and snow, though, distress humans unfortunate enough to live in their midst. I would learn these conditions provided a playground for many fur bearing creatures who delighted in what we consider frosty.

The home provided samples of summer as thermometer and barometer raced toward 100. Open windows, circulatory fans, and other devices did little to abate heat, they just moved hot air around. In the spring and fall, a seasonal palette decorated the outside and if Mother had any involvement, migrated inside as a cheerful bouquet on her kitchen table. These seasons brought outside beauty. Considering the inside, I like to imagine the house Mother and Father selected harmonized with Nature, regardless of season, allowing samples of outside weather passage inside for us to experience.

Being young, I have little memory of negotiations, down payments, points, mortgage agreements, bank loans, collateral deals, letters of employment, handshakes, relatives’ advice, promises, assurances, or other arrangements leading to our property acquisition. Somehow events congealed and we left our rental property on the Middlecoff place for our home in the Chesterfield suburbs. The last house within city limits we believed afforded us suburban status. An east and a west neighbor both lay farther than a football field away. Officially, our eastern neighbor lived in Chesterfield, the western in Macoupin County.

South of our property, early agriculturalists cleared and began cultivating prairies years ago. Drain water from two particular fields coursed directly across our property. Moving north, partially cleared hills gave way to hickory forests blanketing drainageways too steep for agriculture but suitable for pasturing cattle. Once secured with fencing, assembling a small herd advanced on Father’s project list.

Immediately south of the property lay Main Street in my scheme, running east-west and forming our southern property perimeter. A perpendicular driveway struck north forming a loop and roughly dividing the residential area into two segments on its east and west sides (Figure 2). On the east perimeter lay open lawn, with a sandbox for my Sister, me, and stray cats. The house lay to the west, accessed by a short sidewalk linking driveway to doorway. This arrangement divided available lawn space west of the driveway into north and south segments.

Image2.jpg

Figure 2. Homestead, 421 Main Street

The north side of the driveway to doorway sidewalk became our outdoor company area. Plenty of lazy lawn chairs greeted all who stopped by. This area found use when relatives visited or when we managed time for outdoor family relaxing.

Across the access sidewalk north of this company area Mother kept her grill on which she made some of the best BBQ ever. This portion of the grounds served more closely knit family functions. Visiting with neighbors, barbecuing, planting flowers in the spring, cranking homemade ice cream, all found a home here. To the north beyond this area lay Father’s gardens.

The south front yard, the north front yard and garden, combined with the east segment of the property containing the sandbox, complemented a large rear lawn on the west side of the house, together comprising the space available from the purchase. Further north sat several acres of pastureland, including previously installed wire fencing meant to manage livestock. Large enough to be comfortable with no immediate neighbors, we settled into this irregularly shaped homestead making the best of our piece of the Land of Lincoln.

Chesterfield is a small community. Records indicate Jesse Peebles and Aaron Tilley platted it in 1836. The population in 1890 stood at 374 diminishing to 364 by 1900 (EP n. d.). As children in the 1950s, my Sister and I joked the population sign headed the wrong direction. It should be increasing from the posted 300 (ca. 1955), not decreasing. Near the millennium