1987 – (Written during a business trip to Northern Illinois University)

Drive for an hour or two west of Chicago and you are in another world; life is different in the corn belt. Corn really does grow as high as an elephant’s eye, and creeps right up to the edges of the roads in endless regiments of green, waving stalks. Stop by the roadside, get out and walk up to it like an impenetrable forest, each stalk strong, tall, with tough, gnarly roots rising up from the rich soil. No sprinklers here; God waters these crops. No fences either; they just don’t seem needed.

Here and there an oasis in reverse, a dry patch among the endless plains of verdure that stretch as far as the eye can see. Places like Malta, Illinois, Pop. 1000. Drive through the center of town and go back in time 50, 60 years. The general store with its 3-stool lunch counter looks like it hasn’t been modernized since 1943. It hasn’t, either. Some of the products on display might have last been paid for with silver dimes and quarters, old silver dimes and quarters. Three men sit playing cards in a corner. They, and the proprietor, belong to the same era. Since he is busy, one of the card players gets up to help me. I feel Gumbyesque, walking through the pages of a prewar novel. Everything here is slow, quiet, peaceful.

Malta, IL – General store, looking exactly the same as it did in 1978. Found at Flickr.

The rest of the shops on the street all seem to have been closed for years, but signs on the doors give the owner’s phone number – trade by appointment. I would have liked to go into the antique store. This whole town is an antique: what forgotten treasures might be found within? Malta’s public library is housed in a small brick cottage with a picket fence, half the size of my first home. Open Tuesdays from 1 to 6 PM, but today is not Tuesday.

The next town down the road is Creston, Pop. 500. They must go into Malta to shop.

On the campus of Northern Illinois Univerity, rabbits hop through the bushes. One of the buildings looks just like Emily Brontë could have lived in it. Where one might expect placards explaining fire escape routes, instead one is told what to do in case of a tornado, and when evening falls, the shrubbery and trees flicker with hundreds of tiny, falling stars: the fireflies which my desert children have never known. In spite of their cold luminescence they impart a warm feeling to the dusky night air.

An invitation to a private viewing of a Burmese art exhibition in the campus museum. In one corner of a room, a Burmese lady is dishing up rice and something which looks vaguely like chop suey for the guests. I have eaten, but cannot resist. Having partaken of glowing coals in sulfuric acid, I retire to my room in the on-campus hotel, wishing I could find some nice bland Szech’uan cooking to quench the fire in my entrails.

The following day found me at Toad Hall in Rockford, one of my favorite bookstores in the whole wide world. I could happily starve to death there.

I regret only that I don’t have a lifetime to explore and photograph all the beautiful nooks and crannies in this part of our nation.

The Old Wolf has spoken, for no reason.