Spring in a River Town

Circumstances had me staying (alone, but not unhappy) at a B&B in far southern Illinois, in Elizabethtown, on the Ohio River, facing Kentucky. The B&B's address is Front Street and Main. Because of melted snow and rain, E-Town's Front Street was entirely underwater, just feet from my window. Above is a view of Front Street, and the photo below is the corner of Front & Main, and the yard and fence of the very nice B&B.

Sad to say, little E-Town is broken-down and boarded up except for 2 B&Bs, two bars, a liquor store (where I bought a bottle of Jim Beam, it was that depressing), and one gas station doubling as the town cafe. Another restaurant -- on a boat, anchored in the river right off Main Street, the E-Town Restaurant, is famed for its fried catfish and I'd looked forward to crossing there on the walkway and eating some. In the top photo you can see where the floating restaurant had been (on the left) and in the far right upper corner, between the trees, you can see it, with the blue roof, tied to some trees. The rushing waters broke the lines that held the restaurant in place and men went out on boats and caught it before it floated any farther down toward Cairo, Illinois, where it meets the Mississippi.

I hadn't seen the Ohio River since leaving Ohio (after a brief residency) in 1980. Odd to see it again when I never expected to. Understood more completely when I saw E-Town how people get annoyed with the way things are.

The Gift of Warmth

Really good wool blankets, like children’s beloved “blankies,” serve as full-body hugs, hiding places, coats, curtains, shields, bedrolls, bags, tents and more. I treasure my two.

The Hudson Bay Company, founded in England in 1670 and still around, made this unbleached wool blanket with sky-blue stripes and three “points” or lines along one edge, a reminder that North American Indians and trappers traded three beaver pelts to get one. Dense and scratchy, it's windproof, wears like iron, gets passed down as an heirloom, and is priced to match. A wire brush loosens the twigs & grass & beggar lice it picks up outdoors. Bought from L.L. Bean. After 10 years of very severe treatment, including somebody dying in it, it has only begun to look “lived in.”

The navy-blue blanket was made in Portland, OR by Pendleton, founded in 1883. Lighter in weight and softer, this is my house blanket, kept on the bed. It’s banded with rainbow stripes (rainbows and stripes are divine). This one bought from REI. Again, pricey, but like the other, you need to buy it only once.

Toothpicks and Tarpaper

Not far from here some farmer sold an acre along the highway to a real-estate developer. The developer shaved all the trees off, and in record time, using toothpicks and tarpaper, erected another of those "dream houses," aka "McMansions." It has columns out front and a little treeless yard. It has never had an occupant, not in four years.

Nearby, within sight, are three acres of pasture in -- get this -- a floodplain. There a developer built yet another dream house, dressing it up with curtains and porch lights. Every summer for four years now, the hopeful real-estate agent opens up one door of the three-car garage and parks a car in it, and puts a kids' trampoline in the back yard. But you never see any kids, because there aren't any parents dumb enough to buy a dream-house in a floodplain.

On a ridge just above it, visible only in winter when the trees are transparent, is a huge rustic barnlike "dream house" with a wraparound porch and dramatic rows of Anderson windows. The buyers wanted to run a bed-and-breakfast in the nice oak-and-hickory Missouri woods. Anyone could have told them that city folk on weekends don't want to bed-and-breakfast in the woods. They want to be able to walk up the street to have a latte and buy antiques. This dream-house was advertised for sale in the paper, for $550,000. It's still for sale, for $450,000.

Now, you and I know that most people can't pay $450,000 for a house, or even $300,000. Even $200,000 is a little steep for most families. And the economists are wondering how it happened that "the bottom fell out of the housing market."