Day 20, September 20—Weldon

Lane 

About halfway between Clinton and Weldon is the little unincorporated community of Lane, which lies just south of Route 10. The day was a bit hazy, and the heat was beginning to build, so I went back to my pickup, mounted the bike on the front, and drove to Weldon, where Ty Osterbur, a manager at Weldon Fertilizer and Lumber let me park my pickup right on the corner company property. The state had put up no parking signs along both Route 48 and Route 10 near the intersection, and it didn’t look safe to park along the highway there in any case.

I biked back west as the heat built, wondering what on earth had led me on this crazy walk, where I seemed to go back and forth across the same stretch of highway again and again. Just how many times did I cross that length of Route 10 between Lane and Weldon? Twice on my initial survey of Route 10, once on my route survey, once on Saturday when I drove home from the eastern edge of Clinton for a weekend of rest and showers, once today when I first drove west to restart my walk, once on foot, once on a bicycle. Good grief! Who planned this strange trek, anyway?

On the prairie, the atmosphere plays tricks on the eyes. This phenomenon is more noticeable to me on foot, when I’m walking at a snail’s pace. The next town appears and doesn’t seem to far away. Then it disappears as I go down in elevation. When the town reappears, it seems farther away than it did two miles earlier. Weldon was no exception to that general optical illusion. Eventually, though, I arrived at my pickup and headed into the heart of downtown Weldon to explore in the excessively hot afternoon, about the hottest I remember on this walk.

Weldon

Weldon, just south of Illinois Route 10 on Illinois Route 48, has a bank that was never robbed by John Dillenger (so said the bank clerks, when I asked what I should know about Weldon’s history). There’s a big, busy grain elevator in Weldon, and Mama D.’s restaurant is right downtown. There’s a very nice public library, though its limited budget does not permit generous hours of operation. I was wondering whether there was Wi-Fi, when I saw a mother and daughter with a little folding table, sitting on a park bench surfing the Web with their laptop, though the library was closed. I said to them, “I guess that answers my question of whether the library has Wi-Fi.”

“Yes,” they answered. “It sure does.” I wasn’t sure whether it sure answered my question, or whether the library sure had Wi-Fi, but both turned out to be true.

By the way, several people on this trip have asked me what the initialism Wi-Fi stands for. According to a Wikipedia article, “Wi-Fi (pronounced /ˈwaɪfaɪ/) is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance that manufacturers may use to brand certified products that belong to a class of wireless local area network (WLAN) devices based on the IEEE 802.11  standards. 802.11 the most widely used WLAN technology.” It was originally short for Wish-Finger, but I have no idea what Wish-Finger stood for.

I used the Weldon Public Library’s Wi-Fi to communicate about a teaching job I’ve been discussing with people from a special program at the University of Illinois. I have somehow misplaced (I hate the word “lost” in this context) my up-to-date resume, and I sat there in the shade getting bitten by stable flies, of all things, retyping my resume from memory. How unprofessional is that?

I stopped at the Weldon Elevator and got to shake hands with and thank Tim, a veteran, for his service. He’s a manager there. I had seen the veteran plates on his Chevy pickup, stopped in, and asked whose pickup it was.

I didn’t find as much history of Weldon as I wanted to. The first bank organized in Weldon was private, set up by Jacob Swigart in 1887. It was reorganized and incorporated as a state bank in 1906. In 1931, the bank was closed, during the depression. There were no banking services at all in the community until 1937, when the Citizen’s National Bank of Decatur set up the Weldon Currency Exchange. State regulations closed the exchange, and a succession of banks would occupy the location now occupied by the current bank.

Following my route survey, when I first visited Weldon, my wife Mary and I visited Mama D.’s, a restaurant that is open only on Friday and Saturday evenings, just down the street from the bank, and on the same side. They have excellent food, and plenty of it. They have a John Deere décor in the story, and a radio plays country and western music. Weldon is also the former home address of our missionary friend Jan Moody Caba, who has travelled the world training teachers of children. She’s now a teacher at Judah Christian School in Champaign. Of course the bottom pasture of her home farm is now at the bottom of Clinton Lake.

I wrapped up my walk for the day at Weldon and fled to an undisclosed location that has air conditioning, free Wi-Fi, bathrooms, and electrical outlets. That’s where I am, typing this blog, and hoping to get it posted before I venture back out into the sweltering heat of the late afternoon.