I posted my blog for Friday, September 3, at the Camp Point Public Library and walked outside. I saw my son Joe riding up on his motorcycle. After a couple of hearty hugs, he asked where we should eat supper, and I told him the librarian recommended the Railroad Park Eatery, practically across the street. We had a great time together, and the meal was fantastic. It was a far cry from my first meals on the trip: jerky, an apple, a can of cold baked beans, and a bottle of water.
Dad Between Pickup and Joe's Bike at Clayton, Illinois
Dad;s Bike and Joe's Bike
Rob and Son Joe (I'm the old guy in the reflective vest.)
Joe's Bike at Illinois River Bridge
Joe rode the 3 hours back home last night, after visiting for a couple of hours with his old dad. If you get a son like that, hold onto him. Mine is sure a keeper, and he and his wife Heather have given us two of the cutest and sweetest grand kids on this planet.
Mount Sterling was named by an early settler, who referred to the “sterling quality” of the local soils. The population in 2000 was about 2000. In addition to being the county seat of Brown County, Illinois, Mount Sterling is home to Dot Foods, Hills Industry, and an Illinois correctional facility. Chief of Police Colby Yard is a 5-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, who served a tour in Southeast Asia and two tours of duty in Iraq. He earned the rank of sergeant with the MOS of helicopter air crewman. I tried to meet him at the police station early this morning, but he was occupied elsewhere.
I drove ahead to Mount Sterling last night so I could use a compressor to air up the air mattress that Becky Barlowe had donated to me earlier in the evening to replace the one I bought at Farm and Fleet in Urbana last week. It has a 3-year warranty, but it wouldn’t hold air after the first day, for some reason I haven’t yet figured out. I can’t really just pick up and drive the 160 miles (320 round trip) to Urbana to get it replaced, so it’s taking up space in the pickup and isn’t doing me much good.
Becky’s mattress worked very well for about 2 hours, after which the air was all gone. I plan to investigate further today to see whether there’s a valve I didn’t find or something of that sort. I used the air at the Ayerco gas station to air up the mattress and then parked the pickup next to what I took in the dark to be a park. It turns out to be only a vacant lot, but it suited my purposes well. That’s where I spent the night. It got down to about 48 degrees, so I was glad of my sleeping bag and old wool Army blanket.
I headed out riding west (this is the part that’s always hard to explain to people who want to know what I’m doing). Yesterday I had missed what is certainly the biggest and most important industry at Timewell. Though I bicycled up and down every single street in town, I failed to note that, out at the highway (not at the Timewell exit I had taken earlier in the day, though) Timewell Tile has a plant that manufactures all kinds of field tile. They are in operation making tile 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They even publish their own magazine about tile.
I spoke to manager Dan Peebles (he didn’t play NFL football), who graciously answered my questions and who explained the tile manufacturing process very clearly in a few words. (I won’t be able to explain nearly as well, but suffice it to say that they draw in resin pellets from large grain bins, feed them into a mixer, put them through the extruder, essentially a very large barrel heated very hot. To this layman, it looks amazing. The pellets go into one end and the finished tile comes out the other.
Timewell Tile makes single-wall tile in sizes of from 2- to 15-inch diameter, and double-wall tile from 4- to 48-inch diameter. The smaller the diameter, the longer the section of tile that fits on a roll. For instance 4-inch single-wall tile comes with 6200 feet on a roll, and 2-inch has 10,000 feet per roll. That’s over 2 miles of tile!
The larger tiles, especially double-wall, is now frequently used for road culverts. They can be purchased in 10- or 20-foot lengths.
As I was walking back to Mount Sterling from the first Timewell turnoff, a young man in a pickup stopped to ask whether I needed help. He was Frank Price, who, though he now lives in town, still goes out to help on the farm. Though I didn’t need help, I sure appreciated his offering it.
Deputy Sheriff John Zimmerman, soon to be married, served as a U.S. Army military police officer before becoming a civilian peace officer. I met him early this morning at the Mount Sterling Police station, and I saw him again when he drove out toward Timewell to check on my progress the morning.
U.S. Postal Service clerk Becky Barlowe, already mentioned in this post (air mattress) and in the previous post in connection with Clayton (Library District President) and Timewell (substitute mail clerk during my visit there yesterday) had the early shift at the Mount Sterling Post Office today. She spoke to Bill Tweedt, a Navy Veteran and adjutant of Mount Sterling American Legion, Post 374. He called me out on the road and offered to meet me at the edge of town and walk in with me. I gratefully accepted that offer, and his wife drove him out to meet me. After she saw me limp a ways down the road, she said, "Bill doesn't have any feet or knees left either."
Several more veterans met us at the Ayerco gas station. I thanked them all for their service for our country. Some had to return home, but a good number walked with us or drove down to Rene’s Place, a restaurant I’d recommend to anyone. There we met still other veterans, including 94-year-old World War II veteran Fred Parker, who still has a very firm handshake. We also saw veteran Bill Mountain, who actually belongs to the Perry American Legion, Post 1040, though no one held that against him. Bill spent from 1968 through 1969 in Vietnam during that war.
Brown County Sherriff Snowden came to eat with us, as did Deputy Zimmerman, Bill Tweedt, and Joe Follis and his lovely wife Marcella (soon to be Deputy Zimmerman’s in-laws). Joe served two combat tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1969 to 1972, and earned the Purple Heart for being seriously wounded. Wayne Shepard also joined us. He’s a Korean War Army veteran who served for 16 months in Korea during that war. He had lots of interesting stories to tell, but I’ll relate just a couple.
He said he was blessed to not have seen any actual combat while in Korea. Once he was sent to guard a truckload of North Korean soldiers who were POWs of the United States. He was issued a carbine, as were all the other guards, but they got no ammo. Of course the POWs didn’t know that. They were told that, if a POW escaped, they should just let him go and let the Republic of Korea soldiers deal with him. The truck Wayne was guarding broke down, so the transport was delayed considerably.
Wayne also played on his unit’s baseball team, which was the theater champion team. For that he received a special belt buckle, but the MPs confiscated it on the ship going home, and he never saw it again.
Tom Schneider, another member of both the American Legion and the VFW, gave me a list of interesting books about military service to read:
1. Chickenhawk, by Robert Mason, in which the author tells of his experiences as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, chronicling his enlistment, training, experience in Vietnam, and experience upon returning home.
Boyd
Triumphant Tragedy
I’ll look at the Champaign Library when I get home, and maybe I can read them.
Cordell Jones, another Korean War vet, still lives on the farm at rural Mount Sterling. He stopped by to say hello, and I thanked him for his service to our country. Jim Dudendeck and Dave Downey made up the rest of our party. After lots of beef jerky and protein bars (I do have apples and avocados along too), the ham and cheese omelet looked really good, and it was.
I’m very grateful to these distinguished veterans for their service to our nation and for their kindness and hospitality to me on my walk across Illinois. They paid for my meal, too, and then walked me back up the street to my pickup truck.
John Flesner, who had given me a ride into the stiff wind yesterday, when I was walking past the business where he works, lives in a nearby town with his new wife, having lost his first wife to pancreatic cancer several years ago. He still has his house in Mount Sterling, and he graciously invited me to use his place to shower and sleep, so I took him up on that. He and his lovely wife showed me the house, and he showed me where the fresh towels are and the bed I can use. I told him I’d be going over to MacDonald's to use the Internet, but he said, “Don’t do that. I have high-speed Internet here. Use that." So this is a triple blessing.
John says that the Lord brings the people into our lives with whom he wants us to interact, and whom he wants us to help out. His gift to me on this trip is one I’ll never forget. May the Lord prosper your way, John, and lead you in his paths forever.
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