Mount Sterling Reprise
After a record 12 hours of good, sound sleep, I went over to the Mount Sterling veteran’s memorial. Jim Duvendack and Bill Tweedt had told me it cost $80,000. I wanted to examine it more closely than I had been able to when we had walked past on our way to and from the restaurant the day before, and I wanted to pay my respects there. They listed the names of local veterans going back to the First World War, and they decided to inscribe the names of all of their veterans, living and dead. It gave me a kind of jolt to read the names of some of the veterans I had met just the day before, because I somehow associate names on a memorial with those who gave their lives in the service, or with those who have died, at any rate. But why not honor living veterans too? Mount Sterling has a very tasteful and meaningful veterans’ memorial.
I explored all of Mount Sterling, a town with lots of churches, but I just couldn’t settle on one to attend on Sunday morning. I drove out to the east side of town, found a wide grass shoulder on the right-hand side, parked my pickup, got my gear together, unloaded my bike, hoisted my flag, and started walking east on U.S. 24. I hadn’t been walking more than a few minutes, when a lady (Cathy) came out of her house, greeted me, and asked whether I’d like to attend Sunday school and a worship service at her church, right across the road. It was just a few minutes before 9:00, and Sunday school started at 9:00. I agreed to go with her. There was even a good place to park my bike, with the flag up.
The church I attended is right outside Mount Sterling on the north side of U.S. 24. It’s the Cornerstone Christian Church, actually founded by a group of people from nearby Cooperstown. In the Sunday school class I met Arkie Quinn and his lovely wife Ivagene, who loaned me her favorite Bible to use during the class (mine was in my pickup).
Arkie is an Army veteran, who served at Fort McClelland, Alabama, and then near Salzburg, Austria, during the war trials following World War II. He didn’t explain, but said he saw a carton of cigarettes bring $1000. He said that in his first year in the Army, he was promoted to sergeant. In addition,o his duties at the Salzburg war trials, he was assigned to duty in railway security there in Austria.
Cornerstone Church is between pastors, and they applied to Lincoln Christian University in Lincoln for some advice on how to go about finding a new pastor. One interesting piece of advice they received was to wait a month for every year their previous pastor had served there before beginning a serious search for a new pastor. The idea is to discourage comparisons between their former pastor and the candidates who would come to try out.
Today Dr. Clay Ham, provost and professor of New Testament and preaching at Lincoln Christian University and Seminary, delivered the sermon. He made a few introductory remarks, then recited the entire Sermon of the Mount by heart. His delivery was dramatic, but not overdone. It’s probably the most effective presentation of that passage of scripture I’ve ever heard. Of course we would expect a sermon that was originally given by Jesus to be a good one.
The congregation gave me a round of applause when someone announced my walk across Illinois and my presence in the service, and after the service many people wished me well on my trip. I met a family who are caring for the daughter of Shanna, who is in Indiana for train-up, preparatory to deploying to Afghanistan for a year. I told the folks that I would pray for Shanna along my route, and I again set out walking up the road.
Two miles out of town, Joe Follis, former U.S. Marine and purple heart recipient, whom I had met the day before, was standing out near the highway with his wife Marcella, waiting for me to walk by. I really appreciated that show of support, especially as I know that Joe cannot stand on his feet for long periods of time. They asked whether I needed anything, but all was well. While we stood there talking, Jim Duvendack, 19th Infantry Divisision veteran, drove up with his wife. Jim said he was glad to have another chance to shake my hand, and that he really appreciated my effort to honor our troops and veterans.
About 4 miles east of Mount Sterling is a rare relic from our past—a roadside picnic table along a 2-lane highway. When I was a kid, and we went on one of our rare family trips, my mom would pack the picnic basket with goodies. At about noon, we’d all start watching for a roadside table. Often they were located at a road junction, which we called a “Y.” In a small triangle of grass and trees, there were usually several tables, well-spaced out. Sometimes other families were there eating their lunch too. And there was usually a well with a hand pump. If we were lucky, there was a wooden outhouse too.
Near the concrete picnic table in a small copse of oak, ash, and shagbark hickory on the south side of U.S. 24, there is a very large sign with lots of historic information about the area. Off to one side is a small obelisk, the tombstone of the largest pig in North America, Tip Top Notcher, who was grand champion at the 1904 St. Louis world’s fair. The day before, when some of the veterans mentioned that pig as being buried in Brown County, they said that, ironically, the largest man known to have lived in North America was also buried in Brown County. I’ll plan to research that matter on another visit to West-Central Illinois.
The historic marker listed Ohio native Cornelius Vandevarter as the first permanent settler in the area, in 1824. Later, settlers would arrive from Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennesee. In 1829 Alexander Curry and his family bought a claim at the site of present-day Mount Sterling. They platted the town in 1834. In 1839, Brown County was formed out of part of Schuyler County, and the same year Mount Sterling became the county seat.
Mount Sterling was on a major overland route to the California gold fields in 1849.
In 1834, James Washington came from Virginia and lived in Mount Sterling until he relocated to Quincy. This polymath was physician, lawyer, railroad executive, and finally brigadier general in the Illinois Militia during the Mormon War (1844). He was also delegate to 2 Illinois state constitution conventions, and served both in the Illinois Legislature and the U.S. Congress (not simultaneously, of course).
Stephen A. Douglas used to hold court in Mount Sterling (1841–1843) as judge of the circuit court, and Abe Lincoln spoke there on October 19, 1858, while campaigning for the U.S. Senate.
As I rode my bike back into Mount Sterling to retrieve my pickup truck, I stopped and thanked a local man for keeping the roadside so well mowed in front of his two houses. He told me his uncle had served 3 combat tours in Vietnam. He was going to enlist in the Army, but his uncle talked him out of the idea. Then I stopped at Joe’s house one more time to pay my respects at his personal veterans’ monument:
To all veterans, no matter where, no matter when.
In memory of
James L. Busen, Vietnam 1969, Navy
John W. Scott, Vietnam 1966, Army
Thomas J. Alsop, Agent Orange, 1986, Army
Rest in peace, men. You are not forgotten. Joe has made sure of that.
When I got back to the church where I had left my vehicle, Jeff Wilson, church member, and his very sharp young son Zachery were dropping something off at the church. I asked to use the restroom, and Jeff said he’d thought of asking me whether I’d like to. Such a small convenience, but what a blessing! I hadn’t seen Jeff at church that morning because he had to work.
Ripley
Ripley, Illinois, with about a hundred inhabitants, is located near the LaMoine River, which arrives there from the northwest, where it is swollen by the East LaMoine. Long before it gets to Ripley, the LaMoine runs just east of Carthage through a little farm I used to own in Hancock County. After it crosses U.S. 24, in a deep valley just east of Ripley, It flows on into the Illinois River, about 5 miles southwest of Beardstown. Though not really navigable now, the LaMoine used to carry a lot of Native American commerce and travel, as evidenced by Godar and other era spear points and artifacts located along its course. Before roads, many white settlers also traveled along the LaMoine, often by canoe.
Ripley was founded in 1835, and it and the surrounding area were long known popularly as “Jugtown” because of the pottery that was made there until about 1910. I had heard that term used at Western Illinois University in Macomb during my studies there many years ago.
There’s another Illinois town, that one in Bond County, Illinois, that is named Ripley, and it is sometimes called “Old Ripley,” to distinguish between the two.
When I first drove around Ripley (bicycle on the front of the pickup), I asked some young fellows at the town park whether they knew anyone who dealt with pottery. “That would be Mark Bowman. He lives over there across the park in that double-wide behind the old church building,” answered one of the boys. I thanked them and went over to Mark’s place.
Mark had been digging out an old stump in his front yard a few years ago, when he felt his spade go through something that he knew wasn’t dirt. He began digging and discovered an old crock. Right next to it was another piece of pottery, and then yet another. He had stumbled on an apparent discard or storage area from one of the many potteries that were in that area from the late 1800s until about 1910, when the U.S. glass market came of age. Eventually he sold some of the antique pottery, but he said he’s since quit digging it up and quit selling it.
People came from far and near to look at and buy his findings, but if they saw the slightest flaw in a piece, they wanted nothing to do with it. He finally gave up digging up old pottery, and he has kept some of the old pieces as souvenirs, including the first piece he found, which he graciously brought out and showed me. I asked Mark how to find the Cannon Pottery, and he gave me excellent directions. He also told me that his neighbors the Ham family had three sons who had served overseas in the U.S. military.
The Cannon Pottery
After a distinguished teaching career at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Jack Cannon set up a pottery in Ripley. In 1976, he and his wife visited Ripley, already known for its late 1800s pottery. He says he went there primarily to work in the local, native clay, rather than in the commercially prepared clays most potters use. He still prepares his own clay. http://www.lib.niu.edu/2002/oi020302.html
I nearly left town without seeing either Jack or his wife, because he was out in his studio barn throwing clay, and his wife was around the place doing some chores, but she didn’t hear my hail at either the front or back door. When I went up onto the back porch to knock at the back door, a very pretty cat acted a big frightened of me. She was the sole survivor of a litter of abandoned kittens Mrs. Cannon had rescued after their mother left, and she heard them crying. The cat’s name is Vicious, because she was initially a very mean kitten.
Mrs. Cannon showed me some of their outdoor equipment, pointing out to me that clay is very caustic, something I hadn’t realized. Their son is a dairy farmer, and he sometimes finds used stainless steel milk-handling equipment they can use to process their clay. One item looks like a large, stainless steel bulk tank, enclosed in a rusty steel framework. Mrs. Cannon believes it may have originally served as a cottage cheese tank.
Jack grew up in several communities in Southwestern North Carolina. In his 1947 high school graduating class of about 100, nearly half were returning veterans going back to finish their high school education. One summer after he graduated he took a job as a stage hand in Cherokee, at the famous outdoor musical drama “Unto These Hills.” He worked evenings and had the days to himself, so he started hanging around the pot shop at the nearby Indian school, and that was his introduction to working in clay.
He had been seriously trying to do abstract art, but he threw away lots of paintings during that era. He eventually realized that pottery was something he could actually do, and he took it up. He served 2 years in the U.S. Army, and then used the G.I. Bill to get through college. He has 2 bachelor’s degrees and a master’s degree.
Jack said he got some of his inspiration to be a potter from the people along the Potters’ Highway at Seagrove, North Carolina, a place my wife Mary and I visit nearly every year when we go to visit her mom in Winston-Salem. Seagrove, North Carolina, also goes by the nickname of Jugtown.
Jack is a genuine artisan, and I hope I may one day own at least one piece of his pottery. He has a twinkle in his eye, and has not been afraid to follow his dream of making pottery with clay that he processes himself. When I opined to his wife that probably only half a dozen potters in the country were still processing their own clay, she said she really doubted that there were that many. I left this delightful couple as a richer person for having met them, and I hope one day to be able to visit them again.
East of Ripley, U.S. 24 goes down a steep hill into a valley, where it crosses the LaMoine River. All along that stretch of highway there is extensive work being done on the shoulder and far back beyond the shoulder. About a mile from Ripley there is a junction with Illinois Route 103, and there is a wide graveled area well off to the right side of 103, so I parked there, took down the bike, and resumed my walk. I had been glad I didn’t have to climb the curving hill ahead on U.S. 24, but 103 is a series of fairly serious hill until it finally descends to real river bottom ground quite a bit farther on.
I walked a long time, but finally decided I should ride back to the pickup. I had never walked so far in one day before, nor had I ever walked so late in the day. As I approached my pickup, I saw a white pickup parked in front of it. At first I thought it might be a police vehicle, with an officer looking over my pickup, but it was 1st Infantry Division veteran Jacob Nathan McCoy, from the Peoria area, with his pickup full of things he was moving, including a mountain bike.
Just a few minutes earlier, driving east on U.S. 24, he had to stop suddenly to avoid hitting an old man riding a bicycle, weaving down the middle of the highway, with his old dog at his side. Afraid for the man’s safety, he had notified the county sheriff’s department, who had a deputy on the way. His sudden stop had scattered banana chips from an open bag all over the cab of his pickup, especially all over the dash. He had stopped to clean up the cab when I came back to where he was. He said he had been really overweight just last year, tipping the scales at over 300 pounds, but that he had started riding a mountain bike everywhere. He looked to be all muscle and about 200 pounds. I gave him one of my walk brochures and thanked him for his service.
If my math is correct, I think I am 20% of the way across Illinois. Tomorrow I’ll try to verify that. I’m glad I made some extra miles yesterday, because I had 13 miles scheduled for the next part of my walk.
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