Graveyard Lunch -

October 15, 2010

Day 37

Graveyard Lunch

We drift off I-90 West to find some Claritin D.  CVS doesn’t sell it without Illinois identification.  Walgreen’s does.  Now we think we need ice and as we’re heading out of town we stop at WalMart.  One 7# bag of ice and a spare Claritin in hand we’re assessing our lunch options. We’re hungry and lunch is usually something from the cooler.  Generally we find a roadside park, rest stop, or scenic pullout big enough to eat our leftovers, cheese and crackers or granola and yogurt.  We are definitely hungry, but the WalMart parking lot seems to be stooping too low, so we head out.

We’re on another route from National Geographic’s Guide to Scenic Highways and Byways. ( A recommended must buy for this kind of trip.) This is another section of Mennonite and Amish country.  We’ve seen their horses tethered at grocery stores and pharmacies. 

They ride through the busy streets of town hugging the margins of the road the way bicyclists do in Olympia.  In fact, several of them are on bicycles and we pass one riding a recumbent bike along the back roads. 

So we’re taking in the sites.  Horses standing head to tail in the pastures, laundry drying in the autumn breeze, cattle grazing in fields of cut corn.  This is a more progressive group than we experienced in New York.  We can tell by their clothing that they are either Mennonite or Amish, but they are using power mowers in their yard and are shopping at CVS and WalMart.  One grey bearded man, hair tucked into his wide brimmed hat, drives an antique tractor through town hauling a small cart filled with his purchases.  A young mother pulls out on her bicycle with an infant carriage attached. We pass them driving their buggies everywhere.  They cue up behind the cars to make left hand turns and scoot to the edges when freight trucks roar past.  A buggy passes trailing the sounds of a boom box playing something that sounds a lot like rock and roll.  Another passes and a young man waves, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  We pass a small cart being hauled by two ponies, beside it a young girl bicycles visiting as the move down the road.  They are everywhere and blend in with all other sorts of transportation around them.

We found a shady spot under a maple tree, complete with a picnic table next to shocks of corn bundled and tied tipi style 

It all sits beside a Mennonite church and graveyard. Once again we’re eating with local church people, only this time they’re pretty quiet.  We eat our leftover Mexican pork and shrimp and walk through the graveyard. Some have lived long lives, others are simply labeled infant son of Abner and Irene.   Some of the names are freshly carved into the granite tombstones, others have faded over time. They are clustered in family groups with early ancestors born as far back as 1890s.  The names repeat and become familiar showing a long family lineage as part of this community.  Even though there is more evidence of participating in modern culture here, it is going to be a real study in contrasts when we finally park the car in Chicago tonight – a city of six million people.