Illinois days.

April 24, Flora.

The driving is flat, corn fields and more of the same, farmhouse dotting the road, silos like exclamation points on the horizon, gone are the daily beauty of the drives, I had forgotten about Illinois.
Endless driving as a photographer for The Jacksonville Journal-Courier, crisscrossing nine counties all day long and in all weathers, Schuyler, Brown and Morgan, Scott and Cass, Sangamon and Greene, and into Pike and Macoupin, Sundays my favorite, alone on the shift (and I met Fridman photographing the circus, a big happening in a town of 15,000 people,) the frog jumping competitions, the church pancake breakfasts, the harvests, the farmers at the cafe counter, the county fairs, listening to the week end programs on NPR, Steve Copper laying out the pages on the desk, his quiet wit, always a welcome in his eyes, the picture of debonair but the ultimate professional; flat, boring Illinois - and I miss all of that.

A dress rehearsal for the Berea Church cemetery walk outside of Ashland, Illinois, a Sunday assignment a long time ago, des souvenirs bucoliques.