Country roads again.

October 1, Gardner.

Back in the country, back in the corn fields, morning drives again, yes.

Seasons.

October 1, Gardner.

It turned cold yesterday, barely in the sixties in the sun at mid-day and last night it dipped into the low forties. The four of us slept in the bed together, nice and cozy.
Summer is over, and I keep waiting for it. Muggy and buggy never happened but for opening and closing ceremonies - the brief heat wave of early June and a short spell of bad bugs last week. This last episode kept me sealed off in the trailer with the A.C. on even though it wasn't that hot: the bugs looked like fleas that would fly instead of jump and were small enough that they went in through the screens; they drove me crazy. I counted 32 bites on my arms alone and the sting kept on for days.
Hello, autumn!

A trailer with a view.

October 1, Gardner, Illinois (51 miles, corner of 129 and Carbon Hill Road.)

Literary news (on the road.)

September 30, Downers Grove.

Last week a cook-house announcement appeared next to the day's menu:

Introducing
Kelly Miller Circus
Library
in the cookhouse
Derrick Pinnix librarian
Feel free to borrow books
contribute books
and
read, read, read!

I contributed a Philip Roth (Sabbath's Teather, all the sex talk and bored to death; evidently I must be missing a full intellectual section of the brain for I don't get Roth at all, it's all male egocentric, albeit literary masturbation as far as I'm concerned ) and Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt, of Angela's Ashes fame, a disappointing and bitter book after such a life-affirming debut novel.

A trailer with a view.

September 30, Downers Grove, Illinois (40 miles, O'Niell School.).

A trailer with a (nocturne) view.

September 29, Somonauk.

A trailer with a (clearer) view.

September 29, Somonauk.

Bad drive.

September 29, Somonauk.

We moved last night and it was the worst drives of the season yet, urban traffic, highway construction and country roads that never end. To top it off we're traveling back through much of the same tonight, back to the Chicago suburbs for the last time before hitting the open country again.
The Somonauk lot is a preview, the corn fields are as high as the trailers.

Lucky Eddie played with Dylan in the maze.

A trailer with a view (not.)

September 29, Somonauk, Illinois (65 miles, Community park.)

Three men and a parade.

September 28, Chicago.

Not Frank Lloyd Wright.

.
September 28, Chicago.

There is a house across the street from circus, I love it, it's green and out of place, it's not Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's boarded up and probably slated for demolition to make room for one of the same over-sized architectural insults that is being built a few houses down.

Brief encounter.

September 28, Chicago.

Her name is Lynn (Lynne?) and she's lived here all her life and that's all we know we know about her. I wanted to ask for an email address or give her the blog address so we could stay in touch but I didn't want to be pushy. She was someone I think I'd become friends with would I live here. I wish I'd had the guts to ask her if I could take her picture. She had a beautiful face, much younger than her 42 years.
She was jogging with friends when we asked for directions yesterday morning across the street from the circus; she offered to walk us part of the way and we chatted the way strangers do, and she told us she was coming to the show. I saw her twice again, at the playground, and on the street after the show with her kids, three girls and a boy Dylan's age, and then she came by this morning to drop some clothes off for the kids. Sara was delighted with all the girl stuff, too.

A trailer with a (second) view.

September 28, Chicago.

Vintage.

September 27, Chicago.

We found a bicycle for seven dollars at a garage sale around the corner.
The one I've always dreamed of: old and rusty, deliciously retro (our trailer is old too, but not enough to be a classic, just enough to be rusty.)

Chicago.

September 27, Chicago.

We're in Chicago!
Unfortunately it's a week end so there is no time to go downtown before the shows, but still we'll try tomorrow morning.
Beautiful neighborhood, full circus, what more can you ask for?

A trailer with a view.

September 27, Chicago, Illinois (10 miles, Norwood Park school.)

The North Shore.

September 26, Wilmette.

I ran into Dee Dee and baby Sam this afternoon at the whoop, across the street from the circus. Dee Dee, who teaches school at the circus and is married to one of the Perez family guys, is from the Chicago area. Wilmette is millionaire territory, she told me. "A lot of people like to say they're from the North Shore, but now this, this is North Shore."
I take it that North Shore is to Chicago what Marin county is to the Bay Area.

A trailer with a view.

September 26, Wilmette, Illinois (43 miles, Regina Dominican high school.)

History revised.

September 25, McHenry.
Traveling in the West with Chimera the encroachment of suburbia was pervasive, every town like a giant construction site, shopping malls and housing developments sprouting up in every corner of the landscape, raw, ungainly.
It is less evident around the rest of the country, at least as far as I can see, maybe because land is not as bountiful. Yet here in McHenry, a northwestern exurb of Chicago, you can see it happening as well. And lost in the middle of row after row of brand new townhouses and homes and chain stores sit a farmhouse and its barn and out-buildings, and ironically, the name of the farm, in faded blue letters on the barn, is "City View Farm".
It is as if history had been turned on its head, Manifest Destiny inside out. Instead of the great westward expansion to claim land the great surge to expand by erasing it, gobbling up great chunks of farmland and churning them back a blank slate of boxes and warehouses, the promise of a few skinny trees, here and there, a paltry reminder of what once was.

A trailer with a view.

September 24, McHenry, Illinois (45 miles, Petersen park.)