Heading a bit more west and dipping quickly into Georgia and back into Tennessee which also was the crossing-point into the Central Time Zone, the mileage sign showed I was far closer to Nashville than I had imagined.
That could mean only one thing…let’s see if we can do the tour of the cousins and visit Grandma and Grandpa in southern Illinois and possibly make it all the way to St Louis where more cousins can be found!
Nashville is a interesting city to drive through. I love my father but his sense of navigation was about nil and his nemesis was Nashville. There are some oddities if you’re approaching from the east on I-40 that you have to keep in mind…that is to go north you have to go south and vice versa. If you don’t do this right, you will end up making the loop of the city on their I-440 ring road.
The last time I was in Nashville, I ensured I was the one driving when we hit the city limits because time just didn’t permit doing the usual eight loops round the city that he did with us once because he just couldn’t believe that the roads would be designed so foolishly.
This time it wasn’t a problem…the I-24 approach from the southeast doesn’t have this problem. The problem I had was that there was an impressive jam near downtown until well out of the northern suburbs. That gave a least a little bit of time to enjoy the sites of what is a very beautiful city.
Seeing that I was making good time (and now had an extra hour in my pocket!), I decided that I was going to push for St Louis for the overnight stay and so I reached out to my cousin Hannah’s mother to see if we might be able to get together to see each other. Last time she and I were in close proximity was a day full of nasty storms, one of which had diverted her flight to Charlotte Douglas International which then had a tornado walk across the field for good measure. Unfortunately, three kids with me on the way to Fuquay and the many storms between us anyway conspired to keep us apart but at least the old Piedmont people still at Charlotte took care of her (as she wasn’t 25, no hotel was going to hire a room to her for the night).
The negotiations went pretty well in the beginning and we ended up switching to voice near Paducah where I got stuck in a really nasty jam right at the bridge over the Ohio River which would last about 30 minutes. Sadly, her boyfriend’s sister is pregnant and can’t have anyone round that hasn’t been vaccinated so those plans went out the window. However, a nice consolation prize was that my cousin Scott who lives just east of St Louis would be able to have me come round so the destination was set!
Once I cleared the bridge, the first stop on the way to St Louis was Harrisburg IL where my cousin Cindy still lives and runs a right impressive farm. The goal was to find Aunt Oma Lee’s and Uncle David’s farmhouse on Lewis Road and then find Cindy’s place on Lewis Lane. And it turns out that I did find Oma Lee’s house after a bit of going back and forth on a very narrow road…the problem was that I didn’t quite believe that I had found it as I remembered it looking a bit different and having the trees in a different place. And looking for Uncle David’s satellite dish that he used to monitor the commodities market all along the river to know which way to send his trucks full of corn wasn’t visible either. Trusting my instincts even though I’m having a hard time doing so is fast becoming a theme of this trip…
I did completely biff identifying Cindy’s house…I was looking in the right place but seeing as I’d not seen it since 1998 when it was a trailer and not the house it currently is, I ended up going right past it.
So now that I had thought I’d struck out twice, I’m heading west toward Marion to visit Grandpa and Grandma’s grave. Actually, there are eight of my relatives in that cemetery right next to each other…Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Nadine and Uncle George share a headstone and my great grandmother McClerren and her husband share a stone with Uncle Carl and Aunt Ruth right next door. I was pretty sure I’d find the cemetery relatively easily.
As I’m coming into Marion, I noticed a small house on the main road and had accidentally found Ted’s insurance agency office! A quick turn round and parking behind the building right at their closing time is how I met his assistant who was leaving for the day. I asked her if Ted was still there and she looked at me like I was crazy (she was more right than she knew!) but when I told her I was Cindy’s cousin, she agreed to play along to have a little fun with Ted.
So she goes back in one way and I head to the front and she tells Ted that someone is here to see him about some insurance. When he saw it was someone he’d not seen in over ten years…his jaw about dropped to the floor and his assistant did a great job not busting out laughing! 🙂
We ended up doing FaceTime with Cindy and Courtney and Ryan who were 30 miles behind me and too far to backtrack but now that I know to trust my instincts, I won’t miss them next time! 🙂
As I had expected, finding the cemetery was very easy. Finding Grandma and Grandpa’s grave marker, on the other hand…not so much when they all look alike and the lighting’s not so hot! I don’t know what it is about graveyards screwing with my sense of direction but I’ve been rather hopeless at finding particular graves for a while now. It took me about a half hour but I did eventually find them.
Now it’s time to make a speed run to just east of St Louis to meet up with Scott who was kind enough to stay up after a long day of work for a cousin to turn up at last minute. He and his new lady friend Carol had the Canes/Blackhawks game on the telly when I arrived and we ended finishing that game and most of the following one before he started nodding off near midnight which was my cue to move along. I can’t wait to see what he does with those bottles of Lexington BBQ sauce I left him…his grilling exploits in his patio recreation of Key West are often legendary! 🙂
As I’m pulling away, it occurred to me that I never hired the room for the night so I pull into a petrol station and I’m frantically hitting Travelocity but as it is after midnight, everything is showing as sold out. Fortunately the lady at the Hampton Inn in O’Fallon took pity on me and I had a place to lay my head for the very brief night!
