Dispatches from the Midwest, Issue 7

Wednesday, 5 March 2014: Daytime

In Thanksgiving of 2011, my Aunt Carla died rather suddenly. She was the second of my grandparents’ children to pass away, and with her death, only my mother remained. I was 31 by that point, and had long lived far away from my family and from the Midwest, and so I was beginning to appreciate the precariousness of my family. The older generations were dying out. So as my eldest sister cooked the turkey and my middle sister yelled as loudly as she could at our near-deaf grandparents, I joined my mother out on the screen porch. As she smoked away, I talked to her, hammered her with questions, tapping away on my iPad as she recalled everything from the address of her first home to the foods she used to hate to eat. She endured and answered these questions for a surprisingly lengthy period of time, before finally saying with her slightly-amused, slightly-sad smile, “I’m tired of this.” So I put away my iPad, and she and I went back inside. All in all, I was rather satisfied—I had gotten a chance to ask her about her memories of her childhood, her family, her life, and she had given me a lot to go with. And there was still plenty of time to ask her more questions.

December 16, 2013: Time’s up.

No more chances to ask her anything. All I have are the things that she told me, and whatever information my family cobbles together in conversations. But I have my fancies, and I have my ability to conjecture and imagine. And I have Optimus Prime, too, and a pretty solid GPS. So we head out, and north on the 19, through little towns called Cicero and Atlanta. Soon we enter into Tipton County, and I cannot help but to get a little shiver. This is not only where my mother is from, but my grandfather, too. As far as I am concerned, this whole county is his old stomping grounds.

Soon I see the Tipton Water Tower, clearly visible over the flat, barren fields, and then the beautiful courthouse tower. And then, I’m in downtown Tipton, Indiana, where my mother and grandfather both grew up. I’m not crying, dammit, I’m not crying. It's just one more tiny-ass Indiana town, but goddamn it, it's mine. It's perfect.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t planned my day down to the T. First I go to the Jim Dandy Restaurant and chow down a behemoth Hoosier specialty, a pork tenderloin sandwich.

 As I do, I eavesdrop on the conversation of a few local men—farmers, late 50s perhaps or even older, predictably overweight. They could have gone to elementary school with Mom, I think to myself, but of course, say nothing.

After lunch, I follow my GPS to 425 North Independence Street. I make sure I have the right location, and park Optimus Prime, and trudge through the grey slush to the house up close. There it is—the old white house with the porch out front and the little old “carriage house” at back. There’s still a porch swing out front, just like Mom remembered, but this one is a modern contraption, and portable. This is it: her childhood home.

From there, I make my way to the town library, where I spend a couple of hours, and then I move on to the Heritage Center, which is an eye-opener. It’s a cramped building, filled to the brim with not only the usual historical documents but also a huge assortment of various odds-and-ends: generic objects like dresses and dishes and farm equipment and medals that were probably just ordinary or treasured belongings of Tipton residents over the last 150 years, but now are revered as part of the material history of one humble Midwestern county. I fucking loved every minute of it.

There’s a big-ass cemetery out behind the Heritage Center, and I can tell that many of my grandmother’s family—including her beloved mother, the much-renowned Stella Massey—are buried there. I get the data for the plot locations and trudge my way out to what I interpret to be their approximate burial plot…

…but forty minutes later, I concede defeat. The temperature is dropping, and all of a sudden, it’s snowing, and what the hell, it wasn’t supposed to snow today! Wearily, I throw in the towel, and soon after, Optimus Prime and I are on our way back to Noblesville.

It was a good day—sad yet comforting, rewarding, full of the usual sentiment. And a valuable lesson learned: when locating old family graves, know where you are going. And try to avoid looking for them at the end of one of the harshest winters in memory.

It's okay. I'll be back. Sooner rather than later.