Town just got a lot quieter with the leaving of the Knox students and school letting out and all. It's very hot anyway and I think a whole lot of people just head out to some lake or another.
One of my dashes headed out from HyVee and onto 30 toward Wataga, but then cut down through various turns and bends all the way down to Lake Dahinda. It was a fine display of rural Illinois countryside, flat farm fields with a few wooded bends and hills, until we got to the lake which was filling up, presumably partly with Galesburgers fleeing the heat. She pointed out the sound of the cicadas which was a big deal for me; I haven't really heard them in Galesburg, and thought I heard them only once before. They had them out there for sure. My hearing is so weak these days, everything so amplified by my hearing aids, that I can hardly tell normal sounds from the others.
The day before, I'd been lost deep in the south side of Chicago. It wasn't so much scary as just endless, block after block of city, with busy traffic and things happening everywhere. It occurred to me while driving through farm country that this was like just the opposite, as far as what we have in Illinois, and maybe Galesburg is kind of in the middle between those two extremes. A city of sorts, but a very rural, quiet, scenic city not far from these lakes.
The same day, oddly, I got two dashes on the same street in Knoxville. I like Knoxville and consider it to be a classic kind of town much like Galesburg, only half again as small and toward the rural end of the spectrum. The only things that don't count on this spectrum are places like Naperville which really are just part of Chicago. Chicago is so huge!
Another lake I like, besides Lake Story and Dahinda, is Bracken. Now that one needs a bit of a name change to lighten it up, I think, but it's got some things going for it. One, totally wooded in spite of being out in the middle of the cornfields. Two, being only four or five miles from town. But I'm suspicious: with a name like that, can you actually swim in it? Is it real water that is cool enough to cool off on?
The memories of the south side of Chicago are still on my mind. That, and nightmare traffic in and out of Gary. Gary itself wasn't that bad, all black, yes, obviously a little poor, and lots of people about who were not working. That wasn't a problem for me except that I kept getting lost. And a little unsettled feeling comes to me when I don't know where I am.
It never happens in Galesburg. Even on those way back roads, way out in the country, I knew that if necessary I could stand on my car, or on any nearby fencepost, and probably see Galesburg. You get to know the backroads eventually just like the city streets. They may not all be in great shape, but at least most of them go where you think they would go.
