Covered Bridges, Fuzzy Bunnies, & Back Roads

Last Sunday, we traveled with our friend Kim to the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival in Rockville.  Robbie said that he had never been and neither had Kim.  It probably had been about 10 years since I had been there last.  The amusing part is that once we got there and walked around awhile, Robbie & I finally remembered that I did take him there in the second year of our relationship.  If you have the chance to go there it's a great way to see authentic Indiana and eat your weight in carbs.  Hell, go to Rockville/Parke County whenever you get the chance.  It's a beautiful drive, the town is charming and it's a nice little break when you're from a larger city.  http://coveredbridges.com/

What amazes me most when I'm there is how much of the town has never been modernized like so many of the "donut" towns around Indianapolis.  Don't get me wrong, Fixing up the town squares is a nice thing as it preserves history in a way that many people in the late 60's and early 70's would never have done.  "Urban Renewal" was the way then, and we are much the poorer for it.  Because of "Urban Renewal", Muncie now has this ugly monstrosity of a building that replaced the old Delaware County Courthouse.  With it's gun-slit windows, and concrete form squatting on concrete columns, it isn't that distinguishable from many other government buildings of that era.  Maybe in another 50 years people will come to look at that type of architecture as something wondrous in its simplicity.  I for one, will not be among them.  Amazingly, I discovered while researching the Delaware County Courthouse that the courthouses in Rockville and Muncie were designed by the same architect, Brentwood S. Tolan of Fort Wayne, IN.  Tolan designed a similar courthouse for Kosciusko County in Warsaw, IN.

This is the south face of the Parke County Courthouse, which is a curious mix of Greek Revival and Second Empire architecture.  I would imagine that if you were to show this picture to anyone from around Rockville they would immediately recognize the building they were looking at.  Even when you go for a close up of the clock face, there is something entirely singular in it's design that many would instantly recognize. (As an aside, does anyone know why there is a Star of David on all four clock faces?)

But, this isn't a discourse on 19th vs. 20th century architecture, but rather  it's more about the trip there.  How going there always takes me to places in my mind and heart that I thought were long gone.  Like that the first time I went to the festival was with my mother and brothers in the late 70's.  It was a different time for us then.  We were still a family, small and a little broken, but still a family that was silently grieving the loss of our dad just a few years before. 

Little has changed with the festival in all these years.  They still wrap tents around the east and north lawns of the courthouse square in which most of the vendors are located.  You can still buy small jars of home-made apple butter, hand made blankets and throws, any number of country craft items or even a brown bunny made of the softest blanket material I or Riley have ever touched. When Riley saw the bunny, she grabbed it from Robbie and had a grip on it that told us that we were buying a fuzzy bunny.  She's slept with it every night since then.

The food vendors are still on the south and west lawns where you can still eat anything from pork chop sandwiches to persimmon pudding and everything else in between. They have homemade ice creams sold by the Boy Scouts, handmade crullers from the local Catholic Church, authentic deep fried pork rinds, spiral cut potato chips, cinnamon rolls... I could go on, but my stomach is starting to growl.  Just about anything you can think of as a Hoosier staple can be found there.  The only thing not found are anti-acids, but you can get those at the Rexal across the street.

Throughout the town, mainly on US 36, are various vendors, yard sales, and antique stores.  There is usually a logjam of traffic along the highway coming into town from both directions.  I take the back roads in and out of Rockville for that very reason.  Both ways take you through Marshall which is "famous" for the Marshall Arch.  It's an arch with Marshall painted across both sides of it, spanning the main street through town.  The arch is supported on either side by prairie style columns.  I remember seeing it as a small child, but couldn't remember where exactly it was.  (I couldn't read at that age, therefore I couldn't remember the name.)  It was a bit of serendipity when I rediscovered it about 14 years ago on one of my infamous shortcuts.  I don't mind driving a few miles out of the way if it means avoiding heavy traffic.  Plus the back roads usually afford a more visually appealing route - especially this time of year with the autumn foliage in full color.

It was the route I chose coming back home that became the most memorable for me.  Our trip back took us by Russellville and through the towns of Roachdale (yes, a real town in Indiana), North Salem and Jamestown.  It was a bit of an accident really that we ended up going that way.  I confused Indiana 236 with 234 and drove back to Indianapolis via a different route.  I ended up taking a trip back along the memory highway as well.  These were the towns that my parents grew up in and around, and they would take us through them from time to time when I was a small child.  With Riley asleep in the back, Kim silently knitting next to her, and Robbie dozing in the passenger seat, I was pretty much alone to go through the memories that came bubbling up from the depths of my mind.

It's amazing the amount of things I've forgotten over the years.  I didn't remember anything specific about the route between Marshall and Roachdale other than I had been on it several times a long time ago.  Roachdale is where memories as well as emotions started flooding in.  My mother had spent a portion of her childhood there.  And I think she still had some relatives around there that we would visit from time to time when I was a child.   North Salem is where Mom & Dad had friends who we would visit all the time.  With North Salem only being about ten miles away from Advance, it was an easy trip.  And Dad liked taking his Sunday drives.  Sometimes we would just take trips literally to nowhere for no other reason than just to drive.

Maybe unconsciously I took the wrong road because of what is going on with my youngest brother and his health concerns.  I find myself desperately trying to remember anything true from my childhood.  The older I get, the more it seems that maybe what I remember growing up really didn't happen to me.  Sometimes it seems that I've somehow mixed up my childhood with something I've read a while ago.  Maybe it was just a way to grab back some of my forgotten childhood and reconnect the lines and dots that make me who I am.  Driving through those towns was a way for me to remember events and emotions long forgotten.  Or maybe, just maybe, it was just a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon with the family I now have.