Page 47 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 35

plane called “Big Ben.” My brothers told me not to go because it
might crash. It wasn’t much of a thrill, and I was so disappointed,
but it was nice to be the first one we knew to take off in Jacksonville
and fly twenty miles to circle the view down all over Kampsville,
Carrollton, and Eldred to see where I came from.
Before a storm, I can remember we used to always run like crazy
around the house. Mom burned palm from Palm Sunday to make
the storm stop. She’d stand outside the door on the porch lighting
the braided palm and sticking her arm out into the rain, shaking
off the ash, which made us all feel better. The yard seemed so big
then, and decorated beautifully with Daddy’s big, blooming, red
cannas, but when I went back in 1968, the yard seemed so small.
On occasion I would go over and spend the day with my Aunt
Mag and help her churn butter.

* * * *

This is amusing to say, as I just had the chance to visit my
old home September 6 and 7, 1980. It’s now on the map. Really!
There is an article from the Wall Street Journal this very week re-
porting all the archaeological digging that started in Kampsville
a few years back. I noticed in our Peoria paper a Kampsville trip
sponsored by Lakeview Museum in conjunction with the museum’s
exhibitions, “The Rise of Life at Koster.” Until recently, Koster
was a cornfield I once played in, and now it’s the oldest site of
civilization in America, dating back centuries before Christ to
9500 B.C. The trip included a tour of the Ansell Site, which was
on my Daddy’s old rural mail route. The archeology laboratories
are located in the old post office that my Daddy worked out of and
in which my cousin, Cecilia Stelbrink, worked as postmistress, I
think, for thirty-six years.
I went down Friday at 5:45, September 6, with a group from
Lakeview. We crossed the Illinois River by ferry that Friday night,
and crossed over to Kampsville from Greene County. Many on the
tour had never ridden a ferry before. Now it’s operated free, but