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You can see the moon at night from my parents’ house in Poseyville, Indiana. That’s not unusual. You can see the moon from where I live in Chicago too, but here it’s more of an afterthought, a blip in the ambient light of the city competing with the street lamps and headlights of cars that pass by no matter the hour. In Poseyville the moon is the main event, lighting up the whole town and surrounding countryside. On a clear night you can drive without headlights, it’s so bright. I know this because I’ve actually tried.
Poseyville is a farming community of 1,200 in the southwestern corner of the state. My parents built their one-story, three bedroom ranch house with a two-car garage in 1973 for $33,000. It’s the house where I grew up, the only place I lived until I went away to college. I know living in the same house that long is nothing unique either, but after moving four times in the 12 years since I moved to Chicago, it feels like an accomplishment. For me, the concepts of childhood and home have always meant that one place on Cale Street with the big backyard and a basketball hoop in the driveway.
Through an Unlocked Door
A portion of this piece originally appeared in the South Loop Review, Volume 12, Fall 2010. This version is an adaptation of my master’s thesis for the Northwestern University Masters in Creative Writing program, which won the Distinguished Thesis Award.
AN OLD, TWO-STORY, WHITE CLAPBOARD HOUSE used to sit on a gravel lane just off Indiana State Highway 165, south of the town of Poseyville. On any given summer evening, you could stand outside the house and see the lights from three separate baseball fields. Strains of “Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter” might have wafted over from Robert E. Hunt Little League Field on the edge of town to the north of the house, competing with the churning, cyclical whine of cicadas. Over the corn and soybean fields to the southwest, the lights of North Posey High School burned into the night, illuminating games between junior high, varsity, and American Legion teams. And to the east, the lights of the St. Wendel community diamond would glow in the distance like a real-life Field of Dreams, enclosed on all four sides by phalanxes of corn that part for just one lonely gravel road. The spot where this house stood, at 8100 Indiana 165, was quiet even in daylight, the solitude unnerving for those used to the hum and throb of the city. Years ago freight trains hauling grain and livestock on the Illinois Central line past the edge of town occasionally punctuated the silence with a wail, but the track is abandoned now, and the only sounds come from passing cars or the wind, blowing through the massive maple and cottonwood trees that surrounded the house and lined its driveway.
Express Motivation
There is a point when you’re cleaning out the drainage grate of an auto shop, on your hands and knees and up to your elbows in filth, when you realize that at 19 years old you ought to think carefully about your future. I worked on the cleanup crew for Expressway Dodge in Evansville, Indiana the summer after my freshman year at Indiana University. The drain was clogged after I attempted to clean a garbage can from the auto bay where we sprayed undercoat onto the bellies of new Dodge Rams, Intrepids, and Neons to protect them from rock chips and muffle road noise. This particular garbage can was used for empty containers of undercoat. Our spray nozzle didn’t completely finish a container before it tapped out, so the remaining few ounces of thick tar was tossed along with it, safety cap never reattached. Over the course of the summer, this residual goo trickled down into a three-inch thick layer on the bottom of the garbage can that, when I sprayed it with cold water trying to rinse it out, hardened into the consistency of licorice Twizzlers. The nightcrawler-sized chunks of tar that I managed to dislodge from the bottom of the can washed down the drain running the center of the shop and packed the foundation for an impromptu wading pool of ashy water and petroleum-based fluids that greeted me when I returned from lunch. The passel of mechanics gathered around the mess had a high time watching me reach through the swirling rainbows and soggy paper towels to fish out the blockage. The tide subsided eventually, and I squatted on the sidewalk behind the shop and wrung out my socks.