GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #865: THE WORLD IS MOVING ON, BUT STILL!

 

I've been feeling a lot better, so I thought I'd spend some time at my favorite forest preserve, Fullersburg. I usually hang out at the Graue Mill end these days. I like to read there, but I can no longer wander the land to my heart's content because I'm supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible per my podiatrist. So yes, I have seen the fences from where they're restructuring Salt Creek's flow. The mill is closed up as far as I can tell. And as I drove down the back road to the entrance to the other side of Fullersburg, I saw just how different the creek looked. I can't tell for sure, but I think the waterfall is gone.

I remember when I was a kid I walked the narrow ledge just so I could perch on the overhang above the waterfall. I can't do that anymore. My bad leg would never let me get that far. Even if it did, the unfortunate side effect of two decades of hard-as-fuck drinking is that I no longer have balance, and I still get the shakes. As best as I can tell, those things are never going to go away.

But on that day I looked down and saw a giant fish broken on the rocks below, flapping as hard as it could. At first I thought it was a salmon, but there are no salmon in Salt Creek. There are pike, but they're pretty rare. As it turned out, when its struggles slowed, I could tell it was a pike. Saw the little teeth in its opening and closing mouth.

(There's some bass in there and bluegill. Supposedly there's catfish in there, too, but I've never seen one nor evidence of one's existence.)

The waterfall was fucking beautiful. I hope it's still there, and I just can't see it because of the angle of my view.

But today was a fucking gorgeous day, so I said fuck the foot. I'm going to walk around a bit. More than usual, at least. The sun felt good on me. I felt the Mediterranean in me calling. When I was young I hated it, but in my elder years I can see myself all too easily doing something I thought Gramps was crazy for: sitting outside wearing nothing but shorts, soaking in the sun. He did it so much they had to cut melanomas from his head. But it felt amazing today. Like the world finally had a place for me, and I fit into a me-shaped hole there perfectly.

I never feel like I fit in with the world. I always feel like I'm just a tad out of whack with the rest of it, like I raised my arms at the wrong part of the roller coaster. I'm looking at that sentence, and I'm not sure it makes sense. More like a puzzle that lost a piece, and the owner cut a new piece out of cardboard, and that new piece is me. That feels better. Yes.

This is behind the visitor center, where you can see the partial skeleton of a wooly mammoth, if that's your thing. It's mine, so don't be shy. But where you see all that grass? It used to be all creek.

The water used to come up to this wall. It was never deep, but the wildlife used to come up to the wall, too. Frogs, turtles, ducks and an occasional fish. Once upon a time a friend of mine and I wound up in the newspaper because we decided to venture beyond the wall. The creek had dried up at the time, and the ground *looked* sturdy. The creek was just a streamlet, and she wanted to get a close up picture of a duck that was floating there. She sank in the mud, and when I cockily went to rescue her I sank, too. She lost her shoes (wait, not her shoes, she had "borrowed" them from someone), and I wound up giving her a piggyback ride almost the whole mile back to the parking lot. A journalist was doing a softball piece on the place at the time, and we wound up in her article for the Trib. Granted, she made up a pack of lies about us, but it was nice regardless.

Forgive an old man if he's forgotten whether or not he's told that story before. I'll bet I have. And I'll bet my tone was a lot more annoyed by it. But as I said, this man is old, and he is softening at the edges. Possibly feeling a little more mortal than usual due to a health scare that kinda-sorta isn't over. Forgive me the moment of nostalgia.

After enjoying a bit of natural solitude I decided to walk down to the big bridge, and from the middle of it I saw with glee that I could see through the water again. When I was a kid it was a toxic green sludge, almost. When I was in college the water got cleaned up so much I could see clearly to the bottom. Then it got bad again. Not as bad as before. The green had not gone neon yet. Now that they're doing the renovation I can see to the bottom again. Not clearly, not yet, but I take it as a good sign.

But what I really wanted to see was the short bridge that leads to the island in the middle of Salt Creek. I'd hoped that they finally opened it back up, because I wanted to walk the path that goes around the island, maybe hang out at the rest stop a little bit.

Motherfucker. The bridge is gone, and with it any chance I will have of exploring that island ever again. I looked around, and if I had two good legs I could probably get over there. The creek dried up on this end of the island. All that's there now is a tiny little swamp.

If I didn't need this leg brace to get around, I think I could cross the rough ground and the tiny bit of swamp to get there, but I really don't want to say fuck my foot on that one. The odds of breaking it further here are just too high. If it breaks any more than it already has, I'll become Pegleg Johnny. Because yes, if I do lose the foot, I do want a pegleg. I probably wouldn't be able to balance well on it, but it would be cool for maybe five minutes. Maybe a little longer if I'm going to roar along to "The Curse of Captain Morgan" by Alestorm.

It seems that every time I walk around Fullersburg, there is something vastly different. But as I sat on a bench looking up at the cathedral the trees made above me, I couldn't help but think, No matter how badly they try to change this place, they can never take away its beauty. And it is still fucking beautiful. The world is moving on, but there is still beauty to behold.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #533: THE FORGOTTEN FULLERSBURG ISLAND

 

Fullersburg is probably my favorite forest preserve ever. I've been there so many times I know the place intimately. So intimately that I know about a place that is fairly secret there, where they have a second waterfall. Everyone knows about the one by the Graue Mill, but very few know about that other one. I remember when I first found it I knew I'd been the only one to set foot there since the early 'Nineties. I found empty Pepsi cans with the old design from back then. That's how I know. If someone else had been down there, I feel certain that shit would have gotten cleaned up.

It sucks because now I can't get to the place. I can see the waterfall, but not the area I found nearby. For that you have to jump across the stream, and that involves jumping to a sturdy branch that overhangs said stream. You need two good feet for this, and I've got none. You know about my bad foot. My "better" foot is down a couple of toes. Possibly I'll be down another toe soon. I have a hole in the one next to the two stumps, so . . .

But that's not what I'm talking about tonight. See that bridge up there? It's closed off now. Has been for a few years. I'm not entirely sure why. The last time I had a close look it seemed to be intact and safe enough to cross. I'm irritated because I loved crossing that bridge and exploring the island there. There is one path, and it circles the small island, and there is one rest area with benches, tables, etc. I remember many years ago there had been a flood, and when I found the rest area, which is encircled by a stone wall that you have to step down into, there were fish stuck there. The flood had to have carried them in and stranded them when the waters subsided.

Maybe the flood is the reason they blocked off the bridge. I don't know. I miss that place. It was also good for watching deer because not a lot of people went over to the island. Not that there is a lack of deer in the woods, but they're more likely to stick around when viewed on the island instead of loping off into the wilderness.

It was also a good place to find frogs and turtles, and in the spring you could easily see armies of tadpoles swimming in the shallows.

Every year I hope they'll take down the barriers, and every year I'm disappointed. Here's to hoping for spring 2023 . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #304: WE LOST A WORLD

 So last time I talked about Gore Vidal's historical novel, Empire. I went in search to  many used bookstores looking for his earlier works in the series, in particular Burr because I wanted to read them in order. While I found many treasures along the way, the only other one of Vidal's I could find was Lincoln. In all honesty, that was the one I was most interested in. I knew that the older John Hay was portrayed as a misanthrope, but one who very much still had his finger on the pulse of society. I knew in Lincoln he would be portrayed as a young man, someone who was an adult but still couldn't grow a beard, so he took to gluing fake beards on his face so that people would take him seriously.

I bought the book, and I went to one of my favorite places in the world: the Graue Mill.

I don't remember the first time my mom took me there, but it was so long ago that they didn't have signs that said not to feed the ducks. She would give me a half-loaf of bread so I could break them up and toss them to ducks and geese. I couldn't have been older than four. That place is very dear to me. The Fuller house still stands to this day. The woods are named after that family, Fullersburg. But the Graue Mill is not just any old place. It is one of the very last working mills in Illinois. Most importantly it was a stop on the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape to Canada. And at one point in time, Abraham Lincoln stayed at the house here. I'm fairly certain that it's not the same house, that it was razed years ago and now a new structure stands there. Regardless, Lincoln walked on this land.

I have been a regular visitor all of my life. It is the place I feel the safest. It is the place where my best thinking happens. I try to go there when most people are at work or in school so I more or less have it to myself. And the ducks. The geese. The chipmunks. The deer. The occasional fox and coyote. No bears. They have not been seen in this area for decades.

Sometimes I read there. Sometimes I write there. Back when I had the full use of my legs I hiked everywhere. There are even a few paths that lead to dead ends, and you either have to walk back or climb a minor cliff face. I usually chose to climb the cliff face. There is even a very, very secret place there. I only go there in the most intimate of moments because there is evidence there that no one has been at that place since the 'Eighties. I know that because I recognize the litter. For example, I saw a Pepsi can from the 'Eighties there, and you'd think that would have been cleaned up by now.

In case you're interested, there is a nearly complete wooly mammoth skeleton on the far side of Fullersburg Woods. Touching it is like touching something from a far distant past.

And so I found myself reading Vidal's Lincoln on the very ground that Lincoln once walked. It probably shouldn't have mattered so much, but I could still feel the power of his presence in the novel. It made it feel so much more real, and history should always feel real. That's the only way you can connect with it. And once that connection is gone, it's gone. There is no retrieving it.

History is never too far behind us. And while Hay might have been right in Empire, about us having lost a world, there is still a world to be remembered. And, having that knowledge, maybe moving into a new world. One that is different, but one that has learned from the mistakes of the past. I forgot who said it, but someone once pointed out that it's only a mistake if you don't learn from it.

And now there is some talk that the Graue Mill will be destroyed due to a reorganization of Salt Creek's flow. No historical consideration is being given to it. If you drive by today, you can already see how different Salt Creek looks as opposed to the way it looked only ten years ago.

If this happens, we will lose another world. An important world to history.

An important world to me. I can't imagine living in a world without this place. The only place that can bring me peace or even a calm state of mind. We can't let this happen. We can't let this piece of living history die.

Or it will be another thing that we lost for the sake of ignoring all that came before us.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #124: NEWSPAPERS I'VE BEEN IN

I cleaned out my desk tonight, and I found a few newspaper articles I'd been in that I'd forgotten about. Tonight, I'll be discussing these, starting with . . .

When I was a kid, waaaaaaaaay back in the day, someone from the Elmhurst PRESS asked me about gay marriage while I was at the library. This is what I told them. Considering the conservative town I live in, it's kind of a surprise that my fellow interviewees agreed with me.

This is from when I won the Carlson Award for Creative Writing at Elmhurst College (one of three winners). It was for a short story I wrote called "Love in a Book." It has yet to be published, but it's a fun tale of what happens when a vampire asks his wizard friend to cast a spell on the girl he loves (and what happens when the cops find out). Maybe some day, I'll let it see the light of day, because it is pretty funny.

This is the ultimate proof of why I can never trust the media. If you can read all of this (I know, it's small and distorted, but it's worth the read), please realize that everything written here (except for the loss of shoes) is a blatant lie. Nicole Evans, who co-wrote "Suicidal Tendencies" with me in TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE, was my date, and yes, I was the guy in question. We were NOT elegantly dressed. I was wearing a denim jacket, for fuck's sake. The creek hadn't dried up due to conditions. They were working on fixing the waterfall at the forest preserve, so they shut down the water, which caused the creek to dry to a trickle. And we didn't leave the path, like some misguided Hansel and fucking Gretel. Nicole saw a duck hanging out by that tiny creek trickle, and she couldn't stop herself from jumping over a barrier to walk out and get a picture of the fowl. Except . . . well, she sank down to her knees. I laughed at her from a safe distance (because I was, am and always will be an asshole), but she asked me for help, so I tried to go out and help her. The ground looked sturdy enough, but halfway out, I sank to my knees. It was nearly impossible to pull myself out and help her. I did my best, but I kept sinking down. I lost one of my shoes, but I was able to reach into the mudhole and grab it out. However, Nicole got tired of my slapstick attempt at saving her, so she gave up and walked past me, telling me how much I sucked as a savior. I eventually pulled myself out, walking on all fours back to the barrier. We were both covered in mud, so we cleaned ourselves off with a hose behind the forest preserve's HQ. As we did this, the Trib writer interviewed us (so she knew very fucking well that she lied in her fluff piece). After we were clean, Nicole told me that she'd lost her shoes--for real--in the quick-mud. Because of this, I gave her a piggy-back ride back to the car, so she wouldn't get her bare feet all fucked up on the gravel path. However, the shoes she'd lost were shoes that she'd "borrowed" (please read as "stolen") from one of her friends, so she didn't give a shit. So yeah, even the ONE THING the Trib writer got right was kind of wrong.

This is from when I was in junior high (what they now call "middle school"). Everyone at school knew I was a writer, but none of them knew about my horrid poetry attempts. Much to my surprise, one of my poems earned me a spot as a Sandburg Fellow. (The school is named after Carl Sandburg, who lived about a mile away from it once upon a time.) This recognition led to a poetry workshop, which I bullshitted my way through, mostly because I don't know shit about poetry. I've only had one poem in all of my career published which satisfied me. "The Rubber Band of Sanity" was NOT that poem. Still, it seemed to impress people, so I was OK with skipping classes just so I could hang out with fellow student poets and a real, live local poet.


Sorry. The reason I'm talking about this shit now is because I cleaned out my desk and found some interesting things. Just thought I would share them. Goodnight, people who are probably not really fuckers. (And some of you who might, actually, be fuckers, but lovable fuckers.)