The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A View of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois Springfield, Mo. This morning we crossed the Mississippi—after motoring for miles on steeply built up roads through soupy and...
...When people say or imply that this territory between the Ohio and the Great Lakes is all flat, they are speaking less than a half-truth...
...And if—as frequently happened while we were viewing this scene—the richly colored and artfully outlined design was dappled by the shadows of fluffy woolen clouds and at precisely the right moment the meadow lark with his honey-sweet note gave a voice to all the wide landscape, it would be hard to persuade me that any pile of rocks or heap of ice and snow could be more lovely...
...To their very tops tliey arc covered with verdure...
...blinded by convention who can swing along the roads of an) of these Midwestern stales and not be overcome by the various forms of beauty presented by the landscape...
...It is flat country and the people live flat lives in their flat little towns...
...Louis, where the) had one of our worst race riots not so long ago...
...What could be more enchanting than a wide, dipping valley with the far-stretching spaces patterned in the gold of wheat, the strangely lively green of oats and the dark and billowing green of corn...
...I would start with Pennsylvania...
...This was our fourth notable stream since leaving home four days ago...
...I will acknowledge that the part of Ohio in which I started life's adventure presents a rather even and unbroken face...
...The Rockies and other great mountains are jutting heaps of barren rocks in some cases covered with gleaming ice and snow...
...So they are flat—¦ what of it...
...It is a school for which I have a special affection...
...I was told by a professor of economics at Ohio State University that Ohio is now second in the value added to raw materials by industrial activity —New York being first...
...As for political divisions, we have viewed Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and now most of Missouri...
...But I wish I could produce colored photographs or movies of what we have seen during these four days...
...Well, at Columbus we loafed about in the Student Union of the Ohio State University...
...The wife of one of the professors told me that it w as a part of the usual pattern...
...And because the landscape is varied, the towns and rural areas are as different as can be and so are the occupations and ways of their people...
...In Eflingham, a little town not far from East St...
...Arguments bore me...
...It seemed silly to remark about a feature of life which was obviously taken for granted...
...Out of some misguided notion of politeness, I asked their advice before setting out...
...I didn't ask am questions...
...In Illinois we had a similar experience...
...Ohio, Indiana and Illinois should be treated together...
...Most of them joined in one admonition: "Don't waste any time," they said, "on the Middle West...
...The Susquehanna, the Ohio and the Wabash are not as wide as the Father of Waters, but each has its own charms and is worth seeing on its own account...
...The people of these states which we have crossed are generally regarded as backward, conservative, unintelligent...
...Many of our friends have made Western trips...
...So it was with special delight that I noticed in the restaurant and lounges of the Union colored students and white talking and eating and drinking together...
...But the bread and meat which nourish mountain-climbers are produced on the plains...
...The southern sections of this area are infinitely varied...
...It must be persons peculiar...
...The same may be said of the corresponding sections of Indiana and Illinois...
...In a very real way, the members of its faculty many years ago gave me my start in life...
...The old river is just as brown with sediment and just as obstructed by sandbars as it was in Mark Twain's day...
...No one seemed to notice...
...we saw white people and Negroes eating together in a popular cafeteria...
...So far are they from man's normal existence that setting foot upon their peaks is a task accomplished only by men of the greatest courage and endurance...
...There is nothing really worth looking at until you get to the Rockies...
...This morning we crossed the Mississippi—after motoring for miles on steeply built up roads through soupy and steamy swamps...
...They have been maligned both as to their physical characteristics and the intellectual and spiritual tendencies of their inhabitants...
...And I would not have it forgotten that these states of which the habit is to speak disrespectfully are among the most productive in the nation...
...I am sure that Indiana and Illinois are not far behind...
...In addition to endless picturesque scenery, this state offers tremendous industrial production, great stretches of the finest farms in the world and some of the most magnificent cities which this country can boast...
...If my friends don't like what there is to see in Indiana and Illinois, no debate will change their minds...
...Its mountains are not us tall, sharp or startling as the Rockies, but they are rich and redolent bulges of green against the blue of the sky...
...It is a state which has everything...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 27
