The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Old Man Of Belvidere I HAD NEVER HEARD of the town of Belvidere. It lies in one of the dimples of the Northern Illinois prairie on the edge of Wisconsin. We...
...We used to have business...
...It might just as well have been in any other moderately prosperous Northern state...
...Their hind quarters was socked into the cushions of a car instead of at their desks...
...We found it because we were tired of the turnpike...
...Then it began to dawn upon me that the places which I was passing were of an old and upper-class sort...
...After an hour or two spent rolling past herds of Holsteins quietly and un suspiciously chewing their cuds, we came to Belvidere...
...So I had a motive for strolling down the middle of a town as fresh, as capable of surprises, as if it had been just created...
...The sewing-machine factory failed...
...Look at this town...
...The old men who owned and managed their businesses gradually died off...
...And by God," he said, "I've earned my living since I was 11...
...They knew how to make whatever they were supposed to make, and the employes had respect for them...
...With a cup of coffee I could stand my disappointment...
...First thing we knew we didn't have anything left but a couple of churches—and they don't furnish much income...
...When I asked him where I could find a restaurant, he responded: "Well, friend, there used to be a purty good eatin'-place right down the street...
...The sun was shining, the birds were singing—and never was the wide world more inviting...
...The employers tended to their business...
...It was dignified and thrown into deep shade by a row of giant elms on one side and equally impressive ancient maples on the other...
...I saw first that the magnificent trees which we had noted the evening before had sent out such mighty roots that the ancient sidewalks were heaved and humped all out of shape...
...We turned out furniture...
...Naturally, I was growing hungry, and I thought that if I could find a restaurant my whole problem might be solved...
...They had great porches, gables and porte-cocheres...
...The working people worked...
...The furniture factories discharged their people...
...I was tired from my long walk and, at any rate, the old boy seemed eager for companionship, so I accepted an unvocalized invitation to share the ancient bench...
...The news, he explained, would be de livered at this very spot...
...These cussed youngsters we have now," my friend mumbled, "they can't be depended on to do anything...
...About the time this fruitful thought occurred to me I came upon a thin and hunched old man sitting on a much-carved-and-whittled wood en bench before a tightly closed grocery store...
...It folded up quite some time ago...
...The best vaudeville players came to the theater and people laughed at real jokes...
...someone in our car said: "Let's get out of here and go somewhere where we can see people and towns and cattle...
...He proudly pro claimed that he was 86 years old...
...Eighty-six years I have lived here...
...The next day was Sunday...
...The man's name was Jake Staubell and he was not at all averse to conversation...
...There was not even a wandering citizen to whom I could put a question—at least not until I had passed most of the town's shiny automobile establishments and a couple of locked-up drugstores...
...We made sewing-machines...
...A mighty thump announced the arrival of the news and the end of our en lightening talk...
...In the meantime, my quest for a Sunday paper gave little promise of success...
...No wonder the world is going to pot...
...The young sprouts who took their places thought this town wasn't good enough for them...
...And then what happened...
...he shouted, and looked up and down the empty street as if to challenge anyone to take issue with him...
...That's why things is shut up here...
...He, too, was waiting for a chance to buy a Sunday paper...
...They didn't belong to any of these fool unions...
...Evidently at some time in the past there had been prosperity and freedom to indulge tastes for architecture and decoration...
...I had everything to make life perfect except a Sunday paper...
...The houses had the size and solemnity of Victorian houses...
...We had factories...
...They began to run all over the state—to Milwaukee—even Chicago...
...Nobody looked after his own business...
...They stayed at home and spent their money in their own home town...
...So the working people had to find jobs in other towns—of course, they had to have cars to go back and forth...
...The trees had grown to such proportions that place after place was deep in aristocratic shade...
...The stores were all closed...
...But nothin' lasts long in this town...
...This was enough to put old Jake's memory into action...
...The chief artery of travel and trade was appropriately called Main Street...
...The papers was supposed to be here at 7 AM—and here it is 8:30...
...Horses didn't go fast enough...
...We made cloth...
...Now the town was slowly running down...
...And soon their wives got in the habit of buying their stuff in bigger places where there was bigger stores...
...The auto was in vented...
Vol. 42 • July 1959 • No. 28
