how boring must indiana be to think of this as fun

do not stay at one that is within a half mile of a strip club

Sound advice.

I drove across Indiana on a cross-country road trip when I was ten. I remember absolutely nothing about it.

3rded/4thed notion that you should be a writer, tera. i read ilx at work, so posts as long as yours usually wouldn't get read. but i've read every one here.

I am in Petersburg, IN because my boyfriend works on pipelines and he is doing work on a line here. We haven't been together long and this is the second job I have been with him on. The first job was only a few days in Columbus, TX. That was a teenie town but it was still Texas and the place had a lot of character. It was close enough to Austin,TX and so I had my girlfriends come up to see me.

This is the first job out of state and it is a few weeks. I have always been into small town America and open to it but I naively forget I am Hispanic and look it too. So these little towns may not always be the places they are to my boyfriend who is White. Now that I have had this little culture shock I will be more prepared for the next small town. Although I don't want to be one of those people who is always on the defensive about racial issues.

There is more at play here to. I have always worked at least two jobs since 1995. I had a steady job for 13 years in Austin,TX and now I don't work. I planned on finding jobs here and there as we would travel (like Tod and Buz on Route 66) and now see that I am the type who should be working because my mind just needs to get busy with something or it turns in on itself. The library in town was not too friendly and claimed they didn't even need volunteer work. I haven't seen any help wanted signs and we aren't going to be here long enough anyway. Then of course, would I even want to try and get a job in a place like this? I hope to find a job as soon as my boyfriend finds a job that lasts several months. It may be in another place just like this but I feel that I will be better at dealing with it and will find something to do, volunteer work or real employment. I just hope we don't encounter these places that often. Vincennes, for example, has a whole other feel so I am hopeful. Still, despite everything I am okay with this experience for the most part. I just like experiences even though they might get a bit too frustrating or weird, I know I will look back at them later and be cool with it.

do not stay at one that is within a half mile of a strip club

― it was pleasant and delightful, just like (La Lechera), Tuesday, August 2, 2011 1:58 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

I LOVE motels like that but they have to be well-maintained and clean ones and not all of them are. There's something so distinctly American about them that I find really appealing. Also, they're creepy as hell which I sort of love. I would not, however, want to spend an extended period of time in one.

I've stayed in many good ones but enough bad ones to be able to spot them from the looks of the front desk and location/proximity to skeevy places. Parking lot can tell you a lot too.

I had a horrible toothache in one of those once and I think the nightmares are still with me. Also, one word: bugs. The movie Bug, in fact.

*tera, re the weird racist vibe you're getting, I would say...cautiously... that you're probably not wrong? When I was in gradeschool my parents became friends with a couple from Mexico City through my dad's job, and I remember that the woman found it very challenging to keep her temper while dealing w people in West Michigan. She probably left out the gory details since I was young and impressionable, but I heard enough. They stayed for a couple of years, so she had time to get involved with the art museum, charities, volunteering, (it was a larger town, obv) but when she was out at stores and around town, she was still asked if she was a migrant worker. Or people would be amazed that her English was "so good", etc.

Otoh we also hosted an exchange student from Mexico when I was in high school, and she joined right into everything that all the other HS girls did and was far more popular than I was at my own school. :D So it's really entirely about being seen as an outsider vs an insider, no matter where you're from.

I actually love the motel room. It is very comforting now and my little womb, I sometimes find myself going fetal. It is very late 1940's and the bathroom looks original and well preserved. Other construction and pipeline workers stay here and they are all cool, working men who come home, have a beer, listen to music, sit outside and talk about their wives back home. I like catching those conversations. Makes me realize that at some point, everyone is met with the same batch of problems no matter what their socio-economic level is. If you manage to escape 1/2 of them count yourself lucky and not banal. It isn't a creepy place when they are here. It is very alive. It's pretty empty during the day. I wouldn't say it is creepy, only desolate. The room is my favorite place right now. I do catch myself wondering who has stayed here over the decades and what did they talk about, why were they here...

You can view pics here. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tera/sets/72157627216956133/

We stayed at a hotel that housed section 8 tenants in Houston twice. Just over night, it was $29.99 a night. There was always a cop in the lobby. People never went to sleep there. I'd wake up at all hours and there would be so much activity, talking, yelling, babies crying. One night, it was on our second stay, I woke up to a fight next door. There was furniture being thrown against the wall we shared, a baby in the room screaming, people yelling and a few people crying loudly. That is when I noticed how thin the walls were and how a bullet could easily penetrate the sheetrock, the flimsy head board and then our bodies. At that point I thought we were pushing it by staying there even one night. It looked like it was once some really nice place back in 1969. It was clean. It was really creepy though, well, downright scary.

You didn't mention that you had Chartreuse with you. : )

I have always been a huge fan of the show Route 66 so motels, small towns, driving around the country, experiences..it all appeals to me. In fact, it just occurred to me that this is a Route 66 episode. If Tod and Buz were here they would totally help me out with the race issue. I'm sure I would easily be Buz's type too...oh the drama that would ensue before everything got worked out. Teehee. Love George Maharis, he was so, so dreamy!

HA! I do have Chartreuse and it is glorious. Makes everything so nice and wonderful and all of a sudden I have the world on a string. But then it's over....I drank a small 200ml of vodka the other day straight from the bottle and when I was done thought, oh dear, this is how you end up at those meetings. So I am not touching the booze. I had a tequila shot in Washington and realized I had a drive home and I'm a lightweight. So I am hitting the horchata instead.

Tera - is your bf an ILXOR?

NM - just answered my own question by spotting a pic in your flickr. I recognized you from one he'd posted of the two of you on WDYLL and I know he's told other irl people about ILX so I put 2+2 together. Sorry if that sounds creepy. I have an exceptionally good memory for small details including people's faces. Sometimes it's awesome but it can freak some people out sometimes.

Yes... he is actually.

I can't be freaked out unless you you come at me with a cornbread salad walking like a sleestak and want me to go to Wal-Mart for you. Sorry....

:) LOL

This thread - or at least your updates to it - are awesome btw.

btw cornbread salad is sort of mind-blowing to me. I can't even imagine what that is.

Thank you.

It looked like just stuffing, like a real wet stuffing that was served cold and my bf said it was sort of sweet. He had a nibble. I refused to try it. I sort of believe in kinesiology, and everything in me was saying no.

Well the cat's out of the bag for us *tera. I've loved reading your posts, maybe with the next job is in Baltimore, things will be more exciting. We have found great records in Indiana! Maybe you should start a thread about life on the road?

There are really great vinyl finds in Indiana. Actually, I also found that vintage Native American jewelry and 80 year old sterling stamped Taxco pieces from Mexico are quite the steal here as well. Practically giveaways. Practically the mother lode.

I hope to be so occupied with my camera, coffee houses, vintage and book stores, record stores and exploring the next place we will be in that I won't have time to dwell or even have a dreariness to write about. If it happens to be Vincennes, I will be so happy!

This morning I heard the lawn mower again. There is a strip of grass behind the motel that measures maybe 400sqft. It has been getting mowed every day. I kept hearing the sound of a lawnmower since my first morning here but would delegate the noise to that part of my consciousness that barely simmers on a low flame. A few days ago I looked out the bathroom window and saw a man stoically riding a lawnmower and mowing what seems like a very insignificant piece of land. Apparently the patch of grass is very important to this man. He is either dedicated to having the grass always look neat and trim or determined to never let it flourish or have it's way, not even for a mere 24 hours. The feeling I get from the grass is it is being oppressed.

I think one of my freshman-year roommates was from Vincennes. Hot-shot tennis player with a sly grin and a deep drawl.

Out of curiosity, how is that town pronounced? Vin-senz?

Vin-senz - yes.

New Orleans can be so treacherous for me. After all the work to learn how to pronounce French correctly, the names all come to me that way and figuring out how to Americanize them is hard, especially since I'm often a wee bit temulent there.

Indiana has both Vin-sinz and Ver-saelz

the tomatoes are really great in summer though

Vincennes has the Pantheon Theatre, patiently undergoing restoration. There was a large sign on the building requesting donations. It sounds like it was once something spectacular. I love the downtown area. I love those old buildings.

There's so many terrific brick and limestone buildings in small towns all over Indiana, lots of small vaudeville houses and masonic temples and storefronts with flourishes where you least expect them. Southern Indiana is still a major limestone producer, huge quarries still operating around Bloomington.

Mostly teens and 20's architecture?

That, and some Beaux-Arts/City Beautiful era too, especially in county seats. Lots of small prosperous manufacturing started happening in that whole area from about 1880 through the 20s.

One of the major highways through Indiana goes through the middle of an old quarry! I remember it, vaguely!

I like the state highways in Indiana. And the cool old courthouses!

I asked about the quarry featured in the movie Breaking Away and heard that all the quarries are hard to get too and are not open to swimmers or hikers? I heard this from a bartender in Bloomington. He said you can ride a bike and park a distance away and try and get in that way. We really wanted to swim in an old quarry. Austin had one in the early 90's that was really fun but by 2000 it was already Old Quarry Condominiums.

The houses are amazing, lots of American Four Square, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival. We love these houses!

I'd like to drive through the middle of an old quarry!

I am really into old vaudeville houses as well. I am really curious about the Gimbel Corner in Vincennes. Much time traveling can be had there so I need to get back soon.

I really love foursquares with dormers and big porches.

They're so American, so "country breezes" and "porch-settin' " in nature.

We really wanted to swim in an old quarry

White Rock Park is quite aways east of you, but there are 3 old quarries there to swim in.

Wait, maybe the highway-through-quarry was in Illinois. Sorry. It was somewhere along a family drive we used to make from MI to Chicago.

I'm fairly certain that there was a big quarry in the middle of Indiana somewhere. My family drove from Maryland to Wisconsin & the UP every summer and that quarry was one of the scenic higlights of the trip.

You can see the quarry where they mined all the stone for the Empire State building, just north of Oolitic (have always loved the name of this town, also Gnaw Bone). But it's nowhere near a major highway. There's an abandoned quarry in Eagle Creek park, northwest of Indianapolis - I wonder if it can be spotted from I-65? Would be probable.

Now I sort of want to go back and revisit all the parks and places we would hang out at as kids.

Ah, Laurel's right. It is in IL.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3163/3090951792_fa2247bc6d_z.jpg?zz=1

This morning I received an email from a friend of mine in Texas. He told his partner that I was in Petersburg,IN and his partner urged him to email me right away to let me know that I am in Little Dixie. I looked into it. In the 1920's Joe Huffington started the official Indiana chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The first headquarters was in Evansville, Indiana. Sinister histories linger like old hornets nests. Even when they are not active, the fact that they exist makes them becoming a home for hornets again a definite possibility.

My friend visited this area a few years ago. His partner has been visiting these parts once or twice a year for the past twenty years. In fact, he was just in Evansville a few days ago. I wish I could have had dinner with him. He is a history professor at UT and just a really interesting person with connections to people I know and love. When my friend found out we may be going to Baltimore, MD soon he was excited for me. John Waters! I have John Waters stalking fantasies.

We are going to check out these quarries!

John Waters! I have John Waters stalking fantasies.

A fairly high number of ILXors (myself included) seem to have run into or met him under amusing circumstances so if you do move to MD perhaps the trend might continue and you'll be the next.

Ah, Laurel's right. It is in IL.

Oh wow, I totally remember that quarry from childhood car rides.

Okay, so that is all I need to hear to feel lucky, thanks, ENBB.

I would love to drive through that. Never heard of it until now. It looks so awesome!!!

always strangely disappointed that the first post here isn't a pic of calista flockhart

I tried to Google street maps 'drive' through Vincennes yesterday but it's not very well covered and there's a really annoying smudge on the camera. It otherwise looks like Americana of a very charming stripe.

The Empire Quarry.

Looks astonishing, almost Egyptian in appearance.

visiting a friend in semi-rural pennsylvania. yesterday we drove past a huge quarry (as opposed to one of those tiny ones!) that looked amazing. naturally i thought of this thread