Bridges of Orange County - He Said, She Said

The "new" old general store.

The old general store has been buried in a watery grave for about forty years now.  Swimming with the fishies, not too far away is the ancient rickety bridge that we would cross slowly in our car, eyeing every broken board always wondering if today was going to be the day it would finally give way.

Crossing that bridge was not just crossing a small creek into the small southern Indiana town formerly known as Newton Stewart.  The bridge was actually a time machine transporting us back into a world that time forgot. 

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go.  And so it was on the roads that took us from grandma to grandma in our southern Indiana roots.  From one small town known in the 70's for it's high school basketball fame (before class basketball ruined the sport forever for Indiana) through French Lick, the hometown of Larry Bird and back into the past.

Sometimes our advancement of progress towards getting from one place to another completely destroys the simple beauty of extremely winding roads and those quick hills where my dad would press on the gas just at the top to give us kids the "tickle-belly hills" we loved so much. 

Indiana is for the most part, just some flat piece of land where people travel from a state out east to a state out west.  But southern Indiana breaks away just a bit with a little vertical diversity that to this day tugs at my heart strings. 

The 15 miles from Loogootee Indiana to French Lick consists of ever so slightly elevating hills and winding turns reminicient of the old movie Duel, without the wide open spaces.  No one wants to get stuck behind some slowpoke, likewise no one appreciates the idiots that think they should take the wet-your-pants turns at break-neck speeds slightly pushing you with their front bumper.

Getting there is half the fun.  That's what we used to experience on the drive from French Lick to Newton Stewart.  The 12 miles from French Lick to Newton Stewart was even more adventurous.  Sure, nothing like scaling a mountainside, but it was certainly a thrill to four rugrats packed into the back seat of a 1958 push button transmission Chrysler wagon.   (OK, I'm making up the year and make of the car.  I know we had a push button transmission wagon, but I don't know the year or make,  I googled that part, but I'm sure CnC or my brother Mike can straighten that part out quickly).  I do remember it looked something like this, so you guys can figure it out.

This was back in the days where no parent thought anything wrong with letting a three year old ride the whole trek standing up in the front seat.  Of  course no one would consider that today, but back in the early sixties, this was  the equivalent of taking your kid to King's Island.  I never became a bullet out the windshield nor did I ever get thrown out of the back of a pick-up truck.   It was just routine travel back in those days.  I can relish that freedom while still never considering doing that with my grandkids today.  Sure, they are safer, but they'll also never know that feeling of having the wind whip around you like you could fly. 

Beam me back, Scotty.

So once transported across the time travel machine bridge, we would experience life as it had been since the 30's. 

My grandparent's owned the old general store just past the bridge.   The old store (pictured above is the "new" one) made Floyd's barber shop on the Andy Griffith show look like a modern-day hack.  It was a decaying building, housing the post office, the cabinet type refrigerators full of Choc Ola, Double Cola, Grape NeHi and Orange Crush, 

Remembering the store now, it seems as though it had everything that one would imagine out of an old time Hollywood movie, right down to the wood burning stove and the old men sitting around smoking cigars and cigarettes and telling old men stories. One of the old guys was asked once why he always wore the same pair of pants. He replied, "Well, I figured the new dirt just knocks out the old dirt, so it just really doesn't matter much."

Up the big hill stood my grandparent's home.

My grandmother gave birth to 15 children, 11 of them lived to be adults.  She lost her youngest (my uncle Kenny's twin) and her oldest within a week of each other due to the flu epidemic sometime in the 1920's.  She also lost a set of twins, all before my father was born on Christmas Day 1931. 

Up until the time my grandmother was forced to give up her home in the early 70's to make way to what is now Patoka Lake, there was no running water in her home and only an outhouse for a bathroom facility.   I can remember pumping water from the pump that sat on her porch onto my hand to slurp the fresh cool water.  I will also never forget the smell and general yuckiness of having to use the outhouse.

If you trekked out along the small stream that ran through the town you would come upon a clearing that was filled with arrowheads and Indian beads left there from a century or more before.

When the state of Indiana came knocking on my grandmother's door wanting her land, she asked to be allowed to stay on her property and maintain the general store and post office as that area sat atop a hill and was the only area of the former Newton Stewart that was not flooded for the lake.   Her request was denied and she and my uncle were forced to give up the home and move to nearby French Lick.

Of course the move was hard for her, but it did allow her to live her remaining few years in a house that had all of the conveniences that nearly all homes had long ago possessed.  Running water and an indoor bathroom.

I remember the rumor at the time that the caskets of the soon-to-be flooded cemetary would also go under a watery grave and that they would only take a shovel of dirt from each grave and place that dirt to a new location.  I doubt the story is true as I've unfortunately had to return to the cemetary where most of my dad's family is buried, including those children that died before my dad was even born. 

Several years ago, I returned to the area where my grandparent's house stood.  The house is long gone and the "new" general store was being used as a supply shed of some type.  The road that led us to her house now only remains a vague clearing between the old trees and I narrowed my eyes to remember that hill that led down to the old store and the rickety bridge.  I mourned the loss of the time travel bridge and the generations that will never know that under all that water lay many never to be discovered arrow heads. 

The path to get to the town f/k/a Newton Stewart still passes over the great Tillrey Hill.  The road has been smoothed out to a pristine boring flat straight path.  It's been graded into just a tall incline and I feel sad that there is now a whole generation of kids that are driven over the hill and have no concept of thrill of topping that hill, which used to feel you were on the front car of a roller coaster when you crested at the top, unable to see the road beneath you.  Where a dad can gun the gas pedal of the car right at the top and send their little tummies into a quick trip up and spread the giggles throughout the car like a roar.  They will never hear their fathers tell the story about being a little kid growing up in the 30's whose older brothers would scare them with made-up stories of the crazy lady that rode a pig sidesaddle while she stalked young boys along the stream. 

Are there any roads and bridges that still exist today that allow a youngster to go back in time?  Something tells me they have all been paved over or flooded away forever in the name of progress.   Yes I can get there faster, but now the generic lake that flooded the time travel bridge has no magical properties, so why would I want to waste my time?  Getting to Nowhere, Indiana faster seems to be a pointless journey. 

My dad trailing some of the Newton Stewart kids

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