It happened at the Wall

I spent the summer of 1984 in Germany on an Indiana University exchange program with 29 other Indiana high-school German students. I lived with a kind and patient family in Krefeld for nine of the ten weeks I was there, but we young Hoosiers spent one week in Berlin.

Germany was still divided in 1984. We could not know that in five years the Cold War would end, marked dramatically on our televisions by video of East Germans spilling over the Wall and through its checkpoints. We had all seen photos of it in our history books, of course, and maybe even in our German texts. We had heard the story of how the Wall went up “virtually overnight” to keep East Germans from escaping to the West. The whole concept of keeping the East Germans in seemed sad and silly, yet it happened half a world away and seemed remote. So I was unprepared for the Wall when I saw it.

The Wall was at least twice my height, effectively blocking the view into the East except for tall structures near the border. Its rounded top made it hard to scale.

It stood several feet behind a railing, which marked the actual border between east and west. Step over the railing and you were on shaky ground. The sign says, “Attention, you are now leaving West Berlin.”

The railing made a wide strip around West Berlin into a no-man’s land. These shots are of the Brandenburg Gate, finished in 1791. It teemed with people until 1962, when the Wall was built.

We crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie and saw the Gate’s other side from behind a fence. Nobody could get close to this grand symbol of Berlin from either side.

Back in West Berlin, the wall stopped next to the Reichstag where the Spree River flowed by.

It was a popular place for East Berliners to try to swim to freedom, at least until the East German government lined the river with barbed wire. These eight people were either caught up in it or were shot by border guards as they tried to cross. Here we were told that the no-man’s land behind the Wall was heavily mined and, in some places, lined with weapons that fired automatically.

This is where I fully grasped the Wall’s reality. At first, I had felt frustrated by it, as the roaming American in me was not used to being prevented from going where I pleased. Then I felt saddened that it kept historic sites off limits to everybody. But when I saw these crosses, and the watchtower that loomed near them, I finally understood the real power and control being exerted over an entire people.

I spent but a few hours in East Berlin. Every building was old, gray, and dilapidated, compared with the many gleaming new structures in the West. I saw few cars on the roads, but most of the ones I did see were tiny, noisy, smoke-belching, plastic-resin-bodied Trabants as in the photo at left; the roads in West Berlin were choked with traffic, with cars of every make and model produced across Europe and Japan. I stood in the Alexanderplatz watching people going about their business, noticing the downcast silence with the average East German went about his business, especially compared with the exuberance I had experienced in the nightlife on the hot Ku’damm in West Berlin the night before. And then, as my group passed by the Neue Wache building, a military procession began. Everybody stopped to watch the goose-stepping soldiers in their show of miltary strength; the onlookers’ faces showed dull acceptance.

Nature called while I stood on the Alexanderplatz. A sign pointed to a public toilet; it turned out to be a fetid underground pit into which men peed in plain view of each other. Unable to abide the stench, I sought out a restaurant, hoping to find facilities. A hunched-over old man was stationed in the tiny restroom, requiring a 10-pfennig coin to access the stalls and doling out short strips of toilet paper. Such is the nature of communism’s promise of full employment. I lacked coins, and the man would not change a bill, and so I held it until I returned to the West.

It was in experiencing the Wall, and spending those few hours in the East, that I first appreciated the great gifts of freedom I had always enjoyed.

One November morning five years later, I had just started to make my breakfast before dressing and going to work when I heard the news of the Wall’s end. I sat at my kitchen table and cried, simultaneously recalling my feelings of shock and sadness from my brief glimpses into East German life, and feeling joy for those people and the hope of better lives for them all.

I’ve touched on my trip to Germany twice before, about the joys of it, and about how I thought it put me in hot water with the FBI.

Richmond

The National Road crosses from Ohio into Indiana and almost immediately enters Richmond, founded in 1806 by Quaker settlers. So Richmond is one of the rare National Road towns in Indiana that predates the road. The National Road isn’t even the oldest road leading out of town – a road to Eaton, Ohio, was built in 1807, about 30 years before the National Road. It seems likely to me that the Eaton road was used as part of the Dayton Cutoff.

The road entered Richmond from the east on Main Street. Glen Miller Park was located along the road; in 1928, a Madonna of the Trail was placed on the southwest corner of the park at 22nd St.

Many lovely older homes line the road near the Madonna.

US 40 was widened to four lanes across Indiana in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Here’s the eastbound road on its way to downtown.

Along the way, it passes a McDonald’s that still sports an older sign. Dig those golden arches that touch the ground.

Richmond is a little smaller, at least in population, than Terre Haute at the other end of the road in Indiana. Yet somehow its downtown seems larger, with many more intact and cared-for buildings from earlier days. That’s especially remarkable given that an explosion leveled half of downtown Richmond in 1968. The blast killed 41, injured 127, and destroyed 20 buildings.

Fortunately, much of downtown remains. It was impossible to drive this section of the National Road starting in 1972 as Richmond closed it to traffic and built a pedestrian mall. Fortunately, the town came to its senses in 1997, tearing it all back out, repaving the road, and reopening it to traffic.

A few buildings have not been very well loved.

This building really stands out, the only one downtown with such a modern skin. I would not be surprised to find that an 1800s building lurks beneath this facade.

Many pleasing touches remain in downtown’s details, such as this neon sign.

Just beyond downtown stands the Wayne County Courthouse. It was built in the Romanesque Revival style in 1893.

I made this trip with a friend and she noticed that every door had this little notice on it. She was chuckling over it and I didn’t understand why. I guess my head was into taking photos, because she had to explain it to me. Do you see what’s funny about it?

The National Road was routed along Main Street west through downtown, passed by the courthouse, crossed the Whitewater River, and then jogged south a block and then headed west along National Rd. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly where the road transitioned from Main to National Rd.;  perhaps a Richmond historian will happen upon this post and share.

I’ve visited three other Madonnas of the Trail, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois. Check out the photos.

The end of the Dayton Cutoff

My road-loving colleague Denny Gibson tells the story best, but when the National Road was laid out across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, the Federal Government mandated that the highway be laid out as straight as possible between the three states’ capitals. That meant that the road would not pass through the Ohio towns of Eaton and Dayton, which irked officials there. So they took matters into their own hands, building a road from Springfield, through Dayton and Eaton, to the eastern edge of Richmond just inside Indiana. They put up blatantly false signs at either end proclaiming it to be the National Road and even duplicated the National Road’s milestones along the route. Over time, this road was improved while the competing section of the National Road was not. It worked; more traffic followed what became known as the Dayton Cutoff than followed the National Road. This lasted until the 1920s, when the current numbered route system was instituted, the National Road was signed as US 40, and Ohio state highway funds finally improved the National Road west of Springfield. US 40 became the favored road, even though the Dayton Cutoff was signed as US 35 between Richmond and Dayton.

Here’s where the Dayton Cutoff and the National Road coverge on Richmond’s east end. The Cutoff is highlighted in blue. The Eaton and Dayton subterfuge was so successful that, in Indiana, the Dayton Cutoff is signed as Old National Road even today!

You can still drive most of the Dayton Cutoff. Unfortunately, a railroad crossing was removed just inside Indiana, orphaning its last half mile. Here’s what that orphaned section looks like now, heading east.

This is the where the Cutoff ends in Richmond. The road originally followed the driveway on the left. I assume that, at one time, US 40 was level with that driveway.

Denny Gibson traveled the whole route a few years ago, taking photos along the way. Check out his trip report.

If you like the National Road, you might like reading everything else I’ve written about it.

Three hundred square feet

Our separation was meant to last but a month, but then she didn’t want me back. I had been living in an awful extended-stay hotel, digging a big financial hole by paying the rent with a credit card. I still held out some hope we’d reconcile but the road back looked long. So I looked for an apartment I could afford while still supporting my family in our home. Thank God my paychecks covered my family’s needs with some left over.

But the leftovers afforded me very little. My choices were few, mostly in bad neighborhoods. The apartments were always small and usually broken down. I ended up choosing the place that was closest to my children. It was especially tiny – just three hundred square feet.

Three photographs capture almost all of it. One wall contained built-in storage and a Murphy bed. A friend gave me the TV.

Around the corner was a tiny kitchen and a tinier bathroom.

Looking out from the kitchen and across the Murphy bed, the outer wall was five steps away. The folding chairs and my exercise ball were my only furniture. The eight-dollar Wal-Mart floor lamp was my main light source.

The carpet was stained, the bathroom door had a deep gouge in it, the electric heater was very loud, and I could feel the springs in the thin mattress (heaven knows how many had slept on it before me), but the place became home, whether I liked it or not.

We couldn’t pull our marriage back together, and my wife filed for divorce. Our case ended up going to trial, and because the court was badly backlogged I ended up living in this apartment for 18 months.

And so I came to terms with my marriage’s end here, with many nights spent lying awake in anguish and anger over losing my family. I wished I had the luxury to focus on healing, but I still had to work a demanding job to pay for everything, be a father to my children, do considerable preparation for the trial, and manage difficult interactions with my soon-to-be ex-wife.

The maxim about how to boil a frog says that if you plop him in boiling water he’ll jump out, but if you cover him in cold water and heat him gradually he’ll cook to death. Similarly, I did not realize how much our destructive marriage consumed us until my wife did me the favor of ejecting me from the hot water. The stress had been intense, to the point of compromising my health. But the separation traded stress for stress, the likes of which I had never known. I suffered from chronic insomnia; I lost 20 pounds. Were it not for a web of friends and family who prayed for me and took my phone calls at all hours of the day, I do not think I would have made it through.

Because of them, I was able to begin regaining the inner strength I had lost. I had compromised my integrity so often in the marriage, sometimes from my shortcomings and sometimes in desperation to keep my family together, that I had utterly lost myself. Through that my relationships with my sons had stalled and were decaying. I began the hard work of rebuilding.

My little apartment was the safe place I needed to do the work. That’s ironic, because the apartment complex wasn’t really a safe place. A steady stream of people, eyes darting about nervously, visited two apartments across the way looking for a fix. And it was whispered that a prostitution ring was being run out of a few apartments at the back of the complex. Yet the two likely drug dealers were respectful and occasionally congenial when we encountered each other in the parking lot (where they both parked immaculate white Caddies loaded with gold trim). And one of the alleged prostitutes kept knocking on my door at all hours asking for money until I said, “Are you hungry? If so, I’ll take you to the store and buy you whatever you need,” which chased her away for good. But otherwise none of the funny business touched me. Except for jump-starting a few cars when word got around that I had cables, and being awakened late one night to call an ambulance for a neighbor who had taken badly ill but could not afford a phone, I was left alone. The place was as quiet as a tomb, the silence broken only occasionally when a washing machine went off balance in the laundry room next door. Not sleeping gave me time to do the work, and having few amenities at home and so little money made it hard for me to distract myself or run away. So I buckled down, took a hard look at how far out of true I had gone, and made slow but steady progress back to myself.

Slowly, things started to get better. I learned to accept the pain and let go of my marriage. I found ways to snatch a little serenity here and there. I started to manage the stress more effectively. I began to look forward to my future. And best of all, I started to get tight with my sons again. We used to fold up the Murphy bed and play a rough game on the floor where I’d get on my knees, the boys would try to run past me, and I’d reach out and tackle them on their way by. The boys called the game “Attack Dad,” but I never figured out whether they thought they were attacking Dad or I was the Attack Dad. I can’t explain it, but that game was a tonic for us, almost singlehandedly restoring trust and good feelings.

I drive by this apartment complex a lot today; it’s on the way to church and the grocery store. Sometimes as we pass the boys remark on a memory of our days there. They sometimes say how they hated sleeping on bedrolls on the floor, but more often they bring up Attack Dad or some other good memory from those days. I thought I had left the apartment with more good memories than bad, feeling predominantly grateful for it and how much I grew during that time. Yet not long ago when I stumbled upon the photos I’ve shared here, my mind and body flooded with echoes of the pain I felt then. It took several days for the shock to subside and for me to regain my center. This has forcefully reminded me just how far I’ve come from the crushing stress I faced for so long and its effects on me. I am amazed now that I was able to function in those early months in the apartment. I have no explanation other than I had to be in God’s hand.

I’ve shared very little here about my five-year journey since the separation. My blog has mostly been about who I’ve become since those awful days – it’s an expression of the joy I feel in having found myself again. I’m not sure why I feel compelled to share this story with you now. But here it is, and I hope it provides some context for the rest of what I write here.

The few other posts in which I’ve touched on the journey are here, here, here, and here.

Roadside flowers 2009

The road-trip season is winding down. I have one more road trip planned for this year, a trek down the National Road in eastern Indiana this coming weekend. The rain we’ve had in the past week has removed much of the excellent fall color we’ve had this season – I hope the remaining color hangs on a few more days for our trip.

As autumn wraps up, however, the wildflower season seems to as well. I paid almost no attention to wildflowers until I started making road trips a few years ago. Their color and variety make them hard to ignore when I’m exploring an old bridge or walking the edge of an old alignment! So I slow down and take them in – and photograph them – when I see them.

Yet I know so little about them. I try to look them up online to identify them, but often my search comes up empty. I’d love it if somebody would perfect reverse image search. I’d like to upload my flower photo and have the Internet tell me what it is!

And so I did not find out what these pretty yellow flowers are. Theywere plentiful along a forgotten alignment of US 40 and the National Road in Indianapolis near the Hendricks County line, growing among some Queen Anne’s lace and chicory.

I also couldn’t identify these white flowers, which I found growing in vines last May near an abandoned bridge on old US 50 near Clay City, Illinois.

I’ve known the weed below all my life; they grow all over Indiana. I remember they were especially prolific at my grandparents’ palatial retirement estate in rural southwestern Michigan. I think it’s an ox-eye daisy. I found this resourceful one actually growing out of the deck of that abandoned bridge. Its root system can’t be very deep – the deck is only a few inches thick. I gather that the ox-eye daisy is considered a noxious weed in several states – it tends to take over wherever it grows.

Clumps of these purple flowers, which I think are phlox, grew along a 1919 bridge on the National Road just east of the Illinois border. The sun was very bright that afternoon.

I have no idea what this is, but bunches of it were growing along the Marshall County road on which the Chief Menominee monument stands.

The prolific black-eyed Susan really pops along the roadside all summer. I shot these along a gravel alignment of the National Road near Reelsville. While I shot all the other flowers in this post with my Kodak Z730, I shot this on film with my Minolta X-700. It reminds me of four pupils attentive to the teacher, with one in the back row daydreaming.

If you can identify any of the flowers I can’t, please enlighten me in the comments!

This is my second annual post about roadside flowers. Check out last year’s flowers!