The church where I attend is dying.

Neighboring farm families who settled in northwest Marion County founded North Liberty Christian Church in 1839. Their names are on the gravestones around our building.

The congregation has has its ups and downs in 170 years. We’ve built two log cabins, a brick church, and the current brick-faced cinder block building on the spot where those farmers first met, growing to at least 250 members. Yet in 1877 our doors closed for 11 years. And about ten years ago we suffered a destructive split, followed by several years of factions fighting for control. This nonsense has cost us dearly; our membership has dwindled to about 70. Our offering doesn’t cover expenses. Too many members are burned out and apathetic.

I’ve been at North Liberty for five years. God brought me here, I think, to get through and then heal from my divorce. But then he had service in mind for me, and has laid any number of things before me to do in this congregation. I’ve done everything I think God has asked me to do and many more things that I saw that needed to be done. I’m pretty involved. But deep in my heart I have been hoping God doesn’t ask me to step up any more.

I watch a small handful of people in our church who are involved in everything. It seems to me that they are desperately trying to keep the place together. They are exhausted, but they keep at it like soldiers on the front line who have been fighting continuously without a break. I don’t want to be one of those people. I have enough going on in my life outside the church, including a demanding job, taking care of a house and yard essentially alone, and trying to raise my children under circumstances that I wish were much better. I want to have time for my hobbies, such as my road trips and this blog, for the joy and restoration they bring. My life is full. Please God, don’t put any more on my plate.

During worship last Sunday, I was in the balcony at the sound board. The fellow who has done that for us the past few years has moved on with his family to another church. I was always his backup, and so now the job defaults to me. Nobody else can do it. I was not particularly happy to gain one more assignment, especially one that keeps my sons and I from worshiping with the rest of the congregation below.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed that Sunday morning anyway and had just come from the Sunday school class I taught, one I thought I was prepared for but through which I stumbled as though I’d never seen the material before. So I was feeling good and grumbly up there in the balcony, where I didn’t want to be anyway. I was just going through the motions, and was paying only enough attention to punch the right buttons on cue. Then a song, one that we didn’t even sing that day, started playing in my head.

I’m trading my sorrows
I’m trading my shame
I’m laying them down
For the joy of the Lord

I’m trading my sickness
I’m trading my pain
I’m laying them down
For the joy of the Lord

Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord
Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord
Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord, Amen.

I’m pressed but not crushed
Persecuted not abandoned
Struck down but not destroyed
I am blessed beyond the curse
For his promise will endure
That his joy is going
To be my strength

Though my sorrows may last for the night
His joy comes with the morning

The song was distracting and I wished it would go away. And then my mind got stuck on the chorus, all the yes, Lords. By the 30th or 40th chorus I was seriously considering humming “It’s a Small World” to myself to shake this song – and suddenly I became aware that answering God’s call was the theme of that day’s worship in both song and sermon, which I thought I had not been paying attention to. And I felt that God was making sure I heard it.

Okay, Father, so you reached me. You told me through the circumstances of my day and through the actions of my mind that you want me simply to say yes to all you ask. You suggested through it that what you ask will not be more than I can bear. I can do it, Father; I will do it. Whether I’m to see this congregation die or see its spirit rekindled, I know you want me there doing the work you’ve set aside for me. I know you know my situation, and I’m going to trust you to meet my needs.

There’s quite a story behind how I came to this church. Read all about it. See how this church moved from rural to urban here.

You don’t see many suspension bridges here in flyover country.

This one was built in 1859 in Carlyle, Illinois, on a mail and stage road between Vincennes, Indiana, and St. Louis, Missouri. US 50 follows much of that 1806 road’s path today. I read conflicting reports of whether US 50 ever crossed this bridge, but motor vehicles did travel along it until 1932, when it was closed and a new bridge built nearby. The bridge was built with horses and buggies in mind, and so a few trucks broke through the deck! The bridge sat abandoned for more than 30 years and deteriorated rapidly. This 1936 photo is from Historic American Engineering Record; see more historic photos at the Library of Congress’s Web site.

Fortunately, the bridge was restored in the 1950s and was renamed for Major General William Dean, a Carlyle native who served during the Korean War.

It has been a pedestrian bridge since, and was a popular spot on Memorial Day when a friend and I went out to see it.

The deck is narrower today than it was when it carried regular traffic. I don’t think my little car would fit!

This suspension bridge too puny for you? Check out the one in Wheeling, West Virginia. It’s a real man’s suspension bridge.

As you drive US 50 in Illinois, in several places you parallel an older alignment of the road. The state has intended at various times to build a four-lane expressway out of US 50, to the extent that new lanes have been laid down with the presumable intent of rebuilding the old lanes to carry traffic in the opposite direction. Instead, in every case the old lanes have reverted to local use.

One such segment lies just east of Clay City, which is about a third of the way across Illinois from east to west. The old road crosses three streams within two miles just before it reaches Clay City. In the mid-1990s local authorities closed the old bridges over these streams, effectively abandoning that segment of the old highway. This snippet from Google Maps shows this segment in blue and marks the three bridges.

I never get tired of being amazed by what happens to a road when it’s not maintained for 15 years. Here’s the cement roadway leading eastbound from the eastmost bridge.

The three bridges, rusting away all, were built of steel in 1923. The first two also have unusual brick side rail sections on either end.

The first bridge, over the Big Muddy River, has developed a hole in its deck. It’s a testament to the bridge’s truss structure that an asphalt layer that thin could support the weight of traffic for 71 years.

I walked out onto the current US 50 bridge to take this photo.

The second bridge’s eastern approach is considerably overgrown.

My friend Michael was on hand taking photos as well and got me in his picture. The bridge felt very solid while I walked on it, but this photo makes it look frail, as if I might fall off at any moment.

This bridge, which crosses Little Muddy Creek, is of the same design as the first.

The third bridge is a little different from the first two, and not just because it lacks brick side rails. While the first two bridges are no-nonsense Pratt through trusses, this one’s gently curving top arch identifies it as a Parker through truss.

This bridge crosses the Little Wabash River.

There’s more to come from my US 50 trip, including an 1859 suspension bridge and a bridge that was built but never used. If you’re impatient, check out my trip report on my roads pages.

Also check out South Bend, Indiana’s concrete arch bridges and the bridges along Indiana State Road 42.

I just love to find an old brick road. This one used to be US 50 as it entered Illinois after crossing the Wabash River from Vincennes, Indiana.

Notice how the fellow who owns that house parks his cars on the old highway? A roadgeek’s dream!

You may have noticed that there’s no bridge in that photo. It’s been gone for probably 75 years. I found this postcard image of the bridge that led to this brick road. One part of the bridge was a steel arch truss, and another part was a wooden covered bridge!

Since 1933, a series of grand arches has linked Vincennes to Illinois. Here’s the bridge from the Vincennes side. But even this is no longer US 50; the road bypasses town to the north and crosses the Wabash over a bridge named after Red Skelton.

There are lots of photos of this bridge on the Internet, but I’ve yet to see any taken from the Illinois side. I’ve corrected that problem here.

I didn’t think much about how the 1933 bridge rose so high above the river until someone commented on one of these photos on Flickr that the area looked pretty good for having been under water so many times. The most recent flood was in June of 2008. Several square miles were under water in Illinois, including the old brick road and the house of that fellow who parked his cars on the bricks. (Suddenly, parking my car there didn’t seem so attractive anymore.) But the 1933 bridge was never under water.

This monument, which stands near the end of the bridge on the Illinois side several feet above the old brick road, wasn’t under water either. When young Abraham Lincoln crossed into Illinois, he and his family did it near this spot, and this monument commemorates it. It felt very cool to walk ground Lincoln walked.

Follow another Illinois road trip I took and see why it gave me such a reality check.

When I was a kid, it was fun to guess the make, model, and year of the cars I saw on the roads. In those days, automobile manufacturers freshened their basic designs every year between major redesigns. Those freshenings often involved some pretty obvious sheetmetal changes – new taillights, revised fenders, that sort of thing. Today, manufacturers make few changes between major restylings, which makes it very hard to accurately date a car. It’s not fun anymore!

Today we’re going to play “Guess the Classic Car” by looking at just those details from cars I photographed at the Mecum auction. Click each photo for the answer.

Let’s start with the easiest first. I include it mostly because I dig how this car’s black paint reflected me as I photographed its badge. The manufacturer made a car with this name for only two years. Which car and what years?

These headlights came from a mid-sized grocery getter into which a large V8 could be stuffed. Which car and what year?

This tail light seems to float in its housing. Make, model, and year?

The photo gives you this car’s name; can you tell me what year it was made? It’s tricker than it looks. Extra credit for naming the cars reflected in the El Cam’s paint.

Dodge used this badge on one of its cars for two model years. Can you name it? Extra credit: What is the triangular shape at this badge’s center called?

This tail light is from a big station wagon. Which one, and which year?

These start getting a lot harder now. What car wore this hood scoop? It would help you to know that the car has a twin-loop front bumper.

This wheel well comes from a muscle car about which songs were written. It’s pretty hard to guess a car’s make, model, and year from just a wheel well, but that’s what I’m asking of you. Extra credit for naming the make and year of the car reflected in the dog dish.

I think this is the hardest one. This hood ornament is from this make’s first serious muscle car and appeared, I’m pretty sure, only on the first-year examples, and only when a particular engine was under the hood.

I stumbled upon another muscle-car show one day and found a nice 1966 Plymouth VIP there.

I saw my first 2010 Camaro in the parking lot at work the other day. I felt that familiar twinge of excitement I used to get as a kid over each year’s crop of new cars. I was young long enough ago that cars were still facelifted every year, and you could easily tell the 1971 model from the 1972 model. I used to spend pleasant hours sitting on the front stoop of our home on Rabbit Hill watching the cars go by on the busy road at the end of our street. I called out the Impalas and the Galaxies and the Furys and the Mustangs and the Beetles. When I didn’t know what a car was, I kept a mental picture of it until I saw another one up close and could ask. Before long, I became able to name pretty much any car on the road and even tell you what year it was made, plus or minus one model year.

Today, automakers hardly change their cars at all from year to year. Bleh.

I’m old enough now that I can sing along with most of the songs on an oldies radio station. When I was a kid, oldies were songs from before I was born, but now they’re songs from my childhood. Listening to Oldies 101.9 as I drove to work one morning a few weeks ago, I “named that baby” — they played a snippet of someone singing “baby” in a song, I recognized the song immediately (an old Chicago tune), and was first to call with the answer. I won passes to the Mecum Spring Classic, a big muscle car auction. It’s an annual event that has somehow escaped my old-car-loving notice.

So I went. And it was incredible. It was overwhelming. The auction was held it at the state fairgrounds, and it filled six or seven buildings, including the Pepsi Coliseum, with cars. My passes were good for all four days of the auction, but I had only four hours to spare for it. I could have gone for four hours each of the four days and lingered over every glorious hunk of old iron. Now, I love to see a classic Camaro or Mustang on the street. If my camera’s with me, I’ll even stop to take photos. But at the auction, there were so many Camaros and Mustangs that they became dime-a-dozen, and I quit looking at them! I realized that if I was going to get through it all in the short time I had, I would have to focus on the unusual.

It was easy enough to do. They had cars there I had only ever heard of, like a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T with the 440 Six Pack, a humongous engine with six carburetors. It is a storied engine, the stuff of hushed, reverent awe among Mopar lovers. It made the Challenger extremely potent. A review of the day said, “The explosion comes when you stuff your foot down on the gas pedal, either on purpose or accidentally. The car squirts forward like an unleashed dragster.” I saw one for the first time at this auction, and it even came with the shaker scoop atop the carbs and the hole in the hood necessary to accommodate it.

Although the 1957 Buick Century predated the muscle-car era, one had been sold at the auction and sat outside awaiting its new owner. I had only ever seen the ‘57 Century in photographs. It is every bit as beautiful as those photos suggested, with its big, round wheel wells, chrome side spear with its checkmark-like dip, and four-section rear window. Buick stuffed their big eight-cylinder engine into their lightest platform, and the result was a car that could cruise comfortably at 100 mph.

Even though I quit looking at Mustangs early on, and the 1967 Shelby GT 500 was based on the Mustang, the Shelby is special. It’s another car I’d only ever seen in photographs. This gorgeous example had just been pulled out to make its way to the auction floor, so I was able to get a good, close look at it. With a 428-cubic-inch big-block V8, it hauled serious butt. These are seriously collectible cars – this one sold for $175,000.

My favorite car of the day sold for a mere $40,000. This 1967 Impala SS has a 427-cubic-inch big-block V8 under its hood. I think that the 1967 and 1968 Chevy Impala fastback coupes are among the most beautiful cars ever made. I love its graceful greenhouse and the line where the rear fenders bulge. I also have a childhood connection to these cars, as my mother’s best friend owned a ‘68 Impala hardtop sedan in midnight blue. I loved riding in that car. It was gigantic, but it cruised so easily and comfortably.

I would love to own a ‘67 or ‘68 Impala someday. I once came across a partially restored ‘68 coupe in this color that was for sale, but before I could scrape together the $5,000 the owner was asking, he wrapped it around a tree. I almost cried.

Like classic cars? Ok, so my 1975 Ford Pinto may not have been a true classic, but at least I have a story to tell about her.

What’s the most embarrassed or humiliated you’ve ever been?

I used to think it was the day a female friend of mine cried out as we parted in a crowd, “But Jim! You can’t leave! What about the baby?” She got hers some time later when she tried this bit on another friend. Without missing a beat, he yelled back, “How do you know it’s mine?”

But that doesn’t come close to the time I was laid low on the public airwaves.

Me on the air. Check out the Sennheisers.

I was once a part-time DJ at Terre Haute’s only rock radio station, the number two station in town. Being number two may not sound like a big deal, but we were in that part of Indiana where country is king. The local country station commanded a third of the audience without even trying. We, on the other hand, worked our butts off to be second, and as I recall it was by a comfortable margin. People in town knew who we were. The full-time jocks were all minor local celebrities.

Since Terre Haute is a blue-collar and college town, we did lots of events at bars, the kind that serve pisswater beer in plastic cups. We’d promote some band that was playing and the DJs would turn out wearing station swag. Now, when you’re wearing a staff shirt with the station logo across your chest big enough to be seen by passing satellites, you get attention. People would act like I was their long lost buddy. It was kind of fun until too much beer had flowed, at which point some guy would start telling you at top volume how much your station really sucked because it didn’t play enough Ozzy, or some girl missing her front teeth would ask if you had a girlfriend. Even if she had all of her teeth, every DJ knows that Radio Rule #1 is don’t date your listeners. It never goes well.

So at one Saturday night event I sat down at a table with the program director and the two DJs from the morning show, “Scott and Debbie in the Morning.” Now, a part-timer like me would not normally spend time with such lofty talent as the morning show, as Radio Rule #2 is part-timers are in the lowest caste, the sort of people the full-timers ignore. But the program director liked me. “Jim, you are like gold,” he told me, “because you show up for all your shifts and you follow the format.” I said, “Wow, um, that bar’s pretty low. What does that say about the other part-timers?” He wouldn’t answer. Anyway, he usually invited me to hang out with him at these events, and when I did, the morning show had to give me the time of day.

A young woman, probably a listener, was sharing the table that night. She was sixteen kinds of cute. Young and slender with big eyes and long hair and wow was she ever nicely made. She increasingly turned her attention to me, moving in closer, smiling big and looking away when I caught her gaze, and giggling a lot. By the time she had downed a couple more beers, her body language said she’d follow me anywhere I wanted to go.

What I must have looked like

But then she started to talk – of hating her fast-food job, of wanting to get on at the record-and-CD club that employed half the town because it would free up her nights and she could hit the bars with her friends more often, of her three small children from three different dads, and of how she had to call the cops on one ex the night before and how another ex was getting out of prison in a couple months. The look in her eye seemed to say, “Will you be baby daddy number four?” Images of paternity suits and paychecks garnisheed for child support began to fill my head. Red alert! Evasive maneuvers! Fully grasping the wisdom of Radio Rule #1, I stared into my empty plastic beer cup, looking for a way to gracefully exit. Which I did, except for the gracefully part. “Wow, lookit the time, gotta go!”

Monday morning as I drove to my regular job, Scott and Debbie were talking about the Saturday-night event, what a great time it was, and all the DJs who were there. They talked about the full-timers, anyway. Part-timers don’t normally get mentioned, because let’s face it, listeners don’t remember their names. Do you remember who the DJ is on Sunday afternoons on your favorite station? Right. But then Debbie said, “And did you believe Jim Grey, who works weekends here? This super cute chick was coming on to him, she was so hot! I wanted to tell them to get a room! And then he just sat there! He didn’t do anything! He could have done anything he wanted with her that night, but he wouldn’t even look at her! You have to wonder if he likes girls!“

My stomach knotted and I saw red. She had just made me look like a geek with no social skills in front of every listener in a 50-mile radius! And this was the kind of screw that no matter which way you turned it, it went further in. I would just have to suck it up. Of course, I barely made it past the front door at work before someone said, with a big question-mark look on their face, “I heard about you on the radio this morning! What was that all about?” Two more people asked about it before I made it to my cube – where I hid out the rest of the day under headphones so I could pretend not to notice people who came by.

And so I learned a corollary to Radio Rule #2: uppity part-timers will be put in their place!

Also check out my story about how I broke into professional radio.

This was an ugly way to end our trip.

After crossing the Wheeling Suspension Bridge onto Wheeling Island, we crossed the little bridge into Ohio and then socko.

Time seemed to slow down during the accident. I could see that the green Saturn wagon was going to hit us. I even had time to think, “We’re about to have an accident.” As the Saturn hit us I didn’t feel the impact, but I did watch the intersection spin by as my car whipped around. As the fender curled up like the lid on a sardine can, I saw the undercarriage of the Saturn as its right side left the ground on its way by my front right quarter.

When all cars came to rest, time resumed its normal pace. I checked to see if my sons were hurt, and they didn’t appear to be. My younger son seemed not to know what had happened and was puzzled that I was checking on him until he tried to open his door, which was stuck shut. When I told him he’d have to get out on his brother’s side, you could see his face darken as reality set in. We got out and walked around the debris from the other car, including its entire front bumper, and sat down on the curb as an ambulance and a fire truck came screaming to the scene. I held my sons as they cried.

We were damned lucky – none of us was injured. This could have been a terrible accident if the car that hit us had been going faster or if other cars were in the way as we spun around. I have thanked God over and over that we walked away.

After the EMTs checked us out, we rode along with the tow truck to a tow yard, where we spent the whole day. When we finally got a rental car the sun was setting and all we wanted to do was go home. The Ohio portion of our trip would have to wait for another day. I have never been so happy to drive I-70.

This damage totaled my poor little car. I learned that if you have to have an accident five hours from home, you want to walk away from it, and you want it to total your car so you don’t have to deal with having it towed home or fixed in a distant town. My insurance company cut me a check and I went car shopping. I didn’t set out to buy another Matrix, but I needed another little wagon to haul the kids and the dog, and the price was right.

For a couple days after we came home, the accident was our chief memory of the trip. I realized we needed to balance the view, so I downloaded our photos from my camera and looked through them with the boys. It helped us to remember the fun we’d had up to that point and start to move beyond the wreck. Writing these blog entries about all the great things we saw on the road has helped me work through it, too, and has restored my temporarily damaged love of the road trip.

All things considered, if I got to choose between this and having my home damaged in a huge storm, I’d choose the storm damage.

I’d only ever zipped through Wheeling on I-70 before. The tunnel was always fun to drive through, but every time I emerged from it there was the old suspension bridge stretching across the river. I always swore that next time I’d get off the interstate and drive it.

As part of the tour of Wheeling Ryan Stanton of The Bell Rang so graciously gave us, we first went to the waterfront to take in the bridge in profile. There we could see the bridge make its connection to Wheeling Island. The panorama below (thanks, Autostitch!) shows the bridge’s west end and the buildings along the shore. Here it is in its original size.

The National Road was extended into Ohio starting in 1825, but for many years the only way across the Ohio River was by ferry. The need for a bridge was recognized as early as 1816, anticipating the road’s extension.

When you need to span a large gap, suspension bridges are just the way to go, and so two leading suspension-bridge designers were invited to submit designs. Many delays prevented the bridge from being built until 1849, but at its completion it was the longest suspension bridge in the world, 1,010 feet between its towers.

The Wheeling Suspension Bridge is only the 109th longest suspension bridge in the world today, but it is the oldest suspension bridge in the United States that still carries cars. Actually, as the bridge was designed to handle horse-and-buggy loads, trucks and buses are kept off it, the speed limit is low, and cars are told to stay back 50 feet from each other. The steel-grate deck they drive on dates to 1956, but most of the cables are original.

In 1921, nine years after the National Old Trails Road took over most of the National Road’s route and seven years before Madonnas of the Trail began appearing on the road courtesty of the Daughters of the American Revolution, those Daughters also placed this plaque on the bridge. The bridge then spent many years carrying US 40’s traffic. But after I-70 was built and US 40 was routed onto it, West Virginia has quietly maintained the bridge as part of its state highway network, although it is not currently part of a signed route.

We lingered at the bridge in the chilly air that morning. My boys even walked out along the sidewalk halfway over the Ohio River – yes, the old bridge carries pedestrians, too! But we wanted to see the National Road across Ohio, and to squeeze it in that day we’d have to move along. I finally kept my promise to myself as we drove over the bridge, its steel grate deck causing the car to rumble. We found US 40 on Wheeling Island and headed off into Ohio.

If bridges move you, you might like seeing some of Indiana’s steel truss and concrete arch bridges.

It made good sense to stop in Wheeling overnight as we made our way home on the National Road. It’s just shy of 300 miles from Baltimore to Wheeling, and a bit more than 300 miles from Wheeling to Indianapolis, and that’s about as close to smack-dab-in-the-middle as it gets.

It also made excellent sense to contact the writer of The Bell Rang, Ryan Stanton, since he often writes about Wheeling history and architecture (and frequently comments here). I’ve had great fun meeting bloggers with interests similar to mine when I’m on the road. He was not only glad to meet up, but offered a tour of Wheeling’s sights.

Ryan brought his dad along as we toured downtown and the famous suspension bridge over the Ohio River. I’ll write about the suspension bridge in my next post. There’s enough in downtown Wheeling to crowd it out of this post!

One of Ryan’s favorite subjects is Henry Schmulbach, a brewer key to Wheeling’s growth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He built this 13-story building, which was completed in 1907, to be his headquarters. It remains Wheeling’s tallest building. It’s so tall that I couldn’t get back far enough for my camera’s lens to capture the whole building; I had to take several photos and let Autostitch bring them together. See Ryan’s blog for more about the Schmulbach building.

Ryan also writes about this building, the National Bank of West Virginia, and its unusual entrance. (Thanks to Autostitch for helping me frame this building, too.)

Sadly, all in Wheeling is not quite as well cared for as these two great buildings. Many of Wheeling’s downtown buildings have fallen into disrepair. This poor building was the worst I saw – it had recently burned.

Before I could get too depressed about Wheeling’s state of decay, we came upon this great theater, its neon sign lit in defiance of the morning sun.

Wheeling’s best days may currently be behind it, but its downtown has plenty of potential. Here’s hoping that better days are still ahead.

Want to see other National Road towns? Check out New Market and Ellicott City, both in Maryland.