Visiting My Ancestors Day 4 - Home

 Madison, WI to Home:  454.0 miles

I woke up to a cat leering at me - which is not unexpected at my sisters.  But it was almost ominous.

Once I got over the cat I started the coffee maker and poked around online.  The weather looked good for the trip home, which was a nice change from the previous day.

My sister and I talked for a bit while having our morning coffee before it was time to leave.  I was on the road around 6AM (WI time).  Madison traffic hadn't picked up yet and the temperature was almost perfect in the mid-60's.  I headed south.

There is one Illinois Road Extortion Booth (aka Toll Booth) that I have to go through.  I dutifully pulled into the toll area only to see that there is now no way to pay cash.  I looked for a sign telling me what I should do, but all I saw were signs screaming at me to not stop.  As if I needed yet another reason to dislike northern Illinois around Chicago (don't worry, Southern Illinois is still all right).  So I drove on through and saw a hand written sign with the web site of where to pay.  Granted I couldn't stop to actually write it down, but I was torqued off at this point anyway.  In all fairness, it took me only a few minutes to pay once I got home - but it is still extortion since Illinois roads aren't any better for all the tolls they collect.

I continued on eventually making my way to I-74.  It was getting really warm by this point, but traffic was light all day so I was mostly enjoying being on the interstate.  The boringness of it gave me time to think.  I was really grateful to have been able to see the my ancestor's farms.  And I was especially grateful to have been able to meet my Dad's cousins.  The world is an amazing place - if we let it be.

I must have had the perfect amount of coffee in the morning since I was alert and felt good all day and didn't have to stop until an entire tank of fuel had been burned up.  

The Illinois state police were clearly out in force.  I wasn't too worried about this since I wasn't really speeding above any worrisome level unless a cop had already decided he hated blue motorcycles.  I did see a few cars who zoomed past me pulled over a short time later.  Poor bastards...

As I got into Indiana it got hot, like summer-time hot, 90F with humidity to match.  This early in the year I almost like it though.  Getting through Indianapolis was again tolerable, if not fun.  Soon enough I was on the curvy roads getting close to home.  Somehow all the farm equipment stayed out of my way which is a blessing I'll take this time of year.

I've had lots of time on the road to think about this trip.  Unquestionably I am who I am because my Great Grandparents were who they were.  This is, of course, a banal platitude - but having seen the farms makes this real.  I'll have more time to think about this over the coming days and weeks.  For now, I'm just grateful.  Grateful to have been vaccinated so I could safely take this trip.  Grateful to the people who helped me set this up.  Grateful to my relatives who put up with me for a few hours or overnight.  And grateful to my ancestors ... for everything.

Visiting My Ancestors Day 3 - Not Ancestors

Luverne, MN to Madison, WI:  390.3 miles

I woke up with a splitting headache - unsure what to do.  Part of me wanted to hit the road, part of me wanted to try to sleep.  Getting up won and I felt a little better after a getting ready.  Rather than try to medicate with caffeine, I decided to hit the road.  Radar showed rain to the east, so I played it safe and just went ahead and put on my rain pants.

I rode the short distance south to I-90 and jumped on the interstate.  It felt like TC Boyle's story After the Plague.  Rarely have I seen an interstate with so few vehicles as this Sunday morning.  I set cruise control and let my mind wander.  And wander it did.  Some of it was big helmet thoughts, much wasn't.  I found myself reliving awkward moments, blunders and mistakes - this was not healthy and I'm not sure where it came from.

My headache ebbed and rose through the day, but I was almost normal by the time I got off the interstate.  I much preferred the 2-lane roads, although it was also a bit painful at times due to big evil camping trailers and slow Sunday drivers.

Rain started around Blue Earth and continued heavily until after Albert Lea.  Then it spit rain on and off for most of the rest of the day.  I was headed to my younger sister's house.  Pre-COVID this wouldn't have been very momentous.  Post-COVID, it did seem like a stage of "back to normal."

I stopped to get fuel right as I got near her house and got some soda at the same time.  A dude walked in jabbering on to no one in particular and saw me standing there in my motorcycle coat and rain pants, "You are WAY overdressed."  

I nodded at him, "Motorcycle."

"Gotcha," he says.

"But I do agree."

I saw him as I was leaving the parking lot and he laughed and gave me a thumbs up.  The world is filled with people who are interesting if we let them be.

I got to my sister's and met her new SO.  We talked for quite a while before heading out to walk the dogs.  We went on part of the Ice Age Trail which was really nice.  At times it did feel like we were in people's back yards or traipsing past the weekend soccer games.  Still, some of the views were surprising so close to Madison.

We had dinner and watched a little TV - I made the mistake of showing my sister David Lynch's What Did Jack Do?  Hopefully she doesn't think too much less of me.

I wasn't too upset when everyone turned in early.  I'm ready for one more day on the road.

Visiting My Ancestors Day 2 - The Visits

Nevada, IA to Luverne, MN:  331.7 miles

Still mostly on Ohio time, I was up too early.  Lynne had left a book of photos including several of our grandparents which I had never seen - or just didn't remember.  Between looking at those and poking around online, the time was not wasted.

We talked a bit more over breakfast; it was great to see Lynne and Dan and they were most gracious to have me over when I know they are really busy.  It was also time to hit the road again.

The morning temperatures were really nice in the 70's and mostly cloudy.  It would have been a nice day to poke along on 2-land roads, but the interstate made more sense.  I headed north toward Minnesota.  Traffic was negligible and with the wind at my back my mileage was fantastic.

My first stop was at my Dad's cousin's house.  I had never met her before, but Sylvia is also somewhat of the family historian.  I found the house easily enough, but I had neglected to call when leaving in the morning - so much for making a good first impression.

Sylvia and Larry where really fun people.  We talked about all the myriad of family members as well as the idiosyncrasies that are who we are.  It was interesting how some of the mannerisms crossed generational boundaries.  We probably could have talked for longer than the two hours I was there, but it was time to move on to head west to where my Dad's family originated in the US.

Heading west on I-90, I stopped at the rest area near Blue Earth.  This was located near where the east and west crews building the interstate met, completing the longest interstate in the country.  

Once near SW Minnesota, I got off the interstate and worked my way toward the first farm.  This was the farm my Great-Grandparents rented lived on between 1904-1909.  The last mile was on a scary loose gravel road which wasn't so great on a fairly heavy bike.  

The farm bears little resemblance of what it looked like back then with many large barns and I think even some hog barns.  But I could imagine my Great-Grandparents mix of nervousness and excitement at starting completely over in a foreign country.

As I was entering in the GPS coordinate for the farm they bought, a man in a side-by-side stopped by to ask if I needed help.  The friendliness of the Midwest did not disappoint.

The drive to the farm took me through the town that used to have the railroad.  The railroad is gone, but I can recall the description of my Great-Grandmother's reaction to seeing Minnesota in April.  Cold, wet and no leaves.

Once again the road to the farm was a loose gravel road, this time with a fairly significant hill.  Thankfully the Trophy handled it well.

I spent a bit of time looking around and taking some pictures before I saw someone on the 5-Acre property that my Dad's cousin had sold off.  I stopped to ask him just to be sure I was at the right farm.  He was a bit of a talker, with a West Virginian drawl that was hard to understand.  He was very friendly, almost too friendly - offering me some stuff he had dug up on the property that he thought may have been my ancestors.  Most of it was junk.  But he did also show me some concrete impressions which I bet were from my second cousins.

The farm land itself was quite pretty.  Rolling hills with a creek at the north end.  Previously it was used for cattle and hogs, but now it was mostly row crops.  Compared to the first rental farm, I could imagine how it must have felt, especially for my Great-Grandfather, to have succeeded in becoming a landowner in just a few years after making the leap to North America.  I didn't expect lightning bolts to shoot out of the ground when I walked on the farm - and they didn't - but being there did make the history more real.

When I had seen the wind turbines on Google Earth before starting the trip, I originally thought it was almost vulgar.  But after being there in person, I changed my mind.  Not only are windmills somewhat iconic Dutch (granted not electric generating turbines but...), but my Great-Grandparents were doing everything they could to make it work - always trying to end the year with more money than they started, so the wind turbines are in a real way just an continuation of that.  And I was glad the my Dad's cousin was deeding the property to his sons so it will stay in the family for at least another generation.

However, standing under the wind turbine was a little intimidating.

I left the farm with a final stop for the afternoon to see the graves of my Great-Grandparents.  I'm not really a stop by the grave kind of person, but it seemed like the right way to end the afternoon.  I found the cemetery easily enough, but it was much bigger than I expected.  I started wandering around looking for the headstone when I saw the groundskeeper mowing.  I started to talk to him before being interrupted by a woman also looking for a few particular graves.  She had a legendary level of talkedness.  The groundskeeper pointed to where the map showing the grave location was and as I left to head that way I found my last name.  

Then things got somewhere between eerie and weird.  There was a raven right by the headstone - probably dying, but who knows.  One can draw all kind of inferences with this kind of thing.  It never moved the whole time I was there.  I left it be, but I'm still pondering the significance (or not) of this.

I drove down to Luverne for the night, getting a hotel with a very similar name to the farm.  After checking in, I called Vern - another of my Dad's cousins.  He stopped by and offered to take me to the farm, but when I told him I had already been there, we headed to dinner instead.  He and his wife Ruth were lots of fun to talk to.  He had lived most of his life outside of the military in the area.  They have children who are nearly my age as well.  After dinner, he took me to another farm that was, and still is, in the extended family.  By this point I was nursing a headache and headed back to the hotel for the night.

It was quite a memorable day.  Meeting my Dad's cousins and hearing a lot about relatives and ancestors.  I learned a lot - and have a lot to think about that debt I owe to my ancestors.

Visiting My Ancestors Day 1 - Wrestling with Angels

In 1904 my Great-Grandparents on my Dad's side of the family made one of those great social and geographical leaps.  My Great-Grandfather came from a poor laborer family in a society with little chance of any social mobility.  Against the protests of his soon-to-be father-in-law, who disapproved of the marriage into a more prominent land-owning family, my Great-Grandparents set off to a new life in the United States.  The begrudging push from the maternal family was to go to South Africa - seen as a better opportunity and with family already there.  Maybe stubbornness and resistance to authority is genetic.

The immediate relevance to this story goes back to 2017 when I took one of the commercial DNA tests.  I was a bit terrified to see that it was able to match bits and pieces of my DNA to thousands of other "relatives" - most of these are very minor, and on the order of parlor tricks.  Back of the envelope calculations suggest 50,000 5th cousins would not be unlikely, so maybe the number of matches isn't too surprising.  But it did start a brief conversation with my siblings on a book that my Great-Uncle wrote on our Great-Grandparents' lives and immigration to the US.  Amazingly, this book was available used on Amazon (because of course it was...).  The story was interesting and documentation was deep.  I was able to use the very 21st century technology of Google Earth to easily find the land where my Great-Grandparents first lived.  "I have to go there."

While my DNA data show my history goes well beyond this family uprooting, it is also clear that this is a pivotal part of my history.

Through my uncle, I was able to find a cousin of my Dad's who grew up in the area.  He was a wealth of helpful information, and his brother still lives in the area.

So with full vaccination coursing through my veins and lots of vacation time that must be used in 2021, it was imperative that I head out on a real road trip.  My older dog must have been anxious for me to leave since she started barking even earlier than I usually get up for work.  Or maybe she just really wanted water.  This extra time in the morning allowed me to have a cup of coffee and some waffles before heading west.

Home to Nevada, IA:  587.3 miles

As I left, the air was thick with the smell of onion grass.  It smelled like spring.  It was just getting light as I turned out of the driveway, going down familiar 2-lane roads.  Once I got moving I could smell the fresh-cut hay and tree flowers.  It smelled like summer; it felt like summer.  I was excited to be on the road.

Getting around Indianapolis wasn't too heinous.  It wasn't too fun either.  But leaving early did make it much easier since I missed most of the rush hour traffic.  

I found myself thinking about work just a little bit and allowed this briefly, thankful that I was able to leave work without anything really big lurking.  

Then my thoughts turned to big helmet thoughts.  Really big helmet thoughts.  I thought about my great-grandparents leaving Europe to basically start over.  It must have been equally exciting and terrifying.  I wondered what would have happened to me if they hadn't.  Would I be someone else?  Someone totally different?  Would I just not be?  Or is there some crazy cosmic force in the universe that means that even if they hadn't gone to SW Minnesota, somehow I would still be me?  I sometimes have some anti-natalist thinking - it seems unethical to bring someone into this world without their consent.  But since I do exist (at least I think I do), it seems like I do owe a debt to my ancestors.

Mostly I was just thrilled to be on the road.  Around Peoria, IL I was sick of the interstate and got off, working my way west on smaller roads.  They were nearly without any other traffic making it wonderful.  It did spit a bit of rain, but not enough to even worry a little bit about.  I crossed the Mississippi River at Burlington and stopped to take a few pictures.  I'm not sure that the Triumph has ever been across the Mississippi River before.  A cop slowed behind me as I was standing by the river.  I assumed he was going to ask me to park in a more appropriate location, but he just smiled and waved.  My guess is I'm not the first person to do this.

Once into Iowa I worked my way north and west.  I hit enough rain to stop and put on my rain pants at a gas station after talking with the attendant for a few minutes.  I love traveling through the Midwest since so many people are friendly, and in an honest way.

The rain didn't last long and my rain pants started to get really hot.  I stopped briefly in the town where I lived until I was about a one-year-old.  I don't remember living there, but any time I'm near it seems like I need to stop.

As I got near Nevada a very tiny rain cell blew up right overhead.  I had previously scoped out where the library was in case I got to Nevada too early and stopped at it.  I was pretty wet by the time I got inside, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been since a short lived deluge soaked the area.

After a bit of time in the library stealing their wifi and waiting out the rain, I drove the final few miles to my cousin Lynne's house.  They had recently bought a farm and were deep in renovations.  But the house was far enough along to both be really neat and see where it was going.  It was also still easy to see that it was a lot of work.

Lynne got there shortly after I did and we headed out to Cole's for a true Iowa tenderloin.  Both the tenderloin and the shake were quite good.

Back at the house we caught up a bit while going over some family history and older family photos.  I was excited to head up to where our Great-Grandparents first lived and the pictures and stories helped whet my appetite.