N is for Nebo, Illinois

 

Hebo High School, 1917?

The irony of Nebo, Illinois, is that while I lived there, I could not wait to leave it.  Now I think about those days, get a wallop of nostalgia, and wish I knew more about the place left behind.

It began as a true log cabin town, growing with each new settler with names of Shaw, Ross, Franklin, and many more.  With each new family the settlement became a township.

  When I returned for visits over the years, the town had shrunk just a little bit more and the people I knew had died. Their children left (just as I had), and then there were empty vandalized houses, and people I don’t know.

                            Basically this ghost town could never compare to its former self.

Here are photos of back then :

Baptist Church, which still looks like this.

 

Peck house on Pearl-Nebo road

C.R. Rodgers' Trans Continental trip for
to promote Vin Fizz soda

 

 

 The community flooded to the events like this. Life was personal at this time of Nebo's existence.

Painted by in-mate at nearby prison

Nebo High School Gym--all that remains
of the High School

Country School Students

Another Nebo, in Wales, 1984

 

Mt. Nebo, where Moses is buried

Small Shrines

Farmers walked along this land.

European countries with such centuries of history have, by sheer time, amassed incredible buildings, structures, monuments, and fountains that shout to the visitor:  “I have been here longer than you can imagine!" 

Shrines to the past stand tall, but most visitors do not know what they memorialize. Tourists are there to see, but not to learn. They suffer from camera overload:  so many photo opportunities stand that it is overwhelming to pick and choose. They may try, but there are too many places and things.

We have traveled to Switzerland every summer since 2013. When our daughter gave us a grandson, we hungered to hold him and see him grow. Each time, he taller and soon he was taking us on big adventures of his own making. Now we have his little brother to enjoy.

On the way back to our rented apartment, on the right, each day we passed by a cemetery where tombstones were also made.  On the left, we traveled by clearly ignored shrines of their own, clustered together.

Unlike the grand shrines of historical figures, these shrines require abstract thinking.

I labeled this post "Small Shrines".  

These are stone watering troughs from old farmlands, gathered together  to share the history of the farmers.

An old English telephone booth without its glass, has no phones where a plant had grown. It was there on purpose, I hope.

Each day we walked along the river.

A tree leans along the Aure River, hanging on with its roots until the next snow-melt flood

Sometimes the Small Shrines speak the loudest.
Sometimes one has walk along a river.

Sometimes one has to search for them and sometimes one has

to look to the left.