Yesterday we took a regular trip to Lisbon to visit with my parents at the Parkside Home. Over the phone a couple days previous to that I’d asked Dad if he wanted to take a drive to Sheldon and look things over. Yes, he wanted to very badly. After a nice fish dinner at the home we took off. Along Highway 27 and the road south of Sheldon the crops looked good even though some of the sloughs were full. At the junction of the two roads a dozen potato hauling trucks stood parked at their site making me wonder if a good potato harvest is being expected. Arriving in Sheldon we drove slowly around the streets looking at the mostly run-down condition of the houses in town. We pulled into Curt Black’s yard and drove around his circle drive to find him sorting through a junk bucket in preparation for his September sale. He is one of Dad’s last remaining friends since he’s outlived most everyone else. After exchanging a few pleasantries we drove east of Sheldon to look around.
The conditions of the fields were as we expected to find them - wet and weedy; many of the quarter sections haven’t seen a tractor wheel turn on them this spring, the second year of absolutely no production. Township roads are under water in some spots so we had to pick our way to get to the farm location where I was raised. Even in good growing conditions, my travels through this countryside are somewhat depressing. We passed the farm site where I was brought into the world, the same farm pictured on the cover of my recent book, and where now there is nothing except a few trees. Straight south a half mile is the site of the farmstead that the folks built up and is the scene of my growing years. It is gone, the few remaining cottonwoods shoved into a pile. Another half mile and we passed the historical site plowed under, an old wagon road from Owego to Sheldon. Another half mile used to stand my grandparents farmstead, a place were 52 years ago I met with a life-changing accident. Further along the road, the Lyle Schimming farmstead has vanished. So much has changed, so much gone.
Returning to Sheldon we repeated our trip through the gloomy field situations and came in on the east side. There our once nicely kept school and grounds stands in shambles with junk sitting around and a large hole cut in the gym’s east end so that trucks can come and go within.
Main street had only one car on it and we surmised it was probably the bar keeper’s. The only site of real activity has been and still is the grain elevator where several people can draw a paycheck. Then out west we turned to drive past our land there. We were met with a large sign stating there was no traffic allowed. We’ve heard that’s because of water flowing over a low spot. We turned before that though to drive south to the farm my folks bought from Ma’s parents. There the tenant had put up a nice crop of alfalfa bales on the north field by the railroad tracks, and we could see grain waving in the wind over on the west side of the creek.
While Dad was with us I asked him to verify some property lines since he and Ma had sold five acres a few years back. Stopping there on the road and scanning things over we were met with four barking dogs that came out of the yard signaling in their animal way that we were unwanted there. We could not continue driving south since the creek water stood over that road, so we backtracked and headed back to Lisbon. So for the day we saw one person we knew, Curt Black, and two strangers standing on main street as we came back through. I guess we can call it a ghost town.
