Flyover Lives by Diane Johnson

Author:Diane Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2014-01-16T05:00:00+00:00

Lottie and her sister Fanny in Civil War drag

Their parents, Mary and Charles Stewart Elder, were born in the 1830s, and Charles served in the Civil War, a war far from forgotten even now among people around Watseka, the way it isn’t forgotten in the South and must be remembered by anyone who tries to understand the Midwest or, indeed, America. In Moline, Chenoa, Watseka, there is a pervasive, quiet satisfaction with history, that Illinois has behaved so well in it, freeing the unfortunate slaves, and in my childhood during the Second World War that we would soon free the poor Europeans and terrified islanders trapped on map dots in the Pacific.

Across the Mississippi River from Moline are Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa. The Mississippi at that point is three-quarters of a mile wide, and actually runs east and west, permanently damaging the sense of direction of many who grew up in the area. The Rock Island Arsenal, with the graves of Confederate soldiers who had been imprisoned there during the Civil War, was thrilling to us as little girls when we read in Gone with the Wind that Ashley Wilkes had been imprisoned there; and during the Second World War, it held Germans whom we thought we saw occasionally on our way to the swimming pool, trimming bushes, wearing POW shirts. We were as conscious of the Civil War as of the world wars or perhaps even more so, with the Confederate cemetery, and because we were, after all, in the Land of Lincoln, still under the spell of the tutelary presence, the famous son of Illinois.

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