Land of Lincoln

Lincoln's house in Springfield, Illinois

Despite having nearly a dozen children, my mom and dad somehow managed to give us some memorable summer vacations. The joy of a road trip to some far off place made up for our being jammed into the car, ass cheek to ass cheek, for hours on end. One such trip took us downstate, to Southern Illinois. Now my memory isn't always the best, so I'm not sure if the trip to Saint Louis and the trip to Springfield, Illinois was one trip or two separate trips. So I'll not recount the great luggage rack incident here, or tell about how Mom drove the station wagon well over the speed limit while Dad slept in the passenger seat. For some reason, after a week of 'vacation', Mom always wanted to get home as fast as possible.

What I will tell as best I can, is our trip to Springfield. Illinois calls itself the 'Land of Lincoln' and Springfield is Lincoln central. Plenty of Lincoln tourist things down there. First place we saw was the town of New Salem. What they did there was rebuild the log cabin town that Lincoln had first settled in as a young lawyer. From what I can tell, it was all guess work because the actual log buildings had rotted away a hundred years ago. Interesting, but even as a young boy I knew that I could have not lived there. No indoor plumbing. From there we went to the Lincoln tomb. It was in a normal looking cemetery and was kind of creepy, but I think all cemeteries are creepy. Anyway, I remember rubbing Lincolns nose on the bronze bust in front of his tomb, which everybody did, leaving it very shiny. Next stop on our tour of Springfield was the actual home that Lincoln owned. What I couldn't understand was why, if Lincoln was six foot, four inches tall, were the beds all five feet long? Not only that, but the doorways were short. It was as if the house had been built for Hobbits. So I remember all of those things, but the one thing that stood out in my juvenile mind was the outhouse. Right there, in the middle of Springfield, behind Lincoln's house, was the presidential pooper. I remember us all crowding around it. Then the door to the outhouse was opened and the guide pointed out the actual place that Lincoln sat and shat.