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Eccentrics

The Source

Franky would take off what must have been his only pair of overalls, put them in the wash, then sit on his front porch wearing only tattered underwear, strumming his guitar and sing, “Your Cheatin’ Heart…will tell on you…” His Arenzville neighbors could always tell when it was washday and since rumor had it that he’d occasionally wash both his jeans and his underwear at the same time, we listened instead of looked. Where in the heck have the Franky’s gone? Perry, Illinois, seemed to be a hotbed of eccentrics. Chicken House Charlie lived…well…in a chicken house. I suppose Charlie might have stood well over six feet tall if he’d ever straightened out, but the shape of his domed chicken house prevented him from ever reaching his true height. The ceiling was sloped and so was Charlie. The old man would slowly come of his chicken house every morning, slowly grab his cane then slowly shuffle his way toward Cecil’s filling station where he’d pretty much park himself on the loafer’s bench for the rest of the day. Babies could be born while Charlie was inching along the single block between Cecil’s and the chicken shed. Entire nation’s have been formed in less time. Actually, Charlie wouldn’t loaf all day. He rose around 8, and by the time he slowly dressed and got to Cecil’s it was about to time to turn around and go home for lunch. The Charlie’s are gone. So is Drummy. Drummy Sutton was our next-door neighbor and among his other vivid eccentricities was his outhouse. While most privies in those and these days are small wooden structures with a pit underneath, Drummy skipped digging the pit and simply built himself what amounted to a throne, several feet in the air and without any sidewalls. You could literally look over the fence and see Drummy sitting on his throne each evening taking his nightly absolutions. Pop Van Pelt collected Oldsmobiles. Not working automobiles, but cars without tires, without engines, and pretty much without paint. His back yard was filled with a collection of rusting Olds cars. After he’d wrecked his third auto and parked it in the back yard the Illinois State Police thought that was enough and knocked on his door to take his driver’s license. Pop shouted, “Come in!” The troopers entered the kitchen to find Pop’s license sitting on the breakfast table and Pop sitting there with a loaded shotgun. He calmly said, “There she is boys, you wanna try to take it, go ahead.” The state troopers wished him a good day and quietly backed out the door. Bugsy Ham (no self-respecting eccentric ever goes by his given name) lived on the eastern side of Pike County and instead of a restroom, simply cut a hole in his living room floor. If nothing else it was handy. A neighbor drove up to deliver Bugsy’s mail, saw an enormous black snake in the front yard and bashed the creature’s head. Bugsy came out the front door and asked, “You seen my pet snake?” His neighbor knew that the old man was known to shoot and kill anything that irritated him so on that hot summer morning western Pike witnessed its first mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of a black snake. Of course not all eccentrics are dangerous. In fact, some add a great deal to the well-being of a community. Harry Read would build a complete motor boat in his basement every winter, disassemble it and take it to his summer home in Nauvoo for three months enjoyment, then sell the boat at the end of the season. The next winter would find him in the basement knocking out another boat. A guy on the west side of town found a ceramic pig on his front porch one morning. The next week there was another…and another….dozens…perhaps a hundred ceramic pigs eventually crowded onto the guy’s front stoop. Why? Who? The mystery was never solved but he’s going to have a great yard sale of Hampshire pigs some day. So I ask myself…what’s happened to our eccentrics? I guess we’ve locked them up, drugged them up, put them away or cured them. Too bad. Abraham Lincoln spent his formative years in New Salem, a little town of one hundred people who were perhaps among the most eccentric on the Illinois prairie… unusually well educated, absolutely rabid in their beliefs… Jack Kelso who never held a job in his life, could out-think any fish and out-hunt any raccoon, and who knew much of Shakespeare and Robert Burns by heart… George Warburton, entrepreneur, mover and shaker, who in a drunken fit one night fell into the Sangamon and drowned in four inches of water… Lincoln’s only teacher, Mentor Graham, who taught hundreds of New Salem children although he’d failed to pass the state teacher’s test. I often wonder how much of Lincoln’s success was due to his growing up amid such a wide variety of strange personalities… and I wonder how much we’re missing now.