Au Revoir to Taleamor
On Sunday I left the quiet, rural magic of Taleamor Park outside my home town of La Porte, Indiana, where I spent the past three weeks in an artist residency working on a new writing project set in La Porte. “Working” can be defined in many ways. In my case, it was everything from wrestling with a printer that never operated, to walks in meadows thick with wildflowers and dotted with butterflies as I contemplated the nothing and the everything of my project, to scanning 1961 newspaper articles on the county library’s microfiche machine, to sitting in our hosts’ beautiful barn loft, eating delicious vegan dinners and talking about all sorts of topics. Oh, and yes. I wrote.
In my three weeks there, I finished a solid draft of one story and a partial draft of another that needs a lot of work. I know these characterizations are accurate, because two writers there reviewed my work in a detailed, respectful way. Writing wasn’t the only thing. I researched deeply for this new story collection, resisting the impulse to examine a dozen subjects in favor of four. La Porte’s county historian, a knowledgeable, delightful guy, shared his time, files, and personal recollections freely. I reviewed the museum’s books, charts, photographs, obituaries, and even a collection of midcentury ladies’ hats.
Over at the splendid La Porte County Library, a frequent haunt of my youth, a research librarian and a supervisor in the computer room went the extra mile. “How’s the writing coming?” they would ask me and my friend Elaine, a Michigan writer I’d urged to apply for a spot at Taleamor following a last-minute cancellation. We went there often; in addition to their cheerful help, the WiFi was reliable.
The dozens of corn fields around Taleamor are planted almost to the edge of the road. In the Golden Hour they are awash with light the color of the corn itself. Elaine thought she had never seen so much corn. We marveled at how the land where Taleamor lies, north of but adjacent to La Porte, rolls gently, with roads curving to follow it. A trip to the southern edge of La Porte, on the other hand, revealed just as many corn fields, but planted in a flat landscape of farmland bisected by long, straight roads. There’s geological diversity in this one small town even when both its halves are planted with the familiar.
My niece took me on a driving tour to locations I wanted to see with a writer’s eye, places I thought I might seed into my midcentury stories. Much had changed since I pulled up stakes in the early 1970s. Sometimes my memory-pictures superimposed themselves easily over what’s there now; sometimes that was impossible. Mostly I was glad to see the changes. Elaine and I went to a party at an intimate bar behind an art gallery downtown. A Vietnamese restaurant down the street provided excellent fare. Stylish new apartments rose from the broken metal fields of old factories. So much seemed fresh, fun. La Porte, you look good and you feel good.
The four residents gave presentations in Taleamor’s library about our projects to a friendly crowd. I read three flash fiction stories to be published in Secrets and Other Hobbies and showed a large timeline I made of the events and people I’d been researching for the La Porte project, how the various characters and disparate factual events might connect. “I bet that’s the kind of thing you used to do when you were a lawyer,” our host said. I hadn’t thought about it, but he was right. With the clear mind I had at Taleamor, I cross-pollinated career tricks.
On my last day I went to see loved ones. They’re in St. Joseph Cemetery now: my mother, father, Uncle Bert, my cousin Rose. I stopped by to say hello to older generations, too: my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and my grandmother’s housekeeper Hilda. I wiped a little dirt and bird crap off their graves with a towel from my car, cutting my finger on Hilda’s grave. She would have kissed it when I was a small child. I doused it in disinfectant spray instead, wondering what they’d think of the things I’m planning to write about midcentury La Porte, an era when all of them were still alive (though some died during it). My grandmother will be a supporting character in one of the stories, but I assured her I’ll disguise her, use a different name. Not hearing any complaints, I assume they’re okay with it. Unless that cut meant something.