Today is a scorcher. The air is heavy with moisture. The grass never dries. Pop-up thunderstorms are a daily occurrence. It is the Dog Days of summer. When I was a kid in Eldorado, I did not like the heat of summer. I enjoyed summer vacation, but the weather was miserable. On the days Neva J and I did not go to Pounds Hollow, I asked if we could. My primary means of transportation was my bicycle. I first had a bicycle that looked like a motorcycle. It was fun to look at and difficult to ride. The wheels were knobby and interfaced poorly with the gravel road I lived on. When I got my three-speed bicycle, I was in nirvana. The three-speed cost $70 dollars which was a lot of money in the 60s. I rode it everywhere. I rode it to the little village of Wasson. I was a knight of the open road. It was almost like having a car. I loved to change the speeds and see how fast I could ride. Once in a while, I buy a pack of Marlboro cigarettes to smoke on the bike ride. I was standing in tall clover in those days. Me and the Marlboro Man had it under control.

Neva J smoked Salem cigarettes. She smoked one or two daily. She said that she did not like them, but that all adults smoke. I liked their menthol smooth flavor and took one or two into the restroom and smoked them quickly with the window open and my large canister of bug spray as my accompanying friend. After the sin of smoking Marlboros in the toilet, I sprayed an abundance of bug spray to cover the smoke odor. The canister was the 60s variety of a pump sprayer with the spray contained in a compartment at the front of the device. Neva J finally told me that if I wanted to smoke some of her Salems, I should stop hiding and smoke them in front of her. I did from time to time, but my conscience stung, and I went back to Marlborough’s uptown from the Dairy Queen.

I wrote and enjoyed it from grade school forward. Mr. Feazel and Ms. Barton complimented me and encouraged me. I did not find writing a burden, but a wonderful artistic release. Mr. Feazel said I wrote in a particular conversational style. Ms. Barton told the class that my paper was like none she had seen in Junior High School. As you can see, I never forgot a teacher or, later, a professor who complimented me.

I carried a load as a child, not unlike many kids. Neva J was fragile at times after her and my father’s divorce. She confided in me more than anyone. We were buddies. We were in it together. She began to lose blood from her colon. I feared she had colon cancer. I called her each day from the payphone at school. I turned out she had a benign obstruction in her colon. It took major surgery to remove, and she looked like she was dead when Earl and I visited her in her hospital room. Not long after this frightening event, we began attending church.

The friendliness of the people in the little white church in Elkville was compelling. Most were senior citizens, and it was like having 100 grandparents. I made a practice of shaking hands and speaking with everyone in the sanctuary. They were all glad to see me, and I was them. The preacher was an old-time Pentecostal minister who had a wonderful singing voice and treated me like a son. He was a World War II Veteran and fought at Guadalcanal. He called me Jaycifer, which conjured up images of Lucifer. Everyone in the church called me Jaycifer. What a nickname. I gained some great friends and a wife from my 18 years in the non-denominational church. Steve, who worked, went on to work for Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale a few months after I was hired. Jeff, who had been a homeless Jewish boy on the streets of Chicago and became a millionaire. Brent, who treated me kindly when I assisted him in carpet laying and was beginning to apprentice me into the craft. The little white church believed in raising up preachers from the congregation, and subsequently, I spoke many weekends. I later went on the officiate at over 30 funerals. There was a time that I believed that only God could make a minister and not a Seminary. I have since changed this belief.

In my middle years, I met Dr. Jo Ann Argersinger. I was a member of the Chancellor Search Committee who brought her to Campus for three days of Open Forums and interviews. I saw Dr. Argersinger had a heart for working with blue-collar people. What a tremendous addition her becoming the Chancellor of Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale would be. Jo Ann understood the value of staff to the university’s success. Jo Ann would walk into the middle of a field being mowed by a Grounds worker to shake their hand and introduce herself, and inquire about their opinions regarding our Campus. Jo Ann inspired staff, faculty, and students. Jo Ann became the Chancellor only to be terminated for spite, as Jerry Seinfeld depicted in his wonderful comedy. The Campus had never been the same.

Life in Eldorado is life in middle America. Eldorado was a coal mining town. We are not all financial planners. Appalachia has an influence on us. We seek leaders who understand our lives. Not a gratuitous comment, but real understanding. We midwesterners live and die without hope of recognition by East Coast Elites. For some inexplicable reason, public policy seems to exude from where the nation began in the Revolutionary War. But we are here. We matter. We have a sense of place unlike any in the country. We are who you count on to populate your armies for your wars. We have been forgotten so many times that the words of an obvious conman resonate with our group.