Not just pork... Effingham...

Day 6-10ish

OK, so it turns out driving in downtown Chicago ain’t so bad. In fact, I had no trouble at all once I picked up the car. It has been such an amazing trip in that everything has happened without a hitch, no problems whatsoever. The car pick up was a breeze. I got there and was a little disheartened when I heard the guy at the counter speaking to a guy about a car not being ready, there were like 5 other people there, it didn’t look good. Then the guy looked at me and said, “Are you Andrew Craig?” I said, “Yep.” And he said, “Oh, you have a reservation so come and sign this and we will get you on your way!” I was not a Hertz lobby favorite, I even got an angry grin from one lady. As I drove away I waved at her from the driver’s seat of my air-conditioned sedan, maybe she has something stuck in her teeth, I got that smile again.

While driving downtown is fine, driving on the interstate is not as much fun. I hate Google Maps. Can I say that right now? You do know, don’t you Google that you can’t just pull a U-ey (wow, how on earth do you spell that one?) on 6 lanes of black-top. I wanted to go south, Google maps pointed me north, and no I did not make an error. We get on the interstate, going the wrong way, and I aim for the next exit, visions of gunshots dancing in my head (stupid I know, but I was very much out of my element and long overdue for unwarranted panic). Turns out it was pretty simple to get going the right direction after all.

I love driving, it helps me relax (for the most part), open roads are awesome. Southern Illinois is beautiful, green, rural, totally gorgeous. I was nice to see prairie land for a change. We stopped in a tiny town called Buckley (pop. 300) for a bathroom break in arguably the skeeziest bar I have ever seen. Still, the bartender was nice and we had a good chat about the town’s biggest landmark, the enormous LCMS church down the street. Seriously, this church was massive, brick, and in the middle of nowhere. We took some pictures but there was no one there so we couldn’t get in. Amazing place though, wow.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and we arrived at McClures in mid-afternoon. It was good to see Dan and Beth, and meet the kids (Christopher again for the first time, and Caitlin, dear energetic, crazy Caitlin). Our time with them was really awesome. I know they felt kind of weird because they didn’t want us to feel disappointed with our trip even though they were going through some unexpected personal upheaval, still we were glad to have the time with them, and I feel like God wanted us there to try and help take their mind off of it a bit. We did a lot of just hanging out and goofing around. We played video games, watched movies, went shopping, went to Wal-Mart (surprisingly enlightening, like 85 cent sleeves of Pringles, $5.57 bottles of wine that cost over 12 dollars in Canada, and occasionally disturbing, like seeing a dude load shotgun shells into his shopping cart off of the shelves and the crazy guns for sale all over!!!).

I loved the food there. We ate at Dan and Beth’s mostly, and Beth is an incredible cook but some of the places were fun. Steak n’ Shake was arguably the funniest in terms of its name. They sell… shakes, and steak, well ground steak really. It is essentially a burger chain with a humorous moniker. Cracker Barrell was good too, cheap, wonderful warm, downhome cookin.

We went to the mall, which reminded me very much of Dawn of the Dead in that it was sparsely populated in an almost eerie way and the people who were there looked like very bored individuals who had sort of stumbled across the place and decided to stay. Again, the churches in Effingham were amazing. You can tell this nation has always taken its Christianity seriously, most of the churches I saw were massive and brick and probably a hundred years old or more.

Our time was relaxing, and it was there that I felt little desire to update my blog and keep going with it, because I was on vacation and trying to get away from it all. I loved my time there, we both did. Dan and Beth are incredible people with amazing hearts, and wonderful kids. Christopher is real sweetheart. He is autistic and totally amazing. He is loving, concerned, and joyful. His smile would warm the coldest heart. Caitlin is energetic to say the least, I would say her parents will have their hands full but putting it into the future tense would mean she isn’t a handful now. However, I mean that in an endearing way, Caitlin is not the kind of kid who makes it hard to be happy. Is she silly? Yes. Crazy? Absolutely. Is God getting the last laugh on her father who taught countless youth to be looney? Oh yeah, in spades. Caitlin had us laughing on a regular basis and it was neat to get to know her.

Dan and I have been friends since the day we met, and Beth has always been so encouraging to me. To me, they are family. Dan and Beth have had the most profound influence on who I am outside of my parents (yes, they are to blame, and it may just be why they moved to Effingham in the first place, and yet I keep finding them.) Without going into any kind of detail, they are facing some struggles right now with a lot of facets of their lives, and even though you may not know them I would encourage you to pray for them. Words cannot describe the respect and admiration I have for these folks and I think it sucks that they have to deal with these things. Just pray that God would give them encouragement and clear direction.

More in a bit, including our trip to St. Louis where we saw horses and crawdads…