Perry, Illinois: Once upon a time

“Never bet on the other person’s game”

The final day of the ride was my longest distance of 2024: 82.2 miles… and that only got me as far as Jacksonville. That had been the plan all along. I held out some hope that, with a stiff tailwind, I would reach Jacksonville in the early afternoon, rest up, and then ride the final 25 miles home. But the tailwind wasn’t as strong as I had hoped for, and the morning’s humidity really tapped me out. So, at 2:30, I pulled into the Casey’s General Store where Pam and Caroline had arrived five minutes earlier, I racked the bike, and we drove home. Route complete.

Back in the spring, when I mapped out this little excursion, I had three stops/destinations in mind: Hannibal, for the Twain stuff; Quincy, because I’d never been there before and I was curious about Quincy University, a Franciscan college; and Perry, a very small village where I spent a day more than 50 years ago, and I still think about to this day.

Best I can figure, it would have been the summer of either 1970 or 1971. My maternal grandparents, Vince and Dorothy Feckter, had come over to our house for Sunday dinner. During the course of the day, my Dad mentioned that he needed to go to Meredosia, Illinois, a town on the Illinois River, to take a look at a towboat or a barge that was docked there.

[Sidebar: my dad was in the habit of spontaneously launching into a chorus of the novelty song “Mairzy Doats.” He did it pretty much his entire life. So that day when he said “Meredosia,” I heard “Mairzy Doats,” and my 10-year-old brain couldn’t figure out why there was a place named after that song. Or maybe why the song was named after the place.]

Meredosia is a short distance away from Perry, where old friends of my grandparents lived. Bill and Grace Sweeting had shared an up-and-down flat with my grandparents during the 1930’s or -40’s, and I seem to recall Grandpa telling me that he and Bill had been door-to-door salesmen together. Dad asked Grandma if she wanted to visit Grace: he would drop her off in Perry on his way to Meredosia, and then pick her up at the end of the day. Somehow, in the course of planning, I got thrown into the deal, and would accompany Grandma to Bill and Grace’s house.

I remember that it felt pretty special to be included: Dad waking me up well before the sun rose, probably around 4, then we picked up Grandma, then drove to Perry. Today, it’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive; I’ll bet it was a three-hour trip back then. I’m sure I slept in the back seat—unbuckled—for virtually the entire drive.

I don’t have a lot of specific memories of what I did in Perry that day, except follow Bill around… I was completely smitten with this man. He was slightly older than my grandfather, and both my mom and my aunt remember him as being a bit of a curmudgeon. I didn’t see that side of him. I remember that he showed me how he fixed the analog clock on the dashboard of his car; he showed me some of the toys and games that their sons (now grown and gone) used to play; and he showed me card tricks. Actually, he kept beating me with the same trick: I take a card out of the deck, remember it, put it back in the deck, and then Bill bets me that he can identify the card. It is a ridiculously simple trick, and I kept falling for it. Finally, Bill took pity on me and showed me how it was done, and then he looked me the eye and said the words that I’ve quoted above.

When Dad came back to Perry from Meredosia, Grace fixed a wonderful dinner with an awesome apple pie for dessert. (The crust was made with lard, I’m quite certain.) In retrospect, there wasn’t any one thing that day to make it so memorable, and yet the memory has endured all this time. In researching the location of the house, I learned that Grace Sweeting died unexpectedly in January of 1972; I have a less distinct memory of Bill visiting my grandparents a year or two after her death, and even coming to our house for Sunday dinner. But I was older then, maybe even in my teens, and I didn’t click with Bill the same way; losing Grace had changed him, too.

For my return trip to Perry, I sent an email to the clerk of Pike County, because the property records from that time period aren’t available on the clerk’s website. I received a prompt reply from an assistant clerk, who attached the deed from July 8th, 1942, when Bill Sweeting bought 406 Main Street from his parents. As it happened, my route through Perry required no detours to see their house. It was not how I remembered it; it has vinyl siding now, and the yard is not well-maintained. But it’s a two-story house with a detached one-car garage facing the side street. As I meandered my bike through Perry, there were no other houses that fit that criteria. I snapped a quick photo (below), but my real purpose in visiting Perry was to simply to reflect upon a day in my life, many years ago, and the joy I felt spending that day with a man named Bill Sweeting. Thanks, Bill. I’ll never forget it.