DAY TWO

Day Two rose vigorous and sunny. I got out of bed to see what this part of the country I had landed in late the night before looks like in daylight and I was not to be disappointed. There was no disappointment to be sure in Sandy's bacon and eggs nor in her courageous stories of survival through her times in a really bad foster home in Missouri. We ate and then went resaling [they aren't thrift stores here in Mt. Vernon, Illinois] and so forth. First we went to a pawn shop; Sandy's ex-boyfriend John had some business there. He stank of yesterday's drunk just like I suppose sometimes I used to. Then on to Shorty's.

The people who own Shorty's are rich people pretending to be poor and running a junk shop in what used to be a gas station. Rusted out tools and items of no description lay about under the canopy where the pumps once stood. More stuff was piled about inside-- it looked like it had been flung around but there was a guy running around with a box of stuff scattering it here and there. The old lady there her daughter served in Iraq. I wanted to take a picture of the old lady but her wealth betrayed her. She said simply that she didn't want anyone to see her dressed the way she was. She looked fine to me in a simple housedress but one does not argue too much with older people so that was that.

A few more resale shops and we dropped John off at his apartment. All the old hippies of the 70s are now renting on his street. I always wondered where they went and now I know. John's apartment is in the back of an old [now closed] store-- it resembles a Western store with the red fake brick tacking up the front.
The street were cobblestone. I took a picture of that. [All pics to be uploaded at another time]. And it is haunted according to Sandy and John. They say a woman walks through his walk-in closet out to the back to gather up some wood to bring it inside.

Sandy and I went to the Fifth [used to be the Fourth but Illinois got bigger] Circuit courthouse where a nice guard named Charles West talked to us for a bit and he told us the spiral stairs were from France and came over by boat and then by oxcart. He also said Lincoln had argued a case there at the courthouse the railroad vs. the government of Illinois on taxes. A lady from the second floor was permitted to give us a tour. She showed us one room of old books and one old book where Lincoln had his name mentioned. There are eight circuit judges and three sit at any one time. When they do, they are permitted the use of a bedroom and they get cooking too. So there were three rooms which are bedrooms marked private. Made me wonder if they ever argue over which bedroom each of them is to use. The living room was from the eighties with the big ashtrays and the camp style furniture and the obligatory picture of english setters and a hunter on the wall. The dining room was elegant. The courtroom itself had wonderful arches and a chandelier and also really cool wooden chairs. The bench is up on a dais with room for all three your honors. The courthouse has some added-on downstairs but the original building itself is rather spectacular in its own right.

Dinner was at the Mexican Restaurant owned by a family who recently made a second one uptown. The porkchops and onions were to die for. The chips for the salsa were homemade and marvelous while hot. Sandy said there are illegals who come up this way to work construction jobs. Even the legal ones are afraid of losing their work permits. That's alright I guess though yes there are illegal aliens here too.

An A.A. meeting across the street from the courthouse at St. Mary's church finished off the night.

sapphoq n friends