From the Indian Traces to the Drive-Ins: An Edgar County Anthology

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“The wildest imagination could not have dreamed that this first fall of snow was merely the overture to a winter of continuous storm. The first white mantle still lay unsullied on the frozen prairie, in a profound hush of nature, when the meteorological opera opened with a crash on the thirteenth of December. A furious gale, bitter cold, a blinding, swirling blur of snow, and leaden, lowering skies, combined to make this storm a thing to paralyze that prairie country…” “The cougar! The traveler threading his lonely way through the wilderness heard its wild screaming, like the horrid wailing of a damned soul far off in the forest aisles and shuddered; or he might catch sight of the fearful animal…waiting for its prey; at last to leap down upon a deer, the woodsman or the pioneer who passed beneath, and falling like a thunderbolt, to tear open with claw and fang, throat and artery, and to plunge its dripping muzzle into warm blood.” These are but two exciting excerpts from diaries and historical articles that Mr. Parrish researched over a nine-year period of time. His historically correct stories take place in Kentucky, west-central Indiana, and Edgar County Illinois. The articles include the building of the first log cabin and later the first two-story brick home in Edgar County Illinois. Also included in this work are the histories of the restaurants, drive-in restaurants, and groceries dating from 1827. WILLIE is the story of a lost journal written in 1933 by a man on his death bed. Through months of searching and researching, Mr. Parrish was not only able to determine the author of the journal but return it to the writer’s heirs. It is a time capsule of the great Depression. Mr. Parrish’s sense of humor is reflected in his down-home style of writing. His stories include many of his own childhood memories. From WILLIE: “On the farm there were two accepted methods of killing a chicken for the pot. The first was by wringing its neck. Using this method, one would grab the victim by its head and spin it, stopping the spin abruptly, and thus breaking the chicken’s neck. The other method was less exacting but much more exciting. One would grab chicken by both feet, place it’s head under foot and quickly pull upward, disconnecting the head from the body, and then immediately toss the headless body which would run around “like a chicken with it’s head off,” spraying blood in all directions. This maneuver was very intriguing to a six year old boy, and after much pleading, Uncle Joe allowed me to try to dispatch a young fryer for Sunday dinner. Joe helped me grab the victim by the feet, placed its head under my foot and said,”pull..”..