Same Stars Over Keosauqua

Phil Stong, the author of State Fair, is from my home town of Keosauqua, IA.  Here are two excerpts of an article he wrote in 1951.

“Let’s go home for Christmas.”  This is an airy phrase, a soap bubble of an idea that drifts into our minds in early December, more and more brightly as we grow older, with memories of earlier Christmases, the old house, the folks, the home town.

The idea hits me almost every year, and I begin to pack for my home town, forgetting all over again that if there is one thing harder than to make strangers believe such a town as Keosauqua, Iowa, exists, it is to get there.  Trains and planes and buses avoid it, and typical Corn Belt blizzards have a way of swooping down from the North Pole to glaze the roads between Keosauqua and the towns that do have such exotic forms of getting places. . .

And, the conclusion:

. . . Mrs. Ridgeway wanted us to stay and eat with them, but mother said, “”I’ve got half a turkey at home, and when the children go back East, what will I do with it?”

So, we got into the car and drove toward the changing unchanging river.  There were no sleighs on the ice tonight, but our sleigh was safe back there in the carriage house, where it has always been since 1890.  And the same stars were coming out over my home town.