Chronologically arranged, and incorporating letters, newspaper articles, obituaries, family stories, early county histories and diaries, the poems cover a century of the county's history, from the 1830s through the 1930s.
~~~~~
BJ Omanson was raised in the Spoon River valley of Stark County, Illinois, where both sides of his family have lived and farmed since the mid-19th century.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Proprietress of the Party Line
It
wasn’t so much that she listened in
on
our every call, it was that she took
not
the slightest trouble to mask the din
and
clatter of pots and pans as she cooked,
or
bothered to set the receiver down
as
she bellowed out the door to her boys
or
cursed a pig off the porch. All the town
had
to talk above or around the noise
of
Lucinda’s chaotic life, and yet,
we’d
not have embarrassed her on a bet
by
letting her know we knew she was there---
the
dullness and drill of her daily fare
had
left her, like most of us, deadly bored;
whenever
she blew off steam, we just paused
and
held our tongues till the turmoil passed:
we wouldn’t want her to miss a word.
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