Ten-Finger Exercises

Back Home Again in Indiana

Indianapolis is the city where I was born. Indiana is the birthplace of both my parents and three out of my four grandparents. None of them is still alive.

I am here with my husband for a nation workshop for CSEPP, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program. I have never been on a business trip with him before, and have always wanted to. My mother used to go with my dad on business trips all over the world, but then he was a jewelry buyer. She probably didn't go to meetings of any sort, but did go to the markets.

My interest in going with him this time was twofold. For one, Bill was being given an award, and I wanted to be with him for that. The other reason is that Indiana is the home I moved away from when I was in fifth grade.

I didn't know anything about the hotel where the conference was taking place until the day before we came, and even then I only knew that it was in the old Union train station. I'll try to post some pictures when I get home.

The main dining room/meeting room is magnificent.It's the old train station lobby. I can see it filled with wooden benches, where my dad undoubtedly sat as he waited for the train to take him off to the Army. Later, he'd take the train into Chicago on buying trips, and sometimes Mother and I got to go too. If the weather wasn't good enough for him to fly to New York when he had business there, he'd take the train.

My first real memory of the train station was going with Nana to Kokomo, when I was four or five years old, to visit the radio station, WOWO.

My grandfather Thompson would have taken a train from this same station in the early 1900's when he and his cousin set off for Tacoma to be mailmen on the ferry boat. It was too confusing for him with his minimal education. His cousin kept at it for awhile, and Baba opened a little restaurant down by the docks, "because people always have to eat." My grandmother didn't want to move way out there though, so he came back to Indiana; my mother was born a few years later.

It's fun to be here and imagine who all came through here and where they were going, what they thought about as they waited for their trains. This was a very busy station, and it dates back to 1888.

All over this hotel there are white statues of travelers from the first five decades of the 20th century. There are soldiers and sailors, mothers and children, nuns, hoboes, shoe shine boys. On the second floor where our room is, there are six old train cars, real ones, made into four rooms each. There are three on our corridor and three on the other, all from the Monon railroad. The Diamond Jim Brady car is in front of us, the Lillian Russel car next. Because of these trains, it smells like a train station, in a good way!
Is there anything more nostalgic than smells?

Indianapolis was planned by the same man who designed Washington, D.C. There is a central circle with a large monument to the soldiers and sailors, and the streets go out from that like spokes of a wheel. It is a beautiful city, vibrant and alive.

It's good to be back home again.