The Name Board, or Why I Don't Hate Indiana
You may have read Dave's essay of a few days ago, "Why I Hate Indiana So Much." He showed you his experiences here. Let me show you some of mine.
If you drive west from the small city of Muncie, Indiana, towards the even smaller town of Yorktown, there's a few square miles of land you'll pass where my family roots run deep.
It's land my family still owns. Various residences along Benton and Petty Roads have housed my great-grandparents, my grandparents, my great-uncle, my mother, four aunts and uncles, five cousins, and, oh yeah, my two brothers and me.
I realize that not everybody lives with such strong family ties to a geographical area. After all, we move to different cities, different states, or even different countries with fairly little fanfare. We go to college out of state, we take promotions across the country, or we move to follow a romantic partner, and it's treated as pretty normal. It is pretty normal. Such an intense geographic concentration of family history is probably not.
So I feel lucky to have such a place! The centerpiece of this area, to me, was always my great-grandparents' house. Located on farmland, like almost all the nearby houses, it looks like a fairly typical ranch-style home, but my great-grandparents had it built to their specifications as a step up from their farmhouse. That house was already pushing 100 when they decided to upgrade. Still pretty young, their children fledged, Mamaw and Papaw moved all the way across the country road, within easy seeing distance of their former residence (now open to my grandparents and their brood of little ones). And they made their new house their own, in so many unmistakable ways.
The most distinctive of those was the Name Board.
Hang on. I'm getting there!
I grew up in the Northern Indiana city of Ft. Wayne, near my father's family. It's a beautiful old city at the confluence of the St. Joseph, St. Marys, and Maumee Rivers, chock-full of history and culture. We lived in a busy downtown-ish area, full of parks, restaurants, and cool stores - like Abby Brown's Candy Shoppe, where you could buy a chocolate rose, and even chocolate-covered ants! (This made quite an impression on five-year-old me - until my father actually bought some, and I had to, as they say, put up or shut up!) As a little kid, my idea of a fun excursion with my Ft. Wayne relatives was a trip to the ballet - with a new frilly dress to wear - a visit to the incredible children's bookstore, Mr. McGregor's Garden, or even a jaunt over to Chicago for shopping and lunch at the famous Walnut Room in the flagship Marshall Field's department store.
So maybe it made some sense that, on the first visit to my Muncie great-grandparents that I was old enough to remember, I wasn't sure what to make of a road trip to this rural patch of land where my mother and her family had grown up. These relatives were a little different than my dad's family: for one thing, where my father's family was predictably German Lutheran, my mother grew up Quaker. At age five or six, I didn't know much about that, but it sounded old-fashioned. And, of course, there was the difference I perceived between living in bustling Ft. Wayne and living in this rural part of Muncie that was mostly farmland.
Pulling into Mamaw and Papaw's gravel driveway, I remember being part horrified and part fascinated at how far "out in the country" we seemed to be, the way their farm cat, Betsy, came and went as she pleased, and how green and wild everything seemed. The house had seemed modern and exciting to my mother as a kid, but to me, visiting was like a trip back in time.
Inside, Mamaw would serve us fizzies to drink: a beverage so old-fashioned that it never comes up in any of the posts I see today, promising "20 Things You Forgot That'll Make You Feel Ancient." Fizzies were Alka-Seltzer-like tablets you dropped in a glass of water. They'd flavor the water with cherry or orange, merrily fizzing away as they dissolved in the glass.
The finished mixture seemed like soda, and I'd drink it at the kitchen table, where I couldn't stop looking around. The walls were absolutely jam-packed with decorative iron trivets, plaques bearing Quaker sayings, and Mamaw's own oil paintings: she taught classes at the Meetinghouse she belonged to, and she was quite talented! Most of the landscapes featured a classic 70s palette of olive, rust, orange, and brown - or maybe that was just the Midwestern landscape! Anyway, the colors accented the thick carpet nicely. Did it meet the definition of shag? Well, it was close enough!
But if I wanted to just stare at something and take it all in, nothing beat the Name Board.
This was a lengthy panel of wall in Mamaw and Papaw's hallway. It had traveled from their previous home to this newer one, and on the 8' x 4' panels, every single visitor to their home since 1949 had signed his or her name. Every one. By the time I was interested in the Name Board, it had been collecting signatures for over forty years.
This thing was really something to see! There was a riot of different colors of ink, handwriting styles, and of course, stories behind the signature. My great-grandparents were exceptionally active in their city (for there was one, all right, not even a mile away) as well as within the Quaker community. So that meant that touring writers, missionaries from overseas, and city officials shared space on this wall with appliance repairmen, their own children's and grandchildren's friends, and anyone who happened to knock on the door.
I added my own name in 1996. I was eleven.
Well, we ended up moving from Ft. Wayne to Muncie. Living there, I learned a lot about, and embraced, my Quaker heritage. We Quakers aren't big on symbols. We don't feel we need them. We recognize that of God that dwells within everyone, looking for that Light even when it may seem dim. We're simply determined to see it. And when you're determined to find something, you do - whether it's proof of a theory or a certain signature on a crowded autograph board.
But I can't help but see Homer and Rosemary Holloway's Name Board as an extraordinary symbol of Quaker faith in action. You see, nobody was too young to sign. Nobody was too insignificant. And that's what Quakerism teaches: that we are all equally able to receive the love and guidance of God; that He speaks to and through each of us. In this most important way, we believe, all people are made equal.
I don't pretend that Indiana is a famously diverse or tolerant region. I know we're a mostly white state - and simultaneously a mostly red one. I have known and loved people living in Indiana as ethnic and religious minorities. I watched some of them face instances of absolutely galling prejudice and hate. Those experiences made me feel deeply ashamed of the state where I happened to be born - as have a handful of recent news stories.
But nasty political maneuvering, instances of hate, and vaccine hesitancy are not the whole story of this state. And, crucially, experiences like those haven't been my most formative imprints, which I know has not been the case for everyone. “Your mileage may vary,” as they say, whether you're tearing around our five-lane interstates and bypasses or cruising down country highways lined with fields of corn and soybeans.
Historically, Indiana is very Quaker, and I am lucky to still feel that influence today. Quakers built some of our most prominent communities (and, yes, plenty of forgotten ones). I'll never be able to separate the two, and I wouldn't want to. I am proud that my own religious minority left a tangible footprint here - I'm even more pleased that my birthright-Quaker family has had a hand in furthering the ideals of our faith in this state's communities. My aspiration is to use my own life to continue that tradition! I hope to help all people feel equally accepted, whether here in Indiana or anywhere else I find myself.
The Name Board lives at my parents' house now. It's separated into panels, presumably for easier transport and display. My niece is coming down to visit her Grammy and Gramps this weekend, and I plan to spend some time poring over the Name Board with her. It's a tricky needle to thread for a six-year-old, but I want to make sure she knows why this family heirloom represents acceptance, love, and equality in action.
I wonder what color her signature will be.