The trouble with Cynthiana

Nov. 29, 2007

Dear Leslie,

Driving into Cynthiana, Ind., looking for lunch, the absence of other cars on the road seemed odd. Boards covered the windows of many commercial buildings. The town appeared to be in a permanent a solar eclipse. We were about to begin driving the two miles back toward the interstate when a man rounding up leaves pointed out the lone cafe to us. He couldn't say whether it would be open.

A lean older man behind the counter glared as we walked into the restaurant. Other men in overalls drank coffee and admired the intricacies of some new toy tractors on their table. Presumably children on Christmas morning will admire them, too.

The proprietor told us he'd been about to close when we walked in. We apologized for our timing. That's all right, he said, the way you say it when someone steps on your toes in a movie theater.

He grew talkative after the coffee drinkers left. He asked my parents' ages, said my mom didn't look it, and said he was 56. I hoped he wasn't fishing for the compliment to be returned. He looked many years older, disillusioned and disappointed perhaps by a jungle or a marriage or both. I imagined him in this town with the evocative name staring deep into a TV set at night and still wondering what happened.

The trouble with Cynthiana, he said when we asked, was people. Or the lack of them. When they consolidated the schools and started educating Cynthiana's children at a school 11 miles away, people started leaving, beginning with the teachers. Half the houses in town are empty now, he said.

The Cynthiana he once knew was once a dandy little town with a meat packing plant, a grocery, a tavern and many other businesses. We'd seen their ghosts driving into town. "Hell, we can't even get a preacher to stay here," he said.

DC said her church is having trouble attracting a minister, too, to a city of 35,000. That didn't seem to console him.

He said the last time a car came in from the interstate was two months ago. He had little hope that Cynthiana would ever be what it once was. He walked us to our car and wished us a good trip.

We had stopped in Cynthiana by accident on the way home from spending Thanksgiving with my sister's family in Cincinnati. My sister's children grew up hopeful and confident, their futures beckoning. I hoped the children playing with those toy tractors are not too distressed by their town's plight to imagine something else.

Their town's first settlers came from Cynthiana, Ky. The founder named the Kentucky town for his daughters, Cynthia and Anna.

In Northern California I knew an artist who made gargoyles for Disneyland and called himself the Great Razooly. He wore capes and emceed a horror movie Friday nights on the local TV station. His real name was Tom and his wife's was Denise, so they named their beautiful daughter Tonde. I guess Tomde would have sounded funny.

Tonde grew up in a homemade castle in the hills of Blocksburg, Calif., population 121. She became an art director for the movies. By example, her father taught her to live imaginatively.

Last year he convinced a company that makes boilers to build a gleaming rocket ship he designed. Strapped onto a big flatbed trailer and moved to Blocksburg, the rocket has a capsule, a porthole, fins and a removable nose cone. Razooly named it Griffin Mars Rocket I for his 3 1/2-year-old grandson and their destination.

It isn't powered by disillusionment.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a reporter for the Southeast Missourian.