“Raintree County…which had no boundaries in time or space, where lurked musical and strange names and mythical and lost peoples, and which was itself musical and strange.”

Ross Lockridge Jr.

Poor Uncle Ross…I never knew the man, in fact he extinguished himself in 1948, with a sweeper hose ran from the tail pipe to the back seat of his car, under the ruse that he was going to listen to the BHS football game out in the garage. It was common practice for him to excuse himself to the car port to check up on his alma mater, or so I have been told. I guess his magnum opus was finished. No need to keep on writing, or living for that matter. So it goes.

My great-grandmother was there for the aftermath. I still can’t figure out if she disposed of the vacuum that supplied said hose, or if it was Aunt Clona. In any case, they “helped” Aunt Vernice to hide evidence and soothe his poor children, who are now professors at NYU and Northwestern, etc., except for little Ross, who lives in a hut in the Arizona desert, making whistles and flutes out of clay. Eccentricity is a prerequisite in this family.

I have heard his kids say, “We grew up without a father. Instead, we had a book.” A good book, I might add. It’s a shame that only one of his grandkids has read it. I’m his great grand-nephew, and I’ve read the damned thing. It’s no picnic to read, for sure. The structure itself is enough to give you a headache. But, the longing and imagery it conveys are well worth the effort.

Uncle Ross had tried to write The Great American Novel, whatever the Hell that means. It was a myth distilled from an Indiana that no longer exists…..

“Hard roads and wide will run through Raintree County, and its boundaries will dissolve. You will look for it on a map, and it won’t be there.”

A comment on the Republic, I supppose, is what Uncle Ross was conveying. He was an environmentalist at a time when no one thought about post-war extravagance and indulgence. His book was rather risque for the time as well, with numerous double entendres that were sexual in nature. Not to mention his main character engaged in intercourse under the Raintree. Not bad for 1948.

I am extremely thankful that he didn’t get to see what Indiana has become. It seems if you leave the confines around Bloomington, all you will find is corn field, interstate, factory, gas station, strip mall, repeat. Not only can you not find Raintree County, it has been sterilized, homogenized, hybridized, tilled over and banished.

One can hope that Uncle Ross is up in Heaven, lying under his Raintree, blissfully unaware.