Highland Center, Indiana

The setting for Highland Center, Indiana, the new play I'm working on. The little house on the right, with the blue-green roof, is the "new" house, the fancy new house my grandfather built when he, Grandma, and Aunt Marcella (Babe) moved out of the two-story log house where my mother and her 10 brothers and sisters were born and raised. The "old house" isn't there, having been dismantled, numbered, and reassembled somewhere by some Yuppies who came through and bought it up. My relatives thought that was the silliest thing they ever heard.

To the right, across the driveway you can see remnants of Grandma's garden. Her garden stretched from the road to the end of that "scar" you can see next to that light colored field, where corn and hay was alternatively grown. (That "scar" is actually Concord grapes.) At the far end of her garden is where the old house stood.

The barnyard is overgrown with trees, but interspersed you can see the out buildings: the woodshed, chicken coops, storehouses, the smokehouse. I spent a couple of hot, searing summers on top of those buildings either painting them or tarring them. Right in front of the barn is a shiny circle: a corn crib.

You can see the locust patch that Hank and Billy cut through, and at the top of the image the creek that winds through the locust patch and behind the barn that they wade through.

To the left of my Grandfather's farm is Joe Diehl's farm. When my mother was a child, there was also a store and a post office at Joe Diehl's farm. On the other side of the intersection is Ronnie Hoog's place. (Hoog is pronounced with a long "o").

Anyway, cue the dead rabbit.