Campbell’s Island
Illinois
Stories set here
- Bob's Bright Fragments of ChildhoodBob lists vivid childhood memories: neighbors, a gasoline burn while playing with a toy steamshovel, Barbara refusing medicine, Bernie's skating injury, and Tom Johnson knocking out power lines with a falling tree. He recalls visiting the Rodgers in Cordova, swimming at Campbell’s Island, annual Riverside Park picnics, Iris’s wedding, and poker games with Art and Eileen Cordingly. Other memories include orchard camping and spraying, gathering walnuts, toys and homemade kites, fireworks, homemade foods, hauling water when the well dried up, building a house addition, basement heat relief and flooding, coal heating, backyard tomatoes, and the surviving mailbox millstone.
- A Frightening Summer Ride and a Childhood MisunderstandingOn a muggy summer night, the narrator's father took the boys and a .22 rifle to Harry Means's home on Campbell’s Island. Sent by Bobby to listen at the screendoor, the narrator overheard that they had to shoot someone and assumed a man would be killed and dumped in the river. The boys heard a rifle shot and waited terrified in the closed car. Much later, the narrator overheard Harry explaining that his hunting dog had been put down with Daddy's help. Embarrassment kept the narrator from telling the story until adulthood.
Events here
Childhood
Swimming trips to Campbell’s Island
Remembered childhood swimming trips.
A summer night when the narrator was about eight and Bob about seven
A summer visit to Harry Means's home frightens the boys
The narrator's father helped Harry put down his hunting dog. The boys misunderstood an overheard conversation and rifle shot, believing a man had been killed.
Family corrections
Notes sent in by the family and approved on review. They sit alongside the original record — the book's wording is never changed.
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