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In Your Own Backyard
By Nancy Jo Batman & Paula Cross

I got into tenting (well, actually got inside a tent) several winters ago when I was hot. My mate and I are perfect examples of that “I sleep with the window open, he sleeps with the window closed” song, and when no compromise could be reached, I went to Farm & Fleet and bought a one-woman tent.

I put up the tent. Notice: I used five little words to describe a process which took a whole lot of time and a whole lot of words I can’t use in this column.

I lasted in the tent until 10:30 p.m. and then took everything—canteen, mittens, extra socks, two blankets, snack food, flashlight, etc.—back inside the house because I was freezing, the dog was snoring, and I couldn’t move three out of four of my limbs.

I “camped out” a total of three nights—always coming in at 10:30 p.m.—until a big wind blew the tent down.

Since that time, we moved to a house in the country, complete with 3.3 acres, a pond, and a couple of sheds and 6 million Asian ladybugs.

One nice spring day, I invited Paula Cross of Decatur out for a field trip and overnight camp out.

First, we went to the “Country Store” in Witt, one of my favorite antique stores. It is owned by Linda Clouse and is open 10-4 weekdays and noon-4 Sundays and is closed Wednesdays. (Take 51 South to Pana and then 16 West until you come to it.)

Linda is one of those kinds of people who can take a birdcage, add a lampshade and a doily and make a lamp that I will buy. Or she can take a chair, glue a plate on the back, take out the seat, add some purple flowers and make a chair I will buy.

“I just buy things I like for the store because I know it will sell if I like it,” she says. “I’m not into that hot collectible thing, but if you want a trend, it is this: ‘If it’s good for outdoors, it’s good for indoors.’”

She would love to buy the For-Sale house across the road and turn it into a cottage gardening kind of store. The For Sale sign was right under a big white rooster, which has some kind of charm all its own.

As much as I love her store, I love her little getaway house even better. Her husband, Jim, and son-in-law, David Steffen, built it for her in 1996 as a “labor of love.”

“I wanted a little garden house, a little retreat thing, and furnish it with all my favorite stuff,” she says. Her son-in-law said, “Mom, where do you want it?” And it was built—right behind her house across the street from her store.

It is 12’x14’ and looks like the little cottage in the old ViewMaster disk of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with its wicker chair, daybed, old cupboards, flower pots, table and chairs and knickknacks.

Linda goes out to her retreat every morning, drinks a cup of hot tea and reads several pages from an old book called “The Lilac Lady,” which she has been reading for three years.

We asked her if she had the day off where she would go and she said “St. Louis.” We explained we didn’t have that much time, so she told us we should go visit a holiday shop called “Gather Roun’ The Tree” in Hillsboro, which we did. It’s a cute little store featuring mostly Christmas items.

We ate lunch at the Red Rooster Inn on the square in Hillsboro, which featured a buffet lunch that day with noodles just like my grandma used to make.

After lunch we came back to our house and climbed steep ditches (tied together with the dog’s leash), looked for wildlife and went semi-spelunking near our campsite in the backyard.

And put up the tent.

By then, it was dark and we were too lazy to have a bonfire, so we so ate our s-mores the old-fashioned way: cold.

We settled in—Paula with a real, heavy-duty sleeping bag and me with a blanket that changes into ice.

But at 2:30 a.m., I was still awake and went to my own bed. I think that maybe I had been roughing it too hard since I only had three pillows and usually sleep with four.

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2000 issue of Decatur Magazine.
It may not be reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part without the publisher's consent.
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