Stonefort Reunion

This is the time of year I remember back to The Stonefort Reunion and the many years friends, classmates and I gathered to walk at least 100 laps each night around the fair midway.  It was a time for us to reconnect if we hadn’t seen each other over the summer. We would run to check in with our families, who were sitting in lawn chairs clustered around the stage watching a variety of local music and dance talent, and ask for more money or beg to stay longer.  In junior high and high school, it was a time for young love. Countless relationships surely began or ended between the Ferris wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl over the 120 years of its existence.

It began in 1898 as a way for soldiers and sailors to reunite and be honored by friends and family.  Thus the name, The Old Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Stonefort Reunion. It later evolved into an annual gathering for friends and families with a connection to the area; some traveling great distances, and was a place to behold in its heyday.  Carnival rides and families still sparsely cover the old reunion grounds at the edge of Stonefort, Illinois, on U.S. Rt. 45, the end of August each year.

I hadn’t seen Tony for several years.  I moved out of our hometown after high school and had recently come back to the area.  I heard he had moved away as well. We had grown up on the same street and our families had been friends, so I was extremely happy to spot him on the other side of the merry-go-round at the local fair.  

I am not sure if everyone does this, but often I see someone who looks vaguely familiar and wonder how well I knew them.  I wrack my brain for some tiny fragment of memory–I might convince myself they look familiar because I had pored over pictures in my school yearbook enough I felt I knew them.  Or maybe we actually spent a few Saturday nights cruising town together. This memory glitch bugs me and I don’t want to seem rude, but many times I just can’t remember if or how well I had known them.  I mean, I don’t want to run up and hug a virtual stranger. So I feel safer to smile and say hello. Or wait for them to initiate a greeting.

This wasn’t the case with Tony.  I knew him, I knew how I knew him, and I wanted to know what he had been up to, so I ran over to him and threw my arms around him.  I was careful to be in his line of sight as I talked to him, because Tony read lips. We hugged, chatted, and spent a little time catching up, while smiling all over ourselves–both obviously tickled to see each other.  Then, terror struck. Something just didn’t seem quite right. I slowly removed my arm from around his waist, ducked out from under his arm, mumbled how good it was to see him again, and high-tailed it back to my husband.  I told Jim what had occurred and that I wasn’t sure who I had just talked to. The problem was, Tony doesn’t speak with the usual tone a hearing person often does, and this “Tony” did. Jim rolled his eyes, shook his head, and had that familiar look that said, yep, here she goes again.

I couldn’t just let the situation go.  I can never just let the situation go.  I had to prove to myself I had either talked to Tony or a complete stranger.  I grabbed the first familiar person in the vicinity who would both know Tony and possibly know the stranger I would point to.  It was Garth Brooks (no, not the country performer), and that should have been enough of a warning.

Unbeknownst to me, Garth had seen the whole event, and had commented to my brother-in-law, “What is Carla doing hugging that ex-con?”

So, when I asked him if the guy by the merry-go-round was Tony, he nonchalantly looked toward the amusement ride and in a typical deep, steady voice said, “Well, hell no, Carla, that’s not Tony.  You just hugged yourself a convict.”

To know Garth means you never, ever expect a straight answer from him.  You never know if he’s telling you the truth or pulling a prank and will do either without cracking a smile.  

My face protested while my voice caught up,  “Oh, Garth, really.”

“I mean it, Carla, that is John Q. Inmate, and he just got out of prison a couple of weeks ago.”  

After arguing back and forth that he was lying to me, he continued to seriously stick to his story.  He was getting a real kick out of telling me how I had run up and hugged a convicted felon. I reluctantly asked what John Q. Inmate had done.  

“Rape.”

I had figured that.  I swallowed hard and steered my husband away from the kiddie rides.  Great.  All I need is some sexual pervert hunting me down after I all but threw myself at him.

Before I went to bed that night, the phone rang.  A voice I didn’t recognize asked for me.  Wondering if it could be a parent of one of my students or a long-lost friend, I said, “This is she.”

“Do you know who this is?”

I admitted I didn’t.

“John Q. Inmate.”

My jaw dropped, my mind raced, and a few seconds later I realized Garth was playing a prank on me.  So typical.  I assured him I knew it was really him.  He kept the ruse up quite a while and I began doubting myself.  Then, something in his voice gave him away.  He was telling the truth.  It was not Garth, but my brother-in-law, who had heard and seen the entire fair fiasco and would love nothing more than carry Garth’s shenanigans as far as he could. Also typical.

It is times like these, I have to double-check my forehead in the mirror to make sure GULLIBLE wasn’t written in Sharpie while I wasn’t looking.  Over the years I have become more careful in my interactions.  One can never be too careful.

(Names are changed in this story originally published in Oxymoronlover’s Blog, 2009)

Be sure to visit the Stonefort Railroad Depot Museum in Stonefort, IL:

http://www.heritech.com/stonefort_depot/

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g36741-d6659584-Reviews-Stonefort_Depot_Museum-Stonefort_Illinois.html?m=19905