Miss Donna. Cairo, Illinois, February 2022.
When I decided I was going to chuck it all in early February and take my truck and camper on an open-ended road trip spanning most of the US, I knew that Cairo, Illinois had a spot on my itinerary. My photographer friends, the ones who love the ruins and detritus that the industrial revolution has spawned all over the country, insisted that I make this one of my first stops. Since I was determined to drive from Wisconsin until I could comfortably keep driving in a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, Cairo was definitely not out of the way. It sat at the the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, a huge swath of moving, muddy water that churned ever southward past Cairo, which was right in my path.
Once I was in the vicinity, I made sure that I had plenty of time to get in and out of Cairo before nightfall. Everyone I knew who had made the trip to Cairo said that was the demarcation between safety and the zombie apocalypse. Being in Cairo after the sun went down was tantamount to being mugged, stabbed and murdered for certain, according to my friends. Way too dangerous.
When I arrived in late afternoon of a cold, gray, forbidding February day, I understood. After I drove under the railroad trestle with the bold letters of Cairo almost completely peeled off the rusting iron, the rot and decay of a city long neglected was obvious and jarring. An abandoned, decimated check cashing place off to my left, which in any other decaying, run-down post-manufacturing town would be teeming with desperate customers. Customers who couldn’t live from paycheck to paycheck, but were locked into a system where they were paying criminal amounts of interest every month just to survive. Here, it hadn’t seen a customer in years. That was just the beginning.
Cairo, Illinois. It’s as if whole neighborhoods just packed up their possessions and left in the middle of the night. The main street was one abandoned, broken down structure after another. Fast food joints with disjointed broken windows and dirty, unkempt signs littered both sides of the street. The only businesses open were a couple of small gas stations with rebar strung windows, dingy yellowed neon lights flickering on and off. Large, imposing architectural structures, once libraries and town halls and Veterans of Foreign Wars clubs and fire stations and retail businesses were all empty and had been for many years. Buildings that in any other town would have been civic jewels, bustling with commerce and social events. In Cairo, they had been left for the rats and ghosts.
As I drove up and down the empty streets, a police car followed me for a few blocks, thinking most likely I was here to score drugs or find a hooker, or for some other nefarious end. He pulled me over and once he ran my plates and my driver’s license, struck up a conversation with me about the town. Yes, people still lived there, but they numbered in the few hundreds, rather than the twenty thousand or so that lived in Cairo in the mid 1950s. Floods, changes in economic winds, NAFTA and railroads and bitter racial divides had brought this town to it’s knees, and even the most optimistic of citizens had given up hope that the best years were ahead. He tapped his wrist watch and said, “you’ve got another hour or so, go north and drive those neighborhoods. Eerie over there.”
I followed his advice and found the neighborhoods. What were once beautiful, stately Victorian family homes, with wrap-around porches and tiled roofs and sprawling steeples were in various stages of disrepair. Occupants long gone. Every few houses it looked as if some squatter had taken up residence, but other than that, there was no one. Except the small, well-maintained but faded bungalow on one corner. Although it was in need of paint and a few weeks worth of a handyman’s attention, it felt apart from the rest. Someone lived there, and still cared. There was a 1990’s Oldsmobile parked in the driveway, in the same condition as the house. Proud, and in need of upkeep.
As I got out of my car and stood in the street, photographing the houses that were beyond repair and made the last of the daylight seem desperate, I saw a small older lady get into that Olds and drive towards me. As she passed I could see her head turn to look at me, and she did a u-turn in the next block and pulled up along side me, with her windows rolled down, in the chilly damp air of a river town in February.
“Hi handsome”, she said, stopping her car. She was a small woman in her early 80’s, all dressed in pink, from a pink scarf with a pink tracksuit and pink mittens.
“Hi there,” I said, incredulous that a woman of that age would be approaching anyone out here at dusk, already close to dark. “My name is John, how are you?”
“I’m doing well,” she said, a smile stretched across her face. “You sure are a good looking man!”
“Why, thank you,” I said. “You sure do look pretty in pink. You live here?”
“I’ve been in that house down the block for 63 years. My husband passed in 1996 and I’ve been on my own since. You have such a nice smile,” She said looking me up and down.
“Are you safe in this neighborhood, by yourself?” I asked, astonished she would be living here among the refuse and the despair.
“Oh yes, it’s perfectly safe. Lived here for 63 years and never had a problem. What are you doing here?”
“I’m a photographer just documenting my travels, I’m taking a cross-country trip.”
“How fun,” she said, so small the cushioned seats seem to swallow her up. “Would you like to go on a date? Come over to my house?” She asked, a sparkle in her eyes. “I’d love the company. I’m 84 but I feel like I’m 48. Just flip those numbers around and that’s what you have. I’m 48!”
“Ah, oh, I should be leaving soon, nighttime and all.” I leaned on the windowsill of the passenger door, stooping to talk with her.
“Oh, my name is Donna. People call me Miss Donna.” She said. “Give me your hand.”
I reached in and let her grasp my hand, unsure as to what she was thinking.
“Such big, warm hands. Oh my goodness. Such nice hands!” She squeezed mine, her little grip lost in my palm. “Can I talk you into coming over to my house and spending some time? I may be older but I haven’t put away my spurs yet,” she said, smiling and pulling my hand into her. “I could use a big, warm man in my bed.”
It was then that it dawned on me, obtuse as I could possibly be, that she wanted to sleep with me.
“Ah, gee, gosh, I’ve got to be going but thank you so much for the invite,” I said in my most awkward way.
“I was hoping you’d say yes,” she said, as I released my grip and withdrew my hand from her car.
It was then I could see the loneliness and sadness behind her smile. She was alone in this world that was decaying and fading in front of her eyes. I stood, nodding my head politely.
“I’m afraid I can’t, but you take care, Miss Donna,” I said. “May I take your picture?”
She drove off into the chilly, damp dusk and I stood in the street alone, her loneliness and longing for companionship coming over me like the approaching night. I drove out of that town as the light faded, wondering what would become of her, what would become of me, and what would become of all of us who feel that loneliness that only someone warm next to us, even briefly, can dispel.