I’ve been to Winamac, and a lot of the characters that I blog about knew the historical person known as Winamac.

The Strange Map shows somebody’s interpretation of the location of the state of Winnemac in Sinclair Lewis’s novels. That was interesting in part because I’ve read most of those novels — long ago in high school and college days. My own high school was to the north of Sauk Centre, the Gopher Prairie of Main Street. When the book came out the people of Sauk Centre recognized themselves in the novel and were furious at the way they had been portrayed. But the town eventually had its revenge for Lewis’s portrayal of their bourgeois ways. They took the connection and used it to make some good old bourgeois tourism dollars for the community. As a high school kid I found this all very amusing and ironic, but I don’t know that anyone else thought anything of it. Their high school sports team is even called the Mainstreeters. Unfortunately Sauk Centre was just outside of the area where our school usually played basketball, but I always wanted our teams to meet in the tournaments so I could enjoy the irony some more. I think they did once.

The Strange Maps article points out that Winnemac is named after a Potawatomi leader. Winamac (as it is often spelled) means Catfish. There were two Winamacs who were contemporaries of each other, though. One was pro-American at the time of the War of 1812, and one was very anti. It can be confusing to keep track of which was which. Usually the Potawatomi people would not have given the same name to two different people, but I presume things like this could happen when some of the communities were too far apart to communicate with each other regularly.

On my September 2006 bike ride to the Ten O’Clock Treaty Line, I made a brief visit to Winamac, the county seat of Pulaski County, Indiana. It had taken me two days — over 150 miles of riding — to ride from home to the state park a few miles north of town. Then, because the weather forecast was for rain, we took a couple of days off to spend in Indianapolis, where I did some research at the state library, after which we drove back to the park where I continued the ride. This was my first photo of that ride. Unfortunately this was yet another day of rain, and I didn’t get many photos. I didn’t even get one of Winamac. The above is the closest photo I have, taken not far from the town.

Myra later told me about the time she had spent in Winamac. She had gone to the local Curves establishment for some exercise, and learned that the town had not made up its mind about whether it was adopting daylight savings time or not. Some parts of Indiana had been in a big controversy over whether to join the rest of the world in using DST. The city fathers of Winamac could not agree on what to do. So some clocks in town showed one time, some showed another, and many business places used both.

I admired their spirit and wished I had noticed for myself. I think the town has since become less interesting and has conformed to the rest of the world, though.

By the way, I don’t know which of the Potawatomi leaders the town was named for. I haven’t made much of an effort to find out, but it would be nice to think that the town that couldn’t decide which time zone to use would also be a town that couldn’t decide which Winamac it was named for. Someday I’ll have to find out if that is actually the case.

On workdays I wouldn’t ride on CR-22, but I took advantage of low traffic to ride the windy, rolling road to Goshen. I happened to see a log cabin as I was leaving town, and stopped to take photos. I must never have taken that route out of town before. I’ll have to find out if there is any interesting history associated with the building.

The afternoon route took me through Amish country to Nappanee. There were lots of smiles and waves from the buggies today. The rest of the afternoon was through mostly new country for me, on roads I had never before ridden. I went around the south side of Plymouth on roads that had less and less vehicle traffic. At one place a pack of hound dogs came out to bark at me from all sides. A few miles later I rode past a farm where the roadsides were edged with flowers. Perhaps the farm wife didn’t think the corn and soybeans were pretty enough in themselves. I wondered how she convinced her husband to put up with the slight inconvenience of having to plant, cultivate, and harvest around them.

Mind you, I realize I’m stereotyping here. I don’t know for a fact that it was a wife who planted them. I mean, it could have been a woman who ran the farm while her good-for-nothing boyfriend planted flowers when he should have been working on his Great American Novel. Or it could have been the man who planted flowers so he could avoid going in the house to listen to his wife nag him about how he ought to be expanding the operation. But given the realities of farm life, I’ll put my money on a traditional farm couple who like each other well enough to indulge each other.

I stopped in Culver to get a bite to eat at a Dairy Queen – the only choice available as far as I could tell. I regretted my choice of burger most of the rest of the evening — too heavy and greasy. I still had almost 20 miles to go to the Tippecanoe State Park. The sun was getting low as I headed west-southwest towards Ora. In a couple of places I found myself on gravel, which I probably could have avoided if I had had better maps. The first stretch of gravel was on open prairie country. The 2nd was in heavily wooded country near the Tippecanoe River, with trees arching over the road. The sun was down by then, and I thought of those stories from out west where wildcats have found bicycle riders to be an entertaining type of prey.

Ora was the kind of place that… Well, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to call Myra, an expensive-looking car from the west stopped. A man of about my age, but perhaps more of a country club type, asked for directions. For some reason people think bicycle tourers know the local directions, even when they are in strange country and are on the verge of getting lost themselves. There wasn’t much light left, I still had several miles to go, and wasn’t even sure where I needed to go (which was why I was trying to call Myra). But I decided I may as well be helpful. I told the guy I had come from Culver, but he probably didn’t want to go the way I had come. He said he would be glad if he could find Culver; he had been there before and would know where to go from there. He got out and we studied the map together. After he got an idea of where to go, he gave the town a quick lookover, which could be done right from where we were standing. North Carolina used to have places like this before it got all developed, he said, somewhat wistfully. We visited a few minutes longer, and then we each took off in our separate directions.

I then followed winding back roads that took me to Hwy 35, finally. It wasn’t really that many miles, but riding in the dark in strange country sometimes makes the distances seem longer. I headed south, still not sure where to get into the park. Here on Hwy 35 there was traffic, but my main concern was finding the park. Finally I got in touch with Myra. I still had trouble understanding where to go, so she drove out to the highway to pick me up. I had ridden about 90 miles for the day.