During one of my first trips to the Heartland for work, this one to Hannibal, Missouri, I passed this house. I passed the house on the trip back to St. Louis from Hannibal. Staying away from US 61, a fast yet boring road from the airport to Hannibal, I took the back road down, following Highway 79 from the gates of the cement plant all the way to the interstate that leads to the airport.

This old house is in Pike County. It’s obviously abandoned and probably has been for many years. No other cars were on the road, so I made a U-turn and pulled off the road.

Right across the highway and maybe a quarter-mile south of the first house, I found this house. Equally abandoned and probably just as old if not older.

Just north of both houses is this early cemetery. I imagine some of the people how lived in these two houses are laid to rest in the nearby cemetery.

A few of the Stories in The Rats of Plainville: Tales from the Heartland take place in an area known as the Land Between the Rivers. It is a peninsula between the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. One of my favorite drives between Hannibal and St. Louis took me down rivers from Hamburg to the Brussels Ferry.

My journey usually started in Quincy, Illinois, the river town where I usually stayed when working in Hannibal. I’d drive down Highway 96 through New canton and Pleasant Hill, and then jog onto State Highway 100 at Kampville. Depending upon the time of day and the reading on the thermometer, I’d stop in Michael for an icy mug of Stag beer before driving down through Hardin and into Brussels.

Brussels is a small village of fewer than 300 people. It does have a couple of taverns and probably a few more feed stores. It also has an old cemetery that reminds me of seventeenth-century gothic novels.

Once out of Brussels, a short drive south led to the Brussels Ferry, a free ride across the Illinois River, its terminus just north of Grafton. After that, a journey down Highway 100 again, driving through Elsah and Alton, a bridge across the Mississippi River into Missouri, and down to St. Louis and my flight home.