NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL VANDALIA, ILLINOIS, FEBRUARY 8, 2003 - (26)

In the afternoon yesterday

I made my Vagabond presentation to three more classes at Vandalia High School - Freshman Honors, Sophomore Honors, and another Advanced Composition class. The presentations were pretty unremarkable, except to say that it is a little more difficult holding the attention of a class in the last period of the day on a Friday afternoon, especially when some of the students are a little behind schedule preparing their index cards for an upcoming paper and they're trying to catch up while you talk.

I arrived at the Hanabargers' house about 5:45 p.m. for supper and immediately was whisked through the house by Ethan Allen Hanabarger, who is the most articulate 12-year-old I think I've ever met. At one point he laid out a narrative of all the pets the family has ever had, with all the exactness and seriousness of a trial lawyer summing up his complicated argument. I wondered whether it was because he was home-schooled that he is so articulate, but Linda said he has always been like that. He could talk with almost anyone, she said, and he often does.

The Hanabargers live in a house that is - I would say - ever-evolving, always in the process of being built. It's about process, not product. Linda's husband Dale said as much as seventy-five percent of the materials in the house are recycled. The doors come from Linda's grandfather's house, windows from an old factory being torn down in Vandalia, and so on. The place is heated mainly with wood - one highly efficient wood stove sits in the living room and there's a little heater in the area where they keep some three thousand record albums they've just sold to a fellow in Singapore.

Dale Hanabarger is a musician and a free spirit. Linda is a writer and a free spirit, always a writer, always finding pen and paper to record any new bit of information she learns about Vandalia. Discussion of things historical got so pronounced that by the end of a long evening of talk and music I asked whether they discuss history just as much when I'm not there as when I'm there. All agreed that they do, except Dale, who said that they talk about people from Wisconsin when I'm not there.

To be continued....