By MARK MEDLYN, guest columnist
One of the joys that I have of living in Brown County is the sounds.
In the afternoon, I can hear the Indiana Rail Road as it makes its long journey from Indianapolis to Robinson, Illinois. The lonely whistle punctuates the silence of the afternoon. As I listen, I think of times past as the train makes its way through the bridges and tunnels of Southern Indiana. I often think of what it would have been like to see a massive steam engine as it wound its way across the Tulip Tree bridge.
The silence of the night is shattered when military aircraft come flying over the house at 500 feet. When we signed the documents for the cabin, we signed a document that said we could not pursue legal action for the fly-overs. The house shakes as those four engines roar on a C130 doing 250kts just past the tops of the trees.
Nights also bring out the sounds of the night creatures. As a camper for the past 64 years, I am used to being outside in all types of weather. Imagine one of my first nights in the cabin when the silence was shattered by the screams of a bobcat just feet outside my window. To say that I hit the ceiling would be a misnomer. My first instinct was to wake my dog and make sure that he was there to protect me. A very confused Welsh Terrier did his job. The sounds of the bugs outside as they sang their songs of the night lulled me back to sleep.
Despite my home in Champaign being next to an interstate, I have never gotten use to the sounds at 0-dark-30 of vehicles racing down Helmsburg Road on their way to Columbus or Bloomington. Nothing can jar you faster from a deep sleep other than having a vehicle with no muffler racing down the top of the ridge at 60 miles an hour. I have never understood why people believe that road is appropriate for that speed. Why law enforcement allows it is confusing at best.
As a result of the traffic on Helmsburg Road, I am forced to take my dog to Deer Run Park for his morning walk. It is either that, or our walk would slow traffic to a crawl. It is there that among the sounds of the creek flowing, the birds singing and the wind blowing in the trees, I hear the most heartwarming sound of all: the sound of the bells of school, ringing in the start or a new day or the changing of classrooms.
Those sounds have been silent in Champaign since March 2020. Students who should be in the classroom are “working” from home. Students who can ill afford to miss a single day of the classroom now have missed nearly 100 days in the classroom. For many of them, they will never catch up, leading to increased problems in the future.
I commend the staff of the schools, especially those tasked with cleaning the buildings, for doing an outstanding job to ensure that the students of Brown County are given the best chance of an education — an education that is sadly being missed back in Champaign.
One of the saddest stories I have read all year was in the Champaign News Gazette. The reporter asked a group of students and what they missed most during the pandemic. They all said that they missed their teachers and their classmates.
Kudos to all of those who are working daily to make sure that the students of Brown County are learning. You truly are the unsung heroes of the pandemic.
Mark C. Medlyn of Brown County is a new, occasional community columnist. A graduate of Bloomington High School South and Indiana University, he has worked as a police officer and an adjunct college instructor, authored a textbook on the Illinois vehicle code, and became a substitute teacher in Illinois upon his retirement from full-time law enforcement in 2007. He and his wife, a retired university instructor, have been Brown County property owners since 2015.
