By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--December 26, 2023

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I grew up in a world very different from the world today. So much has changed, but here and there are reminders of those days of the 1950s and early 1960s. One of those places is where US 40, the old National Road, has a junction with Indiana 103 at Lewisville, Indiana. This is what I saw there looking west on the afternoon of December 20, 2023.

When I was six, we moved away from my original hometown of New Castle, Indiana, deep in the heart of Henry County, Indiana. We went to a tiny town in Randolph County where we spent the second half of 1959. My brothers attended the old brick school at Parker City, Indiana and I went to the first half of kindergarten at a newer elementary school nearby. From there we moved to a rented house in Richmond, Indiana, then to a boy’s wonderland outside the city limits with woods and a creek and a swamp.

We moved away from New Castle, but left both sets of grandparents, still living, behind. Other relatives were abundant there, particularly from my dad’s side of the family. Of my mother’s three sisters, we were the last family to leave for greener pastures. Naturally, there were many occasions to return to New Castle over the years.

There were two main routes from Richmond back to the old home town. One was across Richmond on North A Street to NW 5th Street to the place where Indiana 38 and US 35 split on the northwest side of town. From there we would follow Indiana 38 through Greens Fork and Hagerstown, past Millville, and on to New Castle.

The other main route took us across the south side of Richmond across the river on the G Street bridge past the high school to the National Road, US 40, just after it crossed the river and made a jog to go past Earlham College and on to points west. From our house it was only 9 miles to the first town, Centerville. Old Federal style brick houses and store buildings crowded both sides of the National Road there. Jody’s Restaurant stood on a corner of the main intersection and everything about the town reeked of the really olden days. If I looked at the right time, I could see the brick Federal house that had been the home of Oliver P. Morton, the Civil War governor I would later come to revere. Even as a kid I could read the marker standing on the National Road and I knew there was something important about the place. The streets were tree lined, sugar maples and elms if I recall, and everything was neat and quaint and old-timey.

West of Centerville the landscape looked the way landscapes look when they’re perfectly arranged in my memory. Beautiful gently rolling farm........

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