Day 5 - Carmi

We headed to Carmi, which is a little over an hour from Evansville.  About halfway into the trip, Mimi said that she needed a bathroom break.  There is not much in the way of rest stops in Southern Illinois, so we had to take what we could get.  We found a crusty old gas station with a bathroom outside.  When Mimi returned to the car she informed us that, "It wasn't too bad considering that I had to wipe with a paper towel."

On a previous trip we had found an intriguing and quite beautiful little town named New Harmony so we decided to go through on our way to Carmi so we could see it again.  As we drove in we noticed the beautiful trees and Shannon mentioned a sign she had seen that said something about a detour and the New Harmony Bridge.  We had a very pleasant time looking again at this quaint town and discussing its strange history.  It was getting later, so we headed for the bridge that takes us out of town and on the road to Carmi.  Oh, how we wished we had paid more attention to the sign as we were entering New Harmony because the New Harmony Bridge was completely closed. We had to back track through the town and drive north to get on a highway to cross the Wabash river and then back down south again to get to Carmi.


We finally arrived in Carmi and were running out of time to do genealogy research because almost everything in Carmi closes before 4:30pm.  I wanted to go to the Mary Smith Fay Genealogical Library, but we had to feed Amelia so Mimi dropped me off at the library and headed to the only place in Carmi we thought we could trust: McDonalds.  Amelia is always happy when we dine at McDonalds... Shannon and Jill, not so much.

Amelia and Mimi ate at McDonalds and then brought a hamburger back to me.  Mimi reported an odd "small town" occurance that happened to them at the McDonalds.  When Amelia amd Mimi walked into the McDonalds they had to pass a table of older gentlemen who were all seated together. Mimi immediately thought they must be the afternoon 'regulars'.  When they again walked by them to leave one of them made a rat-a-tat-tat sound with his hand on the table top, looked at them with an air of authority and declared quite loudly, "Passin' Through!"

No food or drink was allowed in the library so I had to eat my hamburger on the steps.



The ladies at the library were super helpful and helped me unearth this old obituary for Ethel Nevel who was my Grandfather Wrye Nevel's sister.



We found several good things there, but the library only has one microfiche machine and another woman came in and sat down and started just reading old newspapers on it.  We had several other specific things to look up, but couldn't.  One of the nice woman who worked at the genealogy library called the regular library for us and then came over to tell us that the regular library had some of the records we wanted and an available microfiche machine so we packed up and headed down the street.

It was about 3:45pm and I didn't think we were going to make it to the County Courthouse to get death certificates so I sent Mimi off alone to get them, while I stayed at the library.

When Mimi returned she had found several death certificates, including this one for Ethel Nevel (as in the obit above).  Oddly, the death certificate listed her last name Reed, which was her mother's second husband's name (who was NOT Ethel's father).  So interesting...




After Carmi shut down, we headed back to Evansville.  We were starving, as usual, and stopped at the Thai Papaya restaurant.   We were surprised by how great the food was.  We had a ground pork salad called Larb and my favorite soup, Thom Kah Gai.  It was some of the best Thai food I've ever had.  Who would have guessed that you could find good ethnic food in Evansville?




Next door to the Thai restaurant was a nail salon.  Mimi had badly chipped a couple of her nails earlier so she went over after dinner to get them re-polished.




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