A lot of people wrote me about problems accessing the article. I have copied and pasted it for those who had trouble. Patti Researching Gray's and Vinson's in Cairo. 1863-present? URL FOR HISTORIC CAIRO: (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Country/2717/) EDITORIAL ARTICLE: Last Updated: Thursday, Nov 14, 2002 - 06:26:13 pm CST Top Stories How we've changed: A year after Sept. 11, the citizens of America assess how their country has changed An Out of the Box winner for The Southern Illinoisan. Librarian Judy Travelstead, who knows a family living in America, Ill., suggested the story idea; reporter Linda Rush and photographer Ceasar Maragni did the rest, providing a great read that is partly a reflection on Sept. 11, but is mostly a reflection on life in small-town America. -- DAVID STOEFFLER BY LINDA RUSH / The Southern Illinoisan AMERICA, Ill. -- In assessing how the world has changed for Americans a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, what better place to look than America? Southern Illinois' own America, Ill., that is -- tucked away in Pulaski County. It's easy to miss the green road signs marking the turnoff from Illinois 37: "America," with an arrow. Blink, and you've passed it. It's hard to believe America was once the Alexander County seat, long before Pulaski County was carved from a piece of it. Ask the folks who live there where they're from, and they'll proudly answer "America," even though they know they'll often be accused of wisecracking. The tiny community lies south of Olmsted, north of Mounds and Mound City. What's more, it's "the only America in the country," said Nick Niestrath, county highway engineer and an avid historian. There's one road in, and a few families who all know and care about each other. The Ohio River laps at the edge of some folks' backyards. A few recent rains have turned the corn and soybean fields a rich green. Though the huge Olmsted lock and dam project is being built a stone's throw upriver, and a nuclear enrichment plant at Paducah isn't much farther, somehow America, Ill., seems an unlikely target for terrorists. Despite their apparent isolation, though, America's families, like the rest of the country, watched with horror and disbelief as terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and attacked the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. And life for all of them will never be quite the same, they said. "We've lost a lot of liberty here in the past year," Allan Lang reflected. "But if profiling is what it takes to get our freedom back, that's what we have to do." The 50-year-old millwright works all over the U.S. He and his wife, Barbara, have lived in America for 12 years or so, the last five in a house Allan built himself. He's spending more time at home these days, because jobs are scarce. "It used to be I could finish one job in Pennsylvania or Detroit and my friend would already have another job lined up for us," he said. That's not happening any more. "The construction business is hurting since 9/11. People are afraid to spend money." The Langs' immaculate home has a wide front porch lush with hanging plants -- and patriotic displays. There are red, white and blue banners Barbara found, even a flag flying from an outbuilding. The real traffic-stoppers, though, are a large carved black bear Allan bought in Pennsylvania, and a four-foot-tall wooden Uncle Sam holding an American eagle that he built and painted himself. He has no idea how many hours he spent cutting, shaping and smoothing the wood for the statue. He followed a pattern Barbara found in a craft magazine. The Langs' display is a fitting welcome for those who followed the arrow on the sign in search of America. Some folks, Allan said, accuse him of jumping on the patriotic bandwagon that followed Sept. 11. "We've always had a patriotic display," he said. "We're bearish on America." Allan's father, Denver Lang, 76, has lived by himself in a mobile home on the property for the past three years, after living north of Cairo in Urbandale most of his life. A flag flies proudly beside his front steps, next to vines laden with tomatoes. Denver said the Sept. 11 attacks were "just about as bad" as the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The terrorist attacks shook him up "a tad," and he almost wanted to put on a uniform again, the veteran said, pausing to puff on a cigarette. Denver was just 16 when he enlisted after Pearl Harbor, but "they waited until I was 17 to put me on active duty," he recalled. Down the road, Nick Niestrath said watching events unfold in New York City a year ago has made him "more appreciative of being in a community like this, where everybody is good to each other. It's a great community -- with a one-way road in," he joked. "It's where we want to be. We have privacy, but we also have good neighbors." At 62, he's lived in the America community all his life, except for his college years at the University of Illinois. He said he couldn't wait to get back to his small-town home. He and his wife, Kay, who works in the warden's office at the Tamms Supermax prison, have "a couple of hundred acres," Nick said, including a seven-acre lake. Nick is rooted in the past of his hometown. But he also reads newspapers all over the country online every day and avidly follows TV news coverage. "I was absolutely shocked at what was unfolding" on Sept. 11, he recalled. "It's sad that other people are trying to destroy our way of life." But he said he doesn't feel vulnerable, even though he's a couple of miles from the Olmsted dam and the Paducah facility. "You can't just sit around thinking about what might happen," he reasons. Inside the Niestrath home are Indian artifacts Nick has collected for years, and a collection of whistles that covers an entire wall. Most of the whistles were collected by his father, Oscar Niestrath, who died three years ago at age 86. "He collected for 50 or more years," Nick said. "He grew up listening to whistles. He could recognize the boats by their whistles, then run down to the river to see them." The Niestraths' home has two satellite dishes, one for TV and one for Internet access. Nick searches eBay and is elated when he can buy treasures like his prized old "steamboat and stage map" that depicts the early trails running through what is now Pulaski County but then was all part of Alexander County. A map dated 1818 shows just Alexander County -- with America as the county seat. Nick believes America was chosen because it was the first bit of higher ground in the county, and much less likely to flood than Cairo. There were no levees then to protect settlers from rising waters. It wasn't until 1836 that Pulaski County was formed from part of Alexander County. The old maps are rich with detail in the lower third of the state, while the northern portion of the state is simply uncharted. America was incorporated in 1818, and the farmland "was laid out by streets and lots instead of sections and quarter-sections," Nick said. "The streets were named after Eastern states, and there was a courthouse here." The last of the community's original homes has now burned down, but you can gaze over the fields and still see the old road cuts. There's an old concrete watering trough and pump behind a barn on the Niestrath property. It's now overgrown with weeds, but it marks what used to be a crossroads. "Travel was pretty harsh back then," Nick said. "Roads turned to mud every time it rained." He's happy the Illinois Department of Transportation has given a "dispensation" and continues to replace the "America" road signs. "They're stolen about once a year, but the state is good enough to replace them," he said with a grin. Down the road a bit, distinguished by a bright yellow mailbox, is the home of Niestrath's sister, Kathy Sigman. She's a grant administrator at Southern Five Regional Planning Commission at Ullin. She's also raising her two grandchildren, 16-year-old Justin Aden and 6-year-old Kianna Young. Their mother, Andrea Aden, Kathy's only child, lives and works in Cairo. Kianna visits her mother when Andrea isn't working on weekends. As last year's terrorist attacks unfolded, "everyone was glued to the TV set at work," Kathy recalled. "I remember just feeling grateful we lived in such a rural area -- I was glad to be so isolated." But isolated doesn't mean unaffected, Kathy soon learned. Kianna was attending a Catholic school in Cairo at the time, and began bringing home drawings depicting terrorists, her grandmother said. But as months passed, the drawings have stopped. This year, Kianna is attending a different Catholic school, in Charleston, Mo. "It's a 22-mile drive one way," Kathy said. But Kianna seems happy in her new classroom. Justin initially exploded with anger when he heard about the terrorist attacks, but seems to have put the events behind him, Kathy said. He's a senior at Meridian High School in Mounds. Kathy describes their home as "Animal House," ticking off the list of critters in residence. There's Kianna's dog, Nikki; an outdoor cat, Boo; a big black cat, Dakota; a calico cat, Lily Mae Poupee; a turtle named Michelangelo, a ball python named Sebastian, a guinea pig named Sebastian, two fish, and Justin's snake, Ino. Kianna wants to become a veterinarian. If the 6-year-old's career goals later change, it won't be because of a lack of animals to study. "I'm a grandmother who spoils my grandchildren," Kathy said. "I will do whatever I can for them." She's pleased that Kianna is an excellent student, and that her drawings no longer depict terrorists. But Kathy worries about thousands of other children. "When I think how it impacted her here, I think about what it did to those children in New York." In another corner of America, World War II veteran Dick Ham, 83, lives alone in a huge house built in 1909. The place is known as Riverside Farm. Ham sports what looks like a class ring. But surrounding the large blue stone isn't the name of a school, but rather an inscription that marks him as a disabled veteran. "It should've never happened," Ham said of the terrorist attacks. And afterward, "they talked too much about it instead of doing something about it." He believes the United States eventually will be at war with Iraq. "They shouldn't have stopped Desert Storm," he said. Ham spent four years in the Air Force as a crew chief on B54s, the aircraft known as Flying Boxcars. He'd been out of Cairo high school about 18 months, working at a grocery, when he enlisted Dec. 15, 1941 -- eight days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "Fifty percent of the crews were killed back then," he recalled. Recalling those casualties, he said hearing so much concern about a few casualties overseas "sometimes burns me a little bit." He becomes irate when people complain that graphic war movies showing the bloody price of freedom shouldn't be shown. "They should show them more often," he said. Ham's father, who worked for Western Union, transferred to Cairo when Dick was about 14 years old. Since 1970, he's lived in the house that once belonged to his great-uncle, then his uncle. The uncle sold the place to Dick and his wife. Since she died in 1985, he's taken care of the house and mowed the yard. He gets some help from his stepson, Archie Walston of Cairo. "I raised him since he was 9," Ham said. Across the road, the Ohio River glistens in the sunlight. There have been times when it's crossed the road and crept up into Ham's yard. In the flood of 1937, water got inside the house and rose to the second step of the wooden staircases leading to the upstairs bedrooms, he said. He looks forward to visits from his sister, Madeline Albright of Cairo. She, too, is a World War II veteran. He's fiercely patriotic, and feels that flying a tattered flag is an affront to the symbol. He recalls driving for several years through a Louisiana town that had a torn and dirty flag flying at city hall. Finally, he recalled "I marched up to the mayor and complained." When the mayor didn't reply, Ham announced that he would never again return to the town. "And I didn't," he added. Sharon Long smiled watching her son, Chad Long, 13, and her granddaughter, Chelsey Cato, 8, as they splashed in a front-yard pool with a friend, Harley Showalter, 13, of Mound City. As the children giggled in the sun, Sept. 11 seemed far away. But when asked, Sharon recalled vividly the day the planes hit the World Trade Center. She was at the Living Hope Fellowship Christian School in Grand Chain, which both children attend. Sharon watches Chelsey while her mother works in Cairo. "Some parents wanted to come get the kids, but the school administrator, who is also the pastor's wife, said no. So we just prayed and talked about what happened," Sharon said. Chad, who has two sisters ages 25 and 27, "talked about it a little bit afterward," but seems to have gotten over the incident, his mother said. "I answered his questions if he asked, but didn't force anything," she added. "I think it's pretty much behind him now." Sharon realizes that the anniversary of the terrorist attacks will lead to more attention being focused on the horror. But they'll move beyond it this time just as they did a year ago. "With prayer," she said. "Prayer really helps." Reach Linda Rush at linda.rush@thesouthern.com / 618-529-5454 x15079.