A recap of the Old Roads Tour

Now that the Old Roads Tour has wrapped up, Monroe St Press is focusing on our next projects and exploring some ideas for the future.... first a recap of our later tour stops.

Toulon

The Old Roads Tour came to West Main Coffee and Books in Toulon, Illinois, on June 6.  John had the opportunity to read excerpts from Last Ride On the Galena Coach Road and Other Tales and from Iron & Ashes: An Epic Poem in the Homeric Tongue in Three Acts.  We had very engaging conversations about writing, small town life and many other topics with our host, Payton Schott (left) and guests, including Mary (center), who purchased a copy of Last Ride. 

 

 Princeville

On June 20 we visited The Vine Coffeehouse and Bakery in Princeville, Illinois. Since this is John's hometown, this was an especially meaningful event. Those who came shared stories, memories, laughter, and a few readings from Last Ride, Iron & Ashes, and recent essays.

One of the great joys of the day was reconnecting with old classmates, welcoming one of John's brothers into the gathering, and discovering once again how deeply the places of our youth continue to shape us. We also stayed in the nearby village of Monica and won half a hog as a raffle prize! 

Days like this remind us that books are more than pages—they are bridges back to people, places, and moments that still matter.

Bradford

Our next stop was at the Bradford Public Library in Bradford, Illinois on July 9. This event was one of those those reminders that success isn't always measured by the size of the crowd. Wonderful people joined us, and together we spent a delightful afternoon talking about old roads, local history, storytelling, and the places that shape our lives. The conversations were thoughtful, lively, and exactly the sort of exchange an author hopes for.

We were also made to feel incredibly welcome by the library staff, including library director Sarah Boehm (right) and her assistant Kate (left) who greeted us with such kindness and hospitality. They had refreshments waiting for everyone, creating an atmosphere that felt more like gathering with old friends than attending a formal event. Libraries like Bradford's are true community treasures, keeping alive our shared love of books, history, and conversation.

 

We also visited libraries, bookstores, and businesses in Henry, Princeton, Ohio, Dixon, Sterling, Rock Falls, and Walnut, and stayed overnight at the Hungry World Farm (formerly Plow Creek) near Tiskilwa. Along the way we met welcoming folks, sampled great food, discovered fascinating aspects of local history, and enjoyed the natural beauty of the Bureau Valley region. 

 

Thank you to everyone who came, listened, asked questions, and shared their own stories. Those conversations are every bit as memorable as signing books. We left Bradford grateful for your warm welcome and looking forward to the next stop down the road.

Walnut 

Our final book signing stop was at Avanti Foods in Walnut, Illinois, on July 31. Many people from the area remember this venue as a cheese factory that hosted tours and field trips. Although the facility no longer produces its own cheese, it is still a well known destination and our host (Jeri Zueger) and visitors shared their memories and history of the area. 

Our trip also included stops in Rock Falls, Sterling, and Wyanet, which have their own historic and cultural points of interest, local landmarks and celebrations, some of which are noted in the collage at the end of this post. 

 

 

The Rail Splitter

There was also another unexpected stop along the way -- The Rail Splitter tavern and restaurant in Mossville, Illinois. We stopped here on three separate occasions during the Old Roads Tour, not for a book signing but to take a break from traveling in heavy rain. 

On our last stop, drying off over coffee, we laughingly explained the three stops to our server, Tara, and enjoyed a warm chat over John's memories of the place.

 

When we got home, John did a little historical research on the location. As it turns out that exact location at 10307 N. State St. in Mossville has a long history of feeding and providing shelter to weary travelers along the Galena Trail & Coach Road stretching back nearly 200 years!

 

In honor of The Rail Splitter and its Old Galena Trail heritage, John wrote the poem below and put together this keepsake memento from photos to capture the moment.

 

Thanks to every venue that welcomed us, every reader who took home a book, and friends and family who encouraged us along the way. 

 

The Old Roads Tour may be over, but there are still plenty of stories and roads waiting to be explored just around the bend. 

 

Meet you again soon down the road.....

Why We Still Need the American Epic: From John Brown to the Scrap Yard

The American epic has never looked much like Homer's. 

It has seldom been about kings, rarely about emperors, and almost never about palaces.

Our epics are built beside rivers, railroads, wheat fields, factory whistles, and dirt roads. They are carried by soldiers, blacksmiths, widows, farmers, preachers, immigrants, mechanics, and ordinary people who discover that history has quietly asked something extraordinary of them. 

That is why Stephen Vincent Benét's poem John Brown's Body still matters, nearly a century after its publication. And it is why John Spencer found himself writing Iron & Ashes. 

These two works occupy different centuries. Benét, writing in the early 20th century, stood amid the 19th century Civil War. Spencer, writing in the 21st century, stands beside an aging scrap dealer still plying his trade in the late 20th century on old U.S. Route 40 in Illinois. Yet both are asking remarkably similar questions. 

What becomes of a nation after the noise of history has faded? What remains once the speeches have ended? Who remembers?

Benét answered by gathering the voices of America itself, allowing generals and laborers, abolitionists and slaves, soldiers and statesmen, mothers and children to speak in one vast chorus.  His was not merely a poem about war. It was a poem about the making—and breaking—of a people, and their re-formation into a new kind of nation. 

Iron & Ashes begins where another kind of struggle quietly unfolds. Its battlefield is not Shiloh, Antietam or Gettysburg; it is the scrapyard.  There, iron becomes memory, and rust becomes inheritance. A forgotten bearing or broken plowshare becomes evidence that ordinary labor once held communities together. 

The epic has simply changed its clothing. Where Homer sang of bronze shields, we inherit welding torches. Where Benét heard marching armies, we hear the steady rumble of diesel trucks crossing the Illinois prairie. 

Yet the questions remain the same: Who are we? What have we inherited? What are we willing to carry forward? 

Perhaps every generation must write its own epic—not because history changes, but because memory fades. 

The old roads disappear beneath interstate highways. Family farms become subdivisions. Rail depots become antique malls. Even the objects themselves vanish into the furnace. 

Someone must remember before the last traces are melted away. 

That, I believe, is the work of literature. Not merely to entertain or even to preserve facts, but to recover meaning from the ordinary. 

To look at a weathered wrench, an abandoned forge, a forgotten crossroads, or an old soldier's silence and recognize that these, too, belong within America's great story. 

The epic has never died. It simply moved from the battlefield to the back roads. 

And perhaps that is where it has always belonged.

About This Essay 

This essay also serves as the basis for a Monroe St. Press lecture and discussion program presented to libraries, historical societies, museums, civic organizations, and book clubs. The program explores the American epic tradition through the lens of Stephen Vincent Benet's John Brown's Body, John Spencer's Iron & Ashes, and the enduring relationship between literature, history, and place. 

For speaking engagements or program information, please contact Monroe St. Press via email at elaine@monroestpress.com

Iron & Ashes: A Measure Set in Steel

Coming soon from Monroe St. Press and John Spencer, author of the Surge Series and Last Ride On The Galena Coach Road and Other Tales:

  Iron & Ashes, a literary cycle—part epic poem, part lyric narrative, part stage play, part novel—set in late 20th century Illinois, where progress presses against memory, and shortcuts threaten to erase what still holds. 

Some roads aren't remembered. They're measured. 

Along a worn stretch of U.S. 40 near Effingham, Illinois, in the late 1970s, a scrapyard sits just off the road—ordered with a precision that borders on reverence. Nothing there is accidental. Nothing is wasted. Every piece of metal, every tool, every remnant of industry is placed, accounted for. 

The man who keeps it that way is Silas Vance. He is not a dreamer. Not a man given to abstractions. 

He is a builder. An octogenarian engineer. 

A man who has seen the great works of the world—canals cut through continents, steel raised into skylines—and who has chosen, deliberately, to step away from wealth and status into something quieter... but no less exacting. 

And yet—he is not alone. There is a presence in that yard. A witness. 

Arthur. A son who never came home from the Second World War.    

In Iron & Ashes by John Spencer, the past does not fade. It watches. It measures.

As Effingham begins to grow—pushed by the same restless force that has always driven expansion along the old roads—pressure mounts. Land is wanted. Deals are made. Corners are cut. Lines are bent. 

But some men do not bend. 

And some places do not yield without being measured first. 

In Iron & Ashes, Spencer utilizes the plumb bob as a central metaphor, representing Silas Vance's unbending moral compass. It symbolizes the conflict between individual craftsmanship and the destructive fires of progress. A Scriptural image, used by Old Testament prophets to call attention to ancient Israel's departure from the straight and true. 

 As an engineer of the old school, Vance uses his literal and metaphorical plumb line to expose crooked shortcuts, legal loopholes, and ethical compromises, and forces the town to look at what they are losing in the name of progress. 

  However, this is not a story about resisting change. It is about judging it. About whether what is built stands true... or comes up crooked. 

 Setting Iron & Ashes along U.S. 40 is also significant. Originally, this was the National Road, commissioned by Thomas Jefferson in 1806 as the first federally funded highway. It carved through the wilderness to open Illinois to pioneer settlement. Effingham grew out of the dirt along this original trail.

With the explosion of the automobile in the 20th century, it became U.S. Route 40, the "Main Street of America", lined with mom-and-pop gas stations, diners, and yards that served a traveling nation. 

 By the 1970s, however, it had been superseded by Interstate 70, which bypassed local businesses. Towns began to decline and developers stepped in to clear out the old landscape for corporate expansion, and this is the historical turning point that inspires the conflict in Iron & Ashes. 

This story, like John Spencer's other stories, demands that the reader stop and look vertically, by the steady weight of the plumb line. From the perilous freedom trails of the antebellum Surge Series, to walking the restless paths of the Galena Coach Road, or standing with Silas Vance amidst the iron and ancestral ashes of an Effingham scrapyard, the lesson remains the same. 

The road runs through it all. 

And it keeps its own account. 

Iron & Ashes—Coming Summer 2026.