There is a muted wistfulness in Springfield, Illinois, that always seems to be hiding just below the surface of this town. Springfield possesses a kind of elegiac beauty, as though the city has learned to make peace with its own melancholy. Candy and I have been here for just over two years now, after I accepted a position as an oral historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. There are beautiful days here, certainly, when the prairie sky opens wide and blue over central Illinois, but there are also long stretches when everything seems to settle beneath a ceiling of gray. The clouds hang low, the wind moves across the flat landscape with almost nothing to slow it down, and winter can make the whole city feel as though someone has turned down the saturation. No wonder ole Abe Lincoln struggled with debilitating depression at times. Obviously, not all of this can be reduced to Illinois weather, yet if you spend enough gray afternoons here, you begin to understand the aesthetic a little better.

I am writing this in August, and August tells another story about Springfield.

Summer here can be thick and heavy. The humidity settles over the prairie, cicadas provide the soundtrack, and the corn surrounding the city has grown high enough that the landscape feels completely different from the barren fields of winter. The Illinois State Fair comes alive with livestock, carnival rides, concerts, political speeches, fried food and more people than you thought Springfield could possibly hold. Springfield even claims a place in the disputed lore surrounding the invention of the corn dog, with the “Cozy Dog Drive In” serving its battered, deep-fried hot dogs on sticks along old Route 66 since the 1940s....