The bus dropped us off at a small dairy farm 30 miles outside of Brussels. I have heard that memory is most closely linked to smell, and certainly the smell of dairy farms has left an indelible impression on my memory. I turned to Lauran and told her, “It smells like Wisconsin.” The village was Corroy Le Grand, Belgium, a small community where my great-great-great-grandfather was born just a few years before his family immigrated to Wisconsin. Almost all of my dad’s ancestors lived in similar Belgian farming towns in the area just south and east of Brussels.

My family moved from Wisconsin when I was almost five, and aside from occasional visits for one or two weeks, I have not spent much time there. In fact, it has almost been 10 years since I last visited the small Wisconsin farming town where most of my dad’s family still lives. Small towns in Texas are not all that different from small towns in Wisconsin, but over the years, I lost connections to my Wisconsin/Belgian roots. I don’t speak with a Midwestern accent. I don’t frequent taverns, and I usually barely even notice St. Nicholas Day. Still somehow I found myself traveling 5,000 miles to find some connection with my heritage.

Corroy Le Grand is mostly a typical small farming town. It has a small school, one church, two main streets and a restaurant. The livestock may outnumber the people. There are no shops or tourist attractions. Surely the residents must have found it strange that two Americans were walking through their village, taking pictures of insignificant objects like houses, street signs, fields and mailboxes. To me these details were not insignificant. Each one was a symbol, a connection, or a memento. I had to take a picture of the street sign that said Rue d’Eglise (Church Street in French) because my grandparents live on Church Street in a small hilly Wisconsin farming town that bore an uncanny resemblance to this one. I took pictures of the small dairy farm because some of my Wisconsin relatives have also owned small dairy farms. I took pictures of the hills covered in barley fields because they reminded me of the Wisconsin landscapes. I took pictures of the old cobblestone road because it is possible that my ancestors walked that same road.

We walked through the entire town in about 30 minutes and waited a few more minutes by the dairy farm for the bus to pick us up. I didn’t meet any distant relatives or see any definitive traces of my ancestors, but the evidence of my heritage was abundant. I felt a deep connection to this tiny village that no tourist would ever think to visit. It reminded me of my other homeland back in America, the place where my ancestors finally settled after the treacherous journey across the Atlantic, a place I have not seen in years. It’s funny how a mailbox shaped like a beer barrel can become more than just an amusing piece of home décor, or how a rundown Catholic church can become a historical monument, or how an insignificant village can become a window.

One Response to “Heritage”

1. Brent Heraly Says:
   August 24th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

   Outstanding piece made me realize just how small our world is and better yet how close we really are to the past.

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