Polo Historical Society got a call about our plans for Town and Country Days and while we had talked about this, it was many months ago.

So Beth, Linda and I quickly put our heads together to discuss what we had done in the past and what we would like to do in the future. We have had numerous trolley tours out and about to see several historic spots and the last was out to the cemetery to point out gravesites of conductors of the Underground Railroad. What would we want to do this year?

Have we ever tried a walking tour? The answer was “yes.”

But that was years ago with Joan Raley and a group from Chicago called the Pleasant Valley group. Not many from Polo took part in it. What could we put together and how much walking would we have people do?

We could start out with the Judge Campbell Law Office and move to the Polo Opera House. Linda had recently found out some neat things about the old opera house that people might find interesting. Of course, we would move on next door to the Aplington House and maybe Caroline Aplington would show us some of her newer outfits.

Then we will stroll across the street to the home of Dr. Burns and find out what little tidbit that we had forgotten about as we refresh our memory. Our next stop would be the Lutheran Church and we will talk about the past history of the church. All of those places we will not go in until we come to the last stop.

That last stop will be the Presbyterian Church and here we will enter the church to see what is going on with the church now. We will all be delighted to find out about this from the present owner.

Then we had to come up with a name for the tour and after we had tossed around several ideas, it suddenly came to us. It would be “A Walking Tour of Zenas Aplington’s Neighborhood.”

This will take place on Saturday afternoon on June 20 and the times will be 1, 2 and 3 p.m. So get your walking shoes ordered and have an umbrella on hand for something a little different. Beth will be your tour guide, and I am putting together the vignettes of each historic place. I am finding little points of interest that maybe you did not know.

Beth recently went over to West Carroll School District to my granddaughter Natalie’s fifth grade classroom to talk about the Underground Railroad that went through Carroll and Ogle counties. Before she left, one student asked her, “Is this still going on?” How would you have answered that student?

Betty Obendorf is a historian for the Polo Historical Society.