For the love of home

The cover of Jim Piacenti’s new book, “Greetings from Ladd, Illinois!” includes pictures of Ladd memorabilia he has collected over the years. Some personal items on the cover include his parents’ wedding photo and his father-in-law’s old car. (BCR photo/Barb Kromphardt)

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LADD — Sometimes one thing leads to another and then to another, and you never know where you will end up.

So was the case with Jim Piacenti, whose love of all things in Ladd has resulted in a book titled, “Greetings from Ladd, Illinois!”

“I actually didn’t sit down one day and think, ‘You know what, I’m going to write a book,’” Piacenti said.

Piacenti has collected Ladd memorabilia for most of his life. Postcards have been an ongoing favorite, and Piacenti often stuck notes on the back of each card, including details about the picture.

“I would try and find information about stuff on my postcards,” he said. “I read a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense. I had a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.”

So about two years ago, Piacenti decided to create a time line of the important events in the history of Ladd. He began with the village’s 50th and 100th anniversary books, and then started searching on the Internet for more information about his hometown.

Piacenti got a lot of his questions answered, especially when it came to details about the village’s coal mine, which opened in 1888.

“I was happy with the stuff that I did find about the mine because I knew absolutely nothing,” he said. “We did my eighth-grade history project on the mine — there was me and another boy — and now that I look back, it was awful.”

The project took up large amounts of Piacenti’s time.

“I was working on it for probably at least three hours a day, and then there were some weekends in the winter that I think that’s about all I did,” he said.

Pretty soon, Piacenti found he had written a large amount of text. Instead of just keeping it for his own use, he thought some of the information could be helpful for Ladd’s 125th anniversary, which will be observed in 2015.

Then his thoughts became more ambitious.

“I let my sister read the stuff that I had, and she really, really liked it,” Piacenti said. “She said, ‘I really think you should try and get it published.’”

So Piacenti contacted MCS Advertising of Peru, which ended up printing the book. He received his 1,000 copies on July 24, and has since been showing them around town.

“I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback,” he said. “People have really liked it.”

Piacenti said the project was a labor of love.

“I wanted people to see the Ladd that I see now,” he said. “I want them to look at this and go, ‘Wow! Ladd was a happening little place 100 years ago!’”

The only suggestion anyone has made about the book is that Piacenti didn’t include Ladd’s businesses.

“There were a lot of businesses in Ladd, and if I would have tried to include that, it would have never got done,” he said.

Then Piacenti grinned.

“And besides, now I can do a Volume 2,” he said.

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