The summer months will look a little different for St. Joseph’s Patricia and Bruce Rape.

Normally, the couple who has been married nearly five decades would spend the warm months looking out over vineyards, sharing glasses of wine with friends and bringing friends into their home.

But the summer of 2020 will look different. Instead of celebrating their 50th year of marriage at the Redwood National Park in California with family, the Rapes will be home, continuing to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves and others from COVID-19.

Though Patricia and Bruce have been staying very close to home for the last two-and-a-half months, they wanted to find a way to extend their curiosity and experiences with those they love.

So, they invited the world to their table: through Facebook.

On March 22, 2020, after seeing a graphic with a wine glass in every room of a home, the Rapes posted their first “Shelter at Home Wine Tour.”

Having toured wineries in California, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, the Rapes were equipped with an assortment of wines to start.

“I thought, well, we’ll just start and see what happens,” Bruce said.

To mix things up a bit, they joined a wine club from Utica and another one through Hopwood Cellars in Zionsville, Indiana.

“It’s one of our favorite little places that we discovered a few years ago with some friends,” Bruce said.

They’ve also ordered wines from the Wheelhouse and Naked Wines.

Pairing a wine with a meal isn’t anything new for the Rapes. But figuring out how to incorporate interesting cuisine, including some local ingredients, with a wine in a way that would bring people close when they had to be separated was something that excited the couple.

“We’re very much into organic and locally sourcing,” Patricia said. “I like to research recipes, so we try to incorporate those foods. When we find something that looks enticing or might appeal to someone else, then, we try to pair wine with it, and then we do that for our wine tour. 

“We both love to entertain and we sometimes laugh because when we get together with friends, we’ll plan a day and they’ll say, ‘Oh we’ll come to your house!’ We love to do that for friends, so this is a way for us to share our food, and our flair for entertaining with those that are in our community and in our circle of friends.”

To date, Bruce and Patricia have completed 22 “Shelter at Home Wine Tours.” They’ve prepared  cheddar broccoli risotto, North African curry, cheese boards, creme brûlée, pork chops from Bane Meats and demo boxes from The Wheelhouse. They’ve showcased wines such as Montelle 2013 Cynthiana Port from the Montelle Winery in Augusta, Missouri; Ruffino Prosecco from northeastern Italy, Biltmore Estate Tempranillo and Jacqueline Bahue Pinot Noir 2018, to name a few. 

“It’s been funny to hear comments,” Patricia said. “One of the funny ones is from a gentleman Bruce knows through work. After all these foods that I think are just delicious, his favorite night was the night we featured nachos.

“But our nachos are a bit exotic.”

Even the exotic nachos likely have a hint of something local, though. The Rapes have taken advantage of local produce deliveries at The Wheelhouse, continue to keep connection with David Bane at Bane Family Meats and have discovered Janie’s Mill in Ashkum, Ill.

Thinking about the wine tour begins in the morning.

Patricia likes to see the big picture of the day, then work backwards. 

“They have all these really wonderful flowers for pizza and for pastry,” Bruce said. “We just got a delivery from them (two weeks ago). It’s not really close, but it is locally sourced.”

Planning for dinner begins early in the morning as Patricia takes count of what the upcoming hours will look like. She plans backwards from dinner. 

Sometimes the meals will help them connect with loved ones they haven’t had a meal with in a while. 

“We generally just fix meals around what we’re hungry for,” Patricia said. “When we did the North African curry, we were just hungry for it. We hadn’t had it for a while, and it’s our granddaughter’s favorite. She’s seven; she’s a very picky eater, but curry is her favorite food. So we always have curry when we’re together.”

Whatever the theme of the dinner, Patricia picks out linens to go with the meal and Bruce coordinates his attire with her choices.

“It’s just the same as when I entertain with friends because I always plan certain linens or something different from the last time we were together,” Patricia said. “Bruce, who is very much a clothes person, says, ‘Did I wear this shirt before?’ So then he goes to the closet and picks out a collared shirt to wear for the evening.”

While some people chose to stay in the pajamas or sweats throughout the stay-at-home directive, the Rapes decided that they would continue to dress as if they were going out for dinner or having friends over.

Sunny skies have been helpful to lift spirits. Bruce and Patricia enjoy spending time on their front porch, waving and talking to passerby’s. But the cloudy skies and oftentimes chilly temperatures of April and May sometimes made it hard to pull through the day. 

“The whole wine thing just make us feel better,” Bruce said. “It gives us something to look forward to, it keeps our spirits up because we both tend to get down days. We pick each other up. Just dealing with a new whole reality of our life I think is the hardest part.”

The Rapes know that variety is often the spice of life, though. Instead of always eating at the kitchen table, they travel room-to-room, just as they would if friends were over.

Still, though, both Bruce and Patricia continue to enjoy spending time together, exploring the world together and making memories. They’ve been married for 50 years, but have known each other for 65 years, since Patricia was five or six years old.

Since Bruce retired from Danville Area Community College two years ago, the two have become reacquainted to being at home together, which was more of a learning process that figuring out how to be quarantined together.

Patricia had already been retired from St. Joseph Middle School for five years.

“I’m a very independent person,” Patricia said. “I just did everything, because he worked. So learning then to share the household duties, and that they don’t necessarily need to be done my way, I think, that was the biggest learning process.”

A former literacy teacher, Patricia has enjoyed watching Bruce become an avid reader, though.

“That has really helped during the quarantine period because we both read, and it’s like we have our own private little book club. We read the same books, not at the same time, and then we discuss them.”

Even though the stay-at-home order has ended, and Illinois has moved into Restore Illinois Phase 3, the “Shelter at Home Wine Tour” will continue. 

“I think the wine tour is a pick-me-up for us, but then sharing it with the friends that we miss so desperately. And then their comments make it as if we were together. 

“They share in the joy of what they would have had had they been with us in our home.”

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Bruce and Patricia Rape believe that access to books should be readily available to all.

While teaching literacy at St. Joseph Middle School for more than 30 years, Patricia worked hard to help students find books that made them excited to read.

“I’ve always been saddened when people don’t like to read,” Patricia said. “And I always think they haven’t found something that will inspire them. I always told my students if they didn’t like to read, we would find something.”

Now retired, Bruce — who worked at Danville Area Community College — and Patricia decided to find other ways to share their love of books with the St. Joseph community.

Over the summer months, the couple took an old cabinet built by Bruce’s dad and transformed it into a Free Little Library.

A project started by Todd Bol in 2009, the Free Little Library, which encourages community members to build small enclosures that house books, has grown to 75,000 libraries in 88 countries.

Bruce and Patricia’s library is located at 227 E Douglas St.

Because their home is on the route to school for many St. Joseph Elementary and St. Joseph Middle School students, the Rapes hope to provide access to a wide variety of literature.

Because Patricia focused on young adult literature throughout her career, she has an assortment of books for fourth through eighth graders available. The Rapes are working on providing books for younger children.

“I’d like to appeal to a broader range of children,” Patricia said.

Their Little Library also includes literature for adults, including fiction, memoirs, science fiction, romance and mystery.

“In the adult lit that I have out there now, I’ve tried to touch all genres, not just those that are necessarily appealing to me,” Patricia said.

Bruce and Patricia have enjoyed sharing their love of books, encouraging each other to read, and spreading book suggestions among friends.

Bruce will read one book at a time, while Patricia will often read multiple books at one time.

He’s always amazed that she will complete a book, even when she doesn’t find it interesting.

“I always think there’s something redeeming,” Patricia said.

Patricia enjoys sharing books with loved ones from college who live in Pennsylvania or a friend in Ogden who exchanges a bag of books with her on a monthly basis.

When the couple has gatherings in their home, guests are always impressed with their book collection, and the couple will offer suggestions.

Often times, the couple will talk about how a story touched them or books that were hard to put down, then will hear from a friend down the road.

“People will contact me, and say, ‘I took your advice and tried that book, and it was wonderful,’ ” Patricia said.

She also said that books are often bridges between two people.

“Maybe you can’t make a connection to someone socially, but you can make connections with the characters in a book or the setting in the book,” she said.

For Bruce and Patricia, their Little Library is just about that: connections.

“(The Little Library) was started to give people more immediate access to books as opposed to waiting to go to a library or those who can’t afford to go to a bookstore. I think another premise is to draw together neighborhoods,” Bruce said.

The couple also joined the turquoise table movement, painting an old table turquoise, and putting it in their front yard next to the Little Library.

Their hope is that people will not only stop by to pick up a book, but may also sit at the table and visit.

“It’s another way to pull together people in the neighborhood,” Bruce said.

The Rapes said a couple people have stopped by to get books recently, but they would really like to see more people interact with their library.

“I think some people are under the impression that it’s only permissible to take one if you bring one,” Patricia said. “But that’s absolutely not true. It’s great to bring, but you don’t have to bring one.”

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