Welcome to Forgotonia

Henderson County Museum – Originally uploaded by Rural Rose (Alison on Flickr)

A cultural opportunity in Raritan, IL (population 140, give or take a few).

It was Sunday morning, so it wasn’t open. I’m not sure what we might have found. Though I did enjoy the birds’ nests in some of the MUSEUM letters.

Here are a few more highlights from this tidy village in Forgottonia:

On the last day of school in fourth grade, my class was treated to a grand finale of the school year: a field trip, capped off with a stop at the Tastee Freeze.

The field trip would be on foot rather than on-bus. Our destination was only a few blocks away from Lincoln School. (Actually it was across town, but in a town like Carthage, everything is just a few blocks away.)

It was liberating to be outside on that warm spring day rather than behind our desks. In a single file line, we trekked to the Kibbe Museum, a place that—in theory—was perfect for providing kids with an educational experience.

The museum, it turned out, was actually just a house, a two or three story white house that, on the outside, looked no different from any others in the neighborhood.

I am now aware, as an adult, that this place had been the home of Alice Kibbe, a renowned biology professor at the once-prestigious, but by then defunct, Carthage College. (Read more about the legendary Kibbe here). The place housed all of the  scientific and historical artifacts she had collected over the years.

But when our tour guide explained Mrs. Kibbe’s legacy to our little group, I was probably focused on other, more important things, like whether the boy I liked was ever going to ask me to skate with him. As we meandered through that dark, dusty place, I was more and more anxious for the last part of our trip, which was a visit to the Tastee Freeze across the street.

Suddenly, the boys at the front of our group were really interested in something—I heard “Cool!” and “Whoaa!”—and everyone was gathering around something the guide was showing. I made my way to the front, and sure enough, there it was: the thing Timmy Grissom had been teasing me about all week, but that I swore up and down he was just making up. After all, I was a farm girl and we had a farrowing house, so I knew there was no way such a thing could really exist.

But there it was, staring out for eternity: a two-headed baby pig, nightmarish in its murky formaldehyde bath.

There was a whole animal-fetus collection, I believe, but I’m sure I walked with my head down for the rest of the way so I wouldn’t have to look.

So perhaps I can be forgiven if, for many years after that, I thought of The Kibbe as a kind of carnival fun-house of creepiness.

Now, many years later, the museum is in a different location, is in its second or third incarnation as a tourist destination, and for the last decade has been a place I keep hoping to return to. And there’s a unique item at The Kibbe that helps drum up so much business, the place has been able to build up a strong stream of revenue. Hint: it has nothing to do with freaks of nature. Find out the answer and more in my next post.

According to my hometown paper, the weekly Journal-Pilot, there’s big news in the town of Carthage.

Behold:

“Plans proceed for traffic light to replace four-way stop“

That’s right. The blinking-red-light-on-a-wire in the middle of town—that would be on Highway 136, right between the DQ and the Hardee’s—is going away.

Of course, to those of you who aren’t from my hometown, this might seem like less than interesting news. (And okay, it’s not exactly “breaking”—it’s from last week’s paper. And you have to scroll down to the sixth paragraph of this story to find it. )

But the red light in the 4-way stop—and that’s what it’s called, by the way; not “the intersection of such-and-such streets,” but just “the 4-way stop”—is an icon. It’s a symbol of small-town life, in a place where traffic is so scarce, my driver’s ed teacher actually used to use lines like this when we were practice-driving in the taupe Taurus:  “Okay, try to pretend there’s a yellow light,” or the classic, “Now, if you needed to switch lanes, and let’s say someone was behind you– what would you do?”

(And my college friends wonder why I was always too chicken to drive in Chicago. Or Peoria. Or…Monmouth.)

Anyway, there’s no information in the newspaper story about what would necessitate an actual stoplight in Carthage. This is all you get, before the story moves on to another subject in the next paragraph:

“Bidding on the four-way stop expansion and installation of automated traffic lights [was] at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 5. The project, originally drawn up in 1995, is expected to cost around $1 million.

Obviously it hasn’t been too pressing an issue if they’ve been working on it for more than 15 years.

But now that it’s on it’s way, it’ll be the second stoplight in the entire county (Hamilton can claim rights to the first). Next thing you know? Urban blight.

1. People who live in Georgetown (or anywhere else west of the County Market and Hy-Vee on East Jackson Street) will no longer have to drive all the way through freakin’ town to grab a gallon of milk.

According to Tri States Public Radio’s story, the city has loaned close to $100,000 to the future owners of Jackson Street Market, which will be not in the former Thompson Food Basket—that’s been occupied by a megachurch for the last couple of years—but across the street in what I would call a….Morton-Building-type-mini-mall. The proposed location is 1601 W. Jackson (in what was Brenner’s Furniture).

So: are y’all psyched? Will you shop there? (And perhaps more importantly for those on the west side of town…will this place get a liquor license?)

[See items 2 and 3 below, after the Google Maps location image]

Jackson Street Market location

2. We’re part of a region suffering from a “B.A. divide”—and the separation between people who have a bachelor’s degree and people who do not is getting more dramatic, according this blog, where you can see a map tracking the increasing separation. (If you’re interested in this topic, also be sure to check out some of the entries by  Timothy Collins, who works for a center housed at WIU. Also, tell me if you agree that perhaps they shoulda used different colors for the states on the map, connotations-wise, than red and blue…)

And finally,

3. It turns out I am not the only one who feels frustrated when the sidewalks roll up at dusk. As you know from reading this blog, I like to gripe about how Macomb could do better at offering things downtown for shoppers and eater-outers, especially considering that there are thousands of students here (and they have suburban parents who visit them). According to the results of a recent survey conducted by WIU students, the majority of respondents would also like business owners on the square to acknowledge that some people actually shop and do things after, like, 10 o’clock in the morning:

Most notably… 80 percent of the respondents indicated they think businesses should stay open past 5 p.m.

Yeah! Boo-yah! That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. (So, um….Chamber, are you on this now? Or whoever else is supposed to make that kind of stuff happen? Thanks.)

On a somewhat related note: I had the opportunity to spend some time in the lovely little town of Galena (Ill.) this past weekend with C-Nor and some of my college friends. As we were walking around on the last day of October, taking in the sunshine and the movie-set feel of that historically preserved city, I couldn’t shake this weird feeling, and finally realized what it was—I was in a small town, going in and out of businesses, on a Sunday afternoon. Not only were there businesses to go to, but they were open.

So, you ask, does everything in life have to be about consuming? Is shopping and eating out the most important thing in a community?

Well good question, you.

I thought this over after we drove back down to Macomb with our candy corn (from the old-timey candy store) in tow, with thoughts of Galena’s vintage toy store and nothing-but-socks store (um, yeah) and Abe Lincoln and U.S. Grant dancing in my head. And my answer is that no, shopping ain’t everything. But having lots of stores and restaurants, and a historic site or two—and having them open on a Sunday afternoon—leads to people (and their dogs and strollers) walking around downtown on a sunny day. And that, always, is more hope-filled and less depressing than things like this.

What’s there to see in Blandinsville, Ill.?

Well, not a heck of a lot, to be honest. But like so many other small towns in Illinois,  it’s a little self-contained unit–not quite a ghost town, because there are homes and churches and bars–that has survived for years and years despite not having much to go on.

When you drive down through the heart of town, you can’t help but feel a sense that time has passed in a way that this is a place that once was; that there won’t really be any growth to speak of.  Indeed, as the local history book (below) notes, there are more grave stones in town, by far, than living people.  But,

(More to read, below these photos)

Blandinsville Masonic Temple

here are some interesting factoids about this tiny town in McDonough County (follow the links to see the old black-and-white historic shots:

• It was started as gathering of log cabins, named Job’s settlement, in 1826, but officially platted in 1842 by Joseph Blandin  (a man who apparently did not have eye-rolling teenagers when he decided on the name Blandinsville.)
• The town was developed by, or because of,  the  Toledo, Peoria, and Warsaw Railroad, which came through town.
• A farming center, little B’ville once had a RR depot, a seminary, and a hotel featuring a fairly grand veranda.

The Masonic Temple is still there (pictured above), as are some of the other original Main Street structures. One building in the slide show above, the empty shop that’s for sale, appears in the lower left-hand corner in this street view of Blandinsville in the early 1900s.

(Historical facts taken from the book Images of America: McDonough County Historic Sites by John E. Hallwas,  WIU English professor emeritus  and author of The Bootlegger, [and guy so nice that when I told him I was a fan of his work, he hugged me]).

Just another little slice of the Midwest that seems worth taking a second to notice.

Figurine in window, Main Street, Industry, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

Another entry for the Mapping Main Street project, www.mappingmainstreet.org.

Semi-creepy statue of elderly couple inside a storefront (that, despite its sign, appeared to be closed) on Main Street in Industry, IL.

Click on the photo if you’d like to see more of my Forgottonia-region pictures on Flickr.

Maid Rite, Macomb, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

Just yesterday I posted a roundup of news and historical articles about the former Carthage College / Robert Morris campus, which has sat rotting and destructing in my hometown for at least 10 years, despite many local leaders’ attempts to save it.

Today, this news from KHQA in Quincy:

Congressman Phil Hare secures money for Carthage

To rennovate old Cartahge [sic] College campus

“Hare helped secure $2.43 million of stimulus money to rennovate [sic] the old Carthage College campus. [The money comes] out of American Reinvestment Act …”

[Full story here.]

Now, I feel obligated to warn that the story has some pretty bad errors, (including the name of the vet they interviewed). But they did at least cover the story, and they captured a shot of one of the empty buildings. And it’s great news for this area, especially in this era of budget cuts.

On an oddly related note: my next high school reunion (didn’t we just have one of these things?) is taking place in Carthage over the Fourth of July weekend, and one of the leaders of the restoration of the old Bryan Auditorium has planned a multi-year reunion mixer to take place in the refurbished building. Some of my friends are raising their eyebrows at me about this, but:  I’m definitely turning in my RSVP card. Oh, how my 18-year-old self (of “I’m never comin’ back to this town!” fame) would mock me! (Go ahead and laugh, you little punk!)