Welcome to Forgotonia

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.

Even though I initially told you I wasn’t going to be able to make it, I actually did trek out to the rural, remote, hidden-from-plain-sight ghost town of Vishnu Springs on Sunday with C-Nor.

(more below, after these photos).

The second year of the “open house” was an absolutely heavenly fall day. And in addition to sharing the feeling of taking it in with all the other people interested in the intriguing history of the place, I ran in to lots of friends from my hometown of Carthage. (Though, I couldn’t get any of them to own up to having done this!)

Once again, I’m going to have to miss it this year. But if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, and an excuse to be outdoors, you should think about attending the “open house”—(a.k.a permission to visit legally)—at the property once known as Vishnu Springs.

As loyal readers know, the legend of Vishnu Springs—a once-bustling little resort that became a ghost-town, an invisible-from-the-road spot in the remote-est of places in McDonough County—has long been an obsession of mine.

But before you go, could I please offer a[nother] piece of unsolicited advice?

I encourage you to steep yourself in the idea of the place first.

This week, a co-worker (formerly a suburbanite) asked me if she and her kids would get anything out of the event. I thought I should answer honestly that, once you find the place, there really isn’t all that much to see.

(more below, after the photos I took when I was **definitely not trespassing there** in 2007)

Vishnu Springs Capitol Hotel backside (north)

But, if, like me, you get the chills from standing in a certain spot—an almost entirely forgotten spot—and thinking about all that once took place there, you’ll get more from the experience.

In other words, think about the fact that out in the middle of nowhere, there was once a town so popular, it included a railroad stop that brought tourists from Chicago. That it was rumored to be a hideout for Al Capone. That WIU students from the counterculture era made their way out there to live communally and play music and…do other things. And that every person who spent time there, all those years ago, thought his/her own time in the world was just as important as believe ours to be.

So yes, I think anyone who has an interest in history and ghost towns and local legends can “get something out of it.”

Here are the open house details (from the Facebook event page, where one respondent—perhaps reflecting the spirit of his time there in a certain previous decade—wrote that even though he can’t be there, “Smoke one for me!”

The second opportunity for the public to visit Vishnu Springs (Ira and Reatha T. Post Wildlife Sanctuary). A short historical and educational update will take place at 1:30 pm. Take this opportunity to come visit Vishnu without the risk of having to “trespass” to do so. More information about Vishnu Springs is at www.vishnusprings.org.

UPDATE: Mea culpa: As a certain unnamed reader helpfully pointed out, this entry below (originally published Oct. 3)—or at least its reference to a certain movie —is a bit of an anachronism, since the tower didn’t go up until the 00s. However, said reader, who also happens to be a longtime friend from my home stomping grounds, says, “I say we get a 12-pack and give it a try.”

Over the weekend, C-Nor and I took a walk around the hamlet of Ferris, Ill., which is about a stone’s throw from the farm where I grew up. (It’s just a few miles north of Carthage, Ill., and its young people have been bussed to the Carthage school system for many years.)

Chris took this picture of the water tower. As he was doing so, it struck me as surprising that, having grown up here in the 80s, in the era of the iconic teen movie, none of the bored teens (including me) ever felt inspired to climb atop it and paint the word “SAVE.”

(It would have been a lot cheaper and easier than emulating the movie by taking a day trip into Chicago, that’s for sure.)

Bueller? Anyone?

Who can tell me anything about this sad cafe—which is apparently now home to a salvage yard and a rather…um, interesting used car business—along Highway 136 between Macomb and Carthage?

I’ve driven past it for years and finally stopped to take a picture on Labor Day Weekend. I was greeted by the property owner who, when I asked how long the cafe had been closed, said, “…’bout 10 years.” I beg to differ, however.

What’s the real story of the Midway Cafe?

You can see more of my photos of local stuff here.

Chapter One

The one and only time I ever agreed to help, I was on edge every time I heard a car slowing down on the highway.

The sound of the bell on the door—which I could hear from the living room on the other side of a cubicle wall—put me in a panic. Please don’t be a customer please don’t be a customer.

My older sister, the cool-headed one of the two of us, usually watched the front office of the motel, and babysat my cousins at the same time, on weekends when my aunt and uncle went out of town or out with friends on a Saturday night. But she was about to graduate, and now that I was in high school, I could perhaps be her replacement, was the thinking.

The babysitting part on this Saturday night just meant hanging out with my three younger cousins. The scary part was that these cousins’ home—a living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms—was in the “living quarters” of a motel. The motel entrance, a small office from which to book customers, rent rooms, and distribute keys, just happened to be behind a small partition in their living room.

Chapter Two

My aunt and uncle ran the Prairie Winds motel, a one-story brick business on Highway 136 on the edge of town, about 15 miles east of the Mississippi River. I wouldn’t know until many years later that I had had legitimate reason to be freaked about facing whoever it was that might come in and cause the bell to jingle. Growing up, I had no idea that the motel’s original proprietors—my grandparents—had once been robbed there in the middle of the night.

No, what had me trembling that night was not man, but machine: if any of the travelers who stopped in for the night paid with a credit card, I was going to be in trouble. My aunt had tried, patiently, to show me how to swipe the card through the little box with the keypad on it and complete the complicated transaction. But after the third time, (as I am still guilty of doing when it comes to anything with numbers), I nodded and pretended to get it. “Oh there, I see,” I said, smacking my forehead. “You guys go ahead and go to your dance, don’t miss it on account of me!”

As soon as they left, my cousins got out a board game and I said a secret prayer. Dear God, please don’t let there be any customers and if there are please let them write a check.

Chapter Three

Luckily, the few times someone did come through the door over the course of that Saturday evening, it was just a friend of the family stopping by to say hi, or maybe a deliveryman for the ice machine. I never had to use the credit card machine. But the next few times my aunt and uncle asked me to babysit the kids and the office, I was relieved to have legitimate excuses to be unavailable on a Saturday night: pep band, marching band, or play practice. (Oh and yes, um, dates.)

In today’s Google-map era, there is perhaps little reason to worry late at night about how much further down the road the next gas station or motel might be. But back then, the Prairie Winds was the only place to stay–with maybe one or two sketchy exceptions–in the area, with the next option 30 miles to the east, or across the Mississippi into Keokuk, Iowa to the west.

So it actually a pretty genius idea when my grandpa, a farmer, decided to go into business for himself, (in addition to farming), and build a motel on the edge of Carthage, just near his home and farm. If I’m remembering correctly, Grandpa built the place himself. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering that this is the same man who, today, at 89, is still farming. And the same man who, as a teenager, left school to take over his family’s farm after his father went blind. My grandma would spend many years helping run and clean the place. She was the one who chose the romantic name.

I never heard either of my grandparents mention the story of the robbery; as is perhaps typical of their generation, they saw no need to talk about it. But I eventually learned from my dad that my grandparents suffered a harrowing, nightmarish experience one night when what seemed like just another traveler coming off the highway turned out to be a man who would hold them up at gunpoint and leave them bound and gagged. They lived, thankfully, but apparently not “to tell the tale.”

Chapter Four

By the time my cousins were in their teen years, at some point in the 90s, my family sold the motel to an Indian family from Chicago, and it has been sold again at least once since then. The place is a bit of a lighthearted Carthage joke now; if you’re back for a wedding or a reunion, you might hear, “Where you crashing tonight, the Prairie Winds?”

And the sight of the place in its current state, along an off-interstate stretch of the Midwest, was enough of a story-in-itself to capture a noted photographer’s attention. In August, the New York Times photography blog, Lens, highlighted a series of photos from rural Illinois called Prairieland by Dave Jordano.  There, in the collection of sad places that have seen better days, was the Prairie Winds. (You can read more about that in my initial post here.)

Screen shot of Prairie Winds photo by Dave Jordano

Even though I’m now aware of what happened to my grandparents on that terrible  night, the motel still conjures pleasant memories for me,  not just of spending time with with my cousins in their home in the living quarters, but also of eating Sunday dinners at the buffet when there was still a family restaurant attached.

It might not be much more than a sign of another era now–another symbol of the left-behind feel of west central Illinois. But because I know who built it, it will always be a symbol of two other things to me:  my Depression-surviving grandparents’ sense of industriousness, and their strength.

Postlude: That car in the picture is very much like the kind I used to cruise around in when I was a high schooler– a blue 1985 Crown Vic, to be exact. As you can imagine, this also played a role in the status of my Saturday nights.

Yesterday, I told you about the Chicago-centric publication Newcity publishing a “postcard” from the Forgottonia region, (including a stop in Plymouth, Ill.), which I raised a couple of questions about here. Interestingly, only three days after the Newcity story, the same Hancock County hamlet of Plymouth—AND a piece of my own family’s history—was featured in the New York Times‘ photography blog.

Lens Blog- NYT.com -”A Prairie Wanderer in Search of the Human Touch“

screen shot of Plymouth on NYT blog

I couldn’t believe my eyes when a friend sent me the link to this blog via a Facebook message. This was a friend who (like any good writer) has a deep abhorrence of exclamation points.”OMG!!” She wrote. “Check it out: Prairie Winds!!!!!!” But before I explain the Prairie Winds part, let me tell you about the other things I found when I went to the link above. The blog, Lens: Photography, Video, and Visual Journalism, which “present[s] the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting,” was on that day highlighting the work of Chicago-based photographer Dave Jordano. The former adman returning to his early roots in documentary photography had traveled around rural Illinois in the fairly recent past, capturing scenes of rural Illinois for a series called Prairieland. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, in his journey through the tiny dots on the

photographer Dave Jordano's website

Illinois map (many of which I’ve never heard of), Jordano had cast his photojournalistic and artistic eye on several spots in our immediate region. (Although what he has documented is not, of course, entirely “pleasant”). If you’re at all interested in photography, photojournalism or documentaries, or how our region is seen through others’ eyes, you should check out the photographer’s web site, where you’ll see stirring shots that capture

• a young man in Bardolph, (in McDonough County, Ill.)
• a series documenting the destruction of Gulf Port during the Flood of 2008
• a set of trophies from a no-longer existing school in Plymouth (shown above)
• and many other sad, self-contained mini stories, like this one.

It turns out that one of the Prairieland shots, too, captures a piece of my own family history. Of all places in the world, this photographer had cast his photojournalistic and artistic eye on the Prairie Winds Motel, which just happens to be the little mom-and-pop business that was built by my grandpa—and co-operated by my grandma—back in the early 60s in Carthage, Ill. More on the motel—including one rather terrifying tale—to come.

NYT Lens blog

Thanks to a tip from a fellow Flickr-er who landed on my photostream, I learned that the publication Newcity: Street Smart Chicago recently ran a feature about the Forgottonia region. Intrigued, I discovered that the Aug. 3 item features photos and an interview with a resident of Plymouth, Ill., the tiny village near my hometown of Carthage.

“Postcard from Forgottonia: The land that time chose not to remember“

Newcity's "postcard" from Forgottonia

The story is well-written. And I’m always fascinated to read any “outsider’s” take on this area. But I have to admit a bit of confusion and frustration with this piece. There’s a whole lotta “land that time forgot”-type generalizing:

“Forgottonia is a kind of negative image of urban America—which from the Forgottonian perspective presents itself as the indifferent republic of… well, let’s call it Oblivia for lack of a better term…Nobody sets out purposefully to explore the region of west central Illinois known colloquially as Forgottonia. The place creeps up on you as gently as a childhood memory, and it is only later that you realize you have set foot in this unmarked republic of corn, dust and melancholy. As its name suggests, it is less a place than a feeling—a sense of having slipped away from the present moment into some other time stream, which has been dammed up by indifference and neglect and now registers only as a trickle.”

And until I reached the Plymouth part of the story, I began to wonder if the writer had even visited the region he was describing. I was also intrigued by the fact that the only source the writer acknowledges (other than the interview with a resident) is the feature on the origin of the Forgottonia movement that appeared last spring in the publication produced by WIU students, Western Illinois Magazine.

I’m familiar with Newcity, but only familiar. [Readers: Does this Chicago-centric publication typically do "downstate" features? And in its "News" section?] What about you—when you see objective descriptions of the “forgotten” place you call home, do you feel fascinated, too? Excited? Annoyed? Insulted? Let me hear from you.

Plymouth, Ill.

Maid Rite, Macomb, IL

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

Randolph House

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

The downtown courthouse square in Macomb has fallen on some hard times.

In addition to a recent fire on the the south side that destroyed two businesses, several stores have closed and still sit empty. And, (while this is just my opinion and preference as a consumer), stuff that IS moving in seems less-than-friendly to college students, their parents and professors in a university town, such as a shop selling items related to …being Catholic (?). (Um, yeah.)

The Randolph House on the east side–which was once part of a grand hotel where Abraham Lincoln spent the night and gave a speech–appears to be somewhat neglected. Lately I’ve been wondering: who owns the building? Are there any plans for restoring it? Does it fall under the historic preservation protection?

I haven’t done much digging around for the answer, but thought I’d throw it out here and see if anyone might know the score.