Roseville is a town I traveled through countless times as a college student, but haven’t been through in years, ever since the section of four-lane highway between Macomb and Monmouth, IL,  was finished. Roseville, to me, is poetic for that very reason–a self-sufficient town that is now cut off by the long fought-for interstate.

Anyway, as we rolled down Main Street and I tried to remember how many years it’s been since the four-lane was finished, I was surprised to see what appeared to be a magnificent ghost sign appearing in front of me. On the side of what appeared to be an abandoned building on Main Street, just before the four-way stop (at Main Street and Highway 116), the ghost of a Firestone ad/business sign could be detected.

(more, below the photo)

Despite my having traveled this very path many times over many years, I never noticed this little piece of the past, probably because

A) another business next door, which has since been torn down to create a gaping spot on Main Street, had been covering it up, and/or

B) I’ve only recently caught the ghost sign bug, and so never stopped to pay attention.

But either way, I certainly noticed it, and when we got out of the car to take a few pictures, I noticed upon a bit of squinting that,  just behind the word “TIRES” in the center, it looked like the ghost of a “Ford” symbol was peaking out, too. (We would discover at little later that we were right. More on that in a minute.) A few guys on tractors with loader buckets were working around us, but didn’t seem to mind us poking around.

But then, when we walked further down the south side of the building, discovering the blue bulldozer parked outside, a guy on a tractor rolled over to us. When he approached me, he pulled his sunglasses to the end of his nose, revealing a set of dark eyes and a suspicious but not entirely unfriendly look. “Where you folks from?” he said.

“Hi, we’re just, uh, amateur photographers, we like old signs,” I said, in one nervous rush. “This okay, okay if we take a picture?”

He was already putting the tractor in reverse, and as he backed up, he called out, “Okay, but we’re about ready to tear it down, so…” And then he went back to work picking up bricks with the loader.

“Wow,” I said to Chris. “Timing, huh?”

(More, below the slideshow)

After this, we sat in the park in some of the purest, brightest sunshine I’ve felt in a long time, sharing our picnic lunch and talking about wedding/moving plans and other stuff of life. We stopped at the little antique store on the corner at the 4-way stop,  “Cluckers Corners,” where two white-haired ladies greeted us at the door but seemed less than excited at having customers. We took some more shots around town. One place that caught my eye was a tiny brick building with a ghost sign for a former newspaper and/or printing press on the side. As I was trying to get a picture of it, a guy with shaggy gray hair and a baseball cap emerged.

“I like the sign on the side of your building,” I said, (kind of like “We come in peace.”)  “Okay if we’re taking pictures?”

“Sure,” he said.

And then, small-town girl that I am, having grown up in a Roseville look-alike (Carthage, IL), I started chatting with the guy, telling him how we’d just been down by the old Firestone building and how I thought it was a shame it was being torn down.

“Yeah,” he said, “my great-grandfather had that place built. He was a farmer, came in to town and had the business…”

The guy walked to a work van parked in front of the newspaper building and set something inside. Then he dug a tin of tobacco out of his pocket and took a pinch. He said that his building, and the old Firestone, were expensive to keep up. “The city had been on him,” he said, referring to the owner of Firestone.

We could hear the clangs and backing-up-signal beepin of the cleanup crew tearing the place down, less than a block away. “I don’t get too upset about stuff like that,” he said, and I didn’t know if he meant about city ordinances, or about pieces of his family or town history going by the wayside, so I didn’t know what to say. He gestured toward the newspaper building. “I just use this to store stuff,” he said. “Junk, mostly.”

And we thanked him and walked away.

When we got back to our car, the workers at the old Firestone had broken into that south wall with the ghost sign. It would probably be gone by the end of the day.

On a somewhat related note: the Galesburg Register-Mail reported that same day on razing part of Abingdon’s downtown. But hey, if I’m totally depressing you, here is some good news on the local history/landmark beat).

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.

former Carthage College/Robert Morris campus field house

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

I’ve posted some photos of the current state of the former Carthage College/Robert Morris campus in Carthage, IL on my Flickr page.

Carthage College was the site of the first Circle K club in the U.S., had several prominent alumni, and was home of legendary biology professor Alice Kibbe. But the college eventually was moved to Kenosha, WI, and the former campus in Carthage (my home town)  fell on hard times, including being bought by a mysterious Korean absentee landlord who could not be found for most of the 90′s and 00′s.

• Read more about that weird legacy and see some photos of the destruction inside one of the buildings here.
• Find out more of Carthage College’s history here.

Please leave comments if you remember life at Carthage College or Robert Morris and have any details or memories to share.

I happened to be in the Quad Cities not long after I read about the home, so I got C-Nor, (a.k.a. my fiancee, Chris), to program the address into his GPS.

We navigated from Davenport (IA) to Moline, (with the British lady on the Garmin directing/annoying us the whole way), until we found the lonely structure that was once owned by John Deere (the man). Read about the history of the house here.

I’m not sure why the house and /or property are called “Red Cliff.” I definitely get the “cliff” part, and you will, too, if you check out the photos I took. But the house is, um, green. The house stands out literally and figuratively; it looks out over Moline from a dramatic little look-out point while the rest of the neighborhood is un-remarkable. Chris and I walked right up to the house and looked in the windows. There are some sawhorses and tools inside, not to mention a sign out front that says “Restoration in progress,” that hint at a promising future. But the “10 Most Endangered” list says the restoration effort has been abandoned and the property is now in foreclosure.

Play the slide show for more details, or view the pictures via Flickr to get all the cutline-y goodness.

P.S. On a related note: Time.com recently published a list of the 11 most endangered national places, on which some of the causes of “danger” are proposed Wal-Marts and condo developments. (I will try to think of something non-depressing for my next post!)

old Bryan Auditorium/ new Charger Center

I have received a couple of e-mails and/or comments on the blog from CC alumni and area residents who were interested in the old school in my hometown. (Thank you!) For those of you new to the blog, let me explain that I’ve done quite a bit of writing and blogging about the strange saga that surrounded the campus, a quick summary of which you can find here.

With the recent grand (re-)opening of one of the buildings, and an unveiling of the restored/refurbished auditorium coming up on June 2, the Hancock County Journal-Pilot has been running a weekly series about the history of the former campus.

So, for those readers and for the sake of convenience, I offer a compilation of the links:

Articles on the history of Carthage College

• “Rebirth of the Campus“
• “Evergreen battles, kissing rocks, and other tales of Carthage College“
• “Carthage College students form nation’s first Circle K chapter“

Letters to the Editor from Carthage College alumni:

• “Carthage alumnus remembers“
• “Does anyone remember this?”

If you’re from Carthage, attended Carthage College or Robert Morris (or one of the strange “international” incarnations of the college in the 90s), or have any memories whatsoever to share about the campus, I would love to hear from you.