Welcome to Forgotonia

Signs of earlier days…

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose

This photo (titled “Lonely Ipava”), along with two others I took in the Forgotonia region, was recently selected for inclusion by the editors of Midwest Gothic, a new online and print literary magazine.

A photo by my BFF, kindred spirit (and professional colleague, too), Jane Carlson, was selected for the cover of their most recent issue. (Thanks for the idea and courage to submit, Jane.)

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.

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!)

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?

Hedge balls for sale at Hy-Vee

The first time I ever saw such a concept was on the Knox County Scenic Drive. My sister and I laughed about it all afternoon. Where we were grew up, these ugly little bombs seemed to be as common as the rocks on our gravel road, or acorn caps scattered under the trees.

Hey, wait a minute….
ACORN CAPS, 80 CENTS APIECE!
…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.

Arrgh!

Originally uploaded by Rural Rose (Alison on Flickr)

Last week, C-Nor and I squeezed in one last day of summer by taking a day trip to the bizarre-o House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wis. (and then on to nearby Madison).

What kind of place, exactly, is House on the Rock?

Well, I think it could best be summed up like this. Imagine if Frank Lloyd Wright, Vincent Price, Willy Wonka, and an Edward Scissorhands-inventor-type guy could somehow have a love child, and then that love child grew up to become a hoarder.

(See my full set of photos from this strange place on my Flickr page.)

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.

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.