Our recent short trip to east-central Illinois and west-central Indiana found us spending two nights in Champaign, last Friday and Saturday. During the day on Saturday, we drove east on U.S. 150 and a short way on I-74 into Indiana. Then we headed south on Indiana 36 to Terra Haute, stopping in Dana.

Returning from Terra Haute, we took U.S. 150 westward — that road jogs oddly to the south from Danville, Illinois — and caught Illinois 133 in Paris, Illinois, a town that sorely needs a replica Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe or some such to distinguish it. That road takes you to Arcola, a town we’re familiar with. From Arcola it’s a straight and not too interesting shot back to Champaign on I-57.

So it was a rectangular driving course (roughly east-south-west-north), good for a day trip, despite the heavy rain at times. It’s been a rainy spring and early summer, which we noticed must be damaging crops, since a lot of corn and soybean fields were covered by large puddles (an item from Ohio about the problem).

The sites associated with Ernie Pyle and Eugene V. Debs, honoring Hoosiers of somewhat different cast, were our main destinations. But I had a couple of minor destinations in mind as well. One was an obscure memorial in the obscure town of Oakland, Illinois, which is Coles County. I had passed that way 12 years earlier. Here’s what I said then about the Oakland town square:

“The place was gloomy. Maybe it was just the overcast skies… Still, I wanted to see the monument in the middle of the square. It was Memorial Day, after all. Someone had decorated the edges of sidewalk leading to the monument with small flags, forming a spot of color in the square, so that was something. The monument consisted of two statues sharing one plinth, one of a soldier and the other sailor, clearly World War I vintage, with the names of locals who had participated in that war carved in the plinth. All of it was weathered and dark.”

I wanted another look. In 2019, the square’s a little better looking (officially it’s the Oakland Centennial Park). The monument, a lot better looking. The darkness this time was from the recent rain.
Maybe it was refurbished for the centennial of the war or its own centennial, since carved in stone is the memorial’s dedication date: May 30, 1919 — the first Decoration Day after the Armistice.

I’d forgotten about this item in the town square, a 77mm Feldkanone 16 German artillary piece. A local prize of war, I guess.

In Arcola, I wanted to see something we’d overlooked last year: the Hippie Memorial. How we missed that, I don’t know, since it’s less than a block away from that town’s Raggedy Ann and Andy sculptures, which we saw.

The Hippie Memorial is a very horizontal structure and an example of vernacular art. Better still, a vernacular memorial, which isn’t that common.

Just how much recognition does ☮ get these days? I wonder.

Nearby, a sign offers the dedication speech, made by the widow of the creator, local eccentric Bob Moomaw, almost exactly 20 years ago. The text seems the same, but the background is a lot more psychedelic than it used to be.

Sure, why not honor the hippie movement? It’s been subject to retroactive derision all out of proportion to its risibility. You can argue that hippies were yet another flowering of bohemianism, a periodic occurrence that’s helped keep things interesting since the Romantic movement at least.