West Moss Avenue, Peoria

Posted on April 6, 2021 by admin

During our stroll around the Bradley U. campus on Easter Saturday, Ann and I also ventured into the surrounding neighborhood to the south. One of its streets is the amusingly named Fredonia Ave., which sports ordinary student houses and apartments.
Further south from there is the wide W. Moss Ave., with its sizable houses/enormous lawns on one side, green and beginning to flower.

The lawns are smaller on the other side, but the houses just as pleasant.

We came across a particularly distinctive stack of bricks. Looks like a Frank Lloyd Wright, I said. It was. Guess I’ve seen enough of the diminutive genius’ genius work, which impresses one with its genius aspect, to know when I see one. Well, it is impressive bit of work, anyway.

It’s the Francis W. Little house, dating from 1903. The FLW Trust says: “With its ribbon windows, low-pitched roofs, projecting eaves, and walled terraces, the Francis Little house is typical of Wright’s mature Prairie style designs. The Little house windows are similar in design to those found at the E. Arthur Davenport, William Fricke, F.B. Henderson, and Edwin H. Cheney houses.

“The glass designs found on the interior of the house, which include a variety of skylights and built-in bookcases with glass doors, exhibit more elaborate color schemes and came arrangements than those found on the exterior walls.”

Those elaborate color schemes aren’t for the enjoyment of the public, or at least that fraction willing to pay to tour a FLW house, but rather for the current owner.

Not far from FLW on Moss is the Westminster Presbyterian Church.

“The construction of Westminster Presbyterian Church was concluded in 1898. The architect, Herbert Hewitt, designed an English Gothic structure with Norman spire,” the church web site says, only to explain that: “Other than periodic upgrades, this church remained unchanged until 1985 when it was destroyed in a fire.”

The congregation rebuilt: “The current church was completed and dedicated in April 1989. The architect of the new building was Ben Weese, a member of the Chicago Seven, a first-generation postmodern group of architects in Chicago.” (Not to be confused with the other Chicago Seven, or Eight, depending.)

Bradley University Walkabout

Posted on April 6, 2021 by admin

Before each Easter comes around, you don’t know whether you’ll get a pleasant early spring day or a chilly late winter one, at least at my latitude. This year, as if to echo the glory of the holiday, we enjoyed a flawless spring day.

Easter Monday and Easter Saturday were pretty nice, too, and on the latter of those two, Ann and I spent much of the afternoon in Peoria, Illinois. During this Vaccine Spring, appointments have proven hard to book close to Cook County, and so I’d found one for her at a pharmacy in Peoria, not far as it happened from the campus of Bradley University.

Since driving down to Peoria, getting the shot, and zipping right back seems like an opportunity wasted to me, we didn’t do that. Bradley was close at hand, so after the shot we took a walk in the springtime sunshine around campus.

Bradley isn’t the grandest or prettiest or most historic campus I’ve ever seen (UVA would contend for all of those, actually), but it had its interests, such as the Hayden-Clark Alumni Center, which fronts a wide lawn.

“Adjoining the circa-1897 Bradley Hall, the center welcomes alumni, students and visitors in a three-story, multi-use building for tours, meetings and special events,” Peoria magazine wrote of the building, which was completed in 2011. “The center’s Shaheen Hall of Pride has become a popular destination, featuring 22 display cases, dioramas and videos that chronicle the university’s growth and influential history.

“Designed by architectural/engineering firm Dewberry, the building incorporates elements of collegiate gothic architecture, such as arches, buttresses and a crenellated tower. The façade is constructed of Indiana limestone, like Bradley Hall and other historic campus buildings.

“Four hand-carved limestone gargoyles sit atop the center. In a gesture of appreciation to the past, two of them are replicas of existing gargoyles on Bradley Hall. The other two are original, overlooking a new view to the west. Technically, they are ‘grotesques,’ rather than gargoyles. Gargoyles are functional — usually as waterspouts and drains — but these are ornamental.”

I have to appreciate a 21st-century building that bothers with gargoyles. Elsewhere, there’s a bronze of Lydia Moss Bradley (1816-1908) in her later years.She founded Bradley Polytechnic Institute in 1897, later to become a university. The statue was erected for the centennial of the school in 1997.

Other campus details that caught my eye follow. A small sampling.
That last one is another bit of Bradley art, “Split Figure: Woman,” by Nita K. Sunderland, an art professor at the university who died only last year.

Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, Bourbonnais

Posted on March 24, 2021 by admin

While visiting Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais on Sunday afternoon, I spotted a church building from a distance that I took to be the campus chapel or the like. I decided to drive over to its parking lot for a closer look.I was wrong. It was Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church, which is decidedly not part of ONU, though adjacent to it for historic reasons that I will get into.“The original Maternity BVM Catholic Church, a 110-foot-by-50-foot wood-framed structure, had burned to the ground in September 1853,” Jack Klasey wrote in the Daily Journal, a local paper. “The frame church had been built in 1847 to replace the settlement’s first Catholic house of worship, a small log structure known as the church of St. Leo. The log church had been erected in 1841.

“Like many of his parishioners, [Rev. Isadore Lebel] had been born in Canada. The plan that he brought to Bourbonnais Grove reflected the church architecture of his native Quebec province. It is believed to be based upon a church in Cap-St.-Ignace, located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, a short distance downstream from Quebec City… Construction work was probably begun some time in 1855 or 1856 and not completed until 1858.”

I was certain the building would be locked (as it was, too bad), but I got out the car for a look anyway. Then I noticed a patch of land next to and behind the church that seemed worth investigating.
A grotto.

Maternity BVM has an informative walking tour on its web site for downloading. The centerpiece of the grotto, it tells me, is a shrine built to Our Lady of Lourdes.

“Br. John Koelzer, a Viatorian brother, began building the grotto just over 100 years ago, in 1915. It took three years to complete [and] is fashioned (using stones carved by local residents) in the image of Our Lady of Lourdes, when she appeared to young Bernadette.

“Over the years, she has interceded for the safety of soldiers as far back as World War I, as well as countless school children, bridal couples, rosary groups and worshippers of all ages who have sought her protection.”

The Viatorians — another group I’d never heard of till I researched a place I’d been — are “an international Roman Catholic religious congregation comprised of priests, brothers and lay associates, headquartered in Arlington Heights, IL. Collectively, the congregation is known as the Viatorian Community.”

“Fr. Louis Querbes (1793-1859) founded the congregation in Vourles, France in the 19th century during the years following the French Revolution. Realizing the need to provide education for youth, Fr. Querbes’ vision was to send religious brothers and lay catechists of deep faith and competent learning to parish schools in the countryside.

“As patron saint of the congregation, Fr. Querbes chose St. Viator, a young, 4th century catechist-lector of the cathedral church of Lyons, France.”

True to their education focus, the Viatorians who found their way to Bourbonnais from Canada set up a school that became St. Viator College in 1868. The Depression put an end to the school, however, and the site was sold to Olivet Nazarene University.

The church and the grotto remain. As does a cemetery on the grounds. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Now take a look around the cemetery/grotto and you will also notice several headstones scattered throughout the space,” the tour says. “The cemetery was opened near St. Leo’s Chapel in 1842. By 1884, the old graveyard had no more empty spaces as hundreds are buried here. Many of the grave markers have deteriorated over the years, but there are approximately 30 headstones that still exist and have legible engravings. The earliest legible burial was David Spink, 1848.”

Deteriorated indeed.
Elsewhere on the grounds is a sundial.

When I stood in front of the sundial, it was about 3:30 CDT, or 2:30 by the sun, a time I could have indeed told by the shadow. The sundial was a gift from the St. Viator College Class of 1917, dedicated on June 13 of that year. Eleven members of that class are listed on the sundial plaque, including the class treasurer, Fulton J. Sheen. He had quite a career ahead of him, with influence in unexpected places.

Near the entrance of the grounds is a boulder with a plaque askew.

The plaque has been in place almost exactly 100 years, having been dedicated on Decoration Day, 1921. It honors the aforementioned “sturdy Viatorian pioneers” (the plaque’s term) who founded St. Viator College.

Just as we were about to leave — I was already back in the car — I spotted yet another plaque, one considerably harder to see, under a bush. In spring or summer, it might be impossible to see.
“I have to see one more thing,” I told my family. They’re used to that kind of thing. But I knew if I ignored it, I’d wonder about it later. I was well rewarded by my curiosity, since the plaque made me smile. It wasn’t anything remotely like I expected.
A home plate memorial. Listen closely on moonless nights, maybe, and you can hear the faint cheers of late 19th-century Catholic collegians playing base ball.

Olivet Nazarene University

Posted on March 23, 2021 by admin

College campuses usually offer pleasant places to stroll on warm days, or even when it isn’t so warm, so with that in mind I wanted to take a walk around the 250-acre Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois, on Sunday. Since we’d just taken a walk at Kankakee River State Park, the rest of the family was less enthusiastic about the idea. They waited in the car while I took a 10-minute amble.

I’d heard of the Strickler Planetarium. I imagined it would be a little larger, but no doubt it’s a good facility.

Nice clock tower.

“The Thomas H. Milby Memorial Clock Tower is provided by the J. Harlan Milby Family to remind us that during his student days in 1956, Tom walked these paths on his way to heaven,” the university says. There are carillon bells up there, but I wasn’t around long enough to hear them.

Not far away is a smokestack. As far as I know, it isn’t named in honor of anyone. For a suitable donation, I’ll bet it could be arranged.

I’d call it the Old ONU Stack. Or maybe not so old. If what I read here is correct, it had to be rebuilt after a tornado knocked it down in 1963.

ONU, as the name says, is a Nazarene university. The school’s roots go back to 1907, around the time that various Pentecostal and Holiness groups started merging to form the modern Nazarenes, a process entirely too complicated to summarize here.

ONU itself got started in a wide place in the road called Olivet, Illinois, not far south of Danville, and was originally Illinois Holiness University, a name I believe I would have kept. The school mascot could have been the Rollers, for instance. Or maybe the Fighting Wesleyans.

Be that as it may, the school took the name of the town, no doubt for its association with the Mount of Olives, and kept the name when it moved to Bourbonnais in 1940 after a fire destroyed its main building in Olivet.

Even the small details harken to the school’s early time. Such as on the manhole covers.

Nice design. Features the seal of the school, noting its 1907 origin. One of the many manhole covers of the world that receive little attention, but which are actually pretty cool.

Kankakee River State Park

Posted on March 22, 2021 by admin

Late Sunday morning we headed south once more, dog and all, to walk on paths under clear skies and through warm air. March has provided some good weekends so far.

But first we had lunch in the car at a small park in Bourbonnais, Illinois, bought from the drive-thru of a delightful place called Niro’s Gyros, across the road from Olivet Nazarene University. We would have eaten at the park shelter, but it was warm enough for al fresco to be pleasant only out in sun, not in the shade.

Nero’s Gyros would be funnier, but I guess the owner’s name is Niro or something like it. I ate a gyro, and Niro does right by them. Yuriko had a Philly cheesesteak and Ann some Italian sausage, and were well satisfied too.

Then we went to Kankakee River State Park, a few miles away. I first went there in the late ’80s, but we visited most recently — not that recent, really — when Ann was small enough to play on the swing set like this.
So it’s been a while. Most of the 4,000-acre park includes both banks of the Kankakee for 11 miles or so, but not quite all of it. Yesterday we picked a part of the park that doesn’t follow the Kankakee River, but rather a tributary called Rock Creek.

That part of the park has one thing to recommend it: a trail that follows the creek, then loops around through the forest back to the parking lot. One source puts it at two miles, but it didn’t feel that long. It might be two combined with another loop trail to the north, but never mind. We had a good walk.

When I said the trail follows Rock Creek, what I meant was that it follows a bluff about 30 feet above the creek. There were paths to climb down to the creek, but we didn’t bother with anything more than taking in some of the views.

It’s one of the wider trails I’ve been on lately, at least the part paralleling the creek.

At one point is a view of a waterfall.

Niagara it ain’t, or even some of the wonderful falls in the UP, but as I told Ann, who knows, in 50,000 years it might be a mighty waterfall.

The trail, as mentioned, looped away from the creek and passed through wooded territory back to the start. Nice and smooth, with most of the mud dry. Very pleasant.

The only curiosities along the way were manmade. Sunglasses.

A shoe.

I can see some one dropping the sunglasses, and someone else putting them on the sign. But the shoe? A nice-looking one, too. Put there just to make passersby wonder why it was put there? If so, it succeeded momentarily.

12 Pix 20

Posted on December 22, 2020 by admin

Back to publishing on January 3, 2021, or so. Who knows, there might be snow by then.

Twelve pictures to wrap up the year, as I have in 2016 and 2017and 2018 and 2019, though this time around I won’t bother with a rigid, one-picture-for-each-month structure. They will be roughly chronological.

Chicago
Los Angeles

Azusa, California

Schaumburg, IllinoisWest Dundee, Illinois

Schaumburg, Illinois

Baraboo, WisconsinBeverly Shores, Indiana

Carbondale, IllinoisSchaumburg, IllinoisChicago

One bad apple

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to all.

Thursday Dross

Posted on November 5, 2020 by admin

After a cold second half of October, temps have trended warmer in early November. So much so that I had lunch on our deck today, and expect to tomorrow as well. It can’t last. But it’s nice to sit out there and forget about the national hubbub — which I can’t do during my working hours, as paying attention to it as part of my job.

Here’s an article about the House of Tomorrow at Indiana Dunes NP, which we saw last month. A good short read, except for one thing: no date on it, which is a pet peeve of mine. It’s obviously not that old, since it refers to the recent designation of the national park, but you shouldn’t have to rely on internal evidence to date an article.

When I posted about Pounds Hollow Recreation Area a while ago, I forgot to include the short falling leaves video. Here it is.

We’re past peak here in northern Illinois, but some of the trees are still ablaze, and some still wilted yellow-green. Sitting out on the deck was pleasant enough today, except when a leaf-blower kicked to life noisily not far away. Will future generations ponder that leaf blowers were ever a thing? Hope so. As far as leaves go, let ’em stay where they fall on your lawn. They’re nutrition for next year’s grass.

In Shawneetown, Illinois, the new town that is, you can see a memorial erected about 10 years ago. The wave of such memorials, I believe, will continue into the 21st century.
It’s a tribute to the original group of black families who moved from Shawneetown on the river to Shawneetown three miles inland, where they would start life anew, after the devastation caused by the 1937 flood.

It includes a map of the nearby neighborhood and all the names of the black residents who lived there. The other side has a more general black history of Shawneetown, noting that a segregation-era school stood on the site of the memorial, presumably for the black neighborhood’s children, but it doesn’t say that. The school closed in the 1950s.

All a little wordy, but not as prolix as the Norwegian Settlers State Memorial.

Near the memorial is a rectangular gazebo. Without corners. Or is it really a gazebo?
When Ann and I saw the abandoned Texaco station in Old Shawneetown, I asked her if she’d ever heard the Texaco jingle. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but the point of jungles is to bury themselves deep, so it’s coded in my synapses somewhere.

Most Americans my age would know what I meant, but considering that Men Who Wear Texaco Stars are long gone, I didn’t expect her to know. She didn’t.

Later, I showed it to her on YouTube, where it’s a standalone video (and also the grist for truly stupid local TV news).

That made me a little curious myself. When did that jingle first air? As it turns out, 1962, as a snappier tune compared with, for example, what the singing Men With Texaco Stars did for Milton Berle 10 years earlier. The jingle was also incorporated into later Texaco songs, such as this one sung by Ethel Merman.

As jingles go, “You Can Trust Your Car” is memorable indeed. The story of the copywriter (and composer) who came up with it, one Roy Eaton, is even more remarkable. Aside from being a talented concert pianist, he was the first black creative at a major ad agency, joining Young & Rubicam in 1955 and later working for many years at Benton & Bowles, before founding his own company. He’s still alive at 90.

So memorable that it was the basis for an anachronism in a 1977 episode of M*A*S*H (see the trivia section at the bottom of the page).

The Ricki Lee Jones song “Last Chance Texaco” (1979) includes an example of a reference — to the jingle — that was perfectly understandable when the work was new, and perfectly mystifying to later generations.

Your last chance
To trust the man with the star
You’ve found the last chance Texaco

One more Texaco fact: John W. “Bet A Million” Gates was an early investor in the ancestor company of Texaco.

Now I’ve Been to Havana

Posted on November 4, 2020 by admin

Through the marvel that is Google Maps, I located Chinatown. That’s a restaurant in Havana, and we got food to go there for lunch on October 17. Havana, Illinois, of course, a town of about 3,000 on the east bank of the Illinois River.

The streetscapes along the north side of Main Street, including the restaurant. It runs east-west, so has a terminus at the river.
The former Mason County Bank. Now it seems to be partly occupied at least by World of Color, a painting service. Havana is in Mason County, and in fact is the county seat.
Formerly handsome, now dowdy. Ghost lettering is toward the bottom, but I can only make out BROS.

A sign below that, not visible in my pic, says Apple Ducklings Preschool, which I suspect isn’t a going concern anymore.

On the other side of Main is the former Havana National Bank building, repurposed as Havana City Hall.
Waiting for lunch, I had time to walk up and down Main, while Yuriko visited some of the uncrowded antique shops on the street. Crowding, I suspect, is seldom an issue in this Havana.

I took a quick look at the Old Havana Water Tower, uphill from where I started outside Chinatown.
Dating from the late 19th century, the brick water tower is not only on the National Register of Historic Places — detail here — but also is an American Water Landmark, a list I’d never heard of before. Old it may be, but apparently it’s still a functioning part of the local water system.

Not far from the water tower is the Mason County Courthouse.
By my way of thinking, that isn’t a courthouse. It’s an office building for minor bureaucrats. But probably not faceless bureaucrats, since most everyone knows most everyone else around here.

At least there are a handful of memorials on the grounds. One for the Civil War.
The World War.
One for Lincoln. If Lincoln so much as passed through a town in Illinois, stopping only to get a new feedbag for his horse and use the outhouse, there’s going to be a 20th-century marker acknowledging the event.
Downhill from my starting point is Riverside Park. It includes a large bluff overlooking a bit of green space next to the river. According to a plaque, the bluff is called the Havana Mound.
I won’t quote all of the plaque. Enough to say that it says the mound was the site of Mississippian and later Indian “activities,” as well as the first white settlement in Mason County. In the 1830s, a four-story hotel was built there, which also served as a trading post and post office. Of course, Lincoln used to visit. But it didn’t last long, since the building burned down in 1849.

The odd thing about that plaque is the language at the end: Erected in 1984 by Havana Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That’s the first Mormon plaque I think I’ve ever seen.

In case you’re arriving by river, the town has put out a sign.
We sat at a picnic table in the park at the bottom of the bluff, and ate our Chinese food. The park has nice views of the river.
Havana used to be an important river town, back when that was an important mode of transport, but these days it mostly sees barges and tugs.

Dickson Mounds Museum

Posted on November 3, 2020 by admin

Got up early to vote this morning, since I believe that visiting the polls for a few minutes isn’t any riskier than going to a grocery store. Also, I am just mossbacked enough to want to vote on election day, just as my parents and grandparents et al. did, though I don’t begrudge anyone else the vote at some other convenient time or place.

It only took a few minutes. Few other people were there at the time. I’ve seen more in mid-day, especially during the 2008 election. Only one thing on the ballot made me smile this year: Willie Wilson, candidate for U.S. Senate from the Willie Wilson Party. That’s the best name for a party since the Rent is Too Damn High.

A few miles outside of Lewistown, Illinois, is the Dickson Mounds Museum. As the sign says, it’s a branch of the Illinois State Museum.

We arrived just after it opened at 10 on October 17. I hadn’t visited any museums of any kind since the Getty Villa back in February, for obvious reasons. But I figured the risk of infection at a place like Dickson Mounds was very low. For one thing — the main thing, actually — almost no one else was there, even on a Saturday.

And I mean no one. Entrance is free, so we didn’t have to interact with the woman behind the entrance counter. There might have been a few other employees of the museum around, but we didn’t see them. As we were leaving less than a hour later, we saw a couple with a small child entering. That was it.

The main museum building.

Completed in 1972, it looks something like a set from Logan’s Run, only browner.

The museum is reasonably interesting, including a temporary exhibit of gorgeous prints by Audubon. Mostly the place focuses on the Mississippian peoples who lived in the area 1,000 years ago and more, and who, like a number of other peoples, left mysteriously before Europeans ever came to the Americas.

But the story of the museum itself is just as interesting if not more so, I think. For example, we were nearly 30 years too late to see any skeletons.

In the 1920s, a resident of these parts, one Don Dickson, started digging into Indian mounds on his family’s farm. He discovered skeletons. Lots of them. Maybe in the 19th century, such a find would have been unearthed and put into a traveling show, a seriously undignified outcome for human remains.

Dickson had a different idea, however, one more suited to his time, when Americans were more mobile than ever. He built a private museum around the skeletons in situ and people came to see them.

Not that dignified an outcome either, but at least the archaeological value of the site wasn’t completely destroyed. According to the museum, University of Chicago archaeologists investigated the area for years.

In 1945, Dickson sold the site to the state of Illinois, which later built the current building and still displayed the skeletons for decades. By the 1980s, the indignity of that arrangement was more widely understood, so in 1992 the state sealed off the remains beneath the building. Visitors today would not know about them unless they do further reading.

(Do people say the museum is haunted? That’s all it takes for a place to be considered haunted, after all.)

The museum also includes a lot of undeveloped land. A number of well-marked trails cross the land, so we took a walk.

Second-growth forest, I suspect, if this used to be farmland. A large section of land was fenced off with a tall mesh fence. Archaeological sites that wankers might try to plunder? Could be, though nothing about the fence explained its presence.

Oak Hill Cemetery, Lewistown

Posted on November 2, 2020 by admin

Lewistown, Illinois, isn’t very large. Only 2,100 or so people live there, as opposed to Oak Hill Cemetery in Lewistown, which has a population of more than 5,000. I arrived for a look on the morning of October 17.

I hadn’t expected such a good-looking cemetery. The fall colors helped, but only added to the overall aesthetic of woody terrain, sometimes hilly, peppered with upright stones and funerary art.

As you’d expect, there’s a Civil War memorial.

It’s hard to see in this pic, but this is the entirety of the inscription, written on the stone bench:

IN MEMORY OF OUR PATRIOT DEAD
MDCCCLXI–MDCCCLXV

I didn’t know it until later, but the columns at the memorial were salvaged from the previous Fulton County courthouse, which burned down in the 1890s. When Lincoln came to town in the ’50s to speak, he stood on the courthouse steps between the columns, and so the town wanted to work them into its Civil War memorial.

In as much as Oak Hill Cemetery is known to the world, it isn’t for its beauty or a war memorial. Rather, Edgar Lee Masters took inspiration from it for Spoon River Anthology. Sometimes, I’ve read, very specific inspiration, since he knew many of the townspeople — such as the weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer and the fighter, to borrow language from the opening of the book.

“In the groundbreaking work, Masters, a onetime law partner of Clarence Darrow, gives voice to more than two hundred deceased citizens of Spoon River who are laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery, known to the locals as The Hill,” wrote Laura Wolff Scanlan in Humanities magazine in 2015.

“Freed by the shackles of life, the un-living who ‘sleep beneath these weeds’ confess their deepest secrets, disappointments, frustrations, joys, and warnings to the living in the form of brutally honest free verse poems.

“In some cases, Masters barely changed their names. Henry Phipps was really banker Henry Phelps. Harry Wilmans was Henry Wilmans…

“Even though most names were fictitious, everyone in town knew exactly who he was talking about. Because of this, the book was immediately banned from schools and libraries in the area, including the Lewistown library.”

When Masters died in 1950, he wasn’t buried in Oak Hill, but rather in Petersburg, Illinois, which is close to Springfield.

The Lewistown library started stocking the book in 1974. After the death of everyone mentioned in it, and most of their immediate families, in other words. In our time, Lewistown claims the work as its own, since what else is the town known for, or could be known for? For the centennial of the book in 2015, the town held Oak Hill Cemetery tours, exhibitions and theatrical performances, according to Humanities.

For avid Spoon River enthusiasts, and there must still be a few, the graves of the real people associated with fictional counterparts are marked with numbers.

There’s a guide available that will tell you who’s who in the cemetery, according to their Edgar Lee Masters number. I am not enough of an enthusiast to look any of them up.

Still, I respect it as a successful work of literature about the residents of a cemetery. Interesting conceit. Sometimes I imagine that if the dead at the cemeteries could talk freely, I might hear some salacious bits. On the other hand, many of them might not have very much interesting to confess.

We had a copy of Spoon River in our library when I was growing up, and I read some of the poems then and a few later. The other day I happened across a radio version from 1957, which is worth a listen. William Conrad is always worth a listen anyway.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: Illinois