The Feast of Saint YIB

It's the birthday of our blessed founder and benefactor here on DTL, so I figured today would be an appropriate day for me to take a moment and reflect on where we are in this crazy blog called life. This year YIB turns 28. That's 20 + 8. That's still 3 years older than Amanda Bynes. He's had a very big year, this guy, moving from jargantuan Chicago to relatively small Springfiend, and, let's face it, Springfield is nothing more than 100 small towns stack on top of each other with a capital building in there somewhere. Adjustments weren't easy, but he's gotten the hang of his new job and isn't even the newest guy there any more (I assume that guy's name is Gary or Brian).


But for far more important and selfish reasons, he's a heck of a lot closer to me. Which makes me happy and gave me this blog to work on when I get the time. I think about all the random places we've been this year, basically on his whim that we should "just fuckin' go man" like the hero stoner in my dreams. And go we did. And then kind of stopped because it was getting cold (blogging while cold is like getting your socks wet as soon as you leave the house).

Which makes me think about next year and what's to come for us. When the weather finally gets warms (expected in late February thanks to Global Warming (tm) ) we're going to be heading back out there to see what spring is offering. I know I want to check out some northern towns like Galina and Princeton, as well as some more southern sites like Greenville and Carlyle. There are definitely plenty of places to go and from the outside they look promising enough, I just hope we can come up with better reasons to be there when we're there.

I've talked about how we may need to "plan our trips better" because so many of them are turning out the same, but I'm beginning to wonder if the problem isn't so much the "there" as it is the "us". We certainly have been running into the same mentalities ("Our town sucks, why would you come here?") and certainly the same landmarks ("Lincoln thought about coming here once in 1860 but instead spent time with his favorite hound dog") and I can't help wondering if we're just missing it. There's more to all of these places that don't make them boring and I keep believing it's there, largely because of my own experiences in small towns.

I come from the small towns of Ava and Campbell Hill, IL, located just south of You Have Never Been There and Probably Never Will. And I love it there. There's Kinkaid Lake, a couple of restaurants, and a pretty good Amish grocery store. And, of course, all my family and friends which naturally makes me biased for it. But if I had to tell you why you should go there, I'd certainly have to think long and hard about it, and then ultimately not come up with any reason too convincing. Because you're not from there. Because you have maybe never been on a hayride, or gone night fishing, or gone to church with people you know, and at this point in your life those things will probably never be comfortable to you. Because you're not from there. And you can't be. And I can't give you my memories, as much as I enjoy them.

Unfortunately, even being able to sympathize about not really getting a small town as a tourist doesn't give me what I need to actually be able to do it. I want to be able to walk into a local coffee shop or gas station, find the older guy wearing a Dekalb seed hat, drinking a cup of coffee and say "You. Tell me the most ridiculous story about this town that you've ever heard. Go." I want to go to a restaurant and actually get the best thing on the menu because the waitress wasn't trying to get me to order the most expensive thing instead. I want to ask a guy at the post office why he lives in a town of population 650 and get him to say just honestly that he likes it there and that's it's good enough for him.

Instead of the typical home town bashing we normally get.

It's not to say that I haven't had a taste of this stuff, because I have. I just wish we could get it more consistently. I'm sure the fault mostly lies with me, so I'm going to resolve to get better at asking. As long as no one tells me that I'm making them uncomfortable or that I should stop harassing their favorite hound dog, I'm not going to hold back. Such is my DTL resolution.

So happy birthday YIB, and thanks for coming up with this and for including me. I couldn't have asked for a better friend to do this with.

Signing off,
D. Doctorman, M.D.

Going nuts: Severance, CO

Population: 3,165

Area: 2.2 Sq. Miles
County: Weld
Motto: "Where the geese fly and the bulls cry"
Visited On: October 15, 2011
Cast of characters: High Country Newsman

Howdy, folks, this is the introductory post for Dotting The Landscape's Western edition. I'll thank you kindly to remove your hats and firearms before entering.

As a former central Illinois resident myself now living in northern Colorado, I wanted to start you flatlanders out with a town that wouldn’t freak you out too much (a lot of Colorado mountain towns are isolated dystopian hippie-ocracies that are the realization of a half-assed Hunter S. Thompson story). Enter Severance, Colorado.

Severance actually looks like a lot of the small Illinois towns already profiled on Dotting The Landscape. Surrounded by corn? Check. The Fighting Illini on the local bar’s TV? Check.

A pickup full of “equine senior” horse chow? Check.

But there’s a couple key differences between Severance and the prairie towns of central Illinois.
One is the lovely snow-capped Rockies about 20 miles away. (Sadly, Blackberry cameras are really, really bad at capturing loveliness. Trust me on this one).

The second difference is that Severance’s main industry is servin’ up hot-n-juicy deep-fried bull testicles.

That’s thanks entirely to Bruce’s Bar, by far the largest and most prominent establishment in Severance.

Bruce’s isn’t so much a bar that serves Rocky Mountain oysters as it is an organization on a single-minded crusade to assist and glorify in the eunuchization of every bull.

#OccupyCowStreet

"You folks ain't from around here, are ya?"

Former owner Bruce Ruth, who all young male bulls are warned will come get them in their sleep if they don't behave

Inside, Bruce’s looks much like your run-of-the-mill family-oriented biker bar. At a table sat a family who was either chowing down after hunting for the day or got a group discount on matching camo outfits. At the bar, a middle-aged mustachioed gentleman, wearing a polo shirt the same beige color as the label on the two Coors bottles in front of him, was quietly singing along to the bar music: Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds.” It was a moment of sublime beauty.

After convincing the bartender to get me a Budweiser despite not having my ID, I ordered some oysters, along with a cheeseburger as a backup plan.

Here's what happened next:

The verdict: they tasted like heavily breaded calamari. The only sign I was eating sliced bull testicles was a slight metallic aftertaste, though that easily could have just been my brain trying hard on my behalf to identify, for future reference, any possible difference between seafood and bull nuts. I ate about 5-6 of them before focusing on my Plan B cheeseburger.

Turns out I went to Bruce's Bar a week before history: the 1st annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Eating Challenge.

The bartender seemed excited when I asked her about it.

“We’ve had a lot of people ask about it, but only a few have actually signed up so far,” she said. She handed over at least half a dozen flyers, touting how – for $10, contestants each get a drink, a t-shirt, and – of course – all the nuts they can shove down their throats while the Coors Light girls look on. How can you afford NOT to do it?

By now, I’m sure you can guess where the name Severance came from: obviously, from David E. Severance, a local 19th Century farmer.

Of course, the town is about much more than bull gonads (am I the first person to ever write that sentence?). Severance has actually exploded in population during the past decade, from 597 people in 2000, becoming a bedroom community for the nearby cities of Fort Collins and Greeley. Go about six blocks anywhere east of town, and suddenly the scenery of a sleepy farming town gives way to Naperville.

And, yes, there are businesses in town besides Bruce’s. There’s a newish-looking gas station, not to mention a drive-thru coffee stand/egg dispensary.

In the lower right hand corner of the sign, it says "omega 3," as if farm fresh eggs don't fucking sell themselves

And there's growth opportunities right and left -- you can even buy Severance's post office!

I should specify that this chain-link enclosure is not the actual post office.

The P.O.'s located right across the street from Bruce’s Bar. Maybe we could start a competing Rocky Mountain oyster emporium. Let me know!

I did not see a single goose in town the entire time I was there

Tuesday's Gone With the Wind: Virginia, IL

VITAL STATS

Population: 1611

Area: 1.1 square miles

Cast Members: Dr. Doctorman, Your Intrepid Blogger

Vistited On: July 16, 2011

Oh Lord. Oh God most high. Oh demons of Cass County. What have you done? What have you done?

Have you seen any version of Children of the Corn? There was the original with Linda Hamilton, the legion of sequels it spawned, and the passable Sci-Fi (SyFy?) Channel remake. Rolling into Virginia gave me the exact same creepy feeling. The square was all but deserted and every other window we looked in was either boarded up or wishing it were boarded up. Even the crunch of the gravel under our feet seemed to whisper "Go! Run! Don't waste your life away, young man!"

This appears to have been closed since before I was born.

But why? How could we have felt such crushing depression on such a bright and powerfully warm day? Well YIB and I did know in advance that Virginia was the county seat, a title that had been taken from previously written about Beardstown quite some time ago. We came into town to investigate why, and I think that puts the fault partially on us: We were expecting to find rationality and evidence to answer the question. Instead we found madness and non-Euclidean geometry.

While Beardstown was certainly a tired old river town, it didn't live up the Latino vs. Caucasoid atmosphere we had been warned about. Still, it definitely had a personality of some kind. Probably more like the personality of your previously divorced uncle who is now married to a young senorita, but a personality all the same! Virginia, though, ah...yeah.

We stopped in the mysteriously empty town square at around 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. First thing we noticed (besides the lack of people there) was that the main drag through town is actually called Beardstown Avenue!

Hey man, give the people what they want.

I thumbed through the town's website, http://www.casscomm.com/~cityofva/, and thought the "History" tab would prove useful. That was wrong of me as it's clear that the town's only idea of a history is a long list of what occurs in the town annually. Oh, and there are apparently some replica log cabins nearby. HOOPTY-DOO!

Granny was finally forced to close down in 1981 when she started featuring "Cat Food" as the flavor of the month.

We then bailed back into the car, not waiting for Isaac and his congregation of children to come out and sacrifice us on the courthouse steps. A drive around town only revealed tired old houses, badly in need of repair. One even had the "engine block hanging from a tree" that I really thought was just something Jeff Foxworthy had made up. We were on the edge of true dispair, then we saw this:

It's coming for you.

But there were people patronizing it, despite the eerie music it was emitting.

And then there was this place:

Which frightens me far too much to give it a witty caption.

We finally found our way through to the other side of town, which was not nearly as disturbing. There was a pretty nice ballfield and even a public pool. Honestly not a lot of small towns can brag about having a place to cool off in the summer, other than the tavern or the church basement. And the place was jumping.

Seriously, there are people in this shot, it's just a terrible picture. Something about walking up to a swimming pool where kids are playing and taking pictures does not sit right with me.

Then, to our surprise, we stumbled on the Cass County Fairgrounds. It wasn't huge or anything but it fit the description well enough. The weird thing was, I don't remember seeing any signs in or around town that would indicate that this was here (it probably just escaped by powerful sense of detection).

Here is where the children gathered to decide the fate of that poor comptroller who wandered into town last week.

And there was one street with some houses that were at least partially kept up.

See? Nice!

YIB recently made the point that we need to find reasons for going to our Dots on the Landscape. After Virginia, I can only exhaustedly say "yes, we must." I feel like we came into town, open for anything, and immediately stepped into a pot hole and broke our ankle. As you all probably know, I'm from a small town and I really do love all that that entails. But we didn't see any of that here! There weren't people out talking to each other, just solitary people sitting or moving in isolation...and they looked damned mad about it. Instead of an inexplicable sense of small town pride, we saw unmowed lawns and closed businesses as far as they eye could see. The public pool was probably the only bright spot in the whole town the day we were there.

Now I'm not saying I understand the inner workings of Virginia. I'm sure someone had a good reason to move the county seat there once upon a time. But whatever reason that was, I think it's long, long gone.

Every day is just like the rest: Lewistown, IL

LEWISTOWN, IL

POPULATION: 2,522

AREA: 1.8 Sq. Mile

COUNTY: Fulton (County Seat)

      MOTTO: None. Which is really fucking fitting.

I really hate to say this so soon, but man, these towns are starting to get tedious.

At some point, they all just bleed together, y’know? You’ve got the old court hourse:

You've got the giant old churches:

You’ve got the local paper named after a political party:

You’ve got the little diner, populated mostly by the elderly:

...and specializing in biscuits and gravy:

And you’ve got the references to history:

Well, okay, the references to Lincoln:

And that’s charmingly juxtaposed with fleeting stabs at modernity:

And all of that stuff is fine. Fun, even! But if you’re a blog devoted to finding out what’s special and unique about each and every town*, well, finding this much that is the same in all of them gets really tiresome.

*- This may be just such a blog.

Fortunately- for Lewiston and my general sanity- there is one thing about this place that makes it stand out from every other small Illinois town. It seems that this place was the home of Edgar Lee Masters, and it’s cemetery, Oak Hill Cemetary, was the inspiration for his Spoon River Anthology.

See? Proof of what I say.

Which, okay, as far as exciting goes, that’s not. But it is cool to see a town that turns someone besides Lincoln into an icon.

(Okay, maybe I’m just really reaching for something, ANYTHING to justify this entry)

But this town actually cared about Masters. I talked to a woman who worked at city hall, and she seemed genuinely disappointed to learn I’d never read his poetry. Which was refreshing, because at least when it came to my father, the disappointment usually stemmed from knowing TOO MUCH poetry.

On the other end of town, my waitress could recite some lines from some poem of his, but, as usual, if it didn’t involve biscuits or gravy, I wasn’t listening.

Even the court house had to recognize!

So, at least, it was interesting to find a town that idolizes someone besides Lincoln, and to see a town that kept it’s historical figures so close to its heart. But that only gets you so far. I was still left wondering what people do in this town and why they chose it over any other. I suppose, at some point, I could just ASK someone that question. But no, that’s exactly what they’d be expecting.

Other notes:

A word from the DTL sports desk:

Please note that the DTL sports desk is time insensitive.

And Any Ghosts There Will Remain: Kickapoo, IL

VITAL STATS

Population: Who knows? 500 maybe? (Wikipedia say 3,573 in the greater Kickapoo area)

Area: I would say about, "oh so big"

Cast Members: Dr. Doctorman, Mr. Marlo

Visited On: August 13, 2010

Weather: Balmy

Oh you wish you were a town, don’t you, sweet Kickapoo? You wish you were a recognized municipality, just like nearby Hanna City, Dunlap, and Princeville. You wish it so bad that you’re willing to lie with signs that say things like "Kickapoo 2 miles" and "Kickapoo, a great city to raise your family". You stoop Kickapoo, didn't you know we'd love you for who you really are?

A few weekends ago, friends of the blog Jon and Kevin Klesterates got married at Prairie Wildlife Park just outside Peoria. This was appropriate because it 1.) Was near me, and 2.) lead to the inevitable tidal wave of our friends washing up on the shores of Whiskey Town only to lay about drunkenly the next day. After the heady rush and swell another wonderful wedding came and went, not to mention the dancing of Troy Hayes, I found Mr. Marlo washed up in my basement, sleeping peacefully. Left with a Saturday to while away together, we decided to go ’splorin’.

Kickapoo seemed a natural choice. It’s plenty close and is often thought of by Peorians as "reachable rural". Not to mention they are alleged to have a kick-ass winery. Thus we were hopelessly pulled to this local Charybdis.

YIB tells me that he always (sometimes) does a solid 5-10 minutes of research on a town before blogging. Kickapoo proved a stranger nut to crack. I went into my search assuming I’d finding the usual a/s/l, but instead the internet came back to me with a, "Kickapoo where? Who? Did you mean the park by Danville? Love the blog, by the way."

I figured the U.S. census website would help, but the best it could find was information on Kickapoo Township as a whole. Which, now that I think about it makes sense: I didn’t remember seeing a post office, and when I searched the zip code, 61615, it just comes up as Peoria. You will notice that in the picture with Mr. Marlo above, there's no population count on the town sign, it just marks a perimeter. I guess so that the "townies" can think of themselves as a class apart from the mere "townshippers" out in the sticks. But I digress.

We pulled into town in Mr. Marlo’s sweet rental car and everything seemed in order: There was a nice church, a city park, and the requisite 3 antique malls all in view of the main drag. The town is laid out on the T where Highway 18 butts into Highway 150 (known to Peorians as "War Memorial Drive" and know to Kickapooians [ew…] as "Main Street").

Mr. Marlo and I started this trip with the most important meal of the day to the post-wedding-goer: Lunch. A perimeter sweep around "town" revealed only one place, Ludy’s, not that we were expecting more from a "town" of this size. The bikers were a little intimidating though.

We made it inside safely.

I guess this does reinforce what I’ve heard about Kickapoo being a popular gathering spot in the area. And for what it was, Ludy’s did just fine. What you have to remember in an area like this is it’s RIGHT THE HELL NEXT TO PEORIA. Keeping a restaurant open there has to be hard. It’s only 6.8 miles from a TGIF on the exact same road, although I guess TGIF frowns on bike rallies. Mr. Marlo said his burger was excellent, but he didn’t exactly need to say so.

We let geographic Darwinism decide which antique/knick-knack shop we could visit, and decided that Kightlinger’s could probably eat the other two handily. Mr. Marlo spent some time capturing the scene outside while I wandered in. Jim Kightlinger, proprietor, bondsman, etc. was behind the counter and eager to talk about anything and everything except Kickapoo. I gave him the line that we were just passing through town and stopped for lunch across the street.

Me: So what’s it like here in Kickapoo?

Jim: No much like anything. Just boring.

Me: Oh…(looking at a sprinkling can crafted to display pictures)… So what would you say you do to keep busy around here?

Jimmy: Nothing. There’s nothing here.

Me: Ah. Well, so you grew up here then?

James: Me? God, no. I moved here.

Still Me: You moved here?

Jim Kightlinger: Yep!

And then he changed the conversation to me and where I work and what I’m like and refused to go back. It was like he was trying to repress something and didn’t want a headshrinker like me mucking about in his thoughts. Whatever force in heaven or hell caused him to move to what he describes as "nowhere" and open a pretty nice knick-knack shop is completely beyond me. Mr. Marlo came to my aid though, and we interrogated the rest of the shop.

Like Wal-Mart, Jim prescribes to the "never too early for Halloween" theology

He also bragged about the people he attracts from Peoria and even Chicago. Specifically old lady types that come for wine tastings. Again, you have a shop that attracts people from over 100 miles away, and everything you can say about your town I can fit between the butt cheeks of a small hamster. That old pastime of crapping on your town came back to haunt us. I just don't get it. Honestly, if you chose to live in a burned out hole in the ground, shouldn't you try to convince yourself and others that it is, in fact, the best hole in the ground that ever got burned out? And the case goes triple for small towns like Kickapoo. Why take pot-shots at it when you choose to live there? Chaos reigns!

Anyway, after Mr. Marlo and I were thoroughly antiqued, we strolled around town, taking in the sites and snapping a picture or two.

This isn't reflective of the town at large, but, come on! Four satellite dishes?

Actually we didn't get many pictures of the nice parts of town. Because that's boring. For the most part it all came off as pretty nice, though. There really didn’t seem to be any run-down houses or neighbors, save the unmowed lawn or two. I suspect this is because Kickapoo is very much a bedroom community. Sexiness aside, that means that most of the people who live there drive anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes to get to work everyday. That’s simply where jobs are and where people need to be. I do know that a lot of Kickapooians (again, ew…) work at the many Caterpillar plants scattered around P-town, so it only figures.

We also took a turn through the town cemetary, which, honestly, was pretty cool, especially the tiny Catholic church that’s over a 150 years old. And what's hilarious is the pamphlets they had in the little box next to it had a journal entry from around that time that specifically said there weren't many Catholics around then and "maybe this would help attract some". Kevin Costner is Catholic.

They still use it a couple of times a year, which, as a church-goer myself, I really like because it mixes things up a little.

Catholic Mom: Kids, hurry up, it’s time for church!

Catholic Kids: Aww…

Catholic Mom: Come on kids, it’s in the graveyard!

Catholic Kids: Hellz yeah!1! Roxorz!!!!one!!!

Because apparently all Catholic children speak in 2002 Leet.

And if your name is Heinz, this cemetary is for you!

The walk back revealed two more businesses: A used car lot and a monument/2nd best knick-knack shop in town. Not to mention a lighthouse/clubhouse in some folks backyard.

"Bottles" was certainly a motif around Kickapoo

At that point we’d had enough and decided it was time for THE WINERY.

I’d been here one time before for a graduation, and it was just fine. The inside was simple but also really nice. Mr. Marlo and I enjoyed our 5 tastings, plus a secret 6th taste. Getting mellow on wine certainly makes any DTL project end on a sweet, port-flavored note.

And the summary. Do I vote Kickapoo? Maybe! While not a town and completely willing to let you go on believing it is, it did have several businesses and amenities that you might not expect in a town 7 miles away from a town of 100,000. But therein lies the reason, because I’ll bet people like to maintain a small amount of locality there. But not too much: There was no bank, no post office, and no grocery store. There were two bars and a gas station, though. If I had to guess, I would say that Kickapoo has stabilized with the larger draw of Peoria. Everyone we met did seem to be smiling and more than a few people we saw in there yards and on the ballfield waved happily at a couple of strangers wondering their streets.

Beats other places we’ve been.

And here’s a bunch of other shots Mr. Marlo took around town. He’ll leave you his website in the comments section. Also congrats again to Jon and Kevin, you no longer bachelors you!

Signing off,

Dr. Doctorman