I Swear to God, We Didn't Even Get Out of the Car: Cornland, Illinois

VITAL STATS

Cornland, Illinois

Population: 93 (!!!)

Area: .095 square miles

County: Logan

Cast Members: Your Intrepid Blogger, Dr. Doctorman

Cornland literally doesn't even get to call itself a town. According to Wikipedia, it's just an "Unincorporated census-designated place". This sounds awesomely Orwellian, like one day Governor Jim Thompson just went nuts and wiped a whole town off the map and this is the only hint that there was ever something there.

In fact, given that I've got nothing else to go on, I'm deciding right now that that IS the history of Cornland.

The thing is, we didn't find anyone to talk to in Cornland. I'm pretty sure that's because there just weren't any kind of common gathering places- no town squares, no shops, nothin'. The closest we had was this awesome abandoned school-

And it's not like there'd be anyone to talk to in there, either. Except maybe Pyramid Head. But no one wants to talk to him.

I mean, there really just wasn't much to it. But I did take all of these pictures, so fuck it, you, gentle reader, have to look-see.

I was intrigued by the fact that Mt. Pulaski is responsible for Cornland's fire protection, though. Can any readers- or perhaps, the husband of a reader, who may or may not have a role in emergency dispatch- tell me how that works? Is that kind of resource sharing common?

And yet...Cornland has 93 people, about 5 blocks...and two churches.

It's crazy to me that in a town of 93 people, there's enough members of TWO DIFFERENT religions to warrant two churches. I like to imagine that they rumble on Sunday afternoons.

So all in all, this was a quick one, but, at least by implication, an interesting one. Because really, Cornland is kind of the ultmate expression of a trend we've already seen a bunch of times- the "leave and go somewhere else phenomenon". It's just that in Cornland, you really have to do it for EVERYTHING. There's no school, no hospital, no police. No where to buy a loaf of bread, even (of course, you can't live on bread alone, but that's the one thing Cornland DOES have covered). I'm sure the people of Cornland are used to that (though Springfield's the only real city anywhere close, and that drive has got to get obnoxious). But it's strange to me that you'd choose to live so far away from everything you need. I guess I sorta did growing up, but I was honestly only five minutes from Springfield. So it seems really weird to voluntarily be so isolated.

Then again, I remember what one of my old bosses told me: "If you can't go out your own backdoor and take a piss because someone might see yer johnson, you need to move."