bedsitter23

I have mentioned it here before but was worth mentioning again- the Spoon River rest area.

The rest area itself isn't much to speak of- located in a dull stretch between Galesberg and Peoria, Illinois.  It is secluded enough that it has a bit of a  creepy 'rest area' vibe to it, actually.

I like the thought of it though as I enjoyed reading Edgar Lee Masters's "Spoon River Anthology".  There is a lookout which otherwise is kind of random, but allows you to look over the area, and I think of Masters when I do this.

New Englanders settled here and it is an area rich with early American and French settlers and Native American history.  There is a feeling that I think is distinct from Southern Illinois, and that feeling is largely autumnal.

Anthology was published in 1915 and is a series of poems attributed to the dead citizens of the cemetery.  Masters wanted to "demystify rural and small town American life."  212 characters tell their tales, some with secrets, observations, histories, and fragments; occasionally with the revelation of a good country song.

Of course, this led to some controversy in the town of Lewistown where Masters was raised.  Sort of a "You're so Vain" of its day.  it was banned in Lewistown for 60 years, up until 1974.  Master's mother was on the school board and voted for the ban.  Local historian Kelvin Sampson notes that "Every family in Lewistown probably had a sheet of paper or a notebook hidden away with their copy of the Anthology, saying who was who in town.

In recent years, the town has started to embrace the legacy.  While reading about this, I ran across a Masters-themed tour of the Oak Hill Cemetery.  There are 40 markers that represent characters who show up in Anthology.  The cemetery also is nearby an area where Lincoln and Douglas debated and the courthouse they spoke at has burned down, but the pillars they stood on remain.

I was in Clinton County, Illinois so I saw this Stag Beer ad. (Not my pic)




Wow, okay.

I suppose this means that it's like a craft brew?  Not for beginners?  Hmmm...

Stag is the local brew.  It was a St Louis region beer and if you dig into archives you can even find Mr Magoo advertised it.

Anyway, they seem to embrace some weird irony in their ads.

If you dig deeper into the company history.  They were a big player in the St Louis beer market, and advertised with the St Louis Cardinals (and  announcer Harry Carrey) up until Busch bought the team (and subsequently renamed Sportsman Park as Busch Stadium).

The parent company Falstaff's height was in 1966, but fell afterwards, ending up being bought by Pabst until it was eventually phased out.

Stag is back but it's impact is generally these few counties where I grew up,

Hell Gate of the Mississippi, the Effie Afton Trial and Abraham Lincoln's Role in It by Larry A. Riney

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I have found that some times the most interesting books are local history that I find while visiting somewhere, and I picked this up while visiting the Quad Cities.

The Effie Afton trial is an interesting story that I doubt many people (myself included) know, but was one of the biggest trials of the day.

The Effie Afton was a large steamboat which crashed into the first railroad bridge that crossed the Mississippi River at Rock Island, Illinois. What makes this a significant event was with this bridge, for the first time, goods could be carried by train from the East to West. This was a threat to the previous way of life which was River travel. This incident pitted the Railroads vs the Boating industry, and also Chicago as an up and coming city versus St Louis and other river towns.

The question was if (as the Captain of the Effie Afton explained) the bridge was too much a threat to ships passing (a "Hell gate") and should be torn down. The railroads blamed the captain's negligence, or suggested that the crash was done on purpose to prove a point (or the ship burned for insurance purposes).

The book describes the trial, with a brief history of beforehand, which includes some references to big names of the day like Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis (Secretary of War Davis wanted the railroad, but to cross in the South, not the North). The other reason this trial is trial is of interest is that it is the only well-documented trail featuring Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was not the main counsel, but he was part of the Defense team, and here was sowing the very early seeds of what would be his Presidential career.

Lincoln is on the Defense Team, which given his image as a young riverman, has been lost to time. Here, he backed the railroad interests.

The Missouri Republican and the (Chicago) Daily Democratic Press both sent their best reporters and each put their slant on the proceedings.

The trial lasts 15 days with some dubious direction- the trial takes place in Chicago, and also some jury members seem to have ties to Railroad stock, an obvious bias.

It results in a hung jury- so ultimately the Bridge stands, despite the best workings of the City of St. Louis and rivermen. The few previous precedents such as Erie Canal legislation ultimately make the case that the Greater Good lies with the expansion of the railroad. There is a follow up trial in Iowa where the Rivermen win, but for geographic reasons with the bulk of the bridge in Illinois, is a mere ceremonial win.

The story eventually ends with a whimper not a bang, as with the secession of the South, all parties involved see the need for the Mississippi River crossing, and the story fades away after appeals and retrial.

There is also a (most likely) apocryphal story of how Abraham Lincoln went to the site of the accident and with great sleuthing determined that the bridge was indeed passable. This story makes Lincoln look like the genius of the trial, but only shows up 50 years later in the history written by the railroad companies of that day.

This an interesting topic and worthwhile, if any of the following topics are of interest- Lincoln, Quad Cities and Mississippi River history, Westward Expansion, river travel and mainly- jury selection and the court system in the mid 19th Century.

This is a very academic book, and though, relatively short at 240 pages (with pictures), it is dense. Riney provides a blow-by-blow account that covers every day and every aspect of the trial. This is all backed up with reference to the two newspapers covering the trial and many other sources. For most, this is probably too much detail. For me, that worked against the book, although that much detail may be of interest to some seeking out that level of information.

That was my small quibble with a book that ultimately taught me about an aspect of history I had never heard before.



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I passed through central Illinois a couple of times this summer and this is what is going on.

I wasn't going to make a big deal of it since it is hard to shut up the local idiots (I generally expect Boehner, Ted Cruz and the rest to at least act like grown-ups.  I know, I know), so this is not an indictment of all Republicans by any means, but this is the exact thing that the GOP needs to figure out if it is going to be the party of inclusiveness.

Erika Harold is a Harvard-trained lawyer.  She (as the name implies) is female and black and a Republican, and while this would be a great 'face of the new GOP' story, she is (was?) running in a primary for a state seat.

She is also a former Miss America.

Which means the local party chairman welcomed her to the party by telling a Conservative website ""Now, Miss Queen is being used like a street walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS,"

Even more charmingly, Chairman Allen stated she would lose and end up "working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires."

Delightful.

As you may guess, Mr. Allen has since stepped down.

While I don't believe all Republicans think that if an African-American woman shows up in their party that she must be a plant by the Democrats, it is a problem they have.

As is the Tea Party problem.

And by that i mean eating their own.

2004's What's the Matter with Kansas detailed the death of moderate Republicans as Conservatives took over the party.  This was followed by the rise of the Tea Party rising up to try and bring down party stalwarts like Orrin Hatch.

People like Hatch would have served in Congress for decades without any Democrat challenge.  Their only competition came from within. The Tea Party started making its mark within the last two election cycles.

Inevitably, those Tea Partiers are now finding out you can't be a demagogue and serve the People and are now 'Not Tea party enough'.

Adam Kinzinger was elected with the help of Sarah Palin to the strong Republican central Illinois area (the land of Robert Michel)

Now Kinzinger is being primaried- the verb that means that he has been targeted by the Tea Party to have someone to try and beat him in the primary election.  Votes on Syria and the Military Cliff means the guy  so loved last election is now a "“established Republican sweetheart" per his opponent, the local tea party chairman.  While Kinzinger maintains the GOP can make gains by welcoming younger voters and minorities, by not “going on cable TV all the time and yelling and screaming” and by accepting that it’s a big party and “we’re not going to agree on everything.”

A continuation of what was going  on when I went back to my hometown.

- - -

One thing most people don't know about Central Illinois is its oil.  I grew up with dozens of pumping oil wells and the 24/7 burning flame of gas flares.  i don't know any different, but if you weren't born there, you are probably surprised to see a little bit of Dallas in the middle of the Prairie State.

There was an oil boom in Central Illinois in the 50s.  It was what you would expect- jobs in the oil fields flourished and some local families became rich for years.  My family did not become superrich, but have gotten supplemental income for years.

Now, the oil boom is back thanks to a new process called fracking.  I don't know that I can explain fracking very well, but it seems that water is used to induce pressure which then brings previously untapped oil and natural gas resources to come released.  (There are helpful websites provided by people like Exxon Mobil and other oil producers.  Just google it).

Fracking is a god-send.  Central and Southern Illinois has been an area that has had high unemployment and low job creation even before the economy went south.  Now, farmers who were working their fingers to the bone could see an unexpected light at the end of the tunnel.

Still, one can't help wonder where all of this unexpected good luck came from.  (Okay, I have been reading Jared Diamond, but one needs to head south and see the results of that other innovation strip mining and what happened from it).

There are as many websites that warn against fracking as those for it.  Like many high stakes gambling games, there appears to be a potential side effect to all this 'get rich quick-ness'.  You see, it seems that fracking can leave the ground water on these family farms undrinkable and unusable due to the process.  This not only mean the money dries up when the oil is gone, it leaves the farm family with land that once was their gift to future generations and makes it worthless.

My grandma (I mentioned the supplemental income above) has been approached by the oil companies aggressively.  To her credit 9and to my mild surprise), she has resisted the lure of easy and quick money.

I will admit to a certain extent, I don't know both sides of the story as well as maybe I should.  Maybe BP and their pals are closer to the 'friends of the Gulf Shore' image that their ads portray and less of the image most Americans have of them (which rates them below loan sharks and Congress).  Still, this appears to be one of those phenomenons that we will look back 20 or 40 years and wonder why we ever made this mistake.

While on vacation, there was one story that was covered on St. Louis/Metro East local channel, Marion/Carbondale local channel, and WGN.

It was of course, the biggest story of last week.

Rod Blagojevich dyes his hair.

I always thought barbers weren't supposed to talk (client-patient confidentiality), but sure enough, Blago's stylist was out blabbing that Rod would look like Jay Leno in four short months.

All of the major outlets ran with the biggest "What If" we have encountered n years.



I'm going to miss Blago.  Sure, his predecessor went to prison, too (Why do you need to take a test to get a Semi-truck CDL licence, when you can just pay money instead), but no one talks about him.

Blago was awesome.  Even now, he talks like he will step foot out of prison and be elected to public office the next day.

(Side note to Republicans: Even in a red state like Illinois, you should have won that 2006 election .  You should probably stop letting right wing nutjobs from beating up your candidates in primary season.  Hint hint.)

Blago's "going away" speech was tremendous- it even featured Blago draped in the American flag and banners that said "Thank you Mr Governor. We will Pray."

Just the fact, he gave a speech was awesome.  Your supposed to be ashamed.  Instead, Blago signed autographs and gave what was essentially a campaign speech- defending his record (advising women to take advantage of free pap smears and public bussing- programs he instituted).

It's all a shame that Blago never got to do the job he was born to do.  Think about it- fake humbleness, basic ignorance, arrogance in spades- he was born to be a Pro wrestling heel.  He even got offers.  He would have been so perfect.

Well, he's got 14 years to think about it.