Route Survey, Monday, August 23

At the risk of spoiling things for the walk itself, I'll share some notes from this afternoon's route survey (by motor vehicle). The three-digit numbers along the left-hand margin are odometer readings along the survey of the route, measured from my house, which I named "Four Oaks" when we moved in 7 or 8 years ago.

There are three mature oak trees, a white oak, a black oak, and a mossy-cup, or burr, oak, but I also have a 4-inch high seedling at the edge of the garden, so some day there will be four oaks there if all goes as planned.

I left home at about 1:30 p.m. to drive some of the route and to poke around in general in the small towns along the way.

000 leave Four Oaks

004.2 Staley Road and Springfield Avenue (Illinois Route 10), just west of Champaign.

007 Bondville.
We once looked at a three-story brick house, with basement, near the east edge of Bondville. That was in about 2002. I thought the house was overpriced at $105,000, but in retrospect, it would have been a bargain. Think of all the house guests we could have entertained! Mary was very disappointed when I decided we shouldn’t pursue that particular house.

The house had an interesting story. It had been moved into town from a farm several miles to the south. Given the size of the house, the fact that it was a true masonry brick building, and the tremendous weight, that’s no small feat. I couldn’t see any cracks or other signs of the house’s having been moved.
An interesting Bondville story occurred a few years ago. A friend of mine, Louise, ran a phone repair service and a two-way radio service in the former Bondville schoolhouse, which she had converted into their company headquarters. One Saturday morning the place was suddenly swarming with SWAT officers, who held her at gunpoint, while she explained that the building was her business.
It turned out that some years earlier, when the building had still been vacant, a police training facility had secured permission to use the building as a SWAT training area. No one had bothered to check whether the building was still vacant, or whether the permission to train there was still valid. From this perspective, this could be a funny story, but I can just imagine Louise being held at gunpoint, sputtering to the officers that they had no business being there.

010.2 Seymore

017.3 Lodge
Just south of Lodge is the Pontious Berry Farm, where a person can still go to pick berries. The father of the present owner visited the appropriate authorities (on raising berries) at the nearby University of Illinois, one of the country’s land-grant universities. The agronomists told Mr. Pontius that blueberries just would not grow in that part of Illinois. Undaunted, he researched the topic on his own, treated the soil for the right pH, and began to successfully raise blueberries on the Illinois prairie. The blueberries are still flourishing there.
Route 10 skirts Lodge on the north side, and there is a rail crossing for a north-south line. When I was surveying my route of march, a railroad repair team was there fixing a broken crossing gate (the red-and-white-striped wooden bar than comes down to block a lane of road traffic while a train is passing). I just happened to be stopped waiting for a northbound train to pass so I could continue my trip. The train was a local, comprising mainly tank cars.

022.3 Deland
Deland and Seymore have a consolidated school district. They have built a large facility north of Route 10 out in the country. Fortunately there seemed to be no signs of vandalism, such an isolated building in a city might suffer. Abraham Lincoln said, “Let him who hath not an house not pull down the house of him who has one.” Whatever you may think of the late president, I agree with that quotation.

027.7 Weldon
What I knew about the town of Weldon before my visit was that our friend Jan, for many years a missionary with Youth with a Mission, grew up in the country with a Weldon address. The family’s lower pastures are now at the bottom of Clinton Lake, and the little farm house sits on a road that is otherwise lined with more luxurious homes of more recent construction.

When Route 10 was rebuilt some years ago, it was rerouted to bypass many smaller towns. That speeds things up for those driving right past, but for my investigative purposes, it meant that I had to leave the highway and go some distance to visit several of these little towns.

I thought I’d visit the town library, but it was closed. A mother and daughter sat in the shade out front on a park bench, a laptop computer open on a fold-out table in front of them. I asked, “I guess this means the library has free wi-fi, right?”
“That’s exactly what it means, the mom answered.” Out on Route 10, a blue sign listed one tourist attraction, Mamma D’s Smokehouse Restaurant. Though the restaurant is open only on Friday and Saturday afternoons (from 5–9 p.m.), I walked up to it and found the door unlocked. Sharon, who is also Mamma D, was there to let in a refrigerator repairman. She made me a gift of a cold Coke and told me a little about her business.

She grew up in Oklahoma. Though she works full time as a medical laboratory technician at a nearby hospital (and her husband also works full-time), they started this business as a hobby. In addition to gourmet bratwurst (they’re much more heart-healthful than regular brats because they are much lower in fat), she offers several other specialties, including onion hamburgers (she fries the thin-sliced onion right with the meat).

Sharon suggested that I visit the Weldon Bank, staffed by Jean Lawrence and Becky Farris, and I did. Jean humbly denied any great knowledge of the town’s history, but did tell me about the terrible fire that destroyed nearly the entire downtown. The bank, being of solid brick, survived the fire, and the face of the building looks much as it did in the old days.

Jean and Becky also said that the Weldon Bank was one of the few Central Illinois banks that John Dillinger didn’t rob. Doug Edwards’s Facebook page has some great Weldon pictures.

About 5 miles west of Weldon there is a beautiful white farmhouse on the north side of the road. There’s almost always an American flag flying near the house, and I had noticed that on previous journeys past the place. I decided to stop and see what I could learn about the place.

I saw a tractor with a blade on the three-point hitch, with a pickup truck parked beside it. That was near a machine shed behind the house. The house itself was under construction, with a crew busy adding on to the original structure.
A man emerged from an office in the machine shed and greeted me courteously. I said, “It looks as if this is not only your home, but also your business.”
“Yes,” he said. “I farm.”

The man was tall, lean, and clean-cut. He had a direct gaze, with piercing eyes, and his handshake was firm, when I introduced myself. I told him I was walking across Illinois, a veteran in support of veterans. He said he really appreciated what veterans have done for this nation.

I asked him about the farm and house. The family just received the State of Illinois official designation as a sesquicentennial farm. If you’re not familiar with that program, that means the farm has been in the same family for at least 150 years. It belonged to a Union Army captain named John D. Graham. He built the main part of the house when he returned home from the Civil War 143 years ago (in 1867).
The family recently had all but the original part of the house torn down. The new addition is being built to look like an 1800s carriage house, and there will be two widow’s walks on the roof, when all is complete.

David Newberg, the farmer I met, is the kind of man who has built America. These folks are honest, hardworking, and friendly. David told me that his wife is the fourth generation of that family to live on the farm, and that his grandkids will be the sixth generation of the family, if they decide to live there. Refreshed in spirit by my encounter with this fine gentleman, I continued down the road.

040.1 miles Weldon Springs Road
Just south of Route 10 is the Weldon Springs State Recreation Area, including camping areas. One can make a reservation for a camping spot by going online at reserveamerica.com. Pads with electricity are $20 per night, and tent campsites are $8.00 per night. That means I can’t sleep in my pickup without paying $20, but I can pitch two shelter halves to make a tent, and that is only $8.00.

The campground runs using a system that’s widely used at state and federal parks. The fee-takers, in this case known as hosts, were off duty, as the sign plainly stated, but the hostess came out and graciously answered my many questions. As we conversed, I discovered that she and her husband were doing this (being hosts) for the second summer, that they were permitted to have a small garden next to their camper, a pop-up trailer-tent, and that they hailed from the great state of Oklahoma. During the summer of 2009, she had gotten to know a second cousin whom she didn’t know existed. They had spent lots of time getting acquainted and catching up on their respective branches of the family.

045 Clinton, Illinois
Clinton seems to be thriving. There are many small industries, lots of them clustered along the south side of Route 10 on the east end of town. Clinton also boasts a Case-International implement dealership, a very large Chrysler and GM dealership, and a very special Ford dealership.

The Chrysler dealership offers some spectacular savings on what nowadays are called program cars. (Back in the day, they were known as demonstrators.) Douglas does not do floor planning, which is a euphemism for borrowing all the money for all the cars in the showroom and on the lot. Douglas buys the cars outright, which saves lots on interest, and translates to a better price for the buyer.

The Ford dealership, almost right across Route 10, is the only dealership for many miles that carries special production Ford Mustangs. The car comes off the assembly line and then goes directly to another company, where a super high-performance engine, heavy-duty suspension, and other expensive components are built into the vehicle. Then the care comes to this particular dealership to be sold.

About five and a half miles west of Clinton, there is a Y that introduces a road that heads off to the north. The road name is Y-End Road.

Hallsville, Illinois
About 6 miles west of Y-End Road is Hallsville.

055 Midland City, Illinois
Midland City boasts some very interesting street names, such as Rejected Rock Street (there has to be a story there!). There were also some goats in a pen on Rejected Rock Street.

059.6 Beason
Lots of houses in Beason had American flags flying. The old downtown district was completely boarded up except for the Post Office. There’s a really nice park, with kid’s playground equipment and horseshoe pits that my late dad would really have appreciated. There’s also a beautiful Methodist Church building [[photo]], and the East Lincoln Farmers Grain Company has the Beason Elevator in the northwest part of town.

While I was photographing the church building, two small boys came down the middle of the street, one pulling the other in a plastic wagon. They greeted me enthusiastically, though of course they couldn’t have known why this stranger was taking pictures of an old church building. On the west side of town there is a College Avenue, which ends in a cornfield. Try as I might, I could not find a college. Again I saw some really nice campers in front of many homes, and again there was a pasture with horses grazing just at the south end of town.

064.6 There is a bridge that is down to one lane because of construction work. I hope that work is done by September 17 or so. Otherwise I might have to wait a while to walk across the bridge because there is certainly no shoulder or walkway.

068.9 NOAA National Weather Service Station.
This facility, just off Route 10 to the north, is where our weather radio signals originate for most of East-Central Illinois. There’s a bubble on a tower, probably covering a pretty serious radar dish, and there is all manner of weather station paraphernalia and radio transmission gear. I’m very grateful for this state-of-the-art facility in our area.

Just east of the NOAA facility, but south of the highway, is the Lincoln Christian University campus. I’ve known many students who have attended this school through the years, but I had never actually seen the campus. A friendly lady who was heading to her car kindly directed me to the library, but it was about to close for the day at 5:00 p.m. I was a bit surprised by that, because university libraries are often open in the evening. Nevertheless I asked when the name had been changed from College to University, and the librarian told me that the change had taken place the previous year (2009).

I briefly interviewed three bright-looking young people who were still standing where they had been several minutes earlier, deep in a conversation. Daniel is from Morris, Illinois. He just completed a BA in Preaching in May, and has now begun work on his Master of Divinity Degree at the seminary. I asked whether he might know my friend Jonathan Harrison, and he said, “yes, I lived right next door to him.” Their respective time at the university had one year in common. Daniel served as a part-time preacher for a couple of years before embarking on his educational journey. He seemed mature and focused.

Megan is from Bloomington, Illinois, and she’s also pursuing a Master of Divinity Degree at the seminary, majoring in New Testament, and possibly in New Testament Languages. She’s also a recent grad from a baccalaureate program, and she hopes to do Bible translation with Pioneer Bible Translators in Papua, New Guinea, where she has already done a missions internship.

Sarah is from Cerro Gordo, Illinois, and seemed surprised that I had heard of her home town. She’s an undergrad in Teacher Education and English Secondary Teaching. She is planning to earn a TESOL (teaching of English as a second language) certificate, and she hopes one day to teach English in China. I asked whether she was familiar with ELIC (English Language Institute in China), and she was. Because Christian missionaries are not, per se, permitted into China, Christians go there with other primary purposes, with the full knowledge of the government that they have ulterior motives. Though they don’t go around the streets preaching the gospel, they do have a great opportunity to live a Christian life in front of their Chinese students.

My hat is off to these other-directed young people who have high goals and a willingness to invest their lives in other people.

069.4 Lincoln
Lincoln has an Amtrak depot. It also has yet another college, Lincoln College. I was familiar with the college because they built an attendance center in Normal, Illinois, where they have a four-year program. The programs here in Lincoln are all two-year programs. I’m sitting typing this at Lincoln College’s McKinstry Library (collocated with the Heritage Museum), just off Route 10. The staff have graciously given me access to their wireless broadband, and if this makes it into the blog, it’s thanks to them.