Day 6, September 6, 2010

Parking Place for the Pickup for the Last Leg of Day 5

Beardstown
Beardstown, Illinois, is the only town on my route that led me into Cass County, just east of the Illinois River, and then I headed right back into Schuyler County to continue northeast on Illinois Route 100 along the Illinois River. Though there have been many changes to the make-up of Beardstown’s population since the 2000 census (5766), the town does not seem likely to have grown much in population overall.

When I discussed Beardstown with my 95-year-old mom on a visit to Northwestern Illinois just last week, she immediately mentioned the Beardstown Ladies, a group of Beardstown women who educated themselves to be Wall Street investors. Those ladies were very well-known in the 80s and 90s, and books about them and their investment club were best-sellers.

Mother said that, years later, it turned out that the ladies were using an unsound accounting practice that showed their profits to be higher than they really were. Apparently they were incorrectly putting their brokerage fees into the wrong column, which meant that their profits were only about 9%, which at the time underperformed the Dow. Doesn’t sound too bad right now, though.

When I had been at lunch two days ago with many of the Mount Sterling American Legion and VFW members on Saturday, they had asked me whether there was anything I wanted to know about this area. I said, “Tell me about the Beardstown Ladies.” To that, one gentleman replied that, when he was a teen, the Beardstown girls wore earrings, but the Mount Sterling girls didn’t. He said you could easily tell them apart in that way. No one at the table seemed familiar with the investment club, which has now clearly fallen from grace.

Beardstown has a big Archer Daniels Midland grain terminal, right on the Illinois River, and Cargill has built a large meat-processing plant there too. The plant employs a large number of immigrants, including many Hispanics and a number of people from French Guiana, who, of course, speak French rather than Spanish. I greeted one such gentleman in French, and apparently he understood me because he responded in the same language.

I drove around Beardstown to get a better feeling for the place. There’s a good Mexican restaurant right near the town square (Chuey’s). The square has signs declaring that Abe Lincoln spent time there. In fact Herndon, Lincoln’s one-time law partner, spread a number of salacious rumors about Lincoln after Lincoln was assassinated, and one of them has to do with a house of ill repute that used to be in Beardstown. I won’t repeat the rumors here, but they would later be picked up and repeated as fact by a well-known author.

I spent about an hour driving around the streets. I did see many Hispanics, and even a Hispanic church. The Guianans were also much in evidence, and I saw one man and woman, with the woman dressed beautifully in an African gown, with matching headdress, strolling along a quiet street. It will be interesting to find out what the 2010 Census has to say about Beardstown current demographics.

Hispanic Storefront Church in Beardstown

The first European settler at the location was Thomas Beard, who arrived in 1829. He built a cabin on the Illinois River, and established a ferry and a trading post. Thomas’s son Edward, known as “Red,” went on to become a notorious gambler and gunfighter, but was killed out west (in Kansas) in 1873. Well, “They who live by the sword . . . ,” but you know how that ends.
The old Beardstown opera house is on the National Register of Historic Places.

After lots of deliberation, I decided not to ride my bike or walk across the Illinois River bridge at Beardstown. Call me a coward if you like. Call me a cheater. (Hey, I added Beardstown to my route less than 2 weeks ago. If you don’t like how I conduct this walk, please come out and walk with me.)

Frederick, Illinois
Before leaving Beardstown, I had a bacon and egg sandwich at the Hardees. They offer military veterans a 10% discount, which takes just a little more than the sales tax off the price of an item. Outside the restaurant they have a banner with the U.S. Flag on it, underscored by the words, “Long may it wave.” Below that it says, “Thank you for your service.”

Outside in the parking lot I had noticed a pickup truck with a Purple Heart recipient license plate. Inside I approached the person I thought most likely to be the pickup’s owner. When I asked whether he had received a Purple Heart, he said simply, “Yes, that would be me.”

I told him about my walk and handed him a copy of my brochure (150 brochures was not enough for this leg of the walk, by the way. Even being stingy with the brochures, I have only 9 left, and I have almost a week to walk before I get to go home for a weekend so I can print some more.). The veteran’s name was Herald Root, and he still limps from a World War II wound.

Herald asked me if I was limping because of a war wound too, but I told him I had injured the knee while training for the present walk. He introduced me to 2 more vets who were sitting nearby, and they in turn introduced me to another vet. I shook each man’s hand and said “thank you for your service.” Two of the other veterans were Jerry Paul, Vietnam War, and Art Gramann, World War II, South Pacific, Philippines, Japan.

I resumed my walk out at the intersection of 67, 103, and 100. I had a couple of false starts. A quarter of a mile up the road there is a large truck tire business, which was open, despite its being Labor Day. Porcelain is rare along the roadways, so I stopped and used their facilities. Once back on the road, I remembered that I hadn’t reached my mom by phone the night before because of a busy signal.

Unfortunately I had left my phone in the pickup on the charger, so I went back and retrieved it. I stood in front of the pickup and called Mother. After our conversation, I looked up to see a pickup making a U-turn on the highway. The driver was coming back to talk to me. He was Greg Rebman, who farms a lot of acres near Frederick. Though not a veteran, he is very supportive of veterans and our troops, and he told me about his dad’s service in World War II. He asked me my destination for the day, and when I said Frederick, he pointed across the enormous cornfield north of the highway to a white building off to the east southeast.

“That’s my white building over there,” he said. “That’s also Frederick. You’ll get a lot farther than that today.” Then he went back to his pickup, retrieved his smart phone, and called up the weather radar. He said the worst rains were up around the Quad Cities, and that the rainstorm that had been predicted for us had broken up completely over to the west. “You won’t get wet today,” he assured me, and that turned out to be right.

His prediction about my getting a lot farther than Frederick was right too.

Frederick is on the Illinois River in Schuyler County, about 6 miles northeast of Beardstown. It’s a tiny, unincorporated community, but it does have a U.S. Post Office with its own zip code (62639). With the U.S. Postal Service undergoing such financial woes, one conjectures about the future of such small town post offices.

Of course I have heard the same claim in a number of small Illinois communities, and the claims are probably accurate, but one Frederick resident, who grew up right there, said that at one time Frederick had been larger than Chicago. He also told me about the devastating flood along the Illinois River in 1943, which had nearly wiped out Frederick. He pointed out the very spot where the levy had broken. The rail line runs right on top of that levy, so the break shut down the railroad for a time too.

He said that, sadly, all the older residents who had really known Frederick history had died. I thanked him for his help, and headed back down the road to retrieve my pickup.

Again the prevailing westerlies prevailed, and I had a tough time riding, so I walked quite a bit and eventually furled the flag around its staff and secured it top and bottom with tiny bungee cords to cut down on the incredible wind resistance. I can’t find anything on flag etiquette that bears on my particular display of Old Glory, but I do roll it neatly and store it in a lawn chair cover in the back of the pickup when it’s not in use.

Greg Rebman had told me that, northeast of Frederick, the wind would be less of a problem because of the trees on both sides and the bluff on the west side of the road, and, again, he proved accurate in his prediction. Near the intersection where Greg and I talked there is a banner for a Schuyler County farm organization that states that Illinois Schuyler County farmers feed more than 65,000 people. That statement should help us to place agriculture in its proper perspective as a crucial part of our state’s economy.

A ways west of Frederick I saw an ARMY STRONG sign on a barn to the left of the road. I went up the driveway, and, to my right, near a nice flowerbed, was a wooden fallen soldier cutout that I found very meaningful. The U.S. Flag was also flying. I located the owner of the property, Mr. Goddard, up on a ladder taking old siding and insulation off his house. His nephew was there helping him.

I thanked him for flying the flag and told him how much the fallen soldier cutout meant to me. He said, “Come with me.” He took me over to a shed, showed me an identical cutout, and gave it to me. I didn’t have any way to take it along, though, so he told me to come back some time and get it. I hope I can do that. I’d really like to have it.

The Goddards have 3 sons, all of whom have had Army service, and 2 of whom are still serving. Mrs. Goddard, whom I also met, heads up a veterans’ organization in nearby Rushville. We discussed the sad state of our dear old Republic, and as I was leaving, Mr. Goddard asked whether he could pray with me. He said, “I’m a Southern Baptist, and a believer in our Lord Jesus Christ.” He prayed God’s blessing on my walk and on our country.
I am encouraged that we still have such men in this nation. As I left, he gave me a florescent orange baseball cap from the highway and heavy construction company he works for, G. M. Sipes Construction, Inc. I will wear it with pride.

Route 100 crosses Sugar Creek and Friddle Creek, both tributaries of the nearby Illinois River. The next little town on my route, and the last for today was Browning.

Browning Illinois
Browning, Illinois, is on the Illinois River in Schuyler County. It was first settled by Kentuckian William Robertson, who built a cabin on the site in 1826. Within a few years (1830), Peter Holmes built a landing and warehouse on the Illinois River as part of his wagon business. Browning was the first village incorporated in Schuyler County. The town was platted in 1848. It was named after Orville H. Browning, a Quincy lawyer, who was elected a member of the Illinois General Assembly six years earlier. He would go on to run against Stephen A. Douglas for the U.S. Senate (Douglas won, by the way). Locals claim the town is on Blackhawk War bounty land, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.

In the 1800s, Browning was a regular stop for commercial boats on the Illinois River, which flows lest than half a mile away. When the railroad came through, hundreds of immigrants worked on its construction. 

Archer Daniels Midland’s ARC Line Tug Crimson Glory, Pushing Empty Grain Barges upstream on the Illinois River near Browning, Illinois

Four or five miles north of Browning is the town of Baden. The largest steam engine built up to that time (“Old Maude”) pushed the trains up the very steep grade. The line also ran to Astoria, but it will take much more research about that now defunct rail line to know very much about it. Local resident Virgil Hamm, said that the train stopped in Browning every day to take on fresh-caught fish from the Illinois River from the very platform available in the following photograph.

The Old Browning Train Station

The old paver bricks are still visible to the right of the station building.

A bar called River’s Edge stands elevated above the waters of the Illinois River at Browning. The waitress says her grandpa Farrell “Screwy” Lane ran a casino and knew Al Capone well. Capone did hunt, fish, and gamble all along that stretch of the Illinois River, a fact I discovered during my Internet research of the area before I left home.

A man sitting at the bar eating lunch with his son raised his voice to say that it was ridiculous to think that Capone would leave Chicago at all, because there had been no roads back then, and if Capone had left town, another gangster would have taken over his turf. There is, nevertheless, good historical evidence that Capone spent time along the Illinois River from as far north as Havana and all the way to Quincy, where a house survives, along with trailer hookups his buddies used when they came to town.

Browning put me at about 26% of the way across Illinois.