Peoria Illinoisan

I added the Cubs magic number counter to my sidebar, but it never seems to change. I figured there must be an error in the code but after cussing at it for hours in my failed attempts at troubleshooting, I am resigned to waiting until next year. Hopefully they’ll have the code updated by then so it will work correctly, as CJ’s does.

That is the prize money of this week’s Powerball lottery. While standing in line at a local gas station watching a lady buy a ticket, I began to think what I would do with all that money.

My initial thoughts went to where I could donate. Our kid’s grade school that I so dearly love needs some major upgrades. They get some. The world class Children’s Museum that will eventually be built in Peoria would get a quick funding boost. There would be endowments set up for local schools, and of course savings set aside for our children. I would buy and rehab the Madison Theatre. I would pay to have Glen Oak Park’s suspension bridge and its cannon & parapet saved. I would give to Springdale to help their rehabilitation projects. I would hire professionals to refinish our home’s wood floors and add an addition to our house to expand our kitchen and put a full bath on the main floor. I might even hire someone to do our laundry because we can never stay on top of that. A vacation would be nice too.

On the other hand, we’ll have to get a good security system installed, as I’m sure once our names are printed in the paper we will be the victim of multiple attempted robberies. Our every move would be scrutinized by the press and local bloggers. Privacy would be the exception instead of the rule. I would struggle to teach my children how to stay fiscally responsible when money literally sprouted from a tree. My front door would be knocked on and the phone would be ringing off the hook by the Museum Group, every charity in Central Illinois, family, friends, acquaintances, and Lord knows who else that wants a piece of the pie.

I like to pretend that having more money than I know what to do with would not change my life, but it would and dramatically so. Even though we’re mired in debt as it seems most everyone is these days, I think my life is better off the way it is than how it would be if I won 33 million dollars.

If I had a mere million dollars? The Barenaked Ladies have already considered this possibility. I’d be rich, of course.

Steve Tarter’s Sunday PJStar review of the book “What didn’t play in Peoria” got me thinking about who Peorians are and what Peoria is.

What is Peoria to you? This is what Peoria is to me…

The hub of Central Illinois.

A place where cultural diversity should be, but is not always embraced.

Sometimes backward thinking.

Full of history that most don’t seem to care about.

Average, if you want it to be.

Adventure filled, if you search it out.

Exciting, if you want it to be.

5% White Sox fans, 40% Cub fans, 40% Cardinal fans and 15% who don’t care.

Home to Bradley University, Haddads, Avanti’s and Aggatucci’s.

A great place to raise children.

Conservative to a fault.

Where College graduates will return to raise their own families.

Like a big city.

Like a small town.

Home.

The Good:

Tight undulating fairways with mature trees make for a challenging golf course. The middle section of the course, holes 6 through 12, is fairly wide open, but gives a nice variety to the course. Although it is not a particularly long course overall, there is a 585 yard par 5, three of the par 4’s are over 400 yards, and all four par threes measure over 170 yards. The course was in good shape and the greens were smooth and speedy. You’ll definitely need to bring your ‘A’ game here and you would be wise to not automatically grab your driver on every tee box.

The Bad:

Nearly ever hole is lined on the left-hand side with 70’s era houses. There is nothing wrong per-se with having homes line a golf course, but these are too close and too ugly.  Holes three and four are the only holes which do not have out of bounds because those are the only two holes which don’t have houses either along the fairway or behind the green. The design of the course does not have the 9th hole returning to the clubhouse and the “halfway house” appears have closed long ago, so grabbing a bite to eat halfway through the round is not an option. There was a drink cart, and while it carried an ample supply of refreshments, it did not carry food. Upon returning to the clubhouse after a long round I found they were not serving food either. Good thing I ate a biscuit for breakfast!

The Ugly:

My scorecard. It was a fun round, but the course ate my lunch, as opposed to me eating lunch at the course. I don’t plan on rushing back, but I will return if for nothing else than to retrieve my pride. I left it on the 17th green.

Blue: Par 71, 6604yds, 72.1 rating, 128 slope.
White: Par 71, 6230yds, 70.3 rating, 124 slope.
1620 Summit Drive
Pekin, Il  61554
347-7553

As printed in the July edition of National Geographic Magazine, this is my favorite storyteller’s top ten list of State Fair fun.

1. To eat food with your two hands.

2. To feel extreme centrifugal force reshaping your face and jowls as you are flung or whirled turbulently and you experience that intense joyfulness that is indistinguishable from anguish, or (as you get older) to observe other persons in extreme centrifugal situations.

3. To mingle, merge, mill, jostle gently, and flock together with throngs, swarms, mobs, and multitudes of persons slight or hefty, punky or preppy, young or ancient, wandering through the hubbub and amplified razzmatazz and raw neon and clouds of wiener steam in search of some elusive thing, nobody is sure exactly what.

4. To witness the stupidity of others, their gluttony and low-grade obsessions, their poor manners and slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, pop-eyed yahootude, and feel rather sophisticated by comparison.

5. To see the art of salesmanship, of barking, hustling, touting, and see how effectively it works on others and not on cool you.

6. To see designer chickens, the largest swine, teams of mighty draft horses, llamas, rare breeds of geese, geckos, poisonous snakes, a two-headed calf, a 650-pound man, and whatever else appeals to the keen, inquiring mind.

7. To watch the judging of livestock.

8. To observe entertainers attempt to engage a crowd that is moving laterally.

9. To sit down and rest amid the turmoil and reconsider the meaning of life.

10. To turn away from food and amusement and crass pleasure and to resolve to live on a higher plane from now on.

-Garrison Keillor

On top of his game, Woods leads PGA Championship by four strokes

Tiger Woods watched the last of his three straight birdies take one last turn and drop into the cup.

The final birdie putt gave this major that look of inevitability, with some frightening figures to back it up. Woods is 8-0 in the majors when leading after 36 holes. He has never lost any tournament when leading by four shots going into the weekend.

This was printed in the Journal Star’s Saturday edition, and after I read it I told my wife that Tiger Woods, as good as he is, may not win the final major of the the year.  If I were a betting man, all my money would be on him of course, but writing off the rest of the field halfway through the tournament proved to be premature.

Watching the final round and seeing all the stats the CBS threw out about Tiger, there was no way he was going to lose the last Major of the year.

He did.

Congrats to Y.E. Yang.

From the Peoria Journal Star:

Ron Cox, the president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 416, the union representing 157 CityLink employees, said Simon Properties, the owner of Northwoods, has asked CityLink to suspend most of its routes to the mall.

“It’s a bunch of crap,” said Cox on Tuesday. “They want the buses off the lot.”

Cox said Simon is reportedly concerned about the damage the buses are causing to the mall’s parking lot.

I think it’s obvious what is happening here. Simon doesn’t want “undesirables,” whatever that means, shopping at Northwoods, and it appears to be corporate policy.

Take a Denver, CO mall for example. A Simon representative was actually caught on tape saying “We want to reduce the negative, um, aspects of the Center — one of them is the young, black customer.”

Or how about El Paso, TX where a group has filed a lawsuit against Simon under the Americans with Disabilities Act after the buses were pulled.

Frank Lozano, José Lara and Desert Adapt, an advocacy organization for disabled people, filed a civil suit Wednesday in state District Court against the owners of Cielo Vista Mall.

“Crossing the expansive parking lot is like searching aimlessly for the shore in the middle of the ocean,” said Lozano, who is blind.

Yet another example, from Pittsburgh.

Century III isn’t the only area mall that has rolled back the welcome mat for bus riders, says Barbara Simpson, who co-chairs the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network’s (PIIN) public-transportation task force. Simpson notes that Century III is following a precedent set by South Hills Village Mall and Ross Park Mall (both of which are also owned by Simon Property).

“They’re disenfranchising a number of people,” says Simpson, who also sits on the Allegheny County Transit Council, an advisory group for the Port Authority. Long treks across parking lots can be dangerous for the elderly and disabled, Simpson says: “They’re trying to prevent a certain population from shopping at their mall.”

In recent years, both those malls have moved bus stops farther from mall entrances, relocating them by hundreds of feet.

Simon Properties doesn’t want buses at Northwoods because it is damaging the parking lot? Hardly the only reason.

While I’m not immune to misspellings and grammatical errors, I’m also not in charge of placing historical markers. This is embarrassingly bad.

Over the weekend as we were exiting Havana, my wife was looking at a map and said “There’s actually a town called Goofy Ridge!?”

I forgot about it until I heard this morning’s severe weather forecast which in part said “towns in the path of this storm are Havana, Forest City, Goofy Ridge…” Curiosity got the best of me, so here’s the legend of how Goofy Ridge got its name -

Years back it was just The Ridge, a camp near the river bank where moonshiners and other carousers met weekly to do their drinking. After some serious drinking one night, a local game warden said he wasn’t too drunk to shoot a walnut off the head of a volunteer. Naturally, someone was drunk enough to volunteer. The game warden placed the tiny target on the volunteer’s head, aimed his .22 rifle, and shot the nut right off. This caper was called by a witness “one damned goofy thing to do,” and the camp was ever after known as Goofy Ridge.

aside – I have a framed 1898 map of Illinois hanging in my home and neither The Ridge or Goofy Ridge is listed.

The Illinois River Road National Scenic Byway Southern Gateway.

It was raining on Saturday morning, but my meteorological expertise told me that it would move out by noon, so we threw together a loose adventure plan and hit the road. We decided to take the lower portion of the Illinois River Road to Havana and back. I had never been to Havana before, nor had my wife, so off we went down Route 24.

Before leaving we had to gather our supplies: Music. Check. A map. Check. A good traveling companion. Check. Freshly charged batteries for my camera. Not exactly – would have to selectively take photos.

While passing through the town situated on a bluff called Little America we slowed down for some St. Jude runners and my wife suggested we visit Dickson Mounds before hitting Havana with the assumption that the rain will pass while we go through the museum. Around 10:30am we pulled in to a large parking lot and parked in the very first spot, as we were the only car there. The museum was open and free of charge, which somewhat surprised me as I was expecting to pay at least $5 admission. Somewhat interesting, but underwhelming is how I would describe it. The most interesting portion of the entire museum had nothing to do with the artifacts or the burial grounds, but the history of the museum. It starting as a privately owned road side attraction where you could see Indian bones, was sold to the State in the 1965 and closed briefly in the early 1990’s for renovations after Indian groups finally won their long fought battle to have the exposed bones of their ancestors respectfully covered.

Off to Havana where we were deeply disappointed. The 1901 Carnegie Library was handsome, but the supposedly quaint downtown wasn’t much to see, nor was the riverfront. The 1899 water tower was interesting, but the cemetery down the street was in such disrepair I almost got sick to my stomach. Time to leave…

Following the Illinois River on the eastern side headed north we saw a sign for The Shed Bar & Grill which couldn’t have come at a better time, because we were starving. I can’t say we exactly fit in, but we were driving a pickup truck, and parked amongst a half dozen other pickups. I couldn’t resist the local flavor of the hand breaded twice as big as the bun tenderloin sandwich, while my wife opted for a more traditional cheeseburger. Deep fried cheeseballs made our lunch just right.

Next, after getting lost and driving in a large loop, we found Forest City; the gateway to Sand Ridge State Forest. Of course it was still overcast and raining, so we didn’t hike any of the near 50 miles of trails, nor did we see any cactus as advertised, but we see the perfectly aligned rows of pine trees in the pine forest, drove on a natural sand road, and saw several deer. We will be back.

Rounding out day 1, we drove north through Manito, Kingston Mines and passed two more groups of St. Jude runners in Pekin. Not wanting the adventure day to end, we stopped briefly at Fort Creve Couer and then home to Peoria and out to a movie.

The Illinois River Road National Scenic Byway Northern Gateway.

After discussing various options, we decided to explore parts of the northern leg of the Illinois River Road.

Before leaving we had to gather our supplies: Music. Check. A map. Check. A good traveling companion. Check. Freshly charged batteries for my camera. Check.

After giving my wife a brief tour of my favorite local park, Historic Springdale Cemetery, we headed up Route 26 through Spring Bay, over to Low Point, through the cute town of Washburn, the blip on the map called La Rose, and few roads less traveled eventually ending in Toluca. The venerable Mona’s seemed to be closed for lunch, so we dined at the slightly more upscale sister restaurant Capponi’s. While in Toluca we checked out Coal Mine Park, and I nearly got blown over attempting to take a picture of a freight train moving past at full steam. My wife laughed her butt off, while my life flashed before my eyes.

With no plan, we headed further north and decided to check out Starved Rock State Park. Upon arrival, the huge parking lot packed full of cars reminded me of our trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It was unbearably overcrowded with Chicagoans doing their own day trips.  After driving around for a bit, we agreed that we should come back in the off season on a weekday instead. Any natural beauty seemed very distant. Time to leave…

While I have been to LaSalle/Peru many times, I had never taken the time to see the grand architecture and beautiful churches on terraced bluffs overlooking the Illinois. Leaving, we took Route 29, briefly stopping at a Hennepin Canal lock and headed south on a familiar road. Again, getting close to home and not wanting the day to end, we pulled into a beautiful cemetery in Henry where photo-ops abound.

Other than the cost of a tank of gas, a few mementos, and lunch, we spent little money.

Like I’ve always said, if you can’t find something to do around here, you’re not looking hard enough. Adventure and beauty surround us, but only if you take the time to slow down and notice it.