Another Atlanta

On this trip to St. Louis, I also managed to visit Atlanta. With a population of about 1,650, Atlanta, Illinois, is just off I-55 a few miles northeast of Lincoln, Illinois, which is up the road from Springfield.

We stopped in Lincoln for lunch on the way back from St. Louis on Saturday. Lincoln, the seat of Logan County, has a courthouse square that I’d been to before, though I didn’t remember that until I got there. For lunch, we did our little part to support non-chain, small-town eateries. I wish I could remember its name. But if you’re ever in Lincoln around lunchtime (no dinner), look for a plain room with about a dozen seats, including some whitewashed booths, tucked away in the courthouse square. The hamburger’s pretty good there, complete with that sign of non-standardized preparation, a ragged patty edge. Also, all the other customers know the waitress.

On the road again, I noticed a sign I’d seen many times before: Grain Elevator Museum, Exit 140. I’d passed by it many times before, too. This time I decided to stop, and before long Ann and I were face-to-face with the J.H. Hawes Grain Elevator Museum, a stone’s throw from the library of Atlanta, in whose gravel lot I parked. Alas, the museum is only open for a few hours after every lunar eclipse, or some such limited schedule. So we saw the reddish exterior, more barn-like than silo-like, broad for a couple of stories, then tapering upward, which must have been state-of-the-art for grain elevators when Teddy Roosevelt was president, since the information leaflet tells me J.H. Hawes built it in 1903.

We got as far as the entrance to the Atlanta Library, a handsome octagonal brick building, but Ann had other things on her mind, and I had to keep her from wandering off into the street in front of the library. There wasn’t much traffic in Atlanta, but there was some.

As we were driving away, I saw Hot Dog Man. This was a surprise. No signs guide people to it. Grail elevators are fine, but Atlanta ought to be advertising this site on the Interstate instead. More about which tomorrow.