Leftover Amish Country Details

No posting till Monday. Special weekend ahead, though we're not going anywhere. But I'm already scheming to go somewhere else, now that it's summer. This year, for various reasons, it isn't likely that we'll go as far as last year. Still, somewhere is better than nowhere. I can come away with a collection of details even from a short trip like you might leave a beach with shells. The following are the last odd lot of details from our trip to east-central Illinois.

I'm not sure what use the Plain People might have for football, but most of Arcola, Illinois, must take its high school football seriously. I understand. I grew up in Texas. Along Illinois 133, which is the main road into town, the telephone poles have been painted with likenesses of members the high school football team -- the Purple Riders. Amateur portraits, but they got heart.

Turns out it's a team with a rich history. According to the town's web site, "Since the first Arcola football team took the field in 1894, Arcola has become the third-winningest high school program in state history, as well as one of the most recognized programs in the state.

"...the nickname “Purple Riders” did not come along until [over] 30 years later. In the mid 1930s, the football team was in the midst of a 33-game winning streak, at the time the longest in the nation, when a reporter for the News-Gazette in Champaign wrote an article with the headline, 'The Purple and White Rides Again,' giving the team the nickname 'Purple Riders.' ”

Walnut Point State Park, where we camped for two nights, had a concession shack with a pretty good short-order service. We had dinner there one day. A shelf's worth of paperback books were also for sale at the concession, 25¢ each, near the order window. Maybe these were books that people had brought with them to the park, but had decided to leave. Most of them were what you'd expect -- heavy on bodice-rippers etc. But one title was Reading Lolita in Teheran, which I'd heard of, but never bought or read. So I bought it for a quarter. Randomness ought to be a factor in one's reading diet. I finished two chapters while at the campsite, and will pick it up again before long. It's a good book, the memoir of a civilized woman who had to put up with the theocrats who run Iran.

Oakland, Illinois, can be traversed in about five minutes. It has a town square tucked away among its other structures. Maybe that square has seen good times; certainly it has; but the early 21st century aren't those times. The place was gloomy. Maybe it was just the overcast skies. But the run-down buildings along the square, plus a large old house that had been damaged by fire recently, didn't help. Still, I wanted to see the monument in the middle of the square. It was Memorial Day, after all. Someone had decorated the edges of sidewalk leading to the monument with small flags, forming a spot of color in the square, so that was something. The monument consisted of two statues sharing one plinth, one of a soldier and the other sailor, clearly World War I vintage, with the names of locals who had participated in that war carved in the plinth. All of it was weathered and dark.

As usual, after I leave a place, I discover something I should have seen, and so it was in Oakland. But now I wonder: was that burned house near the square the historic Hiram Rutherford house? I may have to find out. In any case, there's a story I didn't know hiding in Oakland.