Chautauqua Fellow
The Source
The little fellow stood quietly just outside the Chautauqua tent a couple of weeks ago. I thought he looked familiar but couldn’t quite peg him. Then he turned around and I recognized his hiking boots. I still don’t know the guy’s name, but I recognize the boots. He’d been a passenger on our Peoria riverboat three times this summer and every time he saw something to scale he’d tug on his boots and start climbing. One morning…and I’m not making this up… one morning I went down early for breakfast at the Pere Marquette Lodge and the little fellow was climbing up the chimney. The indoor rock face of the fireplace chimney. He teaches something or other at Illinois State University …perhaps rock climbing or aberrant behavior…I don’t know. But he loves nature, art, and everything climbable. He’d heard about the Jacksonville Chautauqua, had a great interest in Edgar Allan Poe (small wonder) and wanted to see our little town on the prairie for the first time. Since I was the only one he knew at the Chautauqua and since I was too short to climb, we struck up a conversation. The man was full of questions. “Why,” he asked, “is this in Jacksonville? Other larger towns don’t have one.” “Well,” said, “it’s a pretty cultural community. And we have a certified madman named Wolf Fuhrig who simply twists enough arms and makes enough calls to make the thing a success.” “But somebody told me…they said you have a college here?” “Three of them.” “You’re joking.” “No… and our own symphony orchestra, a theatre group, several art galleries, and a bunch of organizations that promote the arts.” “Why?” he asked. “I mean, where’d this all come from? You have what…20 thousand something people living here?” This little guy knew his arts. On the following morning he was leaving for a weekend of symphonies and plays in Chicago, and he’s a season ticket member to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington. Each year they pick a season patron to appear as a spear holder in one of their productions and this year he was chosen. The guy nearly wet his toga in delight. But his concern…his amazement…was Jacksonville. “I’ve never heard much about Jacksonville except something to do with Lincoln and every town in the part of Illinois has something to do with Lincoln. You said three colleges? … and your own symphony?” “People here value the arts. I guess that’s the main thing.” He looked over the Chautauqua crowd. “We’d have to push to get this many people to a historically based evening in Bloomington,” he said. “And they seem well-informed.” I wanted to tell this slicker that we’d also discovered the art of peeing indoors, but I let it pass. The fellow playing Poe that evening was one of my fellow entertainers on the riverboat so as soon as he quoth the raven “Nevermore” for the final time, (There was a wind that night and the stuffed raven used as a prop kept falling over. I don’t think the bird could have done Edgar Allan much harm. . .) the little professor went to chat with the evening’s entertainer. I stood there as the crowd filed out and thought myself…you know, we are pretty blessed. You don’t have to leave town to see and hear something worthwhile, and usually it’s of a pretty good quality. Whether your taste runs to stock cars or Stanislavski, Brooks and Dunn or Rogers and Hammerstein, our little Athens of the Midwest still has something interesting and affordable to offer. As the little guy left the Chautauqua tent he said goodbye, and I think to score a final point asked innocently, “Do you have an arts center?” “A what?” “Arts center. Civic auditorium. A place where all these groups can meet?” “Uh…we’ve got a tent.” He smiled and walked away, and although it was dark as I walked across the grass of Community Park to my car, I think I heard someone trying to climb the bandstand.