Destination Jacksonville!
The Source
Destination Jacksonville!
It’s the dream of every city council, Chamber of Commerce, and mayor to have their burg designated a “Destination City,” a place where people don’t simply pass through, but actually make it their target for a good time, be it a weekend or an extended vacation. Branson is a destination city. Chicago is designated a destination. Murrayville is not. Literberry . . . even less so. So what do we do, what can we offer to make Jacksonville a true vacation goal for the families of the Midwest and the world? What attractions make us unique enough to get our town listed at the top spot in the Midwest Living and National Geographic travel issues? Sure we have the Ferris wheel and the new water plant, but can we offer the travel world that’s truly unique and unusual enough to draw hoards of vacationing families? Until someone comes up with better ideas, I’d offer a few things that might draw a crowd. The Hardees Paper Shuffle. Each morning at our local Hardees we’re treated to a time-honored and well-timed event in which various daily newspapers are passed among the coffee crowd with precision and near accuracy. A fellow on the east (more conservative) side of the restaurant will read his USA Today then hand it off to a guy in the middle (progressive) section who is just finishing up his Jacksonville Journal Courier in time to toss it to a reader on the west (radical) side of the restaurant who executes a well-rehearsed handoff of his Springfield Journal Register to the group back on the east end. It’s highly refined tango of precision and beauty as only three papers are purchased but the entire restaurant benefits. Of course everyone has read the Source by this time. Think of the New York City Ballet staffed by octogenarian news hounds. Some mornings I skip reading the paper altogether and simply sit amazed at the accuracy and beauty of the paper passing. (The biscuits are good, too.) Bumper Cars. This event happens year ‘round and it’s held about 150 times a day just off Morton Avenue. The customers coming and going from Home Depot, County Market, Buffalo Wild Wings, China King, Jacksonville Savings Bank and Fujiyama all converge on the entrance/exit to Morton Avenue with absolutely indication of who has the right-of-way. I can see families from perhaps Utah, Houston, and Milwaukee lining their lawn chairs up in the bank’s parking lot and watching the drivers come nose to nose from four directions with absolutely no idea of who gets to go first. The Morgan County Fair has always drawn sizable crowds to the fair’s demolition derby and these will be much newer automobiles. The Great Jacksonville Slip & Slide. Water parks are all the rage throughout our nation’s vacation spots and Jacksonville should take a back seat to none of these destinations whenever the town is slammed with more than an inch of rain. Gremlins creep into the town’s drainage system when the rains start coming down and previously safe streets turn into a float trip down the Current River at high tide. No Wet and Wild Waterpark in the world can match the thrill of driving down some of our worst drained thoroughfares like Morton, the far west end of Lafayette or large stretches of East State. Since the town is always looking for new business ventures I’d suggest a swimsuit store on each end of Morton, perhaps seasonally like the fireworks tents. A Zip Line Through History. By far the hottest resort items are the zip lines popping up in every tourist spot in the country. Any vacation destination with two trees and a cable now touts the highest, the fastest, the longest, the most scenic, the most nausea-inducing, whatever . . . zip line in the world. Jacksonville has no such zip line at present, but I can foresee a time when we can combine the town’s rich history with the thrill of an amusement park by stretching our own zippy line over the heads of our city. To get plenty of height and to allow gravity to do its thing we’ll need to start the ride in the middle of Illinois College then string cables over the Duncan Mansion before taking a wicked turn to the east flying around the statue in the middle of the Square sending the riders screaming toward General Grierson’s house, Woodland Farm, then dumping the passengers out at the pavilion in Nichols Park. I can see a real opportunity for a lemonade concession at the end of the line and perhaps autographed pictures of Mayor Andy Ezard could be sold as they leave the park. And if we can succeed in turning our town into a Destination City, then Pisgah can’t be far behind.