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J'ville Around The World

The Source

The bartender was a graduate of MacMurray College. This wouldn’t have been unusual in and of itself. Someone has to tend the bar and a Mac grad can pull a draft as deftly as anyone. But we were in the Izmailovo Hotel in Moscow. I asked him what the heck he was doing there. Without missing a beat he asked, “What the heck are you doing here?” There’s been much talk about Future Gen bringing Jacksonville to the attention of the world. It’s been my experience that Jacksonville is already there. The young man had graduated from Mac, took a knapsack tour of Europe and parts of Asia, ended up in Moscow without a dime and got a job tending bar at the Izmailovo. I said, “Do you speak Russian?” He told me that he spoke enough to get by, and that most of his customers were English speaking. In fact, that’s how he got his job…he could understand the American businessmen. I never cease to be amazed at the fact you can travel nearly anywhere in the world yet run into someone from “back home.” My Triopia touring group was into the second week of our European tour and were getting ready to fly out of Frankfort, Germany. Before we departed our coach took us to the historically ornate city of Heidelberg. In fact, a young girl in our group had been born in Heidelberg while her father was serving a tour of duty. The great highlight of this trip was watching the mother and daughter stand in tears as they viewed the city from the famed Heidelberg Castle. We’d done the tour guide bit and were knocking around in the castle’s vast wine cellar when I heard a voice ring out between the wine casks.. “Ken! Is that you?” I thought that one of our group had become lost in the cellar. I turned around to see Donald Eldred and his touring group from Illinois College. It’s strange whom you can meet in a basement full of German wine. (I should note that the IC group toured a few things other than wine cellars. After all, Don is an Episcopalian.) On our tour of Amsterdam my students were anxious to visit the home of Anne Frank and I was glad to oblige. Miss Frank’s home is located in a section of Amsterdam that’s now less than opulent, and I had taken my tour rather quickly so I could be out on the street to guide my kids back onto the bus. This was not a part of town where a young girl from Arenzville should be alone. I was standing on the steps of our touring coach and asked the driver if he’d ever been to the states. “Oh yah…” he said. “But a little town. You’ve never heard of it.” “Try me,” I said. “Oh…Jacksonville, Illinois…Springfield, Mt. Sterling. I haf a girlfriend who lives in Quincy and I stay vis her in der wintertime.” Small world indeed. I asked him what he liked best about the U.S. and he told me, “Da bowling alleys, dey stay open all night.” Although Sarah Palin’s Alaska is indeed a part of the United States, I’m always surprised to bump into a local while sailing the Inside Passage. We’d attended a church service onboard, conducted by a catholic priest. Clergy and doctors can usually get a reduced rate aboard a cruise ship if they make themselves available for spiritual or medical emergencies. Chatting with the priest afterwards, he told me he was from Chapin, attended Routt, and went into the priesthood from there. I wish I could remember the guy’s name because no amount of my inquiring around the Chapin neighborhood has discovered any local boy who’d become a priest. And priests don’t lie. Once I scored a triple. Steering my young scholars through Westminster Abbey, we ran into a group from Springfield. Their tour director’s parents lived in Jacksonville. The poor fellow was much too nice a guy to be guiding teenagers around Europe and things were not going well. I gave him a bit of advice on how to kick domestic butt on foreign soil, then we parted…until I ran into him at (appropriately) Les Miserables that night, then again at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He may have been following me. While touring a botanical garden in Nassau, I bumped into a young Jacksonville couple on their honeymoon. I could tell it was their honeymoon for their interests were roaming far from the flowers. I’ll omit their name since they are no longer a touring couple. Maybe it was the orchids. So….those who hope to latch onto Future Gen as a way to get our town known ‘round the world…sorry. We’re already there.