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Jacksonville at Dawn

The Source

I like mornings. . . always have. There’s something about walking into a sunrise while the day is still a blank, unmessed slate that sort of gives me hope. And being raised in a farming community my circadian rhythm has developed an early-morning beat. I never milked a cow but I had a father who believed that anyone who slept past 5 a.m. was a sluggard who’d undoubtedly grow up to be a bum, an idiot, and a drain on society. Many sunrises find me winding my way to Hardees for breakfast. It’s quiet, clean, peaceful, tasty and most of Jacksonville’s problems are settled by 7 a.m. as the local collection of sages meet for their morning coffee. There’s an east group and a west group gathered at the breakfast booths, and although I’m not sure how you gain admission to either, they seem pretty stable in their membership. The guys themselves may not be stable but their numbers and names appear constant. But the most interesting part of my morning journey is what’s happening on the streets and sidewalks of Jacksonville as the sun begins to poke its nose over the eastern horizon. I purposely take various and meandering routes to Hardees just to get a feel of what’s happening in the early morning city and I’ve made a few observations. Like. . .the closer you get to the edges of town the faster the foot traffic. People tend to walk briskly around the Jacksonville Square but when you travel through the outlying edges of town you’ll find more runners. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a traffic problem. The parks also have their own personality. Drive by Duncan Park and you’ll see runners but Community Park is mostly people by walkers. Maybe it’s something about the place’s history as a mental asylum that slows them down. Dogs and their walkers seem heaviest in the region between Illinois College and Walnut. I often see one particular lady near I.C. who’s being pulled down the street by what must be one of the largest black dogs in existence. I’m not sure of the breed but I think he may be a Clydesdale. The lady looks well kept and intelligent so I presume she knows that it’s actually the dog that’s taking her for a walk and not the other way around. I don’t know whether the hound cleans up after her. And it seems that the further west you go in Jacksonville the smaller the dogs become. Although I’m sure there are exceptions, West Jacksonville seems to be peopled. . .or rather, “dogged” with a multitude of miniatures. And I’ve only taken a few early morning trips through South Jacksonville but on several occasions I’ve noticed that the dogs there appear to be a bit wilder. In fact, you’ll sometimes see dogs walking themselves with no owner in sight. Perhaps the town’s nearness to the countryside has allowed a few wolves to wander into town and strike up relationships with the domestic locals. North Diamond has a delightful number of porch sitters in the early hours. I like this. More people should sit on their porches to greet the sunrise with the sound of birds and the smell of coffee. Strangely, East State and East College seem almost devoid of any foot traffic in the early morning hours. I suspect that many of these folks work the early shift. Another area that seems walker-less in the morning is the area around Routt Catholic and MacMurray, however I suspect that the heavy traffic in that part of town might be the cause of people to do their walking somewhere safer. oHHo ButBut But this heavy traffic theory doesn’t hold well when you consider Walnut Street, one of the heaviest trafficked thoroughfares in town yet a street that’s absolutely rife with walkers and joggers. Maybe for the sake of their own well being the town’s runners like to be close to Passavant. The Jacksonville Square itself is pretty much dead in the early hours of the day. If you drive around the Square at 7 p.m. you’ll have to thrash somebody to get a place to park but at 6 a.m. you can do donuts in front of the Farmer’s Bank. There’s a little bleed over traffic from Norma’s but that delightful little restaurant doesn’t host many joggers in the morning. I think it may have something to do with the richness of her pies. On the whole, early morning Jacksonville is a pleasant place to be. Oh, there’s that one guy on East Independence who sits on his front porch in way less clothing than the Lord hath ordained, but at least we have variety.