← Columns

Some Pretty Square Memories

The Source

Okay, perhaps I’m easily excitable. But dog-gone it was thrilling to search for a place to park on the south side of the Jacksonville square last week and find that there was nary a space available. I can think of no other time in my life when I’ve been encouraged by an inability to find a place to park my car. Something’s happening downtown. Yes, I realize that residents of Cairo, Egypt, could say the same thing last week while their fellow Egyptians were tearing up the main drag with riots, but in the case of our hometown it’s pretty darned encouraging. Some folks complain that none of the “big” stores are moving into the rejuvenated center of our city, but honey, that ain’t gonna happen…ever. Even the big stores are being squeezed out of business by the even bigger stores, and if they don’t find a place in the local mall then we won’t even have them on the edges of our towns, much less in the center. No, the boutique store seems to be what flourishes in places such as downtown Jacksonville, and “boutique” is a much sweeter word than “Big Box!” or “Discount!” My Lincoln Land students were interviewing Mayor Andy Ezard a couple of months ago in preparation for an upcoming play. Aside from the fact that they felt Jacksonville had one of the few mayors who resembled an NFL linebacker, they came away with the impression that the guy truly lived and died with the fortunes of the town. He told him that the worst part of his job was when he’d be called away from his evening meal with the family to answer an inquiry from the local radio station asking how he felt about another business moving out of town. I drove around the square again looking for a place to park. It brought to mind the night in the late ‘60’s when the downtown square was to be the sight of “The Great Rumble” between a rowdy contingent of Illinois College boys and a group of their counterparts from MacMurray. The details of the argument are fuzzy. One school…perhaps MacMurray…snuck onto the old I.C. football field under cover of darkness with a bit of kerosene and burnt a large “M” across the 50-yard line. The incensed Blueboys took a bit more creative revenge by sneaking down to MacMurray some weeks later with bags of lawn fertilizer. They fertilized a huge “I.C.” into the Mac soccer field. No one noticed that the Highlander field had been fertilized until the following spring when a deep green Illinois College logo greeted their cross-town rivals …and stayed for the rest of the season. So we were scheduled to meet on the town square to have it out. I went along merely as an observer. When it comes to fisticuffs, I’m much better watching than punching. Punches hurt and there was a rumor that the Mac boys were bringing tire irons. My memory of the evening consists of driving many laps around the square looking for the combatants. I learned later that the Mac lads were also cruising the square in search of hilltop blood. Actually, neither group stopped and got out of their cars. That would have meant we’d have had to fight. The rich history keeps stretching backwards…old records show that the county’s previous courthouse stood on the square and that Lincoln complained of the noise made by the hogs rooting under the rickety structure. In researching one of the Passavant Follies I interviewed a man who as a young boy made good spending money by hawking newspapers around the square. He told me, “The paper cost a nickel and I’d get to keep a penny, but if you stood outside the men’s clothing stores you’d get good tips. When I guy walks out in a new suit of clothing he feels like tipping.” And of course a whole generation who became teenagers in the fifties often recall the nights of circling and circling and circling, yearning for some hormonal reaction to their ’57 Chevy or ducktail. One lady told me, “If you got a new hairdo, you did it on Thursday. That way you could show it off on the square on Friday night.” One older J’ville resident told me, “Dad would go down and park the car on the square on Friday nights. Friday was the night the farm people came in to do their trading and he wanted to make sure our family had a good parking place to watch.” Take a drive around the new square…roll down your window and sniff for the old popcorn store next to the Illinois Theatre, listen for the roar of a glass-packed Mustang muffler, and dream of bit of the next reincarnation of a pretty cool place.