Take Note, Illinois—Kentucky Knows How to Party

By Bob Wire, 7-12-08

	Caption: Man, 20,000 people?!? No wonder they need so much catsup...

Fuck Illinois.

It’s not just the proliferation of Jesus signs and the lack of decent beer. This state has the worst roads I’ve seen since we left Missoula. As chief navigator, I’ve been trying to balance the route between generic-but-fast interstate, and slower-but-interesting state highways. But Illinois, man, these peckerheads couldn’t pave the parking lot of a cement factory. They somehow space these giant cracks in the road so that you hit one every two seconds. Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk. How am I supposed to keep from spilling Milwaukee’s Best all over my shorts while contemplating my life of sin?

But here’s what really put the “ill” in Illinois for me: After a night in a run-down but welcome motel south of St. Louis, we were back on the campground circuit. We pulled into Massac State Park yesterday, July 4th, at about 4:30, just across the Ohio River from Paducah, Kentucky. We quit the road early, on account of the holiday, and we were a little anxious about finding a spot. We did find one, though, and promptly pitched the tent and made camp. When I went to the campground host’s trailer to pay our fee, he informed me that the $10 fee had been jacked up to $30.

“Just for the holiday weekend,” he said with an oily smile. Lovely. He said we could have a “tents only” spot for $10. I peered back through the poison ivy filled woods at a little gathering of brightly colored dome tents, surrounded by roped dogs and kids running around in nothing but diapers. I think I saw a goat cooking on a spit. I told him we’d stay where we were. Nothing like a little patriotic price-gouging to fill those Illinois DNC coffers. The extra skim sure as shit wasn’t going to the DOT to fix the roads. Who knows, this miscreant could have been pocketing the extra dough himself.

I was not impressed with the Land of Lincoln. Surely old Honest Abe would not approve of profiteering on the very holiday weekend that celebrates this nation’s freedom. They don’t pull that shit in Montana, do they?

There were some redeeming sights in Illinois, to be sure. The most impressive to me was the Indian mounds at Cahokia. Seems a native civilization had a community there of 20,000 people sometime between 1000 A.D. and 1500. They were similar in style to the Mayans, hence the huge mounds, which were shaped like pyramids with their tops cut off. By the time the first white explorers arrived, the tribe had vanished, leaving no known descendants. How do archeologists know this without any evidence outside of some pottery shards and a few ancient cigarette wrappers? According to one marker I read, they were digging in the thousand-year old site, and came upon the ruins of a 400-year-old interpretive center.

When we left the mounds, we drove around Collinsville for a goddamn half hour trying to find the world’s biggest ketchup bottle. We did. The transition from the Indian mounds to the ketchup bottle was jarring. Man, if we could have tracked down the Jesus Putt Putt course, it would have been the tourist trifecta.

So we had found our campsite and dealt with that whole financial rim job, and we cooked up a big pot of beenie weenies for a quick dinner. Then it was back in the truck to go to the fireworks display in Paducah. We drove across the river and joined a couple thousand people in the riverfront park, and the city brass band played selections from The Music Man and other stirring numbers. Kids ran around sporting various glow-in-the-dark bullshit and dripping ice cream on everybody. Old people sat in their lawn chairs, in spots they’d probably staked out just after breakfast. I felt like I was on some weird field trip from the retirement home. Barb took the kids to the concession stand for cold drinks, and a hundred conversations buzzed around me while I snoozed on our blanket.

Finally, a state-of-the-art fireworks show blasted off the deck of a barge in the river. Smoke filled the valley, and the crowd went ape shit. It was impressive as any pro fireworks show is these days, and went on for nearly half an hour.

I found myself thinking back to the fireworks show put on by the Pocatello, Idaho Chamber of Commerce in the early 80’s: three guys on a playground merry-go-round, holding lit sparklers, while the chief of police pushed them faster and faster with one hand, holding a burning book of matches with the other. They had some budget problems.

Then came the lovely drive through the smoky darkness in heavy traffic down strange streets through a town we’d never seen, to find a distant campground in an unfamiliar place. At this point I will only say that I was the one who had a meltdown, and I did later apologize to everyone in the family for my behavior. I will be having the tires balanced and the alignment re-adjusted this week. Not much I can do about the teeth marks in the dashboard.

I did stop and ask for directions at a convenience store (Kentucky supermarket), and the woman had to repeat it twice. The further south we get, the heavier the accents are. You know what, the southern accent just makes stupid people sound stupider. I’m sorry, but it does.

We all had a shower at the luxury-priced campground in the morning, and hit the highway. We drove out Interstate 24, passing a large billboard announcing Wayne Newton’s appearance at the Paducah Harrah’s this very night. I assume he must have lost a bet.

As we crossed the river, leaving the “ill & noise” forever, the road immediately got smoother. Probably due to that sleek underbed of pure Kentucky tobacco.

And then there’s the Cadiz Incident…

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