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450 miles of dull, broken up by nothing

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By Bill Wundram | Friday, March 07, 2008 | 5 comment(s)

THERE is no duller ride than the 450 miles from the Quad-Cities to the tip of southern Illinois. It is a trip that could put Dale Earnhardt Jr. to sleep at the wheel.

I vowed this trip would be different. With one hand I would scribble wonders of the state of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Obama. I would try to understand, in my weak mind, that there is something exciting about driving seven or eight hours through Illinois. If I didn’t dawdle, I would make it to Kentucky by dark. Get through Illinois in a day, that’s what Quad-City drivers hope for on their drive to the southland.

First points to break (break?) doldrums: Signs pointing to town names like Opheim, which must be Swedish because Galva and Bishop Hill are near. There is little to enthuse, except to wonder if Swedes eat meatballs instead of lutefisk. A sign says “Rio,” which has nothing to do with de Janeiro. A striped barn near Galva is a peculiar detraction, but nothing much.

I think of Charles Kuralt, who liked to take roads less traveled. He regularly wrote that because of interstates, it is possible to travel across the country without seeing anything. You don’t see much of anything heading toward Peoria, but I still sense an austere beauty in the plains of winter that are scattered with only stubbles of corn, poking their way through snowy fields.

Driving through Peoria used to be fun, when you’d catch a look at the Illinois River through thick girderspans and try to remember when the town reeked of booze from all the distilleries. Now, you bypass downtown and find yourself on more dreary interstates. Up ahead is Morton, but in February there are no carroty-orange mounds of pumpkins, waiting for the canneries of autumn.

I glance up. Through the shiny sun roof I enviously watch a soaring hawk, riding the updrafts. It must be nice. In another life, I’d like to return as a hawk.

On, on, on I roll in a dull concrete drear, trying to remember before the interstate highways ploughed down hills, cut timber, sliced most curves and carved off all corners.

I look. I watch. There is nothing more interesting to see than a heart painted on a silo … a romantic hope of a farmer, looking for a girlfriend or wife? Or, Burma-Shave-like signs haphazardly fastened to a fencerow, something about how more soybeans should be used for oil. It is no match to one real Burma-Shave sign that I remember: “His face was smooth/And cool as ice/And oh Louise/He smelled so nice.”

I’m awed — as often before — at the cross near Effingham. The Cross at the Crossroads, they call it. A sign points to Salem. It has nothing to do with Abe Lincoln, but is claimed to be the fictional city of the TV soaper, “Days of Our Lives.”

Darkness is nigh. We’re over the Kentucky border. We pass Cadiz, where I once took a wrong turn and was told by a stranger, “You’re in moonshine country.”

Outside Paducah, I know I am home free because a baritone is crooning on the car radio, “Get off the stove, grandma, you’re too old to ride the range.”

Four hundred and fifty miles is a long hunk to drive in a day … the dullest drive you’ll ever take this side of Nebraska.

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.