Murphysboro, Illinois - September 13-14, 2008

I strolled around Murphysboro, revisiting places I remember from my boyhood.

Pictures of the house my mother, sisters, and I lived in.



Front.


Rear. There used to be a small, four-room house behind the main house. My sister Kris lived there for a year after graduating from high school. There was also a two-car garage that was falling apart when we bought the place in 1965. By 1968, it was in such bad shape that I hired a friend of mine, Rusty Hiser, to tear it down. He did it by kicking it repeatedly and tearing it apart mostly with his hands. He said it was very therapeutic. The red truck is parked about where the garage was. Rusty Hiser passed away a year or so ago; that blank piece of earth is his memorial.


Side view, showing the north side of the house. The window with the air conditioner was Remy's room. It was actually a finished room with a door. Heat came up through a grill in the floor. Kris lived in the dormer over the front porch. Her "room" had no door nor any direct heat. No wonder she moved into the small house as soon as Mother would let her.



Murphysboro Township High School--or at least, it was when I lived a block away on 20th street. It is now a junior high, I believe. The new high school is on the north end of town. The statue in the center is a high-relief of General John Logan, who, at the outbreak of the Civil War, kept the southernmost 14 counties of Illinois from breaking away from the rest of the state and joining the Confederacy and forming Southern Illinois, much as West Virginia broke away from Virginia and joined the Union. The small plot of land the monument rests on is the smallest state park in Illinois.


Logan Junior High School. This school was almost completely destroyed by the Tri-State tornado in 1925.



Jim Frye's house.


Same, side view.


Sara and I lived here for a summer a year before we got married: 13 1/2 North 13th Street. A train line still runs down 13th street, but no trains run on it. The brick passenger station is now an employment service.



The watertower, with the Apple Festival logo.


"1001 NACHTS" ride at the Apple Festival.


Interior staircase in the Eagle's Lodge. The interior is now a historical museum with docents in 1860's garb.


Prize-winning storefront exhibit, using this year's festival theme, "Ripe with Possibilities."


Tippy's, where I ate lunch that day and breakfast the next (after Ike blew into town).


Tippy's, interior. The figurine of Christ and the children is next to the cash register. The sign on the wall says, "Have you read my book? There will be a test. --God"


Borgsmiller's; the reunion dinner was held next door.


This stone plaque mentions that the building was rebuilt after the original was "destroyed by fire, Mar. 18, 1925." What the plaque doesn't mention is that was the day the Tri-State tornado ripped through Murphysboro, reducing nearly every wooden structure to kindling. The town, already devastated, caught fire. The flames of Murphysboro burning could be seen as far away as Carbondale.



The next day, Hurricane Ike blew through town. The temperature dropped several degrees, and some of the Apple Festival decorations were blown down; large tree limbs were scattered everywhere. I left town after filling up at Tom's, a combination discount grocery store and gas station--hence the clever slogan, "Our Food Gives You Gas."

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