Ticket to fantastic and eccentric
BOOKS | Anita Stienstra
Oddball Illinois: A Guide to 450 Really Strange Places, by Jerome Pohlen, is your ticket to the fantastic and eccentric in the land of Lincoln. The book offers interesting information about unusual people, locations and museums, oddities and bizarre histories from the Mississippi River banks of Quincy to Ashmore, and from Cairo to the streets of Chicago.
Have you always wondered where all the holy visitations in the Windy City took place? Oddball Illinois lists many. Maybe you remember the weeping Our Lady of the Underpass made famous in 2005. The location and story synopsis are in the book. Also in the volume is Our Lady of Cicero, the other weeping icon declared a miracle by eight Orthodox bishops in 1994.
Entries are condensed and brief for the most part, but intriguing and amusing. Each includes the address, direction, phone number, website, admission price and operating hours, if the information is available or if the venues are not free and open to the public.
Oddball Illinois reads like a travel guide to the fantastic. So if you are Ponce de Leon longing for hidden treasures and new discoveries calls, this book will be right up your alley. With this reference, you can plan a week’s trip around the state or a weekend excursion to one specific town.
New experiences wait for you in places such as a humble little downstate eatery that cooks what many consider the tastiest burgers you will ever eat. Or a fun house menagerie, with scares and sillies like no other you have attended.
Or you might opt for a themed tour.
There is a small section in the book with “The Dead Circus Sideshow Tour” boasting 11 stops; another is called “The Mob Mania Tour.” Of course there’s plenty of “the world’s largest” or “the world’s first” to check out on your travels, too.
Four maps and two indexes will guide the way. One handy index lists attractions by town. The capital city, by the way, has 17 entries. Decatur has six; Taylorville, four; Lincoln three, along with other smaller community listings. You don’t have to travel far to get a start on your excursion to the odd in our state.
And even if you won’t be hitting the pavement anytime soon, it’s a fun, quirky 325page book to read. Published in May of this year by Chicago Review Press, the book is Pohlen’s second edition, the first printed in 2000. Pohlen is a Chicago editor and educational writer who has penned 10 travel guides.
Oddball Illinois’ cover price is $16.95. Available at bookstores everywhere, also available in electronic form.