Are we where yet?

Just because a joke is old and tired doesn't mean it won't be repeated; in fact, around here, it almost guarantees that it will. Just ask my daughter about "bags of ice", with bag pronounced--and this is key--with the most Minnesotan of accents. While the story falls apart upon explaining, my daughter's exasperated rejoinder--"at least I know I'm in the right car!"-- the last time she heard the punch line assured me that our good-natured torture is effective and that this gag will probably never die. What else are parents for?

On the other hand, I can't say there's much entertainment value in pointing out that we're really in trouble if, as the highway sign indicates, our north-bound vehicle is about to pass El Paso. But what else is there to do, I beg of you, along interstate 55? While Iowa has the scenic rolling hills that will kill me when I finally bike them, and Missouri, of course, is replete with billboards and fireworks stands, Illinois is torture for travelers who long to be distracted, and apparently it was ever thus.

Sure, I'm grasping at straws, or perhaps a dried out corn stalk, but if you had crossed the length of the state twice in 24 hours, so would you. On that stretch of road, where global overpopulation seems like it must be a myth, so sparse are the sights and the towns, it was striking to see the number of places named for somewhere else. It's hardly an Illinois phenomenon. States are full of cities founded by the unoriginal or the homesick. But, driving and driving and driving, I couldn't help but picture, long before that highway, long before even that corn, people stopping for good at some seemingly random somewhere and remembering where they had come from or where they'd rather be, or, maybe, just trying to conjure some sort of view. So El Paso shares an exit with Mackninaw--talk about extremes--and is not too far from Ottawa and Atlanta or Toronto. Was Illinois once really full of fleeing Canadians? Who knew.

My favorite Illinois place-name of all, however, didn't make it onto a highway sign, though it did make the map, and if I can someday stand to pull back onto that interstate, I may have to make a special trip just to see it and pay tribute to its most reality-based citizens: Cornland, Illinois. It may be redundant, but it's certainly true.