Part 3 of personal reflections and historic explorations of the Grafton to Cairo length of Illinois Route 3 by writer and poet Richard Stimac.

In my childhood, my mom took me to Dr. Rose, an eye doctor who had his own office in Alton. The trip was an adventure. I was born and raised in the Midwest, so I all I knew were flat expanses of land beneath even greater expanses of sky. In a different look from the norm, Alton was built on Mississippi River bluffs as they descended towards a river landing. The streets and sidewalks were steep. The buildings were built stair-stepped next to each other. Downtown Alton could drop in San Francisco as a neighbourhood with no side-eye glances.

My mom parked the car in a lot above the roof of the doctor’s office. We used a set of stairs to reach the front door on the street below. For my young mind, downtown Alton was a labyrinth of twists and turns, dark passages, blind spots beyond the rise of a hill, and high vistas of the river and floodplains. There were even the massive ConAgra grain silos that towered like castle turrets above this casbah. Across the street from the silos were the crumbling remains of Illinois’s first state prison. Add in the 19^th century architecture of steel-frame warehouses and picturesque storefronts and Alton did, and still does, have a great deal of charm.

CLARK BRIDGE AND THE RIVER CITY

When you drive east on the cable-stayed Clark Bridge across the Mississippi River, downtown Alton cascades down the sloped bluffs. The bridge itself is a marvel. Just short of a full mile, it looks like the frame of a giant tent. In suspension bridges, like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Goldengate Bridge, the deck support cables run from one master cable that begins at the top of a pylon. With a cable-stayed bridge, each support cable attaches to the top of a pylon. The cables form a fan-like pattern as each one reaches the deck. The design and construction of the Clark Bridge was so innovative that the television documentary series NOVA dedicated an entire episode (“Super Bridge”) to it. The innovation ends once you enter Alton.

Image: Richard Stimac.

Alton is a city that almost was great. With today’s talk of east and west coasts, the cross-continental road, rail and air traffic, and the Midwest’s disparaging nickname as “fly-over country,” we forget that the United States was initially a north-south country of waterways. Merchantmen sailed with great latitude along the Eastern Seaboard. With equal leeway, steamboats plied the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers along with their tributaries. Port towns ruled the nation long before railroads and interstates. Alton was such a river town. Almost 20 miles down river from the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, Alton offered a transfer point for southbound goods to shallower draft boats before the natural obstacle of the Chain of Rocks, an 8.5 mile outcrop of partially submerged limestone, 10 miles south.

I occasionally visit my friend Jeff who lives in Alton. We have lunch downtown, which is mostly empty. There is a coffee shop, antique mall, arts centre, microbrewery, and more than one sports bar—all the things a struggling downtown has, except people. Finding parking is too easy.

LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, AND THE ILLINOIS DEBATES

After lunch one day, we walked down to the corner of Broadway and Market to the life-size bronze statues of 6’4” Republican Abraham Lincoln and 5’4” Democrat Stephen Douglas. This small city park is the location of their last session of seven three-hour debates held for the 1858 Illinois senatorial election. Newspapers reported that the two candidates gazed at a crowd well over 6,000. At that time, state legislatures chose senators, not the popular vote, making the debates somewhat meaningless. For Lincoln, the purpose was to bring the question of slavery to the national forefront. As the national leader for the one-year-old anti-slavery Republican Party, Lincoln argued that slavery must be legal everywhere or nowhere in the United States, while Douglas advocated for each state to choose for itself. Douglas was the politically powerful incumbent. Lincoln, a relatively unknown country lawyer.

Image: Richard Stimac.

Lincoln won the popular vote for the Senate. The Illinois legislature chose Douglas. Two years later in 1860, Lincoln won the presidency. The Civil War began the year after that. I took a picture of Jeff wagging his finger at Lincoln and warning the would-be Senator not to turn his eyes away from the prize.

“JEFF POLITICS“

Jeff and I ate lunch at an organic microbrewery in an old bakery. He was nearly 70 years old; ten years older than me. Both of us suspected that he was somewhere on the Autism spectrum, though he was never diagnosed, being too old for the autism screening schedules that began in the 1980s. He’s obsessed with politics. When I met Jeff in the 1980s, he was a radical Leftist who began to listen to conservative Rush Limbaugh’s radio show to gain insight into the other side. Over time, Jeff was persuaded by Limbaugh’s rhetoric and is now a hardcore right winger. He also talks loudly in public about his views.

I ordered biscuits and gravy with two eggs over easy; and a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. Jeff ordered diet Pepsi. He’s always watching his weight.  Jeff likes to mention that the Democratic Party advocated for slavery and later supported post-Civil War racial segregation. When excited, he raises his voice and gestures wildly. “It’s true!” he said with intense eye-to-eye contact. Alton is a safe place for conservative politics but still, parents with children started to give us looks.

Image: Richard Stimac

“Things change over time. Maybe the parties aren’t exactly the same today as they used to be,” I replied.

Jeff’s eyes bulged. His stiffened hands reached for the sky.

“It’s true! It’s true!” 

I paid for both of us, and we walked to my parked car. Across the street was the building where my eye doctor used to be. A local-chain optometry clinic fills that space now.

Author bio: Richard Stimac lives in the St. Louis area, Missouri, USA. He has published the poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region. He invites you to follow his poetry page on Facebook.

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