I’m just back from knocking around Cobden and Southern Illinois, wandering aimfully I like to say. Others ballyhoo Yellow Moon Café, and well they should. If only every village of 1150 folks could have such a place(and only one letter short of YMCA). My desire is more to promote visiting Cobden in a general way. I met the now ex-mayor a couple years ago, an old, feisty progressive named Molly Beckley. Cool enough, but it’s where I met her that excites. It was a P’urhepecha in the town-long park bordering the train tracks. That’s a cultural celebration that comes from Cheran in Michoacan, Mexico. People from there have come to this area for years to harvest peaches and apples. Now they infuse the place with Hispanic life and, as the ex-mayor wisely saw, tax dollars so welcome in a struggling town. Of course the Peach Festival is still more famous. Then there’s the museum. Rumor has it some avid collector’s wife finally had enough — «But, dear, you already have an arrowhead» — so the guy ended up decluttering the house and starting a museum. It’s right next door to the Mexican grocery. In addition to all the things in all the little museums, it has a jawdropping collection of Kirkpatrick pottery from just down the road in Anna. Oh, sure, there are presentation pig flasks and pipe bowls destined for sales to southern slaves, but it’s sections of ceramic funeral markers and chimneys that really do the jaw-drop. And for those longtime Illinois natives, yes, it was the Cobden Appleknockers who won a state high school boys’ basketball championship back in 1964. Do drop by when you can.
