I’ve written about the National Road in Illinois many times before. But as I work to deprecate my old Roads site, I need to bring a few articles about the road in Illinois from there to here. This is one of them. This is based on recent research and a visit in 2007.
I wrote another post about Casey when I visited it again in 2014; read it here. Since then, Casey has leaned hard into having the World’s Largest of a number of crazy objects, displayed in the open on the city’s streets. Someday I’ll go back and photograph it.
So far, when we left a town on the National Road, the old road soon curved to meet US 40. That was not the case as we left Martinsville; Cumberland Road headed straight for Casey (pronounced KAY-zee). US 40 paralleled it to the north, but far enough away that we couldn’t see it.
WCBH, a radio station licensed to Casey, has such a powerful stick (that’s transmitter and tower in radio lingo) that it can be heard most of the way to Greencastle, Indiana, which is 70 miles east. When I was a sophomore in college, about 35 miles away in Terre Haute, they changed their format to something they called Classic Hits. They had a terrific playlist. I loved WCBH and listened to it a lot – secretly, because as general manager of my college’s radio station I felt honor bound to listen to our station. The format lasted for five years or so until the station had money troubles. A few years later, I got a call from a former radio boss who got the boss gig at the Casey station, changed its format to top 40, and wanted me to come work for him. I said, “You want me to drive where to work for you just on the weekends?” Now I know where.
I once worked with a woman who grew up in Casey. She was glad to leave the old town behind, she said, calling it dumpy and backward. But as we entered town, you could not have convinced me my old colleague was right. As we passed down Main Street, we could just make out the homes from behind the thick line of trees along the street. With only a couple exceptions, these homes, which looked like they were built in the first half of the 20th century, looked like new. Common frame homes stood next to large, grand homes in deep red brick with white trim, creating contrast. I pulled over and we walked along the street taking pictures. The trees were so lush that they blocked most good photo angles.
I don’t know why I didn’t walk to the other side of the yellow house to take this photo, because the white house was imposing with its large, stone front porch, and I wish I had more of it in the image.
One uncharacteristically dumpy former filling station was host to a large garage sale that day. It made me think of the old Paul McCartney song: “‘Buy, buy!’ says the sign in the shop window / ‘Why, why?’ says the junk in the yard.” Bonus points to anyone who can identify the rusty old car.
Another former filling station seemed to be a museum of former filling station equipment and signs.
I loved seeing the old Standard sign, an icon of my childhood not adequately replaced by the Amoco and now BP signs that have followed. I’m a little sad that the original windows on the building were replaced with those things that wouldn’t look out of place on a mobile home.
Downtown Casey was tidy enough, but not as fresh and bright as downtown Marshall. Downtown began at State Route 49. This photo is the the north side of the first block west of State Route 49.
A building on the southwest corner of this intersection had a few old metal signs attached to it. I liked this Gulf logo as a kid, I think because of the typeface used for “Gulf” has a fat stroke and a low centerline, and it is juxtaposed with letter spacing that brings out the weight of the individual letters. It still works for me; I can look at it for an hour, just studying the letterforms.
I photographed the Odd Fellows building not just because “IOOF747” was bricked into the building, leaving a lasting reminder of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, but because it’s a crying shame that someone replaced the second-story windows with those out-of-place tiny modern sashes.
Hunger was beginning to cloud our judgment, so we decided to head the rest of the way through town in hopes of finding a local tavern or lunch counter. No such luck. We’d have to get lunch somewhere down the road. But before we did, we encountered a lot of old pavement. I’ll share it next time.
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