A man from Sangamon County found himself standing before the gates of heaven. He knocked. Saint Peter poked his head out and asked where he was from.
“Sangamon County, Illinois.”
“Go back,” said Saint Peter. “There is nothing here as beautiful as Sangamon County.”
– from Maria Leach; RAINBOW BOOK OF AMERICAN FOLK TALES AND LEGENDS, World Publishing, 1958
You’re right, carnivorousplant. But I WAS being nice. I could have called them carpetbaggin’, funny talkin’, organized crime lovin’, big pimp car drivin’ snowbirds that done shit in their nest so now they have to come down here and shit in ours. But that wouldn’t be NICE…
And yes, I am painfully aware of the irony of somebody from Arkansas making fun of ANYBODY…:o
Ya’ll set down and have some pecan pie.
Mmmmm. Pecan Pie. That’ll be a good dessert after I polish off this mess of catfish and hushpuppies…
Well, I’ve lived in both the north and the south and let me tell you, neither one has anything over the other.
When I was in grade school, I had a mind-numbing crush on a girl who just moved to California from Illinois.
That’s about it for my knowledge of Illinois. I’ve passed through it a few times on my way to Pennsylvania and Michigan. This also means I’ve passed through Ohio, but the less said about that, the better.
Wait a minute…
“FIBS” as we here in Wisconsin call them, tend to be arrogant, rude, A$$holes when they come up here to vacation. They pretend to own our state, treat the local people like dirt and throw around money like its nothing. They buy up all the land at crazy high prices from farmers who are trying to get out of their business and drive up land prices so high locals can’t afford to work there anymore. I don’t care for 99% of them.
THAT said a couple of the nicest, most generous people I know are from the “FLATLANDS”
Oh and REBS’–you still LOST the war,so please drop the Yankee crap.
GAK- drive up land prices so locals cant afford to LIVE and work there anymore
Still lost the war? You mean that can change?
FILTHY LIAR! I like thin-crust.
I hate Illinois Nazis.
The Face:
Oh, please. Firstly, it has nothing to do with the civil war. I never in my life thought that the south should have won it, or even that they should have seceeded or had slaves or any of that. Plus, taking umbrage at a fairly innocuous term in the same post as the invective you hurled is rather ironic.
Being from the Great Lakes State, Illinois (El-eh-noi or Ill-eh-noi?), Indiana, Ohio, and Southern Michigan kind of blend together to me. The’re somewhat flat. There are a lot of farms with a couple of trees on the border to the next farm. Northern Michigan obviously is one big forest with farms in the clearings of the trees.
The only people I know fairly well from Illinois grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and went to U of I. Whenever I visited, the locals were nice and helpful. But if I wanted to get them going, I’d pronounce the -s and the end of Illinois. They also thought of the entire state of Illinois as a suburb of Chicago. The drive downtown is just a killer.
I will agree that outside of any of the big Midwest cities, namely Chicago and Detroit, that the culture becomes fairly stagnant and stuck in time. Even Detroit is faily mild, compared to other parts of the country. I’m just waiting for the suburbs of Chicago and Detroit to meet at the west end of Michigan. Then maybe they can make I-94 three or four lanes instead of two.
Richard Daley, corrupt politics, freezing cold, jazz, factories in old cities, farms everywhere else, meat slaughtering
Terrible drivers. And I took a 24 hour (12 hours in each direction) road trip with an Illinoisan. He seemed befuddled when we yelped in fear at his driving, because “everyone in Illinois does that.”
Chicago is way, way cool. Love the theater and nightclubs. And the Bundys live there!
The rest of the state is just sad–all the small towns are abandoned and everything else is flat. Remember visiting my baby brother at the Air Force base in Rantoul, and geez, even the base is abandoned now!
Bleak, boring, and you have to put up with Gary IN being right up next to youse.
Ill-annoy does not allow its citizens to carry handguns. They are not free to protect themselves from violent criminals. It is amazing to me that the areas that have revoked the right of citizens to defend themselves are also the areas that have the highest violent crime rates.
And the drivers have earned the state citizenry nickname of FIB(****ing Illinois Bastard). They’re the worst.
I am originally from Illinois. I was born and raised there. I hated it for the most part and when I turned 19 I left (I am 32 now). I will disclose my location of here and there as a Tennessee. When I was little we used to always visit and I knew when I got older that is where I wanted to live. I love it here.
Things that I miss about Illinois. The small town atmosphere. I came from a town of about 4,000 or so. We used to have Strawberry Festivals every year in July. And other towns would have the Sweet Corn Festival. I really enjoyed things like that. I did not enjoy everyone knowing your business. But that is part of small town America anywhere you go.
I don’t miss the snow, the rude people, the terrible roads (and they do suck). Things seemed more fast paced in Illinois even small towns like Catlin. Here you still see people pull over for a funeral (yes I know it is illegal, but for crying outloud it is out of respect for the dead). And yes Illinois does get a bad rap about their drivers.
I went home last August to visit a friend in Champaign, IL. I do miss her and the kids. We were hired for the day to stand outside on one of the main roads to hand out fliers (for a bar) to the people going to the Bears game. Well that lasted all of about 10 minutes until the cop came and said that we were interfering with traffic and backing it up. Oh well they have no sense of humor there, but it was fun. Until my friend decided to give some lip to the cop and then he had to bring up the fact that he knew we didn’t have drinks in those plastic cups. You guessed it we dispersed after that. Like I said no sense of humor.
Chicago on the other hand does have more to offer and I enjoyed visiting there. I always loved going to the Cubs games and such, just one of the few good memories I have about Illinois.
Illinois is a good place for me to visit. But to live there again, never. It’s just too bland.
My family was from Breese, about 50 miles east of St. Louis. Small farm town. The weird thing is that there are so many people in the area with my last name, which is not that common in other parts of the country.
My impression of Breese and Clinton County is that everyone speaks with a very loud voice.