The other Modesto: Illinois town shares our ag heritage

Editor's Note: This story was published in The Modesto Bee on June 16, 2005.

Some call California's Modesto a dusty farm town, more Mayberry than Manhattan.

With its population eclipsing 200,000, it's one of the 100 largest cities in the country.

Want to see a real dusty farm town? Check out "the other" Modesto, an island in the soybean and cornfields of central Illinois. Population: 250.

While big Modesto is racing toward a sprawling, suburban future, little Modesto, with just over one-thousandth the population, is frozen in time, trying to hang on.

It is so small and close-knit that the village clerk conducts the census every 10 years in her living room -- by memory. Her brother-in-law, 59-year-old Tom Thompson, has been mayor so long he can't remember when he was first elected, and he'll keep serving until he finds his own replacement -- or dies.

Meet the locals: Pork Chop, who used to raise hogs, and Knothole, who owns a lumberyard. There's also Smiley, Pee Wee, Green, Pup, Peck, Hound Dog, Shorty and Weasel. And don't forget about Bug, Boob, Squeak, Scat, Speedy, Big'n, Shake'm, and the Even and Odd boys.

At the town's only restaurant, the Front Porch Café, the specialty is a dish called the Horseshoe, a heart attack of an open-faced hamburger, hidden under a mountain of french fries and smothered with cheese sauce.

Front doors are kept unlocked, keys are left in ignitions. The biggest stir has been over selling beer at the town's annual fish fry and barbecue this summer to help raise money for a new playground.

Modesto, Ill., is a dry town -- due to the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which had a local chapter into the 1960s, according to old-timers who aren't fond of upsetting tradition.

They pretty much like the way things are, away from the trappings and noise of city life. They don't have a sewer system -- only septic tanks. And townsfolk say no one's given them flak over the infamous Modesto that's always in the news.

"We don't have any crooked politicians or anyone murdering anybody," said Kasse "Peck" Newberry, 57.

"We're not famous for anything here," he said, noting with all seriousness that the closest -- geographically -- that his Modesto comes to anything famous might be "a guy in Scottville who invented the automatic transmission."

No one can recall when the last murder happened, or if one ever did.

"So-and-so committed suicide back in '47, but that doesn't count," said the mayor, trying to be helpful.

The biggest thing to hit Modesto was a corn-husking contest in 1938, in the days before combines, that drew 85,000 people and made headlines in Chicago newspapers.

"What happens out here wouldn't even make a good comic strip for what happens in Modesto, California," said Walter "Shorty" Gibbs, 72, who never wrote a ticket during his three-decade career as the town's lone and part-time policeman.

IN THE BEGINNING

Sewn into a quilt of green-and-brown squares of farmland, Modesto, Ill., is a hard-to-find patch of urbanization.

From the Mississippi River at St. Louis, drive an hour north on Interstate 55 into rural Illinois, then head west from Farmersville for 30minutes through small towns, along not-quite-two-lane roads.

Make a left after the Whirl-a-Whip ice cream and burger stand in Girard. Follow that road for a while and be patient if you get stuck behind a crawling tractor, or if a sheriff's deputy is trailing you. Turn right at the stop sign in Palmyra, and stay on the road until it turns into Modesto's Main Street.

Like Modesto, Calif., founded in 1870, Modesto, Ill., was born along a railroad line.

The town, incorporated in 1896, got its name when the prairie settlers wanted to honor the Vancils, an original farming family from the area, by naming the town after them.

But Imri Vancil told his neighbors that they should name the new village Modesto, "after the prettiest town I saw on my recent trip to California," according to a local history book.

"Some objected, saying the towns would get their mail mixed up," another book points out. But Modesto it was, and the welcome sign on the edge of town is adorned with grapevines, a nod to the town's California cousin.

(Modesto, Calif., received its humble moniker after a town founder, railroad director William Ralston, declined the suggestion that the town be named after him. Modesto means modesty in Spanish.)

A large park sits in the center of Modesto, Ill., with horseshoe pits, a weed-choked basketball court, a pagoda (pronounced here as "pagody") and an overhead shelter for the fish fry. A swath of grass is dug up in a corner of the park, awaiting the new playground.

The park is surrounded loosely on all sides by houses, businesses and a few abandoned buildings. There are only about 10 streets.

"I can stand on my front porch and be in the middle of town. I can stand on my back porch and be out in the country," said Mayor Thompson, who owns a used-car lot in Waverly, eight miles away.

Modesto, Ill., doesn't look much like it probably did a century ago.

Many older homes have been torn down -- there's only one restored Victorian-style home -- replaced with double-wide trailers or lower cost houses covered with siding.

The median home value is less than $60,000, compared with the $330,000 median sale price for homes in Stanislaus County.

Only two original brick storefronts from the early 1900s are still standing. Both of them, including a grocery store, are vacant.

There's also an abandoned chicken hatchery, grain elevator, high school and gas station. Even the railroad tracks are gone. The railroad closed down in 1941 and the rails were pulled up and sent to steel mills for the war effort.

The nearest hospital is in Jacksonville, Ill., or in the capital, Springfield, 40 minutes to an hour away. There's no longer a doctor or dentist in town. Kids are bused three miles away to a kindergarten-through-12th grade school shared by four towns.

"You can't buy a beer in Modesto, you can't buy gas, you can't buy a gallon of milk, you can't buy a pack of cigarettes, you can't buy a loaf of bread," Thompson said.

But the town survives. There's a café, volunteer fire department and a post office where everyone gets their mail because there are no mailboxes.

The Bank of Modesto, founded in 1891, is a point of pride. With $23 million in assets, the bank has survived robberies and holdups (as recently as 1960, robbers tore a hole in a vault wall and crawled through, removing $1,200 in coins). And it's held steady under the consolidation of the banking industry.

"We could sell it this afternoon," said bank executive Phil Lovelace, 53, the only person in town dressed in a tie and button-down shirt. He knows all of the bank's customers, and he sends them birthday cards.

The town has three churches -- Methodist, Baptist and the Modesto Christian Church, which advertised the week's sermon recently as, "Service is Love in Work Boots."

Everyone's white.

During Christmas, the townspeople line Main Street with paper-sack lanterns. In the summer, there's the fish fry and barbecue that bloats the town to about 1,000 people.

This year, for the playground project, they're trying to raise more than $20,000. To make that much, they are taking the controversial turn of selling alcohol -- for the first time ever.

"We've been so dry so long, we're getting along fine now," said Stanley "Smiley" Fletcher, 80, a mechanic whose grandparents helped build the town.

But beer tent organizer Denise Callarman, 42, owner of the Front Porch Café, said it was time for a change. A Springfield rock band, Hoosier Daddy, has been lined up for the festival.

"We're just afraid we're going to lose the young people," said Callarman, who is married with two children.

She was an office manager for an oral surgeon in Jacksonville before opening the Front Porch four years ago, saying she did so because "I didn't want to see the town fold."

NEXT GENERATION READY

No trip to Modesto, Ill., is complete without visiting the private art collection of Jim and Phyllis Moffet, whose family tamed the prairie in the 1820s.

They have a warehouse filled with antique household gadgets and farm tools, from butter churns to cattle horn cutters. Thousands of rusting egg beaters, apple parers and mousetraps line the walls and shelves.

Over the years, their farmstead has served as an underground railroad hideaway, stagecoach stop, post office and inn. Today, it is a popular field trip for school groups.

"One of the reasons we saved and bought this stuff is to tell the next generation what this is all about," said Phyllis Moffet, 72.

The old-timers are ready to hand over the keys, quite literally. And by the look of things, the next generation will be able to hold their own.

In the drawling words of the mayor's 5-year-old grandson Levi, as he starts a car and puts it in reverse, "Get 'er done."

Grandpa works the pedals while Levi sits on his lap and steers around the empty streets of Modesto at 30 mph, while the the fasten-seat-belt sign flashes on the dashboard.

At the Front Porch, the lunchtime crowd isn't old farmers in bib overalls, sipping 15-cent coffee at the counter all day. It is full of young adults and families. There are plenty of kids around.

The population peaked in 1910 at 500, but has held steady for decades at 250.

The average age is 39, according to the 2000 census, and two of the six members on the village board of trustees are under 30.

The consolidated K-12 school has an enrollment of about 400, and graduates 30 or so students annually. About half of them stay in the area, Principal Charles Barlow said. Some are "tied to the soil" on their family farms, he said, while others commute to jobs in bigger cities.

"A lot of people my age, they don't want to live in a city where the houses butt up against each other," said Sarah Harbaugh, 28, who is married with two children. She's waiting tables at the Front Porch while getting a business degree from a community college in Springfield. Her husband has a job with the state highway department.

"They don't care if they live an hour from work," Harbaugh said. "They want to come back here where it's quiet."

Ryan Bettis, 29, who owns a concrete company, is married with two children. He also stayed in town.

"We know everybody," he said. "They say, 'How you doing? How you been?' You can't beat it. When I go to Springfield, I go to get my stuff and I get out. I can't handle it."

There also are enough girls around to marry, he said.

"She's from here," he said of his wife, Hannah, who was chasing their two boys around a large lawn.

And, he added, pausing for comic effect, "We're not related."

This story was originally published January 28, 2011 at 10:48 AM with the headline "The other Modesto: Illinois town shares our ag heritage."