" IT'S HIP TO BE SQUARE"

Let me begin by saying that I'm 44 years old and most people would consider spending a day on the road with their mother (at that age) a pretty uncool thing to do. Perhaps, but then again, my mothers not the typical Mom. My wife had to work Saturday and my mother was in town to visit us for the weekend. No problem, we grabbed all my (Tom Russell, Slaid Cleaves, Jim White & Leonard Cohen CD's) and hit the road. We drove through some great towns along the way (Greenville, Hillsboro, Leitchfield) before we ended up in Girrard,Il. at the Deck Bros. soda shop and bookstore. We grabbed root beer and chocolate floats from the 50's soda shop and I picked up Woody Guthrie's, autobiography "Bound for Glory" at the bookstore. We had a very interesting conversation with the legendary Deck brothers, about the history of the area, books & the two buildings they own. From Girrard we were only 4 miles from Virden, Il. ( a town I wrote about only a couple weeks ago) and the SLY FOX and BOOKS ON THE SQUARE bookstores. We spent the afternoon in these two shops buying books and chatting with George at the SLY FOX & John and Jeannie Alexander at BOOKS ON THE SQUARE". I found some brand new mystery 1st editions still on the shelf from the late 90's of (Charlie Stella, Vicki Hendricks, Ace Atkins,Jason Starr and Ken Bruen)at the SLY FOX, and some wonderful vintage paperbacks of (Dashiell Hammett,Raymond Chandler,Rex Stout, Jim Thompson,Graham Greene,Dorothy B. Hughes, and William Faulkner) at BOOKS ON THE SQUARE. Funny... but both stores owners said we were the best customers of the day. That's probably why I'm always broke. If I could eat my books, I'd weigh a thousand pounds! Before we left town we stopped at the corner gourmet coffee shop and grabbed some terrific cappuccino's and a bag of Dutch Apple coffee beans for later. The latter part of the day didn't go as scripted. We left Girrard headed for Decatur, but we ended up in Springfield, looking for a restaurant that she had seen featured on one of her favorite cooking shows. The kicker is, she couldn't remember the name or address... but she did remember it looked like a Quonset hut. After 45 minutes of searching downtown Springfield to no avail, we gave up. We settled ( if you can call it that), for the Rt.# 66 icon, "THE COZY DOG". I've been several times, but it was her first time and was quite a treat. This is a must stop on any Rt. #66 trip and was the origin of the corn dog. Make sure you order the homemade fries as well. It was now getting dark, so we headed home through Decatur,Il. We did stop at Best Buy, Hickory Creek Mall, and a going out of business sale at Hollywood Video. It was there that I found a Leonard Cohen DVD. We made a pass by the Avon Theatre to see what was on, but decided to pass this time. We got back to the house about 9:30 pm ( or about 12 hours after we'd started). It was a great day and just proves it's not that unhip to spend time with Ma!