VILLA GROVE – In 2015, Villa Grove farmer Ralph Burnett wanted to keep his mother’s memory alive by protecting the land he loved in her honor.
On his property, a beautiful 20-acre wooded corridor with the Embarras River has always been one of their favorites. Burnett donated this area to the Grand Prairie Friends land trust for permanent protection and named it Edna Edwards Burnett Land & Water Reserve.
As an east-central Illinois land trust since 1984, Grand Prairie Friends owns, restores and protects more than 1,200 acres of natural areas in Iroquois, Ford, Champaign, Vermilion, Coles (Warbler Ridge) counties ) and Shelby.
Winners advance in Hoop Shoot
Now, with Burnett’s recent passing, his sons have continued that family legacy by selling the adjacent 60 acres to Grand Prairie Friends to expand that to an 80-acre reserve in perpetuity.
Funds for the purchase were provided by the Community Clean Energy Foundation of Illinois Land Acquisition Grant, which protects natural areas and wildlife habitat in communities across Illinois. . Brookfield Renewable Energy will provide funds to restore the site to floodplain forest over the next 30 years. These efforts aim to create prime habitat for three species of protected bats that live in the area.
My Town: Clint Walker’s Memories of Coles County From the Archives
Cosmic blue comics
From Nov. 22, 1992, Journal Gazette, this photo from Cosmic Blue Comics in Mattoon; where I spent almost every Saturday afternoon for about two years. This little back room that you see just to the right of the Coca-Cola sign was where they kept the many, and I mean the long boxes of back issues. I still have my bagged copy of “Tales of the Beanworld” issue 1 that I found there. Unfortunately, this place is now just a “green space”.
Mattoon Arcade
Pictured is Bob Murray of Shelbyville from the June 2, 1982 Journal Gazette displaying his dominance over the TRON arcade game at the “Carousel Time” arcade at Cross County Mall, later Aladdin’s Castle, shortly long after to no longer be a thing anymore. I spent pretty much every Saturday in this arcade, maybe with the exact same haircut. No overalls though. I was more of a “Pacific Ocean” type.
of Icenogle
Pictured, November 28, 1988 Journal Gazette, Icenogle’s grocery store. Being from Cooks Mills, we didn’t often shop at Icenogle…but when we did, even as a child, I knew that was how a grocery store was supposed to be in a perfect world, and it wasn’t. isn’t just because they had wooden floors, comic books on the magazine rack, or lots, and I mean lots, of trading cards in wax packets.
Cooks Mills
I had long since left Cooks Mills by the time this Showcase article on Adam’s Groceries was published in the Journal Gazette on June 13, 1998, but there was a time when I very well could have been one of those children on this photo; because if it was summer, you had a bike and you lived in Cooks Mills, that’s where you ended up. At last report they still had Tab in the Pepsi branded cooler in the back. I am seriously considering asking my fundraiser if I could afford to reopen this place.
Mr Music
Pictured is a July 16, 1987 Journal Gazette advertisement for Mister Music, formerly located in the Cross County Mall. I didn’t buy records at that age, but I would eventually, and that’s where it all happened. If you don’t think it sounds “cool” hanging out in a record store with your buddies on a Friday night, a hot driver’s license in your wallet, you’re right. But it’s the best a geek like me can do. Wherever you Mister Music owners are today, know that a Minutemen album I found in your cheap trash can changed my life.
sound source guitar throw
Portrait of the author as a young man, about to throw a guitar through a target during that year’s Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing Contest, from April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette. Look at my grunge-era hoodie, and yes…look, those are Air Jordans you see at my feet. Addendum: Despite what the cutline says, I didn’t win a guitar.
Pictured, taken from the online archives at JG-TC.com, is an April 18, 1994 photo of Journal Gazette of Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing contest winner, and current JG-TC staff writer Clint Walker.
At Vette’s
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, Vette’s Teen Club, June 20, 1991, Journal Gazette. I wasn’t “cool” enough to hang out with Vette in his “golden age”, and by “cool enough” I mean, “not proficient enough at parking lot fights”. If only I could get to it now.
FutureGen
FutureGen: The End of the Beginning, and Finally, the Beginning of the End, December 19, 2007, JG-TC. I wish I had paid more attention back then. I probably should have read the newspaper.
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