Monday, May 26, 2025
Time: 1 PM
Song: Going Up to Country
Artist: Canned Heat
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on shuffle on the way to Paw Paw, IL.
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1c6tN2sFiq2e0dKINVaF88?si=7629090e574b4488
We are pointed east on Route 30, cutting across flat, sandy farm land of Lee County. The sun is out, and it’s Memorial Day. Our destination is an alpaca farm near a little town called Paw Paw. It’s about an hour trip one way.
Jodi saw a posting on Facebook for three gelding alpacas, and as part of our goal of finding some sort of grazing livestock for our small pasture, we decided to go check them out.
Paw Paw is a tiny town on the southeastern edge of Lee County. When I first started working at the paper back in the mid-2000s, I remembered that they had a basketball coach who would report their scores. We delivered papers there, although I can’t imagine too many people actually subscribed to the paper in Dixon, nearly forty minutes away.
To my knowledge, we never actually covered any of their games. If we did, it had to be some rare appearance against one of our other small school teams in our coverage area. Perhaps at a winter basketball tournament, or something. The school has dozens of students in it.
I’ve never been to two Paws (as we always like to call it), and I didn’t actually go there today. We saw a sign saying that Paw Paw was another six miles east as we traversed the rural roads to the farm. We did go to Compton, another tiny village, not the area made famous by N.W.A.
We toured the farm, met the alpacas, which actually you have to approach with hands down so they can sniff your face. Whether or not we get them is up to Jodi, but realistically we are not setup for them, so it would mean a pretty healthy fence installation. A couple cattle seem more likely.
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