Oblong

There’s a Dog n Suds in Robinson, Illinois. It’s over near the Indiana border about 50 miles from I-57. On our way back north, we decided to check it off the list. As we headed east on a two-lane road, we passed through the town of Oblong. The citizens are very proud of the fact that no other town in the world is named Oblong.

I parked on a side road and pulled out my chair and my camera. Three or four people from a house across the street stood out in the yard and stared at me. (My wife didn’t get out of the car.) I imagine they got a kick out of it when I drove off with the hatch door open — I noticed it when we were about half a mile down the road.

The town was once called Henpeck, but the natives didn’t care for that, so they renamed it Oblong in honor of a nearby rectangular prairie. The Chicago Tribune once ran an article about a man from the town who married a woman from another Illinois community — “Oblong Man Marries Normal Woman.”