Gem Theater and Elks Club.

At the bottom tip of Illinois where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi, there’s an empty town called Cairo. As I walked down Commercial Avenue on a Sunday afternoon, my footsteps ricocheted across old bricks, the only sound save for the faint drone of an insect or powerline. I peered into the doorways of stately stone banks and the dusty windows of cracked townhouses and mansions in graphic decay. A blue-faded poster of the Maytag repairman hung in the display window of an appliance store filled with clumps of insulation and dangling cords. Sheets of plywood muted the windows of a shop that said “Family owned.” I gazed up at the empty marquee of the Gem Theater, shuttered since 1978. The Gem Theater. Such an elegant name from better days. I walked the streets of a city designed for 20,000 people that now holds fewer than 3000, most of whom left the downtown long ago. Somewhere a car door slammed and I jumped. Cairo is that kind of place. Further down the road, a chipper sun-bleached sign said “Visit Millionaire’s Row!”

Cairo used to be rich. Like Memphis further downriver, the town’s namesake was a great Egyptian metropolis perched on a mighty river and for a while, “Little Egypt” seemed like it might fulfill its destiny. Cairo was a natural crossroads, with evidence of settlements and warfare dating back to the ninth century. Old bones, spears, and knives. Lewis and Clark spent a week here in 1803, studying the rivers and learning how to work their maps. There was brief talk about designating Cairo as the nation’s capital. In 1861, Ulysses S. Grant stationed his troops at the foot of town at Fort Defiance, where the Union army blockaded the Mississippi to prevent supplies reaching the Confederates. Flush with profits from the Civil War, the town poured money into ambitious public buildings and it boomed for years, fueled by ferries and the new Central Illinois railroad.

That night, I read about the bloody racism that opened the twentieth century. The lynchings and hysterical mobs and black men murdered by the police, their deaths classified as suicides. Racial violence persisted through the 1960s, by which time most residents left. The county’s police force was reduced to four patrol cars that remained idle, unable to afford fuel until they were repossessed by First National Bank. A high school principal recently told his graduating students to get out of town if they wanted to have a future. When Cairo faced flooding earlier this year and the Army Corps detonated the Bird’s Point levee, many wondered why they bothered. Dig into Cairo’s downfall and you’ll find every dark feature of American life. And you feel it in those gaping doorways, you see it in the piles of bricks.

I went to the neglected park at the foot of town where Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri are stitched together. Picking my way through a field choked with weeds and trash, I headed towards a strange cement structure that watched over the joining of the rivers. After poking around to make sure I was alone, I climbed to the top and laid in the sun on the concrete slab. I closed my eyes and listened to the river slosh and the bugs chirring in the weeds. I zoomed out and positioned myself right here in the center of America. Where did everybody go?

I thought about the mistakes I’ve made. I thought about that beautiful empty town up the river and I thought about the mistakes that everybody made. I imagined the distant chant of a crowd marching down Route 51, a roaring crowd frustrated with our current life of cubicles, barcodes, and monthly payments, and they’re flashing signs that say “Occupy Cairo” and filling up the silence of Commercial Avenue to begin something new, to breathe life into these dignified buildings that have been crouched down here by the river for years, waiting for something like this to happen.

The put-put of a motorcycle woke me. Boots and the jangle of keys. I leaned over the edge of my cement ship and saw a thick man peeling off his gloves and squinting at the river. We were the only people around, me and him, and I didn’t want to startle him. I gave a light cough as I stood and when he looked up, I waved. He scanned the park and kicked at the gravel and gave a weary shrug like “What the hell?” and I said “I know” and he shot me a lazy peace sign as he climbed on his bike. I turned back to the sun and listened to him drive away.

Sources and further reading: Project Cairo; a coffee shop opens (now closed); Wikipedia; scenes of Cairo; Death by Racism

Fort Defiance.

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The Cure – Fire In Cairo (Studio Demo)
from Three Imaginary Boys (Rarities 1977-1979). Recorded in 1978.

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Ricky Nelson – Lonesome Town
Imperial, 1958