Vintage Danville, IL Postcard

I found this image a couple of weeks ago when I surfed over to the Wikipedia entry on the small city in Central IL that I lived in from June 10th, 1977 'til June 9th, 1985.
The first non-kid's movie I remember seeing was at the Fischer Theater (c. 1884), pictured on the right. Star Wars as a six year old in the summer of 1977 was mind-blowing.

A few doors south of the Fischer one can faintly see a SEARS sign, the store that my dad was the Merchandise Manager of for seven years. The drugstore across the street from the Fischer (surprisingly not a Walgreens) was Alexander's when I lived there. The last of a now-extinct breed - a family owned sporting goods store.

I don't miss Danville one bit but I do have some very fond memories of growing up in that small city.

Toll Change

Back before the days of the Illinois Toll Authority's iPass system (and before they had video survelliance at every tool both), when you had to throw a fistfull of change to open the gates on the TriState, Necco Wafers were often found in my car.
Why would I have these horrible-tasting "candies"? Well, when I started terrorizing the suburbs in my mom's sweet turd-brown 1981 Buick Skylark (powered by the mighty Iron Duke 4-banger) in the mid-80s, WLUP Chicago DJ combo of Steve Dahl and Garry Meier started talking about how these putrid pastel pucks were the *exact* dimensions of a US quarter.

Now of course I would *never* gyp the bottomless pit of Springfield or the Illinois Toll Authority out of their rightful .40, but from what I am told the technique was to stack two on top of each other and slide them down the basket so that they wouldn't break on the way down. Bingo, you just overpaid by ten cents! I also heard that it was a good idea to have .40 in coinage on hand just in case it didn't work - which might happen about 25% of the time.

Each roll holds 40 wafers - equivalent to a $10 roll of quarters. Not a bad investment, as long as you didn't get caught.