Cheryl's Old Book Barn

On Saturday, June 20, I took a Saturday afternoon trip to Decatur, a small town about 40 miles south of where I live in Bloomington-Normal. Decatur is a special place for me, because a few times in 1994 I came here with SLAC (Student Labor Action Coalition - we called ourselves SLACkers) down from Madison, Wisconsin to support the workers in their strike against the A.E. Staley company. For this trip I was simply visiting some indie booksellers, but I thought I'd swing over to see the Staley area as well.

On my way into Decatur, my first stop was Cheryl's Old Book Barn, located in the small town of Forsyth, population 3284. At first I thought Forsyth was a suburb of Decatur, but because I got lost finding the store, I could easily see that I was wrong. I passed the store coming south and knew I must've missed it when I saw the big box sprawl that extends north of Decatur on the highway. Turning around and heading north again, I noticed that this sprawl has come up right against Forsyth. But the small town environment is still unscathed by Decatur's advance. I ventured inside the town off the highway when I was lost and got to see the town off the highway. Turns out, though, that the Old Book Barn is on the east side of US Highway 51, next to an Indian-owned Phillips 66 convenience store, the Forsyth Convenience Center, which I should say provided me with a Decatur map (my wife took the GPS to Chicago), soda and a restroom for my bookstore visit.

Entering the store, I realized right away that this visit was going to be a new sort of experience. In the front foyer of the store, old knick-knacks and memorabilia were on display for sale, including old furniture and old stuff of all kinds - Campbell soup cans and memorabilia, old Illinois license plates going back to the early 20th century, old cassette tapes and LPs, and much more than I can comment on here. Some people might be tempted to call this junk, but its presence gives the store an old-time charm. Inside there was more memorabilia and old stuff, which I looked at briefly. The memorabilia is found all over the store, organized according to the theme of the type of books sold in an area, scattered in small rooms and disjointed hallways that form a confusing maze of books.

I started browsing the philosophy books and ancient literature books, near the front part of the store, and ended up buying in the end some ancient plays by Aeschylus and Euripedes. After leaving what was a comfortable area for me, I started looking at the extended selection of the maze. The Old Book Barn has quite an extensive selection of used books, and the bookstore itself is extremely large. If I lived a little close, and certainly if I lived in Decatur, I would definitely check here first to see if I could buy it used and support my local bookstore. Besides a good selection of used fiction and ancient texts, the store has complete series of books and magazines. For instance, one area has hundreds of National Geographic magazines. I noticed that it has loads of travel books, all used, and all the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I'm really understating their collection here by picking out what I happened to see.... their selections in detective novels, spy genre, New Age, and women's contemporary are just some of the categories that I noticed having huge selections. There are also rooms that have very old texts, many of which are very obscure, giving you the sense of just how many books have been published through the decades. Some sections qualify as antique collections. For example, I saw some old Princeton University school yearbooks from around 1910, items I happened to pick out in a sea of old texts. I loved the New Age room, a tiny room located somewhere in the back of the maze, in which you could read on an old chair under a fake cobwebbed portrait of man whose eyes had been cut out. Next to the portrait was a warning that the store was watching you in case you had any inkling to shoplift.

As you can see, you really have to visit the Old Book Barn to get a sense of its crazy eclecticism. As I checked out, I came to notice that one of the women behind the counter called another women her mother, and it became apparent that there were two or three generations of family owners working in the store. I asked the person who check me out, maybe she was Cheryl, how long they had the store. 20 years? She was both answering me and asking her family members if that was the exact number. 20 years, and from what I could tell, still going strong.

Cheryl's Old Book Barn
126 South Highway 51
Forsyth, Illinois 62535
(217) 875-0222