The Sly Fox

Recently we visited St. Louis for the 4th of July, traveling with friends and seeing the local punk/bluegrass band The Monads at a bar called Off Broadway, eating at some fine establishments, and visiting Left Bank Books. On the way back, traveling back to Bloomington-Normal on Highway 55, we veered into the corn fields to visit the Sly Fox, a small bookstore in Virden, Illinois.

It was a dreary day, which lent a depressing mood to the cornfield countryside. The land around Virden was very flat, all very agricultural except for an upraised open pit strip-mining coal operation somewhere near Girard. We traveled through both Girard and Virden and noticed striking similarities between both towns. Each had a very large square plaza in the center of towns with downtown buildings facing the center of the plaza, an unusual outlay for a Midwestern town. The streets around the plaza were huge, having gigantic parking lots that were actually part of the street. Given the small size of the towns, the downtown areas were somewhat vibrant with many businesses. We did notice, as well, that we were in bible country. There seemed to be a good number of churches, signs decrying abortion, and signs - both suble and overt - of fierce nationalistic tendencies.

We drove non-stop through Girard, but we stopped in Virden to visit the Sly Fox. The bookstore was on the plaza square, and surprisingly, it wasn't the only bookstore in town. Another store, Books on the Square, was very close, but it was closed and we could only look inside through the front door, seeing that it was largely a small bookstore selling used books. My wife and I browsed the Sly Fox for about 30 minutes or so. It has a lot of children's lit, and for adults, specializes mostly in the mystery genre, that sort of book you can easily find in the supermarket and is easily found in abundance in used bookstores. My wife called them "beach books," ostensibly meaning what one would read when vacationing on the beach. I have to say that the genre isn't my thing, but the presentation of the books at the Sly Fox, all very colorfully bright and arranged so impeccably on the shelves, made me want to read a few for the sake of curiosity. (In fact, one book I'm reading now, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, probably qualifies as a book of this genre.) There were also some history books, specializing in Lincoln and Illinois figures and topics, as well as some travel-related books on Illinois hiking, attractions, haunted houses, etc. It was a very cute store, located in an Old Highway 66 town that definitely could not fail to arouse one's curiosity.