PARADE KICKS OFF SCOTT CITY RAILROAD FESTIVITIES

SCOTT CITY -- The streets of old Illmo were alive with activity Saturday, somewhat reminiscent of the time it was a thriving railroad community.

Young and old came out to enjoy the combined Halloween parade and Railroad Day festivities.

"It's coming, it's coming," shouted Trey Carter, 4, as police and fire sirens signaled the start of the parade.

Smokey the Bear even put in an appearance in honor of fire prevention month, which is October.

Scott City's band led the remainder of the parade. It sounded like a band, but it didn't quite look like one.

Since it was a Halloween parade, director Jim Arnold allowed band members to dress for the occasion. Witches, ghosts, monsters, princesses and even "flower children" played the school song as they marched along.

Float entries and costumed participants made their way across the overpass into old Illmo.

The kids on the floats seemed to enjoy throwing the candy as much as the kids on the street who scrambled to retrieve it.

Classy Chassy Country Music provided a sneak preview of their noon show as they sang a rendition of "Monster Mash" from their appropriately decorated float.

Bringing up the rear of the parade were Princess Laura and Prince Cody riding in their white carriage drawn by the Pratt family miniature horses.

Larry Harris and Joyce Roth, both dressed as hoboes, kept busy passing out free balloons to the children and selling hobo stew.

They weren't dressed for Halloween but for the best dressed hobo contest to be held later in the day.

Scott City's Historical Society displayed photos of homes for the best decorated home contest and the Cotton Belt Family Album, a scrapbook that contains biographies of Cotton Belt workers.

Barbara Harrison, a member of the society, is still searching for photos and information on former Cotton Belt workers. Harrison had done some research to verify a story about a famous Illmo resident.

Mannie Jackson, owner of the Harlem Globtrotters, was reported to have been born in a boxcar in Illmo. Harrison was able to contact Jackson's father, who confirmed the story.

"I remember those boxcars," said Bill Dickey, a retired Cotton Belt conductor.

The railroad provided the boxcars as housing for the Gandy Dancers, a group of section men who traveled across the country laying track.

"There was a lead dancer," said Dickey. "He would sing a chant while the men laid the track. When you looked down it, the track was as straight as any machine could lay it today."

Many of the crew were black. Their whole family would live with them in the boxcars.

Children were not allowed to attend the local school and had to travel to Cape Girardeau, which had a school for blacks.

Sheets were used as wall dividers in the boxcars. Some cars were furnished with wooden floors, but many had dirt.

"They swept and polished them so much that you could set down with a pair of white pants on and they'd be clean when you got up," said Dickey.

Dickey remembers a lot about the railroad and the town. He served as the first elected mayor when the towns of Illmo and Scott City merged.

His father, Harry, hired out as a brakeman in 1904, and Dickey followed his father's footsteps and joined the rail service.

Illmo once boasted a four-story hotel, several grocery stores, a mercantile that had a little bit of everything including "the best tamales you ever put in your mouth," doctors, dentists, barbers and hardware and clothing stores.

Most of the residents worked on the railroad. Second Street, the main street of Illmo, was known as conductors' row.

"Almost every house had a conductor living in it," said Dickey.

Many of the original stores are gone and others have been taken over by different businesses. The mercantile is now an antique shop, a barber shop occupies the old post office and flowers are sold from what was once a Kroger store.