Day 4: November 2, 2024 Conference Wrap Comment via blog

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Joe Sonderman kicked off the last day of presentations with a talk about Route 66 St. Louis Style. Then Dave Tucker told us about how the Illinois Coal Museum in Gillespie came to be and Mark Pierce shared stories about the Mississippi River Festival. I had heard of this remarkable music festival that ran from 1969 through 1980 (probably because of the Bob Dylan connection) but knew next to nothing about it.

At some point it occurred to me that I'd not posted an exterior view of the theater so I grabbed this shot during the lunch break. I'm told that gorgeous Mustang belongs to a theater employee named Gayle (or Gail or Gale or some other spelling).

Afternoon presentations came from Bill Iseminger on Cahokia Mounds and from Jim Hinckley on how Route 66 went from being just a highway to being an icon.

The conference's last official event is the passing of the symbolic MOPCon mop through the sequence of past organizers until it ends up in the hands of next year's organizer. In this case that is Debyjo Erickson for MOPCon 2025 in Joliet. Of course, that is pretty much symbolic, too, because even though there is a designated lead organizer for each event, all of these ladies are fully involved.

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