Wells bin 'splodin

One of our local landmarks suffered another indignity, yesterday, and I missed it because I was coughing up a lung...

The Wells Elevator, a grain elevator a few blocks outside the center of Monmouth, IL, had, for a decade or two, been celebrated by having the college student arts publication named after it. Some years back, somebody managed to put a star and a flag atop it, so it became (in spirit, if not in actual fact) the highest spot in town. It's been a cultural fixture, as well as an architectural... lump.

And, yesterday afternoon, the grain dust got to it, it seems. It's likely that the company will have to take down the old bin, since it's top has been rather dramatically cracked, and its structural integrity will have been compromised.

Bummer.