In most Midwestern county seats, the county courthouse is the center of attention. It sits in the middle of downtown and is surrounded by side-to-side and up-to-the-sidewalk storefronts. After all, why do you think they call it a town "square"?

For reasons that I have never been able to figure out, Macon's courthouse is different. It sits all by itself about two blocks north of downtown in a residential neighborhood, surrounded by houses. It's almost as if the courthouse got up and left downtown. No, that would leave a "hole" in the square. Maybe they just "forgot" to build the downtown around the courthouse. No, the downtown area is right where it "should" be, near the railroad tracks. It's a mystery to me.

Anyway, it's a neat old red-brick building, built — like most others in the Midwest — soon after the Civil War. It's on the National Registry of Historic Buildings.

Actually, there are two main buildings on a huge tree-filled lawn. And another building (I think for the county jail) sits across the street to the north.

Several granite monuments decorate the large lawn around it, each commemorating the soldiers who gave their lives in various wars. (The "colored" men who died are on the same monuments, but they are listed separately.)

When I was growing up, the courthouse lawn was the location of the annual "Ice Cream Social", a fund raiser for the high school band boosters.

It was also the place where the time-honored tradition of announcing the election results was held. When I was a senior in high school, our jazz band (in which I played piano) had the honor of entertaining the crowd as they awaited the announcement of the vote tallies. Yep, I actually remember playing the piano wearing gloves.