SITTING contentedly on the banks of the Illinois River in the very heartland of America, Peoria has for years been the butt of jokes, the gagman's tag for Nowheresville. "How come you got married?" "Well, I was booked into Peoria and it was raining." Today that humor is as stale as the idea of Peoria as a backwater of national life. The Peoria of 1966 welcomes more foreign visitors than just about any other U.S. city of its size (pop. 133,000), and sends its citizens abroad to range the world. The bartender at...
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