Copyright © 1975 by Mark Henkes

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Contents Acknowledgements 1

Foreword iii

Introduction v

One Early Settlers 1

Two T h e Immigrants 8

Three T h e Gay Nineties 1 6

Four T h e Century Turns 2 5

Five World W a r I 3 1

Six Dry Plaines 4 0

Seven Calm Before the Storm 4 9

Eight Depression and Relief 57

Nine World W a r II 6 5

Ten Suburban Spectacular 73

Eleven T h e Way It W a s 8 4

Twelve Yesterday and Today 91

Acknowledgements Most of the material gathered for this book was obtained from the

archives of the Des Plaines Historical Society Museum. I wish to thank this institution for its generous assistance and facilities which it extended to me during my many visits there. I particularly wish to thank Museum Director Richard W . Welch, who gave so many hours of his time to intro­duce me to Des Plaines history, who offered other possible sources of information that led to the discovery of more facts, and who corrected errors of time and place that otherwise would have been overlooked. I am also grateful to the Des Plaines Historical Society Board of Directors which named me an honorary member of the Society, notably Richard L. Jordan, Arthur R. Wetter, Sally Sove, Henry J . Kracalik, Kenneth G. Meyer, Gil Newman, James H. Kinder and James R. Williams.

Thanks are similarly due to the staff of the Des Plaines Public Library, which provided me with 21 years of newspaper microfilm neces­sary for this study, particularly William J . Wiman and Kathleen Vieser.

I am indebted to the Des Plaines Bicentennial Commission, which during the course of this work designated me official Historian of Des Plaines after giving me the honor of writing this history as part of its program. It is my hope that I have fulfilled their expectations for this part of its program, that this work will help fulfill the need for Des Plaines to have a written history of its own, that this book will help those who have lived here recall the days they like to remember, and that it will help the young people of this city to learn and understand the times through which their city has lived. For their sincerity and encouragement, I thank David R. Wolf , Daniel W . Morava, Sue D'Hondt, Jared Birch-field, A. Daniel Mesenbrink, Eileen Erbach, Clayton E. Rawn, James R. Williams, Jordan Minerva, Jr. and Carol Marx.

Last, but by no means least, I wish to thank the following citizens of Des Plaines, all who graciously offered their time and thoughts for this book, and who realized there were memories of their own that should not be lost forever:

Hobart Ahbe, Edith Anderson, Ferdinand Arndt, Harold Ascher, Jeannette Jefferson Baranski, Birdie Niclaus Becker, Herbert Behrel, Min-

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nie Heller Bielefeldt, John Boeckenhauer, Helen Byrne, Jim and Lucille Calabrese, Alton and Mildred Carter, Don Corey and Shirley Lagerhausen Corey, Grace Coasch, Hugo Dahm, Tom Donovan, John Duntemann, George Eck, Herbert and Evelyn Fischer, Hubert Fischer, Julius Froeh-licher and Hazel Minnich Froehlicher, Richard Froehlicher, Ed Geisen, Clarence Grewe, Clifton Goodyear, Savena Ahbe Gorsline, Hazel Haed-icke, Lillian Sengstock Hageman, William Heifers and Grace Held Hei­fers, Dr. and Mrs. William Heller, Leslie Holmes, David Jackson and Peggy Kinder Jackson, Ernie Kaufman, Harrison " T a t " Kennicott, Wal­lace Kinder, Alvina Meyer Koehler, Franz Koehler, Regina Kufke, Alfred Kunisch and Esther Kuhl Kunisch, Elsie Patrick Kunisch, Hilma Kunisch Van Ness, Rose Kunisch, Ken Larson, James R. Lawrence, Charles Lund, Bernice Manuel, Mildred Manuel, Phyllis Manuel Stokes, Victor Mensch-ing, Ken Meyer, Adolf Moehling, Margaret Moehling, Ted Napier, Ethel Nelson, Harold Petterson, Herbert Rosen, Gilbert Rudiger, Rosemary Sajovic, Oscar Seeger, Clarence Senne, Louis Senne, Murray Smith, Pearl Nagel Spiegler, Rose Thiede, John Vacilek, Kate Yaccino.

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Foreword When Eileen Erbach of the Des Plaines Bicentennial Commission

asked me to write a series of articles on the history of Des Plaines, she had three or four articles in mind. That was in November, 1974. After eight months of research and composition, the author would have per­formed a gross injustice if he had penned less than a dozen.

With personal and telephone conversations with old-timers who have lived in this city most or all of their lives, the author has attempted to use facts in order to identify with and create the atmospheres of time-periods so prevalent in their memories — World W a r I, Prohibition, the Depression and World W a r II .

With the archives of the Des Plaines Historical Society, it was pos­sible to piece together already known facts, as well as altogether new findings of historical import which have developed a more complete his­tory. Microfilm of local newspapers from the 1890s, from 1917-23 and from 1954 to the present in the Historical Society and the Des Plaines Public Library had never before been examined with the scrutiny necessary for a full-length account of Des Plaines. Otherwise boring facts from censuses placed into historical perspective were given the attention the author thought they deserved. Few words were used for interpretation, although at times it was necessary. Otherwise, the events and thoughts of the times should help explain themselves.

Some words and phrases no longer commonly spoken or written are employed in the chapters as they were used in daily life. "Autoists," for example, was used when there were no "cars." "Negroes" is used during the Civil W a r years instead of "coloreds" or "blacks." "Roads" is used when referring to "railroads" or "railroad tracks." These, for authen­ticity's sake.

If the author learned anything as he compiled this history, he learned how little he and many other Des Plaines residents know about Des Plaines and why they should have the chance to learn as much as they can about their home town — so much has happened here, and it's down­right fascinating.

After speaking with dozens of long-time Des Plaines residents, he

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learned something else — they have experienced a life that nobody will ever see again, so incredibly different. Old-timers who take their daily walks along Miner or Ellinwood or elsewhere in this city knew what it was like when they were young. Today they walk on cement sidewalks, along paved roads, among streams of modern cars, past new high-rise buildings. Times have changed, but their opinions and attitudes and out­look on life and their style of dress have to raise the question "Where did it come from?" If you ask them, they'll be happy to spend hours with you. With them you find wisdom.

For decades, concerned Des Plaines residents have called for a writ­ten history of this city. This book is a history, not the history of Des Plaines. If one performed and organized solid research for two years, sifting fact from fiction, validating as many sources and clues as possible, conducting interviews with a few hundred long-time residents — in other words, making this a full-time job with many hours of overtime — one could write a 2,000-page history of Des Plaines. Maybe someday, someone will find the time.

This book is not a fairy tale. If it happens to read like one, then it has suddenly come true. Only facts were used. What was thought to be fiction was discarded.

June, 1975 M. H.

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Introduction Where is the only bridge in the United States on which two railroads

cross each other? Guess Des Plaines and you'd be right. Did you know that the first cast iron greenhouse gutter was made in

Des Plaines? What about the area between Oakton and Touhy that once had the

nickname "Frogtown?" There were so many frogs here children brought them home for parents to prepare froglegs for supper.

Des Plaines, City of Roses, the Flower Center of America, home of Socrates Rand and Joseph Jefferson, the grist mill, Northwestern Park, Stars Park, Monkey's Run, Whiskey Point, the Echo Theater, the pump house, the bandstand, the milk and cattle trains, the sorghum mill, the brickyard, Maine High School.

For Des Plaines, 1840 is difficult to recollect, but 1920 was only two weeks ago and 1960 was only yesterday.

In 1960, the population of Des Plaines was 30,000. Today it is near 57,000. That means for almost half of all Des Plaines residents the history of their city reaches back no further than 1960, a date that can only fall within the last stages of Des Plaines' industrial development. It's much like the timeline the geologist uses when he speaks in terms of hundreds of millions of years — it is so difficult for many of us to comprehend. So too, with the history of Des Plaines.

Try to imagine a Des Plaines area of the 1830s, covered with forests and farms, with a few Indian trails and wagon roads winding through woods filled with muskrat, raccoon, wolves, mink, pheasant, rabbit and quail.

It is even a chore to envisage the downtown area as it was in the early 1900s — with horse-drawn wagons, dirt roads, saloons, vaudeville shows, runaway horses unaccustomed to the sound of the train, medicine shows, hitching posts, wooden sidewalks, and a river that was clean enough to swim in and catch a variety of fish. Just ask Johnny Weiss-muller. He learned to swim in this river.

Des Plaines is an American city, and it has lived the joys and sorrows of events that have marked this nation's history — the migration of early

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settlers, the immigration of Europeans, the Civil War, the Gay Nineties, World W a r I, Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World W a r II and the rapid transition into an industrialized Chicago suburb.

At the same time, Des Plaines citizens have been filled with the doubt, anxiety and curiosity that has always accompanied the dawn of new inventions that finally became popular, such as the telegram, the phonograph, motion pictures, the telephone, the diesel-electric engine, the electric icebox, radio and television.

But other things haven't changed much. Kids still don't like to do homework. And they do things they know they shouldn't do, just for the satisfaction of secret accomplishment — until they get caught. Des Plaines still has a movie theater. The movies just aren't silent anymore. Many Des Plaines streets have been here in cruder forms for more than a cen­tury. Des Plaines does not depend on the railroad as it used to, but the Chicago and North Western is still the only train in the country that can run left-handed.

Let's not kid ourselves; we still have saloons today. The only dif­ference with today's tavern counter is that we push the stools up to the bar and eliminate the brass footrail. Of course, there is one major dif­ference — women can walk into a "saloon" today and not be called un­ladylike.

Snowstorms still paralyze Des Plaines to some extent as they did 100 years ago, temporarily halting the everyday rush of a modern com­munity and transforming it overnight into a serene place that must be satisfied with just the bare necessities. W e must still humble ourselves to Mother Nature as did the first settlers here, though so much more often, so many years ago. And the 1967 snowstorm proved another axiom here, that Des Plaines folk eat more bread and drink more milk than any­thing else.

Yes, Des Plaines has a history. From the tiny hamlet of a few hundred persons, it has grown to be one of Chicago's most industrialized suburbs.

It is a history of achievement, sentiment, folly, gracefulness and purposefulness of a community that has lived and breathed a robust life of its own.

vi

It is a history of thoughts and actions of bygone eras that would otherwise be forever buried by the frenzy of a modern world, a com­memoration of times that will never be relived.

It is a history of the remembrance of generative souls who have lived here, and the unselfish transmission of heritage, a legacy that trans­cends the mere passing away of individuals.

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One

Early Settlers

" I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made, Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade."

William Butler Yeats 1865-1939 The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The year is 1833. Andrew Jackson last year defeated Henry Clay for President and is

now setting out to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, claiming it serves the interests of the northeastern states.

The revolutions and movements for national unity in Europe during the 1830s and '40s will send hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the United States, speeding America's expansion westward into newly-acquired government lands.

For eight years the 363-mile Erie Canal has been open to steamboats, helping a veritable flood of settlers from New England and New York seek the rich farmland that has been advertised for the Upper Illinois region. The Chicago Road from Detroit to Chicago is already completed. Illinois has been a state for 15 years.

But before this far-reaching transition could take local expression in what is now called Des Plaines, the land had to be secured from the Indians who owned it — the Potawatomi and Sac and Fox tribes. After

1

more than a generation of bickering over the treaty of 1804 and later treaties regarding the cessation of land to the federal government, the showdown with Chief Black Hawk arrived in August, 1832.

Fighting 1,000 Indians and a terrifying wave of Asiatic cholera, the Illinois militia massacred most of Black Hawk's forces and drove the remainder west of the Mississippi. When this tragic war ended, it signaled the beginning of peaceful settlement in the Des Plaines area. Indians would be passing through from time to time, but on a friendlier basis.

In 1833 there was only a handful of settlers and their families deter­mined to establish homes here among the tall grasses and a woods so dense the river could not be seen from a short distance. Men like Mancell Talcott, Dr. John Kennicott and Ebenezer Conant — names familiar to us today.

It wasn't until 1835 that Socrates Rand and his parents, originally from Massachusetts, journeyed here, via Buffalo and Detroit. A New Jersey farmer named Stephen Thacker settled here five years later. The entire population of Des Plaines and Monroe precincts was only 350. The population was so sparse the census taker didn't even bother to total up each of the precincts. Cook County's population, in comparison, was 10,201; its largest town, Chicago, was booming with 4,479. It wasn't until 1850 that an Illinois enabling act wiped out the two precincts from official use and replaced them with the township, this one becoming Maine.

The first settlers here were squatters. Though they exerted great effort clearing the land of an intense overgrowth of prairie grasses and ancient trees, building their durable one-room cabins and raising their families, they did not have title to their land.

Owned by the government, the land could not be purchased by settlers until it was surveyed. The first survey was not taken until 1841.

For eight years the founders of Des Plaines had to protect their claims from newcoming farmers or businessmen who might be monetarily capable of forcing them off their plots of land once the government put the land on the auction block. It sometimes happened that an unsuspect­ing settler would be evicted from his newly-built home and cleared farm­land because someone else legally owned it.

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The minimum price for this land was $1.25 per acre, and this is exactly what most of the settlers paid for it, usually in blocks of 40-160 acres at a time. Edmund Crowell was the first to purchase land here on February 27, 1841, north of what is now the intersection of River and Rand Roads. By 1842 Joseph Jefferson and his sons, well-to-do farmers from Vermont, already owned $10,000 worth of property — quite a sum in those days. Their property included a newly-built grist mill, the first in the Des Plaines precinct. Land was such a precious commodity because, with few exceptions, farming was the only way of life.

And what a life it was. In the remarkable diary of Augustus Conant that begins its story on January 1, 1836, the following describes a few days of the Des Plaines settler:

January 1 — Attended to the survey of my claim, cut a few logs for rails, weather mild and pleasant.

January 2 — Father bought five hogs for $3.60 apiece. January 3 — Sunday weather rainy, wrote poetry in the evening, went

down to Mr. Long's. April 5 — Lyman Clifford commenced making rails, let Jefferson

have sleigh, drew rails from Soule's claim to make pasture fence west of trail.

April 6 -— Helped Long raise his house, engaged to let Walton have 10 bushels of potatoes.

April 10 — English heifer lost herself; Lyman shot a wild goose. April 17 — Went down to Long's, read encyclopedia. On May 9 of that year, Conant says he married Betsey Kelsey, so we

must assume this is the first marriage in what is now called Des Plaines. Also mentioned are the attacks of prairie wolves on hogs and calves and the destruction of corn by blackbirds.

A temperance society was formed in 1837, the first meeting held at Conant's place. Alcohol had been labeled a public nuisance and a product of the devil by those who preached against it, so these societies were nothing new. Prayer meetings and Bible readings were held in the homes of neighbors along the road. Itinerant preachers passed through now and then and members of the community assembled to hear the sermon. By 1839 Conant was a preacher himself, delivering messages in Wheeling,

3

Geneva and Chicago, then was ordained an Evangelist minister in Boston. The Episcopalians in the Des Plaines and Monroe precincts were repre­sented by the Rand family, at whose home services were held in 1837.

The year 1837 was a tough one for men like Socrates Rand, who probably did more for the promotion of the young Des Plaines area than anyone else. Through the 1850s there was still much land to be bought in this area, particularly along the railroad that was to be built during this decade. But 1837 was the year of the Great Panic in the United States, a time of severe depression. Illinois had gone wildly into the in­ternal improvements business in that year, with the state approving the construction of canals, roads and railroads across the state.

Then the Panic hit. Illinois reneged on its promises. No canals were built, few roads were laid, and there was no railroad charter to be had from the state. Illinois became known as the most untrustworthy state in the Union — there were only 26 at the time.

It was that reputation through much of the 1840s that Rand and others had to contend with. What effect the smeared name of Illinois had on the migration of settlers to this area is of course uncertain, but it was surely an adversity that a small country community could ill-afford.

Des Plaines. Strangely enough, the spelling of this word was not generally accepted until the 20th century. Some persons still spell the city as one word — DesPlaines. In the 1700s and early 1800s, the river was spelled a number of ways, with the variations originating from writers and explorers who followed the early French spellings — Plein, Le Plein, DePlein, DesPlain, Desplaines and finally Des Plaines. In some publica­tions and letters it was spelled Aux Plaines, Oplain and O'Plaine.

These early French spellings quickly became obsolete by the time the German settlers began to arrive here during the 1840s through the 1880s.

By a strange quirk of fate, Des Plaines acquired yet another name during Prohibition that was the common joke of many a train engineer — Dry Plaines.

The Des Plaines River, after which the town was later named, was both enjoyed and feared by those who first lived here. When he was 13 years old in 1852, Amasa Kennicott wrote a composition for his English

4

tutor about his observations of this extraordinary waterway: "This river, as I before mentioned, is liable to sudden freshets

( f loods) , which carry away everything with them. I have seen this river when it is a few rods — and a few places but a few feet — in width, and again I have seen it when it was half a mile across . . . they sweep away all the bridges and leave the river impassable for days, weeks altogether. Sometimes the water rises as to come into the houses of people living near the banks of the stream, and so as to compel them to row about in canoes to attend to their necessary duties."

Marquette and Joliet had the same problem in 1673. But it was nevertheless a splendid place to fish and hunt. Rabbits,

pigeons, squirrels, partridges, quails, deer — and wolves too, that howled in the night while neighbors rested in their cabins after a hard day's work — were plentiful. Swimming in the river was another pastime, as Kennicott reveals at the end of his composition:

"Many is the time that I have plunged into its stream and come out cool and refreshed, and many is the hour that I have spent in fishing on its pleasant banks."

With the use of Indian trails that traversed the Des Plaines area and later the widening of these trails into roads for use by ox and wagon, the importance of the river decreased for travel purposes. When the weather

was good, farmers frequently traveled to Chicago to sell their goods — flour, oats, flax, corn, lumber, wheat, poultry or cattle — and to purchase needed supplies. The trip was an all-day affair, and the quickest and safest route was the Plank Road, now Milwaukee Avenue. Oftentimes an overnight stay in Chicago was necessary before the trip home the next day.

Undoubtedly the person with the earliest birthdate ever to settle in the Des Plaines area (if only for a short time) was the father of Nicholas Sherman, Phineas, who died in 1855 at the age of 85, making his birthdate six years before the signing of the Declaration of Inde­pendence.

Other residents of the area were Captain Hollis Sabin of Canada, Elem Kinder, Edward Higgins, Luther Ballard, Dr. Miner, William Dear-love, George Babcock, Mark Ockerby, Louis Peet, J . W . Walton, Gardner Brooks, Dr. Silas Meacham, Samuel Hoard, Horatio Fallonsbee, James

5

Long, Thomas Gibson, James Watts, Uriah Stott, and others. For these people, living and working together was natural and essen­

tial. The failure of one farmer harmed the entire livelihood of the entire community. One family's joys and sorrows were shared by others close to them, and in these days, nobody was a stranger unless he was a new­comer.

For the Rand's, the Jefferson's, and all the others who settled here in the 1830s and '40s, home life transpired in the pioneer fashion.

The heating system was simple — a fireplace, usually made of sticks and clay that ran up the outside of one end of the building. At one end of the fireplace hung pots, pans, skillets, kettles and other utensils for the busy housewife, who, by the way, proudly told the census taker her occupation was that of a full-time homemaker. A wooden bucket was always in the home, filled with water, and ready to be used for drink­ing or cooking.

On one wall, resting on wooden hooks, hung a long-barreled, flint­lock squirrel rifle, or something akin to it. The bullet pouch and powder horn hung next to it, along with the double-barreled shotgun.

The door of the cabin swung on wooden hinges and was fastened with a wooden latch which was raised and lowered by a strong leather string. The string passed through a hole that left the free end hanging outside. The door was "locked" if the string remained inside the cabin, and unlocked if it was passed through the hole above the latch. Hence the phrase, "The latchstring is on the outside" — the equivalent of say­ing: "Come in friend, you are welcome!"

With the trundlebeds and feather ticks on one side of the cabin, almost as much space was needed for the hand looms and spinning wheels. Constructed mainly of wood, the loom was the contrivance with which the housewife made jeans for the men, linsey for the women, coverlets, counterpanes and pillowcases.

Cooking was a full-time chore in itself. Meals were cooked three times a day on the hearth over the fireplace. Three times the table would be pulled out before the fireplace and the dishes set on it. Under the "spider" — a skillet with legs — were pushed red-hot coals for baking or cooking such items as bread, biscuits, potatoes, pies and cake.

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The tea-kettle was heated directly on the fire, the coffee boiled on coals placed on the hearth; ham, bacon and eggs were placed in a skillet and fried on the wood-burning fire. Soon the cook stove would replace the fireplace, but to the "old-timers" the flavor just wasn't the same. Matches were not yet in common use, so the fire on the hearth was never allowed to go out. If, by mistake, it did, someone went to a neighbor's home and returned with some hot coals.

Going to the mill was a frequent chore, and the closest one here was the Jefferson's (next to their homestead) which was built circa 1841 where the Izaak Walton League building now stands just south of Oakton on River Road. This greatly relieved settlers here of having to travel long distances to find a mill to grind their grain. It wasn't until about two decades later that the saw mill which Socrates Rand bought (which still stands today) at Miner and River Road was converted into a grain mill.

Once the neighbor arrived at the mill, Jefferson would take the sack and pour the contents into a hopper, from which the grain ran between two millstones. One wheel was stationary, the other was turned by the rush of the Des Plaines River. For his services, Jefferson usually took a toll, or in this case a certain percentage of the grain.

The life of the early Des Plaines settler was simple, but it was hard. It was already changing in the late 1840s and especially during the fol­lowing three decades. Europeans, particularly Germans and English, would be arriving in what was to become Des Plaines; first in a trickle, then a massive wave. They would permanently alter the course of Des Plaines history.

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Two

The Immigrants

Mein Kind, ich habe es klug gemacht, Ich habe nie uber das Denken gedacht."

"My boy, I'll say that I've been clever, I think, but think of thinking never."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832

A casual stroll through the cemetery on a pleasant Sunday afternoon is not something one does for a hobby. But a close look at the Town of Maine Cemetery on Dee Road and Touhy Avenue will tell you some­thing. If you can't read German, you can't read the epitaphs on many of the tombstones.

"Christus ist mein Leben, und Gott ist mein Gewinn," meaning "Christ is my life, and God is my reward."

Others quote lengthy passages from the Bible, carvings in stone half weathered away by Old Man Time. Dozens of smaller stones read "Mutter," "Vater ," "Sohn," and "Grossmutter."

This small and seemingly insignificant piece of land tells a fascinat­ing story and stands as a reminder for us today of the tremendous num­ber of Germans, English and other Europeans who left their nations and helped build Des Plaines during the 19th century.

Erhardt, Koehler, Beto, Mueller, Fricke, Wagner, Ahbe, Hoffman, Hinze, Arndt, Scheunemann, Bruhn, Weinberger, Henk, Nagel, Johanns,

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Kaufman, Flentge, Wedel, Bruning, Hahn, Niclaus, Wolter, Minnich, Kunisch, Prucha, Koch, Moldenhauer. Some of the English include Pitt, Penny, Burke, Sherman, Webster, Foote, Watts, Huntington, Wilkinson. These are only a few. Some had long since moved to other suburbs, townships and states. But the names still remain in Des Plaines to those persons who have heard of them or who know their descendants.

This isn't to say that migration from settlers of the eastern states had stopped. By no means. But already by 1850 more than one-third of all the 548 Maine Township residents had been born in Europe, half of them in Germany. Only 112 had moved here from some other place in Illinois. The remaining 236 originated from the East, almost exclu­sively from New York and Vermont, where, by the way, most of the land advertisements had been sent from Illinois.

The English weren't far behind the Germans in 1850. There were 60 here in that year, and 11 from Scotland, four Canadians, 13 Welsh, 10 Irish, 11 French and two Austrians. Most of them were farmers and laborers.

With the population of the township at 1,120 ten years later in 1860, the percentage of foreign-born residents increased from 34 per cent to 37 per cent, with 319 Germans, still 60 English, adding to this one Dane and one Swiss to the others before mentioned.

But why so many Germans in Des Plaines? Why not more Poles or French or Italians? After all, they too were experiencing the revolutions of the early 19th century. There is probably no clear-cut answer, but a quick glance at history will reveal some clues.

Until 1870, Germany was never really one nation. It was a con­glomerate of at least 33 states which, since 1815, could not decide on a constitution acceptable to all. The two largest and most powerful states — Austria and Prussia — each hoped to gain constitutional domination of a future German nation. Meanwhile, the lesser German states had to decide who was to be their ally — Frederick of Prussia or Metternich of Austria. It wasn't an easy decision. It was difficult to ascertain who would be most powerful should war break out.

All of this resulted in revolution, confrontation, regimentation, con­fusion and frustration. Then came the climax in 1866 when Bismarck's

9

army crushed that of Austria. Some Germans were jubilant, others not so. Taxes were high, and anxieties too. The strict army life affected civilian life.

Look at the demography of the 1870 Maine Township population. Of 1,850 persons, 675 were foreign-born, 484 from Germany. Of the Germans, a remarkable 184 were Prussian and 230 from Mecklenburg and Hanover — two states that bordered Prussia.

One interesting and almost invisible note about the 1870 census: Throughout the first few pages of the records, the census taker jotted down the word "Germany" when referring to place of origin for immi­grants in Des Plaines. But suddenly things changed. The next entry was more specific — Austria. The next was Prussia. They were neighbors, from two German states that had just been at war. They wanted it known they were from their respective states, and not merely Germany.

Did the census taker understand their feelings? In this case, it didn't matter. He knew he had to be more exact, and from then on he most certainly was.

And so Des Plaines began the 1850s with a lot of residents who couldn't speak "the language."

But to use "Des Plaines" here would be technically incorrect. The town wasn't incorporated until 1869 when a Board of Trustees was organized. Prior to this date, the area that comprised the Des Plaines of 1869 was written in the records as the subdivision called Town of Rand. Each subdivision of Maine Township had and still has a name, this one, of course, named after Socrates Rand. But this was only an official name that subdivided property. Residents of the area before 1869 considered themselves residents of Maine, not Rand.

So one might ask why the name Des Plaines was chosen for the town in the first place? True, before Maine Township was organized in 1850 some of the area was known as Des Plaines precinct. But there is another reason. The railroad.

In 1854 a railroad was built from Chicago to Cary, a distance of 39 miles. From Chicago north the first three stops were Jefferson, Can-field and Des Plaines. The Des Plaines stop was located near the present intersection of River and Miner, so that the engine could take on water

10

from the Des Plaines River. For the railroad the name was only appro­priate — a full 15 years before Des Plaines was incorporated.

Then in 1873 it was decided that too much territory was embraced within the town limits. No wonder. Des Plaines included four square miles, with a population represented by no more than 80 voters. But its property had been assessed at about $50,000, including both banks of the river, two expensive bridges and 10 others on the tributaries. The burden of expenditure was just too much, so the village of Des Plaines was decreased in size.

To make matters more confusing, the postal service, which for all practical purposes began in Cook County in 1837, had its own names for its offices in this community — Chamblee, Monroe, Short Bend, Maine, Mainville. The names changed with the times, with the relocation of offices for better distribution and the creation of Maine Township.

Before 1847 there were no stamps, so the person receiving the mail paid 25 cents on delivery from private parties on horseback. Later, make­shift offices were set up in stores and other buildings that were centrally located. After the railroad was built, mail was carried in pouches by rail and was sorted at each office.

The first railroad right-of-way was purchased by the Illinois and Wis­consin Railroad in 1852, and a steam-operated sawmill was built by this firm to make ties for the tracks which still stands at Miner and River. Socrates Rand was chosen to grade the four-mile roadbed from Norwood Park to what the railroad was already calling Des Plaines in 1854. Rand later bought the building and converted it into the community's second grist mill.

Finally, in the fall of 1854, the first passenger train pulled into town, and citizens got their first look at the Iron Horse with the balloonstack. Quite a sight for a small farming community that was growing industrious.

From this point on, the railroad would bring industry, skilled labor­ers and tradesmen into a town that would grow rapidly. Maine Town­ship in 1870 recorded a population of 1,850. The one-year-old Town of Des Plaines boasted about 300.

In August, 1859, the Chicago and North Western train set a remark­able speed record on the run from Janesville through Des Plaines to

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Chicago. T h e train made 11 stops at stations, was detained 15 minutes with a hot box, stopped once to oil machinery, making the actual running time two hours and 31 minutes. Taking time out for delays — 50 minutes — the actual running time was one hour, 46 minutes to cover the more than 91 miles. That means it averaged almost 60 miles per hour.

By this time the types of skilled workmen here reflected the diversity the town was to attain — there were masons, carpenters, joiners (cabinet­makers), clerks, machinists, a dentist, blacksmiths, mail carriers, a civil engineer, millers, gardeners, a wagonmaker, a barkeeper, a shoemaker, and of course, a tax collector.

Many young girls worked as domestic servants in nearby households. Peddlers (then spelled pedlar) traveled about selling their wares. Many wives stayed home and kept house, but some worked the fields, as did the children who were old enough.

Probably the two most fanciful occupations of 1870 Des Plaines were those of Levi North, a circus proprietor, and William Stockwell, a light­ning rod dealer. There was apparently room for everyone.

Meanwhile, young children went off to school, especially during the summer and winter months when there was less work to do in the field. The first semblance of a schoolhouse was supposed to have been in the home of Socrates Rand, who had renovated a cheeseroom for a group of about 15 children in 1838. His sister, Harriet, was the teacher. The Jeffersons sponsored another school in their home to the south. Two years later, a one-room structure was erected solely for education purposes near what is now River and Perry.

Until 1855 the Des Plaines area had a subscription school, a very logical choice at the time. Each parent would buy as many yearly sub­scriptions he thought necessary for his children. Sometimes a man with four children could afford two subscriptions only, dividing school time between all four children, some helping at the farm while others learned the golden rule, alternating their study and their work.

But it didn't work out. The poorer family could not pay the price and thus the children suffered. In 1855, the free school system was established, whereby all school expenses were raised by taxation. In 1860, 244 children in the township were eligible to attend school when they had the time.

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Reading, writing and arithmetic (the three R 's ) were the basic courses, and for most of the students they were enough to handle. The scholars of the early schools had to use the goosequill for penmanship practice. The steel pen didn't come into general use until the 1850s.

Students whose parents were well-off could buy books that concerned themselves with the marvelous workings of Morse's electric telegraph or the power of Watt 's low-pressure engine, like the one they had just seen the other day at the Des Plaines River.

Some families like the Conant's bought the Saturday Evening Post or subscribed to the publication The Fugitive, an anti-slavery magazine that supported the Underground Railroad which smuggled Negroes to Canada during these years of Civil W a r tensions. A few of the fugitive Negroes were smuggled into the Free State of Illinois and 14 lived in Maine Township in 1850. By the start of the Civil W a r only one remained.

Even though the township rested on Free Soil, many citizens here thought the movement for abolition was ill-timed and premature as did the Chicago American. The Civil War helped answer the Great Question.

In 1843 the Congregationalists were the first to organize and build a church in this area. Worshippers came for miles to attend this church on Dee and Talcott. It served the Congregationalists of the entire county. Then, just as Des Plaines was being incorporated as a town, three churches sprung up here:

The Congregational Church, with its 14 members headed by Rev. Laird and a Sunday school of more than 100 students; the German Luth­eran Church with Rev. Mauerman conducting services only in German and a German school taught by August Koch; and the Methodist Church with Rev. Schwartz. This latter church was finally abandoned by 1881 because of monetary problems, its members uniting with the Congrega­tional Church. These were the only churches in Des Plaines of the 1870s. Other faiths would soon follow.

In these days if one wanted to buy vegetables from a merchant in town it would probably be Solomon Garland, who made a specialty of raising vegetables in his six greenhouses (then called hot houses) which were heated by hot water.

In the 1870s if anyone needed a horse or a place to keep the one he

13

had, he consulted the proprietors of the Haverly or Meinsen livery stables on Ellinwood Street. Then he could go next door and have a few drinks (but hopefully remain sober) at the Meinsen Saloon. Crossing the dusty dirt road, he could buy hardware or farming implements at Ben Kinder's shop (Kinder's Hardware is still going strong and is the oldest business in Des Plaines today).

If his horse needed a new shoe, he went to John Schuh or Tom Luce, both reputable blacksmiths. Travelers who needed a place to stay tried the Meyer Hotel with its 25 guestrooms. If they came through the area after 1883 they could live it up in the luxurious Thoma Hotel on Miner, a $12,000 structure with three floors, 35 guestrooms, rooms for entertain­ment and later the first bowling lane in Des Plaines.

Walking down the main thoroughfare, a resident could easily have shaken the hand of Henry Senne, who was president of the first Des Plaines Board of Trustees of 1870, a representative in the Illinois legis­lature, and Cook County commissioner.

Other trustees were Charles Wicke, Simeon Lee, Franklin Whitcomb, John Sabin, John Behmiller, Frank Hoffman, I. D. Poyer, C. E. Bennett, Conrad Mueller and August Moldenhauer.

Leaving the town to the south on River Road the traveler passed Whitcomb's brickyard. Today, if you drained Shagbark Lake maybe you'd find some of the remaining clay, because that is where he got it. He manufactured 800,000 bricks the first year in 1868 and averaged 3 million per year after that, dividing his market between local and city transactions. A few of the present houses near the intersection of River and Algonquin were made from the handmade bricks of this enterprise.

And so Des Plaines had taken a monumental step. It was no longer a hodge-podge of scattered businesses and farms.

It was a town with a working government, a famed railroad that brought prospective residents and businesses, and, by 1874, even had its first brick schoolhouse — North School.

Buildings mushroomed on Miner and Ellinwood and new businesses replaced old ones. Farmers brought their products from the outlying districts into town to be hauled to Chicago and elsewhere by the engine with the new diamondstack. They came to town by horse and wagon,

14

articulating in their own favorite fashion, conversing in their own tongue. Here and there a German newspaper from the city would be lying around, as if waiting for the next one to read it and pass it on.

And Des Plaines was spelled Desplaines, not Des Plaines.

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Three

The Gay Nineties

"Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more."

William Shakespeare 1564-1616 MacBeth Act 1, Scene 3

T h e face of Des Plaines had changed extraordinarily by 1880, and the old-timers knew it.

Socrates Rand was already 76 years old, a man who had witnessed the entire transition from one-room log cabins to multi-room frame houses, from messenger boys on horseback to the telegraph, from reports of terri­fying Indian wars to the establishment of nearby Indian reservations.

He helped put Des Plaines on the map when he almost literally single-handedly built the railroad through what was to become the town; he was the first township chairman and one of its first highway commis­sioners; he financed many organizations and provided them with timber from his sawmill when they needed a building raised.

Now it was time to step down. The old man of the 1880s was now watching Des Plaines expand behind the reins of a younger generation — the Civil W a r generation.

But if there was something that hadn't changed since the olden days, something that even the most Herculean efforts could not stop, it was the monstrous overflow of the Des Plaines River.

The ten bridges that crossed the river in Des Plaines were what one might term "temporary structures." They were constructed of wood, and

16

they were not meant to last forever. Sooner or later they would be dam­aged or destroyed by the river's spring onslaught. How long each would last was anybody's guess.

But it wasn't just the river that wreaked havoc in Des Plaines. It was the chain of streams and creeks that flowed to the river through the town itself. The largest was Weller Creek, which during these times ran totally in the open from Arlington Heights to Des Plaines at the present "six corners" intersection to Miner. It was a favorite spot for young ice-skaters during the winter, but it was like a demon when the flowers bloomed.

Another stream flowed just south of Ellinwood from Parsons, across Lee to the river. A wagon bridge — a culvert made of planks — crossed the stream. A footbridge with a handrail gave pedestrians safe passage from the teams of horses and kept them free of dust from the dirt road. It was a great place to catch frogs and crayfish when the fords weren't flooded.

After the "Great Flood of 1881" made travel impossible in Des Plaines for days and difficult for weeks, the village council appropriated $140 for the construction of a brick culvert for the Lee Street Bridge. Other bridges received similar treatment. The culverts would last longer, but the river was not about to be subdued. Northwestern Park and the Methodist Campgrounds always got hit hard.

Methodists from across the country had been assembling here every summer since the end of Civil W a r hostilities. This national meeting-place of Methodism was to be another big plus for Des Plaines, a factor that put the village on a national map and not merely on a suburban one. Trainloads of Methodists, usually bringing their own provisions, stepped off the Chicago and North Western in Des Plaines to participate in their annual gatherings of prayer and fasting, which provided quite a contrast to the socials and fireworks next door at Northwestern Park.

Des Plaines residents didn't know it in 1883, but the farmhouse which then sheltered 15 boys from Chicago would someday lay claim to having housed more than 30,000 children — St. Mary's Training School. But it was called Feehanville then, after Rev. Patrick Feehan, the Chicago arch­bishop who walked from the Des Plaines depot to dedicate the school.

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Feehanville was struck with tragedy that first winter when five Indian boys from the Sioux and Chippewa tribes died of respiratory disease. The other 36 were sent to a warmer climate, and a small Indian cemetery on the campus today recalls the severe consequences of early beginnings.

The Catholics in Des Plaines in 1885 were bound and determined to have a church of their own, so they went to Arlington Heights to get one. They loaded an unoccupied church on two flat cars, added an engine, and St. Mary's Church was placed near its present site. The Catholics were now represented.

By this time, the period called "The Gay Nineties" was just around the corner. Was this blue ribbon era a happy time for Des Plaines? Was the economic depression of the 1880s waning? Did the 1890s bring about that atmosphere of leisure and hospitality that it is famous for today? Sure it did, for some. Not so for others.

For Mike Brazell and those who knew him, the Gay Nineties were ushered in like a horror. Brazell, a trustee of Des Plaines in 1877, was killed in October, 1890. It was to become the most bizarre murder in the history of Des Plaines, if not the most talked about one. On October 22, a pedestrian strolling along Miner Street heard a scream from behind the buildings. He ran into the Thoma Hotel where a meeting was taking

place and he summoned the others. They found Brazell dead in a build­ing behind Miner, his head crushed. A $500 reward was posted for the apprehension of the murderer or murderers. They were never found. Brazell's property was still for sale at least two years after his death, his property in the hands of Scott and Scharringhausen Real Estate.

Subsequent shootings in Des Plaines during the next few years may have been committed by the same man. Constable Burchard claimed they were all perpetrated by a man named Thompson, but he never proved it.

The Brazell murder truly intensified the emotions of the townspeople. Almost exactly one year later, barber Harry Rabson quickly found out how intense they were.

One evening Conrad Mueller was feeding his horse when he heard someone in his barn. He grabbed his gun from the house, but the man had already slipped away. While Mueller was rounding up a posse, poor Rabson happened to start after a doctor to look in on a sick member of

18

the family. Spying Rabson on the street, the crowd suddenly thought it was he who was the guilty party. They chased him through the town and the unfortunate Rabson dodged into Dr. Dornbusch's cellar to escape his pursuers.

It finally dawned upon the party in pursuit they were on the wrong track, and had been making things decidedly hot and uncomfortable for an innocent neighbor.

The Gay Nineties had arrived in Des Plaines. Des Plaines had its first village hall in 1892, located where Manda's

Snack Shop is today. Prior to this, village council meetings were held at the Thoma Hotel or in other businesses or homes in Des Plaines that would charge an insignificant fee or no fee at all. At the September 22 dedication, the hall was draped with the tattered flag from Civil W a r days, made by the women of Des Plaines for a company of soldiers camped near the river in 1861.

Professor Quantrell of Northwestern University and the Rev. Huel-ster of the First Congregational Church kicked off the round of dedication speeches with eloquent laudations of Des Plaines, praising its advantages over other towns.

Then Dr. Earle came on strong, an enthusiast for village improve­ments, and said it made him feel ashamed to compare Des Plaines with other towns along the road, referring to the 1,500 feet of cement sidewalk just installed in Park Ridge.

" Y e s ! " retorted Harry H. Talcott, "and you ought to hear them growl about their taxes!"

During that year, Des Plaines had installed new sidewalks, but they were the old wooden plank sidewalks, spiked into the ground and four feet wide.

If anything revealed the feelings of Des Plaines citizens during the 1890s, it was politics. This year of 1892 was a national election year and the village was immersed in the campaign fever. The Germans, the Irish, the English and Dutch joined with the others to make this election in Des Plaines one that would simply be inconceivable today.

At a Democratic torchlight parade that year at the new village hall, it was evident, from the murmurs of dissent that were heard, that there

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was a liberal sprinkling of Republicans in the hall. Half the speeches were belted out in German, of course, and when Mr. Goldzier spoke, a grey-haired German alien exclaimed to his non-German Republican friends, "He make a l ie; oh, he make a big l ie!"

The most embarrassing and hilarious local race in 1892 was probably the race for coroner: Democrat Jim McHale vs. Republican Henry Esdohr.

As election time crept closer, Democratic Party Chairman Ira Bur-chard verbally ripped apart the Republican candidate for coroner:

" I have known Henry Esdohr from a boy up, and the fact is he can't read and write the English language well enough to do business. He will have to go to school for 20 years and longer and then he won't know enough, for he is lacking right here" (pointing to the top of his head) .

But the smear job backfired unexpectedly, for that next week the man Burchard so openly supported made a speech before his fellow Demo­crats in a state of ultimate intoxication. McHale wore a silk high hat, with long flowing whiskers of a dirty yellowish hue. He stepped up to the podium as drunk as a skunk, and the following is a phonetic version of his speech attempt that night as reported by the forerunner of the Suburban Times, the Desplaines News:

" 'Know my friend McHale? Runnin for govner. No, hie — not guvner, butcorner. Gointerbebeat! Hie! Know Henryesdohrtoo. Good-fellowtoo — hie! Twenty five yearsanlongertoo. Ain'tgoodfellow — madamistake. Damdutchman! Cantreadanrite. He and McHale runnin-gainst each other. Esdohrdamdutchman. Youredamdutchman — hie — everybodysdutchceptme!'

"And so Jim McHale stuttered and blundered on until even those who were at first inclined to laugh at his maudlin utterances became dis­gusted and slowly, silently, sadly, stole away, leaving the old man in his pitiable state."

It was a bad year all around, however, for Republicans. Des Plaines had never before voted Democratic, but it did in 1892. On the national scene, Democrat Cleveland more than doubled Harrison's electoral vote. Of 422 Des Plaines voters, 207 voted for Cleveland, 203 for Harrison, and the remainder went to the Prohibition Party.

The next day, according to the newspaper, Des Plaines Republicans

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were strangely inconspicuous: "Scott and Scharringhausen were at home bidding goodbye to their friends, preparatory to taking passage up Salt River. Tom Luce had left his forge and the place wore a deserted look. Curtis and Meyer were still at their posts but their faces wore a solemn aspect. Even the newsboy shared in the general gloom and said he had lost all his holler. Republicans who wish to engage in a comfortable berth for the trip to Salt River can apply to E. C. Shaeffer, prospective postmaster for the Cleveland administration."

The news stories reporters could so often get away with in those days! Those were the days when catching a good-sized fish in the river

was not uncommon. Dana Jefferson caught a l0 1/2-pound pickerel here on September 23, 1891, reportedly the largest ever.

Those were the days of Winchell's livery, of Kunisch's and Rabson's barber shops, of Scott and Scharringhausen real estate, of Lagerhausen Lumber, of C. W . M. Brown's general store and of Spiegler's store.

Those were the days when Ely's Cream Balm was the cure for catarrh (cold in the head) , hay fever, deafness and headache; when six bottles of Swift's Specific restored to perfect health the person with contagious or poisoned blood.

Those were the days when Uriah Stott and all undertakers held the funeral in the home of the bereaved family; when people who didn't take

a bath for weeks or months always had the worn-out excuse — they didn't know anyone with a bathtub. If they did, they did not have the time to get a bucket, go to the backyard to the pump, fill the bucket with water, bring it inside, heat the water on the stove and pour it into a bathtub. Usually a big metal wash basin was the only thing available.

These were the days when Barney Winkleman's Saloon was the hang­out for prominent citizens and barflies alike; when the Des Plaines Mili­tary Band played for all occasions, including the opening of the picnic season; when the big question in Des Plaines was "Should the village hall be used for dances and concerts?" The answer was "yes," because the village treasury needed more revenue.

In 1893 the treasury was empty for all practical purposes. It had $64.82 in it. Citizens who had accounts against the village simply had to wait until more taxes were paid. No wonder there were no cement sidewalks.

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Those were the days when commencement exercises for North School were held in the Methodist Episcopal Church; when, after the Great Chicago Fire of 1881, buildings in that city were going up faster than ever and thousands were flocking to see the Columbia Exposition; when the old Des Plaines jail was sold at public auction for $21.75 and re­placed by the basement of the new village hall.

For outdoor concerts, Des Plaines had its famous bandstand, elevated six feet above the ground, located next to where the Choo Choo Restaurant stands today. It was a place jammed with young people who gathered around to dance, a place where boy could meet girl on a warm afternoon or a cool summer night.

One of the few licensed veterinarians in the area, Edward Manuel, began a business in 1895 that would prove to be a blessing to the com­munity — United Motor Coach. There were no motor driven vehicles at that time, so the passenger traveled by horse and the carriage with the fringe on top. From this point on, nobody had to travel on foot all the way to Feehanville if he didn't want to.

Then there is the story of Riverview, the village that was south of Des Plaines bordered by Oakton, Touhy, River and Mt. Prospect Road. Riverview was incorporated as a village in 1876 and by 1885 had four factories in running order. Four years later, a fifth factory proclaimed Riverview a boom town at a time when there was little industry in Des Plaines.

The Steel Car Works was a large brick building at Riverview and Illinois Streets where gondola rail cars were made for hauling coal. The Western Coated Paper Works was located along the Wisconsin Central Railroad (called Soo Line in 1910) facing on Everett Street. The Woolen Mill was located at the present Safety Electric site next to the river, just south of River and Oakton. The Schaeffer Piano Company was just north of the present intersection of Mannheim and Prospect.

In the fifth factory the first commercially sold crayons were made. A man named Julius Kreh owned what he called the Kreh Chalk and Pencil Factory, at the present intersection of Linden and Everett. He made the first colored chalks and called them Color-ons, then he changed the name to Kreh-ons, and finally phonetically spelled it Crayons. The first crayons were not wax, but chalk.

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During the 1870s and '80s Hiram Jefferson ran an excursion boat that began at the Jefferson Bridge (now Oakton) . On weekends he traveled south to pick up persons from Chicago who came to the river from as far away as Leyden Township. Jefferson's boat, propelled by paddle wheels, could only go as far as Rand Bridge to the north because this bridge was too low for his boat to pass under. His business took a great drop when he first changed to a gasoline motor. It made so much noise people were afraid it would explode.

A decisive election was held on July 29, 1892, when 17 Riverview voters unanimously called for bonds to be issued for the construction of a school at Illinois and Riverview. The cost was $1,500. The first teacher, L. H. Burch, was paid $60 per month for teaching 179 school days for 52 children in grades one through eight.

Riverview had its own fire station, village hall and train depot, and farmers oftentimes took their goods to the Riverview depot at Mannheim and Everett instead of making the trek to Des Plaines.

Riverview children picked cherries in their spare time for five cents a 20-pound basket. Plucking onions from the ground for farmers was always another odd job for anyone interested in making some money, and many Des Plaines youngsters also got into the act. Farmers hired Germans and other foreign-born Americans to help during the harvest season. River­view high school children walked what they called the "Cinder Path" (Cora Street) to attend Maine High School in Des Plaines.

During the boom town era, the average laborer in Riverview fac­tories earned $1.25 per day for 10 hours work. Regardless of a man's ability, he received $1.40 per day if he had eight or more children.

Then, suddenly, this thriving community fizzled out. It remains a mystery to some, but to those who have lived in this area the tragedy was simple to explain. Within four years, four of the five factories burned to the ground. It began in 1899. The last of these fires razed the Schaeffer Piano Company and in 1903, the Woolen Mill owners moved their con­cern from Riverview because of the fire scare.

It is believed by old-timers that these fires were the work of an arsonist, a man who had lost considerable property and money through the real estate business. One cannot rule out the possibility that these fires

23

were started in order to collect on fire insurance, but according to old-timers the man who they thought began the fires and who they tried in vain to find was actually the brother of Julius Kreh, owner of the chalk and pencil factory which was also ruined by fire.

This not only meant the industrial collapse of Riverview, but it halted the sale of lots and impelled some families to move their houses to Des Plaines. The Hulsmann-Dittman real estate company went bank­rupt. With the factories gone, Riverview and some Des Plaines residents had to look elsewhere for work.

The area of Riverview had been dubbed "Frogtown" by Des Plaines residents and by Riverview residents themselves. Creeks flowing west to east into the river left part of Riverview a slough all year long. When the weather was warm, frogs croaked and crickets made a racket that could be heard for some distance. Some families thought nothing of serving froglegs for dinner. Some considered this nickname a slur, but just as many in this tightly-knit community were proud of its name.

These years at the turn of the century would never be forgotten by those who lived them. The children in Des Plaines would never forget the curfew bell that rang at 10 every night. When kids under 16 saw the policeman walking the streets after the slow bell sounded, they scat­tered rather quickly to their homes in hopes they wouldn't get caught.

The kids in Des Plaines would never forget playing baseball in Stars Park across the river from Rand's old grist mill; they'd never forget taking a stick of sorghum from the wagon parked in front of E. D . Scott's sorghum and cider mill; they'd never forget seeing blacksmith Axel Pet-terson cure a faltering horse as well as the best veterinarian, or the way they would jump on the runner of a farmer's sleigh (flip bobs) after he unloaded his goods at the freight depot. If it was one thing the farmer was proud of during the snow season, it was his set of sleigh bells as they jingled through the heart of town.

Or what about the first bowling alley at the Thoma Hotel on Miner Street? Or Dr. Melze's first silent movie theater at the Geisen Saloon? Or the little drinking fountain in front of North School where students recited the pledge of allegiance and sang the national anthem every morning?

T o those who were young and alive and carefree, those were the days. 24

Four

The Century Turns

"As we rush, as we rush in the train, The trees and houses go wheeling back, But the starry heavens above that plain, Come flying down our track."

James Thomson 1834-1882 Sunday at Hampstead, X

"Sure, the next train has gone ten minutes ago."

Punch, vol. ix, p. 206 1871

A century epitomized by the seemingly endless fruition of ideas and inventions was now giving way to another that would technologically and intellectually move even faster. It didn't seem humanly possible in the early 1900s.

Man fly? Impossible! Man wasn't meant to fly. Look what hap­pened to the "Castle in the Air" at Antwerp and the aerial bicycle a few years ago.

Us get involved in a war in Europe? We're too civilized for that. Maybe 25 years ago, but not today.

No alcohol anymore? But what would happen to the saloons? And anyway, nobody around here supports the Prohibition Party.

But all of it would happen, and with a population of 1,800 Des Plaines wasted little time starting the 20th century with a lot of progress of its own.

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In 1900 came the first steel bridge across the Des Plaines River, then, the first steel railroad bridge for the Chicago and North Western.

In 1903 came the first and sorely needed water system in Des Plaines. Way back in 1893 the digging of a deep artesian well behind the village hall was begun. It was 1,200 feet deep and would furnish 100 gallons of water per minute, by overflow or pumping. The projected completion date was 16 years, but the job was finished in 10. This became the vil­lage's first water tower.

The system would do wonders for the village: it would reduce the number of backyard outhouses, the ones that were sometimes overturned by Halloween pranksters; it would gradually lessen the importance of backyard handpumps and wells; it marked the transition from the pitcher, washbowl, soap dish and slop jar to the beginning of indoor plumbing. N o longer would the water freeze in the washbowl overnight.

It also meant more pressure for the volunteer fire department, the men who had to push and pull the two-wheeled fire cart with the water can and the long fire hose. With the new water tower the fire depart­ment had a better chance to extinguish fires on second story buildings. Later, when fire hydrants were installed, citizens were asked to keep them clear of snow and ice — otherwise firemen would have to take the time

to hack the ice themselves, time they could not afford when an old wooden building was going up in flames. Since these were all volunteers, passers-by would often be the first ones to arrive on the scene to help once the hose arrived.

In many instances the question was not whether a building could be saved, but rather "can we stop it from spreading?" Late reports, faulty alarm systems, flammable materials and bad weather all hampered the efforts of the fire department in its early years. It was not a fun job, and many times it was dangerous.

Just before 1910 Des Plaines had its first cement sidewalks along the business district streets of Miner and Ellinwood. Some of the wooden hitching posts were now cast iron, and the kerosene lamp was making more and more room for the gas lanterns installed along the main streets.

Maybe the grandest victory for Des Plaines during these years was in 1902 when officials voted that Maine Township High School be con-

26

structed on Thacker Street in Des Plaines rather than in Park Ridge or Norwood Park or elsewhere in the township. Prior to this, students had to travel all the way to Jefferson Park for high school.

In fact, since 1892 there had been a rivalry between Des Plaines and Park Ridge concerning the all-important location of Maine High School. T h e Des Plaines Village Council drew a petition that year asking that Park Ridge unite with Norwood Park to build a school so Des Plaines could locate one of its own.

Even though Maine High School created somewhat of a bond between Des Plaines and Park Ridge, it obviously went only so far. A distinctive competitive spirit between the two villages would continue in respect to the high school as well as other fields which would evolve with the pro­gression of expansion. Don't forget the sidewalk competition of 1892. T h e next one would be the problem of busing Park Ridge children to the high school in Des Plaines.

The man who was most responsible for the idea of the high school and its location in Des Plaines was also the man who so much wanted Des Plaines to keep up with the times — Dr. Clarence A. Earle, after whom Earle Field was named.

He called himself the pioneer doctor, and that he certainly was. He had witnessed the days of the two-wheeled cart when he'd travel for miles, sometimes to farm families outside of the villages. He had only one eye, "but he could see more with that one eye than most men could see with two." He was the man who jumped on his horse in the middle of a freezing night to answer a house call, and who doctored persons hit by express trains across the street from his home at Miner and River. Many times he took them into the old Rand grist mill, which he had converted into a garage for his buggy and later his automobile.

He was instrumental in establishing the first Des Plaines Public Library in 1907 at Miner and Graceland with a $5,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. Librarian Sarah Weeks earned $10 per month in those days.

In 1906 Des Plaines had its second grade school, obviously because more facilities were needed with an increase of school children. South Division School at Center and Thacker had four classrooms and 150 stu­dents in all four grades when classes began that year.

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If there was anything that fascinated some of these school kids and the adults as well during these days, it was the grand spectacle of the Iron Horse as it whizzed through town or gushed clouds of smoke from its sides as it gathered steam.

Milk trains cooled with ice stopped here to load the farmers' one, two, five, eight or 10-gallon milk cans. Some of the farmers ventured into the village so often they considered themselves citizens of Des Plaines even though they did not live within its limits. One time a milk train jumped the tracks just east of River and Miner and the engineer, seeing most of it was lost, allowed persons to take what milk they wanted — free.

Quarters of beef, lamb and pork were loaded onto express cars either by hired help of the local butchers or by the local expressman. Trainloads of livestock headed from Chicago's stockyards were not an uncommon sight. There were circus trains that barreled through town, their cars filled with animals and painted with clown faces and other bright ornamentation.

Passengers didn't board trains through doors located in the middle of the cars — they boarded at the ends. There were gaslights on the ceiling of each car, and the cars were heated by coal stoves at the end of each coach. Usually the Chicago and North Western trains had two passenger cars and a smoking car. Smokers were separated from the other passengers and were apparently not even considered as such, because the smoking car was actually a converted cattle car. These cars had openings between the boards along the sides so the air would rush through them to help condition the inside.

Until about 1925 there was a railroad line here called the Palatine, Lake Zurich and Wauconda Line. But Des Plaines residents and others had their own name for it — "P. L. Z. and Walkback." The term "walk-back" refers to the countless times this train would sway left and right, sometimes break down, and force the passengers to find another mode of transport. When the train was stuck in a gigantic snowdrift, it took days to dig out the engine and the coaches.

The water tank for the railroad in Des Plaines was first an old wooden tank about 15 yards in diameter. In winter the water froze, and firemen had to break the ice from the top so the engine could take on

28

water. Later a larger, metal tank was built, and the pumphouse men near the river had little difficulty pumping water into the tender of the locomotive. It was also the responsibility of the firemen to stoke the coal-box on the train during stops.

The trains never stopped to deliver or take on outgoing mail. The mail cars had sliding doors, and the post office workers here put the outgoing mailbag inside a belt that was clipped onto a stand, high enough so the man on the "fast train" could grab it. Incoming mail was thrown on the ground alongside the tracks in a designated area. Stealing the mail before the post office picked it up was, of course, just not done.

Des Plaines was only one of few villages that had its own round­house, this one near the intersection of River and Ellinwood in front of Lagerhausen Lumber and Coal Company. Manned by Rudolph Goodyear, the wooden structure could accommodate four engines on its pair of tracks during the night when the engines had to be occasionally stoked for the first morning run. The turntable in front of the roundhouse was used to turn the locomotives completely around so they could be backed into the house. It took two men to turn it. There was only one track for inbound traffic to Chicago and one for outbound traffic northwest. Prior to this there was one track for all traffic.

Nearly everyone knows it is a common practice for trains to run right-handed on double-tracked railroads in the United States. The Chi­cago and North Western was the exception. It ran and still runs left-handed, and more than one person has lost life or limb through ignorance of this fact.

Watchmen were hired to guide pedestrians and teamsters across tracks. But these men were not always on duty. There were no 24-hour shifts, and, in most cases, only one or two crossings were guarded. Some­times the teamster or the guard was drunk or sleepy. Fast trains zipped through the middle of Des Plaines at 50-60 miles per hour and sometimes a careless person would be killed or seriously maimed.

By 1915, there was a number of well-established businesses in Des Plaines. Sigwalt Coal Company and the Des Plaines Lumber and Coal Company were here. The Desplaines News had been changed to the Suburban Times under publisher David Gillespie. Fresh geese, turkeys

29

and ducks were displayed in the windows of Hindrer, Niclaus and Hammerl meat markets. There was Weber's Bakery, Imig's Saloon, Behren's General Store, Giles and Rosen Creamery, the Gross Pickle Factory. The Echo Theater was the first one built for that express pur­pose. And Tom Minnich was busy cutting his blocks of ice from the river and storing them in his ice house between layers of sawdust and hay.

There were two bank buildings in Des Plaines in 1915. The first, which had been established in 1905, was the Des Plaines State Bank on Miner Street. In 1913, the First National Bank was established. Prior to this August Moldenhauer owned a vault located to the side of the Behren's Store at Pearson and Ellinwood, and this was used as a bank for many Des Plaines residents.

Storekeepers were always wary when the gypsies came to Des Plaines. When persons on the street saw their brightly-colored wagons roll into town, they sometimes warned the shopkeepers in advance. Usually they wandered into a store in groups of two, three or four. One would make friendly conversation with the proprietor, while the others walked off leisurely with some goods. They weren't always successful but that was the way they operated. They wore loose clothing with bright colors that was hard to miss — until autos became popular. At that time one had to wait until they climbed out of their big auto before they were recognized.

Like many other inventions, the auto was not a popular machine when it first hit the streets. The reason was simple: they so often got stuck in the crevices and bogs of muddy roads through which horses could easily navigate. Until the roads were paved, autos were only used during the dry seasons of summer and autumn. The favorite reply to the friend whose new-fangled auto was stuck in the muck was "Why don't you get a horse?"

Then, suddenly, the atmosphere in Des Plaines changed. On April 6, 1917, to be precise.

The war had been raging in Europe for three years. The German U-boat campaign had begun in February, 1917, and in April the United States under the leadership of President Wilson was at war.

The Great War , the one with the long fuse, had just begun.

30

Five

World War I

"We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

Refrain from an American folk-song popular in the British Army, 1914-1918

" W h a t did you do in the Great War , daddy?"

Recruiting placard, World War I

"Put the flag in the window of your home. Keep it there all the time. It need not be a large flag. It need not be an expensive flag. But let it be an American flag.

"In this war, the safety, the liberty and the future of the American people are at stake. From every city, town and hamlet, men have gone and will go into the army. They fight for Americanism. Let them know there is Americanism behind them by displaying its symbol — the Stars and Stripes — in every home in the land."

Maybe that quotation from a 1917 Suburban Times sums up the atmospherics of this unforgettable era in Des Plaines history.

This feeling of patriotism might seem somewhat out of place today. It wasn't in 1917. Not when the Women's Relief Corps and other Des Plaines women were constantly knitting socks and sweaters for the GIs fighting in the trenches in France; not when Maine High School Christ-

31

mas Concerts consisted only of songs like "America's Message," "Keep the Home Fires Burning," "American Patrol," "March Militaire" and "We ' l l Never Let the Flag Fa l l ; " not when the Echo Theater discontinued its regular run of silent films to honor Des Plaines soldiers during Soldier's Benefit Night.

But if this sounds all too simple, you're right, it is. It would be too simple to say there were no men here who didn't want to fight in Europe. It would be too simple to say that no GIs in Des Plaines didn't openly complain about not receiving compensation while they were injured and jobless at home. It would be all too easy to disregard the troubles of many Des Plaines citizens of German descent while Des Plaines fought a war against Germany.

As if the shock of war wasn't enough to adjust to, Des Plaines had already voted itself dry by 1915, a full five years before Prohibition took effect on a nationwide scale. Add to this the ravaging snowstorm of 1918 and the deadly influenza epidemic of that same year which wiped out dozens of Des Plaines citizens when the village population was only 3,000.

Yet during hard times like these, people try all the harder to find time for fun and relaxation, and Des Plaines seemed to have its own special brand. Some of it was inspirational, some was downright hilarious.

Not to say that World W a r I was taken lightly in Des Plaines. It was anything but that. It was vigorously accepted that anybody who belittled our allies or opposed the draft or justified the German cause in deed or speech should not complain if he was swiftly punished. Those who failed to respond to the roll call were please asked to go to the country they supported. Those who forgot to take off their hats when the flag passed by in a parade were given a sharp nudge in the side.

A total of 91 Des Plaines men were either drafted or enlisted into the armed forces at the start of 1918, and most of them enlisted. This number was to rise over 200 as the weeks went by. The Boy Scouts and the local Red Cross were busy assembling comfort kits for GIs and allied soldiers. There was a cry for farmers in the Des Plaines area to produce and send wheat, corn and sugar to Europe. "Corn will win Democracy's war."

The home guards, the Des Plaines boys in high school, drilled with

32

broomsticks and anything they could find during the week in the Maine High School gymnasium, preparing to be recruited for the cause.

By 1918 the federal government owned the railroads, and carloads of soldiers and war material passing through Des Plaines was a common sight. During the war, one of the freight locomotives of the Chicago and North Western was the Mikado, named after the Emperor of Japan, who was our ally. The staccato exhaust, the tedious pulling of heavy machin­ery, would be repeated again and again.

Then in the dead of winter, January 6, 1918, came what was reported as the worst snowstorm since 1885. Every place of business was suddenly at a standstill. Mail and milk routes were cancelled. Farmers never made it to town to deliver their goods at the Des Plaines freight depot. Those who were already there to do so could not unload their merchandise be­cause most of the trains were not running.

Papers from Chicago never left the city. Two huge milk trains at Harvard and Crystal Lake were tied up for three days and this threatened Chicago with a milk famine. Even local milk trains were cancelled in Des Plaines. The Russell Cut near Arlington Heights, which had already gained fame years ago as "the burier of trains," held four coaches and two engines for four days. There was no train service north of Barrington.

Meanwhile, the P. L. Z. and Walkback was a lost cause in Wau¬ conda. The first train through was, believe it or not, a bobsleigh. Twenty-foot drifts separated locomotives from freedom. One railroad worker fell off a railroad car and suffocated in a gigantic snowdrift. With 100 men at work it would take one week to clear the snow and open the road.

Officials were trying desperately to secure rotary plows from the north to put the railroad into operation as soon as possible. Coal short­ages were in the making, and in these days they were real nightmares. N o coal, no heat.

Borden's Milk Company hauled milk across country in sleighs to Des Plaines. But even these teams had difficulty. The Chicago and North Western was finally compelled to furnish hotel rooms to passengers of trains that had to be abandoned.

Frank Garland lost three greenhouses, Solomon Garland two and Henry Standke one. Some tried to go to work by car to Royal Enameling

33

Works — the largest factory in Des Plaines — but they gave up and returned via Minnich's horses.

By the time the snow was under control, a cold wave set in and the area had to watch the coal supply with scrutiny. When some families ran out of the precious commodity, they either borrowed coal from neighbors or moved in with them. Without trains, Des Plaines could not survive long.

And the war effort against Germany continued. A liberty bond drive was begun in Des Plaines in March, 1918.

Persons received four per cent interest per year. On the first day alone the drive netted $25,000. In April, Des Plaines sponsored liberty loan parades and attendance at the parade equalled and very well could have surpassed the population of Des Plaines — 3,300. The American Legion, the Women's Auxiliary, the scouts, the Women's Club were all there. In May, there were two more parades to end the success of the bond drive. "Keep pouring your savings until the world is free!"

In summer, 1918, there was a bond drive at the Echo Theater. Sixty employes at the Des Plaines Benjamin Electric Plant sat with flags in the front row "to get promises to be responsible to get the quota of $210,000 for the fourth liberty bond drive." It was the committee's responsibility to publicly post names of those who wouldn't give to the drive. In the end, Des Plaines surpassed its goal with a whopping $250,000. Quite a feat for a village its size.

It was a war against the German army, commonly referred to as " T h e Huns" and "The Kaiser's Barbarians." A weekly advertisement in the Suburban Times featured "Boschee's German Syrup for coughs and colds — sold in all civilized countries."

Germans in Des Plaines who were not yet citizens of this country were labeled "the alien enemy." In February, 1918, 22 German aliens registered as unnaturalized persons at the Des Plaines Post Office. The penalty for hiding one's identity by refusing to sign the list was imprison­ment until the war was over.

Many residents of Des Plaines did not appreciate the sound of spoken German, even by residents who had been established here for years. "You've got sauerkraut hanging from your ears! Why don't you go back to the homeland!"

34

It was often difficult for German-Americans in Des Plaines to express patriotism because it was sometimes thought to be insincere. Many of them hadn't learned much English, and this includes the townspeople as well as the farmers in the outlying districts. Whi le the children were mainly learning English in the schools and only speaking English with their peers, the older generations many times preferred the language by which they were raised — German.

The Immanuel Lutheran Church and Christ Church conducted two of three services only in German. When Des Plaines politicians went to these institutions, they either had to find someone to interpret the German or else hand out political pamphlets written in German. At Christ Church the first confirmations in English weren't performed until 1920. With the advent of World W a r I and the anti-German sentiment that accompanied it, the use of German at these two Des Plaines churches tapered off. Dur­ing World W a r II there were German services on Good Friday, and it was even difficult to find a preacher who could say a mass in German by that time.

The war to end all wars ended on Nov. 18, 1918. It was a time to rejoice. But as soon as the war effort was diminishing in Des Plaines, another war just as deadly came to the village's front doorstep. It was influenza. Death was waiting just around the corner.

More than 20 million persons died during this winter epidemic, 548,000 in this country, more than 50,000 in Illinois and more than 20,000 in Chicago. When World War I ended Des Plaines was already hit. Between November 25 and December 2 there were 100 new cases in Des Plaines. There was no cure, just makeshift remedies and a lot of hope and prayer. T h e remedy was simple: "Dress comfortably, don't panic, avoid alcohol (it was illegal in Des Plaines), avoid crowds and avoid common drinking cups."

It was " L a Grippe," a disease that spread quickly and unnoticingly. Those persons who had the sickness oftentimes wanted to go outside for a bit of fresh air. If there had been obvious symptoms, they could have been spotted. This was not the case. Proprietors in Des Plaines wore cheesecloth facemasks during business hours. Some Des Plaines citizens caught influenza, then later died of pneumonia.

35

It was a very mild winter, a winter that made popular the phrase, "Green grass means an open grave." Chicago hospitals were jammed so tightly that offices were taken apart to provide room for the diseased. So many persons were sick there were actually not enough to bury the dead. Men were hired to dig trenches for mass graves for those who would not be buried with the luxury of a coffin. One day a Des Plaines resident saw a neighbor walking down the street as healthy-looking as could be; the next day the church bell tolled the number of years he had lived. It was frightening.

It wasn't until the cool, wet weather turned dry and sunny that Des Plaines could really enjoy the fruits of peacetime.

The young men who had received a tear-filled send-off at the Des Plaines depot the year before had now returned in their khakis to march in the first spring parade. On Memorial Day the veterans of the Civil War, the Spanish-American W a r and the most recent war marched to­gether with the Des Plaines Band.

The first moonlight picnic of the 1919 season was held in June with entertainment from the Dreamland Jazz Band and Art Minnich's Hungry Five at Northwestern Park. Families carrying basket lunches, flocked to the park where lunches were auctioned, refreshments were served and the baseball game started at 3 p.m.

The Fourth of July festivities were almost mind-boggling: band con­certs, picnics, ball games, foot and cycle races, parades, weddings, fire­works, dancing and Ed Geisen flying his stunt airplane with Chic Wheeler parachuting into the park. One time Wheeler was caught on the wing of the airplane, but Geisen shook him off.

A long row of gaslights surrounding the footbridge across the river led the way to the park where many a band assembled for young people. John Huebner had his band and played drums, and Les Fulle had a band of his own and played violin. Other popular local musicians were Judge Bert Sengstock and his sax and clarinet, Herman Kruse's violin, Alvin Minnich's drums, Mel Borchard's piano, Martin Katz' clarinet, Vince Connor's piano and Rubin "Nups" Minnich's drums. These bands and musicians had great followings here and when they traveled to other towns in the Midwest and West. Northwestern Park was the place to

36

be on a weekend night. "Alvin Minnich, player of traps, drum and bells, and manager of the Kruse Orchestra of fourteen pieces, has advertised Des Plaines his musical way. He is ready and willing to make out of town calls on short notice. He is liberal in donating music to churches and charity, and has as many as four and five orchestras out in one night."

Ballard Inn, the Masonic Temple at Lee and Miner Streets, Hoff­man's Hall on Ellinwood, Schnell's Grove on Higgins Road and River­view Hall were also popular dance halls. Meanwhile William Thiede was busy taking photographs of communions, confirmations, weddings, parades and every other important occasion. He was the most sought after photographer in Des Plaines.

A funny thing happened in 1919 at Mr. Magee's Echo Theater. On November 24 of that year, a fire burned two homes in the Methodist Campgrounds, and for some reason the fire alarm rang at the theater while Mr. Magee was busy looking for the young culprits who were popping their paper popcorn bags. Someone in the crowd yelled "Fire!" and there was a mad rush for the door with children clinging to their parents. Before the place went up for grabs, the two Des Plaines police­men in the crowd quickly informed them that the fire was a mile away to the east. The fire alarm system had not yet been perfected.

The first World W a r I military funeral in Des Plaines was held on July 31, 1921, for Private Ernest Mensching who was killed in France. On Armistice Day, 1921, elm trees were planted at River and Pearson for the seven Des Plaines war dead — Mensching, Ernest Beth, John Markgraf, Harold Lorenzen, Elmer Zaleski, George Cook and Anthony Biba. The memories of this war and the commemorations of the men who fought in the war to end all wars would be apparent for years to come.

The main streets in Des Plaines had been paved, so the automobile was in full swing. The Hupmobile was on the market, the Elgin Six was selling for $1,095 and the Overland Light Four for $795. Rib roast beef was 26 cents per pound, oranges were 37 cents a dozen, corsets were only $1 , corduroy Tam O'Shanters were 9 cents and golden grain toilet paper sold for 3 for 23 cents. Magee's Echo Theater was featuring movies like "The Talisman," " W e e Lady Betty," "Perils of Pauline," "Tray of

37

Hearts," "Ten of Diamonds," "The Red Baron," "Southern Pride," and Mary Pickford in "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." The price was five cents. A 1916 book advertisement for the theater read "The Echo Theater — clean, bright, instructive, most entertaining. Nothing but clean, cen­sored pictures shown. Right in your home town. Where you will pass a sociable evening, meet friends, see a good play, have a good seat, good welcome, and your money's worth."

George M. Whitcomb was now selling cement that was "warmest in winter and coolest in summer." George F. Meyer was growing "fancy fruit for retail trade" at the rear of the State Bank. Herman Koehler had his fruit farm on Lee Street where Valiquet is located today near Lee and Howard. "Herman Koehler the fruit grower, right on the farm, direct to the consumer, absolutely pure, fragrant and fresh. No middleman's profit. Direct to you from the farm. Fruit presses right on the farm. Cherry, grape, currant and other fruit wines."

J . Walter was a "dealer in harness, robes and blankets" for horses, the Squire Dingee Company was "a manufacturer and packer of pickles, olives, mustard," John Congdon was an interior and exterior decorator in the Tosch Building on Ellinwood, Joseph La Mantia received fresh fruit daily which stood in bushel baskets outside his store on Ellinwood,

the Quilici Brothers made home-made ice cream and William F. Heller tuned and repaired pianos.

John Hahn was selling his pure glycerine soap, and Royal Enameling Works and Benjamin Electric combined resources near the North Western and Soo Line intersection on Northwest Highway. Moline universal tractors were becoming more common, as well as the first gas heaters, ranges and electric washers.

The eggs laid at Albert Grewe's White Feather Egg Farm were sold across the country and even in Canada and Mexico. He was raising an average of 20,000 chicks per year which laid 5,000 dozen eggs per year with an incubator capacity of 7,200 eggs at a setting.

In 1920 Des Plaines had four large industrial firms: Benjamin Elec­tric, Lord and Burnham, the Des Plaines Foundry (where Garland made his first cast iron greenhouse gutter next to Stars Park on Miner) and

38

the Safety Electric Company which located just inside the Riverview area on River Road that would five years later become part of Des Plaines' south side.

Des Plaines citizens got a look at their first fire truck when the fire department purchased one for $4,000 and sold the old fire wagon for $115. In 1919 it was decided that volunteers receive no pay instead of the $5 per fire they had been receiving, and at the same time there was a call for more men to join the force.

As the joy of victory in Europe and the commemorations of World W a r I in Des Plaines became less intense, with the boys back home and ready to settle down with families, another burning issue began more and more to replace the anxieties of war.

There were public debates in Des Plaines about it. It was the age of the speakeasy, the leaky barrel and the little old lady who made bath­tub gin for the boys. It was the period of economic boom combined with new federal laws that turned out to be a 13-year experiment with the unknown.

The Roaring Twenties. Prohibition. Dry Plaines.

39

Six

Dry Plaines

"Let the schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning."

She Stoops to Conquer, song

"Licker talks might loud w'en it git loose fum de jug."

Uncle Remus, Ch. 34

"It 's a long, long way to Prohibition, It's the wrong way to go, Let us all fight the opposition Of the drys, our common foe; W e must all together stickin', Let this be our cry, It's a long, long way to Prohibition And we won't go dry." This was the everlasting motto of the Hanke Medicine Company at

the intersection of Monkey's Run and Whiskey Point in Des Plaines (River and R a n d ) .

Richard Hanke was quite an apothecary. He made some of his own medicine and put it in cases. Business was going so well in 1917 that

40

some Des Plaines citizens were absolutely disgusted. Others sat back in disinterest. Still others purchased his medicine because they were sick — sick and tired of being without it.

On January 4, 1918, Hanke was caught in the act for the third time. For the third time he had violated the local option law in Des Plaines, because Des Plaines was already Dry Plaines. Some concerned Des Plaines citizens and Sheriff Trager's men raided Hanke's place and found 140 cases of beer. They had been humiliated with the talk around town about the ease with which Hanke was allowed to dispense liquors in what was known as "anti-saloon territory."

Hanke paid a fine — a small one — and pledged never to do it again. But he did, and so did others in Des Plaines. If there was one thing the GIs might groan about it was the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment just after they had acquired a taste for European beer and wine.

It was the Prohibition Amendment, passed in 1919 and activated in January, 1920, which forbid by law the manufacture, transportation, sale and possession of alcoholic beverages.

It was nothing new in this country; beginning with Maine in 1851, many states had passed prohibitory laws. The Prohibition Party had been established in 1869, and the prohibitionists finally won their struggle in 1919 on a nationwide scale. Des Plaines had voted itself dry with the local option law in 1915. The law was now set and officers were required to enforce it.

Dr. Earle was a tenacious public supporter of Prohibition. He had detested alcohol from the outset. He asked before he passed away that no alcohol of any kind be bought, sold, distributed or consumed on the grounds that he donated to Des Plaines — Earle Field. He wanted Des Plaines to remain dry when the Prohibition Amendment was quickly repealed by the states in 1933. There were many others in Des Plaines who were decidedly less vocal but who nonetheless cherished the same opinion.

Chicago had its "Little Italy" and Des Plaines had one of its own. Italians made their first homes here after World W a r I when Dr. Sam Purves sold land to them on the north side of town around Brown, West-

41

ern and Perry Streets. These Italian immigrants started from scratch and built their homes little by little on land that was not occupied.

Like the German families which had been making family beer for years, some Italians traditionally made their own wine. One type they called "Dago Red," which sold for $1 per bottle. It didn't take long for this neighborhood to acquire a reputation among some townspeople, some­what like that of Whiskey Point at River and Rand, even though it only took a few individuals to do so.

By 1922 Brown Street was more and more becoming known as quite a rendezvous for hooch hunters after Des Plaines police took five barrels of hooch and wine from one place housing an Italian family. Since Des Plaines was a small community, and since families could easily produce themselves what alcohol they wanted, it was not difficult to do so and there were no guilty feelings. Buying and selling was a bit riskier how­ever.

This anti-alcohol movement spurred another of interesting import in 1923: the Des Plaines anti-Cigarette League. These moralists believed that if alcohol was removed from the hands of American youth, cigarettes, "petting parties, and other abuses which are undermining the health and morals of American youth" would also be obliterated. One vice went hand-in-hand with the other.

"There is absolutely no question as to the fact that the properties of cigarette smoking as it affects the growing boys are physically, men­tally and morally retrograding. However, all persons interested in the public welfare should awaken to the peril since the evil of cigarette smok­ing is not confined to boys, but threatens to invade the ranks of young womanhood. The recent installation in a Chicago theater of a smoking room for men and women indicates the trend of the times." A quote from the Suburban Times.

But those who despised the new laws were equally intense, thus admitting the importance of the prohibitionist's victory. They too believed that the public should be able to purchase alcohol if it chose to do so, even though it was against the law. Some made alcohol just to make money and sometimes they killed for it — the stereotype gangster. Some made it just for the family or for close friends. Others still sold it to

42

the public for what they called humanitarian reasons, calling it a great public service, providing quality liquor for a public that demanded it despite the law.

Many in Des Plaines knew one of these humanitarians as Roger Touhy.

Touhy spent 25 years in Stateville Penitentiary for a crime he said he never committed — kidnaping. He was a bootlegger. He lived just north of Des Plaines on River Road in the house just south of the Haps¬ burg Inn. But he still considered himself a resident of Des Plaines. His two boys went to school here at St. Mary's and many of his good friends were here.

But he had other acquaintances too, men he said he accepted as unavoidable evils in the Chicago mob, men who he said he and his union friends were fighting, men like Al Capone and Babyface Nelson. Touhy dealt in beer with Capone, and they didn't always get along well.

One day a group of Capone's men were hired to kidnap Touhy's two sons at dismissal time at St. Mary's School. They waited outside for them. When Touhy got the word, he realized that his wife had already left the house to pick them up. For some reason Capone's men never found them and Touhy's wife Clara drove off with them, unsuspecting of any danger. From that day forward, Touhy set up a laundry truck for his boys across from the school with armed guards inside to avoid the same mistake.

One day during Prohibition the Chicago Tribune among other groups was planning a historical pageant for Des Plaines, in which Des Plaines residents would dress in garb characteristic of the early settlers while they traveled down the river in canoes and small boats. Meanwhile, Touhy wanted to rid himself of some mash (fermentation of beer) into the river. He dug a trench and laid sewer tile in it so he could easily whisk the mash into the river. Father O'Connor, superintendent of St. Mary's Train­ing School, got a whiff of the horrific stench in the river and he knew what had happened. Knowing Touhy was a bootlegger but nonetheless a pious Catholic, he pleaded with him to do something about it before the Sunday pageant. He did. With the help of some Maine High School boys, Touhy dumped perfume into the river before Sunday, and the pag­eant was a sweet-smelling success.

43

Touhy gave his money freely to people and families in a pinch. He left baskets of food on the doorsteps of homes with a $20-bill attached to the basket-handle. The recipients sometimes never knew where the food came from. He paid medical bills for some families. He made good money selling good beer and then gave some of it away.

It wasn't until December, 1933, that the Prohibition Amendment was repealed, making it the only repealed amendment ever. It had by this time met with great opposition in many states, especially in the cities. Those in sympathy with this view grew to believe that a mistake had been made in making prohibition a national rather than state matter. So much dissatisfaction was expressed that the Twenty-first Amendment was passed by the Senate and four days later by the House. Thirty-seven states voted in favor of it.

"There wasn't any stigma to selling beer," said Touhy after his prison release. " I t was a great public service, most people thought — and the United States finally agreed, you'll recall."

But until that time, some of the picknickers in Northwestern Park secretly carried the flask of grain alcohol to mix with the near beer. The two combined for a good time. Others didn't display the courage and limited their activities to the speakeasy or through neighbors and friends, drinking only in the confines of the home. Others followed the law to the letter. It was an issue that assuredly split the opinion of Des Plaines.

In January, 1922, a flagman in Des Plaines was found drunk on the job one night, thus endangering the lives of anyone who might cross the tracks at his intersection. This quickly prompted the Des Plaines anti-Saloon League to hold a debate at the First Congregational Church.

Des Plaines saloons could no longer legally sell liquor, so they turned to other businesses or else shut down. The Imig Saloon was converted into what was to become a favorite candy and soda shop for Des Plaines youngsters during the early 20s. Adam Imig sold sodas for a dime, pep­permint sticks for a penny, tomato bullion, Kranz Brothers candy, rock candy on a string. Customers were served on marble top tables and stared at the long glass cases of candies along the wall.

The Geisen Saloon at Pearson and Miner had always been a popular Des Plaines meetingplace. On the first floor was the bar, a dining room

44

for the hungry and some stables in the back where the customer's horse was pampered with oats, water and some rest. On the second floor was the dance hall, and Dr. Melze opened the first movie house in Des Plaines in this room before the Echo Theater was built.

The contents of a typical silent movie show was first a comedy, accompanied by a live piano performance by a local pianist; slides adver­tising the wares of local merchants; finally, the feature show with piano accompaniment. The pianist had to keep her eyes on the screen because with every change of mood or scene on the screen she had to change songs. A love scene required a song with a slow rhythm, while "the chase" called for a lively one. From time to time the manager of the show flashed that obnoxious sign across the screen that read "Wi l l the ladies with the large hats please remove same so the people behind you can see." In 1922 the Geisen place caught fire and burned to the ground.

Besides the abrupt changes Prohibition brought to Des Plaines, there were other issues about which the village's citizens loudly complained at this time.

In 1918 a truck was demolished by a fast train on the Soo Line tracks at Lee Street. It had been left unguarded by the railroad. For several years the automatic bell installed by the Soo Line was out of order. Other times it would ring for weeks without stopping, disturbing neigh­bors no end. This nuisance wasn't stopped until April, 1920.

On February 28, 1919, the Illinois state highway commissioner stated he would fine the Soo Line $100 per day if it did not provide for 24-hour shifts or install wig-wag autostops within 30 days. It was not carried out.

On November 19, 1921, a man was killed by an express train because there was no watchman at River Road after 10:30 p.m. Sometimes close accidents were averted by turning the auto parallel to the tracks to look for a train. Coroner Peter Hoffman said, " T h e people must be educated to the fact that they must be careful when they are driving automobiles. I would recommend that a law be passed whereby every motorist would be compelled to stop before he crosses the railroad track. Gates or signal­men will not stop a speeding motorist."

He suggested that Des Plaines go halfway with the railroads to pro­vide adequate safety facilities. There were four crossings on the Chicago

45

and North Western in Des Plaines and five Soo Line crossings. But the death toll continued to mount unabated.

Another man was killed and his truckload of potatoes destroyed in October, 1922. In 1923 an autoist actually killed the flagman; the driver wanted to win the race across the tracks. He beat the train, but killed the flagman who was warning him of the train's approach.

When a flagman in Des Plaines blew the whistle, it meant to stop. In Chicago, however, it meant just the opposite. This confusion resulted in another death in 1923. And still there were no gates, no 24-hour shifts for guards of any type in Des Plaines. These were some of the accident victims Dr. Earle often hauled to his garage across the tracks at River and Miner for medical attention.

Then there was the road problem. The dirt roads were worst for the farmers during the hauling of

harvested crops in the autumn. During this heavy traffic to and from the surrounding farms, cold weather struck when the ruts in the roads were deep, freezing them solid and making hauling in winter quite uncom­fortable and even painful. It put strains on hauling equipment. Car owners often abandoned the use of them until spring rather than risk breakdown.

In 1920 main thoroughfares were paved with either asphalt or cement or both, but there were more roads which were sometimes im­passable. In 1922, Ellinwood and Miner were widened because the tran­sition of horse to auto was changing the traffic conditions in downtown Des Plaines. On July 1, 1923, the country road speed limit was raised in Illinois to 35 miles per hour instead of the previous 30 miles per hour, and there was a new law requiring the dimming of headlights "regardless of whether they are equipped with so-called anti-glare lenses or not." There had been a wave of accidents reportedly caused by glaring head­lights.

In 1920 water in Des Plaines scarcely ran to the second floor of many homes. The water supply was deficient. In case of fire, there sometimes wasn't enough water to straighten the hose and it was difficult to reach the roofs of buildings.

Benjamin Electric completed a well that would be used only in

46

emergency in 1923- It was 600 feet deep with a capacity of 1,400 gallons per minute — enough to supply Des Plaines. Meanwhile another well was being drilled at the pumping station on River Road. It was thought by some that persons were hesitant to move to Des Plaines because of this problem.

Finally, sewage and the Des Plaines River was a headache. Pollution was nothing new to Des Plaines in the 1920s. For years raw sewage had been dumped into the river near the Miner Street bridge, killing fish and leaving the river a stinking mess during Indian summer's dog days when the river was low and stagnant. Swimmers avoided certain spots like the plague. Sewers were installed in the '20s in residential areas, little by little. The big question was "Where would the sewage be drained?"

Meanwhile, farmers Fred Grewe, Louis Watterman and C. G. Moehl­ing met with the fire department in 1921 to discuss plans for a new $5,000 fire truck that would offer protection for farmers in the outlying districts. They met with expected opposition by townspeople because if the truck were one day used at a farm, it would temporarily leave the village un­guarded.

But when the truck was purchased the following year, everyone had a reason to be happy, at least for the time being. It was bought for only $4,000, it could travel at 50 miles per hour to the farms, it carried two 35-gallon chemical tanks, four acid bottles, 1,200 feet of hose and was mounted on a Reo Speedwagon chassis. It also helped lower fire insur­ance in Des Plaines.

Because there were so many parking violations on Miner and Ellin­wood, Des Plaines acquired its first motorcycle cop in that same year.

Another hot issue during the '20s was the Maine High School. A petition signed by 500 Park Ridge parents in 1921 asked that Park Ridge be able to build a high school because of what they called unsatisfactory busing of pupils to and from Park Ridge.

By this time of course veterinarian Edward Manuel had departed with his horse and buggy service and livery stable and had graduated to the bus service we now call United Motor Coach. Many Park Ridge pupils took the train to the high school in Des Plaines, but Manuel did have a morning and afternoon route for the students.

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Dr. Earle, president of the school board (and a Des Plaines resident), argued that departments would have to be dropped because there would not be enough students to fill classes. He also said that Maine Township was one of only three townships in Illinois that offered free bus service, even though it was against the law. "Would Park Ridge be able to pro­vide its own free transportation?" he asked.

Park Ridge retorted that the town would double its student popula­tion in two years, thus requiring a high school of its own. A high school would also enhance the growth of the town, they said.

In the end, Park Ridge did even better. In 1930, Maine High School was moved from Thacker Street in Des Plaines to Potter and Dempster in Park Ridge. Now it was Des Plaines' turn to bus its pupils.

By this time Des Plaines was a village ready to become a city. Its population in 1920 had been 3,348, more than the 1,000 required by law. Des Plaines had failed to get the majority vote needed when it first tried on February 19, 1921. The totals: 180 for, 181 against; it missed by one, single, solitary vote. But it was only a matter of time. Des Plaines would become a city at last in 1925, four years before the stock market crash would suddenly tear open the pocket book of Des Plaines and everyone in it.

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Seven

Calm Before the Storm

"What we gave, we have; What we spent, we had; What we kept, we lost."

Epitaph on Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, (died 1419)

If there ever was a time when Des Plaines was roaring, it could very well have been during the '20s. Prohibition was trying desperately to fight a war it could never win. Des Plaines became a city. City improve­ments in Des Plaines were substantial; new roads and sidewalks, a new water system, the beginnings of a more adequate sewer system that still needed much restoration, better fire protection, better street lighting and more business.

In 1922 there was already a staggering number of businesses in Des Plaines — 192 business firms and 82 retailers. The number had doubled between 1917 and 1922. Maybe one of the most interesting business adver­tisements here was for the People's Bakery, which read " G o to the corn­fields and brush heaps for your bunnies, but come here for your buns."

Lord and Burnham built greenhouses 70x200 feet long in 1922 to grow sweet peas and calendulas (an orange-yellow flower, much like the marigold). Des Plaines was loaded with individuals who cared for their own greenhouses and who could help supply the national market with their goods. They made Des Plaines famous. The Garland brothers,

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Solomon, Frank and Warren, all had their own set of greenhouses. Witt-bold, Bauske, Bensen, Linnemann, Standke, and others. Then there was Premier Rose Gardens, which still existed during the '60s. Des Plaines was nicknamed the City of Roses because it grew more than two million annually under glass.

Some Des Plaines residents depended on the greenhouses for their livelihood. Glaziers worked full-time installing glass; others had to keep the coal supply high; still others managed and delivered plants. The high cost of coal and the high taxes on real estate were two big problems the greenhouse owner faced. For roses a greenhouse usually had to pro­duce $1 per square foot, with roses costing $1.50 a dozen. But the real downfall of the Des Plaines greenhouse came 20 years later.

Des Plaines women first voted on September 15, 1920. Maybe the new women voters would affect the outcome of the state election, when it was thought the future of prohibition enforcement in Illinois would be decided by the lawmakers in Springfield that next session. But it didn't make any difference. Even though women did not have to be registered for this, their first election, few of them voted. This includes Des Plaines.

Meanwhile, the Des Plaines Dairy at Lee and Oakwood was con­tinually trying to overcome adverse publicity, like the news concerning impurities found by milk inspector Harrison Kennicott in the milk of four area farmers. In its ad, the dairy states " W e wish to inform the public that the cows in our dairies are tested against tuberculosis by an Illinois Federal Licensed Veterinarian. This milk is also properly pas­teurized and taken care of which makes it safe for all people to drink, children as well as grown-ups."

The Des Plaines Telephone Company under the management of J . F. Risser was laying heavier underground cables from the Miner Street Bridge to Graceland to Rand Road. The first 25 telephones in Des Plaines had been installed as far back as 1897, and the telephone numbers in the '20s were of three digits. The person who wanted a phone installed would most likely be greeted at the door by George Eck, Walter Becker or Ed Pinney.

The telephone company in Des Plaines avoided a near catastrophe once in 1923 when a terrific rainstorm hit the village. Campground Road

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was covered with two feet of water and all fords at the dams were closed to traffic. Forest preserves were flooded. The wind blew a large tree branch through the roof of the train depot, the branch protruding like a porcupine quill. Two persons drowned while swimming up the river. Telephone lines were down. The roof of a house burned when the owner could not call the fire department. A gas main exploded, causing still another fire. Employees at Benjamin Electric bailed gallons of water from furnace pits. Crops were flattened like pancakes. Shocks of grain stuck up like small islands in the flood water.

But the telephone company had more than telephone lines and fires to worry about. The company itself was bailing for its life. Water backed up into the basement of the building and nearly put the entire Des Plaines phone service out of commission — indefinitely. This would have hap­pened if there had not been three manholes kept open so water could be diverted from the electrical equipment.

The sewer system was obviously still a mess, but new building codes were drawn in the city for use by builders who wanted to know restric­tions and specifications. Des Plaines had its first Boy Scout Troop in 1923, and the following year West School became Des Plaines' third grammar school.

Speaking of schools, Immanuel Lutheran School still conducted classes in German; the affiliated church held all-German services; young persons were baptized and confirmed in German; prayerbooks were still printed in German. As time elapsed, more and more English crept into the liturgy until there were two English services and one yet in German for the old-timers. Christ Church also conducted services in German at Cora and Henry, with some of those in the Immanuel Lutheran congregation switch­ing to this newer church.

Prior to the advent of the mailbox at the home, persons in Des Plaines had to make their daily trek to the post office. This changed in the '20s. Postmaster John Kray announced if enough people bought mail­boxes, mail could be delivered free of charge. It proved an instant success. "Of course, we are having difficulty in getting mail to all of the addresses," said Kray, "but as people become accustomed to the condition, they will have their mail addressed directly to their homes and not alone to Des Plaines, Illinois."

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Those were the days when there was no such thing as a Des Plaines Democratic Party but only that of the Regular Republicans and the Inde­pendent Republicans; when "William Busse was President of the Cook County Board; when Coroner Hoffman became sheriff; when Charles S. Stewart was mayor.

A stunt to help put the new City of Des Plaines on the map began in 1927 when the radio program "Des Plaines Radio Party" was broad­cast from the Stewart-Warner studio, W B B M , on a 226 meter wave length from 8:15-10 p.m. It consisted of entertainers and speakers from Des Plaines, like Bert Sengstock and the Des Plaines Orchestra and Mayor Charles Stewart who spoke about Des Plaines history and industry.

These were the days when conversation over the "radio telephone" had just reached the stage of privacy. By means of a scrambling process in transmission and an unscrambling process in reception, the spoken word of the electro-magnetic wave could finally be kept free from outside listen­ers. Some in Des Plaines were curious and ingenious enough to make their own crystal sets. It was a device that, after years of experimentation, could be sold commercially. National news could now reach the public by ear instead of the next morning in the newspaper. It was faster and more efficient. It wasn't until the '30s however that reception was general­ly good enough to enjoy broadcasts without static interference or without interfering reception of other radio stations.

These were the days when the Masonic Temple at Lee and Miner was a great place for the teens to dance; Hoffman's Hall on Ellinwood was another, or the Riverview Hall, Ballard Inn or Schnell's Grove on Higgins Road. What great times these were.

Nobody could have predicted in 1925 that the New Era would ever come to an end. How could they? It was an era of prosperity for most, an era whose slogans were "Two cars in every garage" and " A chicken in every pot." The Great W a r was a thing of the past, the business boom was phenomenal. But prosperity was not as it appeared.

Long before the stock market crash, more than one million Americans were unemployed. Overproduction meant job cutbacks by employers. Many farmers had been living in privation even during the prosperous '20s. There were more and more foreclosures on farms as mortgages

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were due and farmers were unable to pay. Banks were loaded with un­salable property and this resulted in many bank failures. By 1928, 1,588 banks with deposits totaling $539 million closed their doors.

Stronger banks did not seem to learn much from the failures of other banks. Even before the bottom of the stock market fell through on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, some persons in Des Plaines were trying to guess which banks would fail and which would not. Some gambled and changed banks. Some lost their savings, others were more fortunate.

The Des Plaines State Bank, then the oldest bank in Des Plaines, failed in June, 1931. It never opened again. Convinced that they would lose all their savings if they left it in the bank, some Des Plaines citizens decided to put their money under the mattress rather than in the bank vault. But most of their savings were already lost. There was little money in the bank. It was a common practice for banks to overlend money, to overextend credit, making loans on securities that were constantly rising in paper value only and on urban real estate that was enjoying a boom of its own. In order to rake in profits from an interest rate that at one time reached 12 per cent and sometimes as high as 20 per cent, banks over-lended money to those who wanted loans — money that belonged to depositors.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Board was looking the other way. The Reserve Board members, many of whom were profiting from the boom, were not about to do anything to decrease speculation and risk a bust. But the bust came anyway. There was no government agency to curb speculation while banks and corporations were ready to lend money at unheard-of interest rates. In March, 1929, when President Hoover left office, he dismissed the stock market with the comment that stocks were "cheap at current prices" and the country was "absolutely sound." The year 1931 was the same year William Fabian, former reporter for the Suburban Times, began his own newspaper and called it the Des Plaines Journal.

The First National Bank of Des Plaines at 1490 Miner closed on March 6, 1933, when President Roosevelt declared a national bank holi­day. It did not re-open until it could prove to the federal government that it was sound enough to do so, which meant it remained closed at

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least until the bank holiday was lifted a week later. For at least one week nobody in Des Plaines could get their money when they wanted it or needed it. Both the well-off and the destitute were in the same boat. It was heart-breaking, but for some it was also an adventure, trying to find ways to live without money for at least one week. T h e bank was closed, thus cutting off cash that would have helped frugal Des Plaines residents who put their money in the Des Plaines National Bank or other banks for a rainy day.

Those in Des Plaines who were lucky enough to have paper money were unable to use it to telephone, ride a bus, buy a newspaper, or make other purchases, because they could not get it changed. The copper penny and the silver coins were priceless. Even John Rockefeller ran out of dimes.

The day before the first banks opened, Roosevelt gave the first of his famous fireside chats over national radio, reviewing the banking situation, promising the 12 Federal Reserve banks would issue currency backed by sound assets of stable banks as soon as they could. Day by day more banks were allowed to open. Some were closed for weeks; others like the Des Plaines State Bank never opened again.

Money was so scarce when the effects of the Depression solidified that many a Des Plaines resident could not even afford to pay for items that were at rock-bottom prices. In 1935 the Jewel and A&P stores in Des Plaines were selling tomatoes at 5 cents per pound; sugar was at 5 cents per pound; seedless grapes, 25 cents for four pounds; 200 tissues were a dime; Sun-Maid raisins, two 15-ounce packs for 15 cents. These prices held at about the same price at other markets in town: Raffetto's Market, Calabrese Groceries, Royal Blue Store, Rexses and Kehe's.

Meat markets sold swiss steak for 15 cents per pound; hams, hens, lamb, liver sausage all 20 cents per pound. The Oakwood Dairy at Center and Oakwood sold quarts of milk for 8 cents and a dozen eggs for 34 cents. Mary's Sweet Shop at Ellinwood and Center sold Sunday chicken dinners for a quarter.

In 1937, Studebaker Dictators and Presidents with air-curved lines and 12 coats of paint cost only $665. But this was expensive in 1937. Thor washers sold for $49.50 with $3 down. The new giant radios with the 12-inch speakers cost $100.

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The schoolchildren of the post-war era now had to work during the Depression; that is, if they could find work. On the other hand, this time of poverty and helplessness also brought with it a feeling of togetherness in Des Plaines. Everybody was afflicted. Nobody could escape the devas­tation of a depressed economy of gargantuan proportions. When few had money, the popular song was "We're in the Money." Excluding the few millionaires of the period, the bootleggers and narcotics dealers were making the most money; the federal government would eventually give away the most money.

Some Des Plaines companies offered their charity to needy Des Plaines families. Local milkmen picked up children of destitute families along their routes and brought them to churches where they gave away free chocolate milk (the childrens' favorite), prizes and a Christmas party. Many families couldn't afford presents for their own Christmas.

One Des Plaines milkman once stopped at a home in Des Plaines along his route. The mother answered and he heard the children clamor­ing for their delicacy — chocolate milk. She couldn't afford the milk, so the milkman walked into the kitchen, poured the milk into a pitcher for the family, then went outside and broke the bottle. He saved the top of the bottle and the cap, and when he returned to the distributor he told him he dropped the bottle accidentally and that he lost the milk too. This was one of the many lifesaving favors done in Des Plaines for those who could not help themselves. And milk was only 8 cents per quart.

Skim milk was considered unsafe to drink by the Chicago Health Department, so the sale of this milk was illegal unless prescribed by a doctor for his patient. Then too, so few families could regularly pay for milk that some of it went sour before it was sold. It was then dumped into the nearest sewer.

The Des Plaines Public Library was also in a financial straight-jacket. The operation during the worst of the Depression was paid for by tax warrants and at one time the librarian was paid from fines collected on overdue books. The library was housed in 1936 on the first floor of the State Bank building at Lee and Ellinwood, at that time, of course, unoccupied. When the new city hall was built where the library had been

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on the corner of Graceland and Miner in 1937, the library resumed its services in the west wing of that building.

Not unlike the rest of the country and much of the world, it would take Des Plaines years before it could finally recover from this economic horror. Through the help of government funds and the perseverance and courage of those who had to suffer in hard times, the hopes of the new City of Des Plaines would eventually be seen at the end of a dark tunnel.

Eight

Depression and Relief

'I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."

Second Inaugural Address, FDR 20 January 1937

When families whose savings had dwindled to nothing, when only the lucky ones could find jobs, when their main food staples were fried tomatoes, potatoes, milk, cream, soup and vegetables, when they knew their children weren't getting enough to eat but couldn't do anything about it; that's the way it was for many in Des Plaines during the Depres­sion.

It was a time when people had to help each other out, when people huddled closer together; otherwise, somebody wouldn't make it. For those who had jobs a salary of $30 per week was a good one. Many in Des Plaines couldn't pay their property taxes or food bills. There was no end to it. It didn't hang on for weeks or months, but for years. When would it all end?

You could always reach for the newspaper and look at your favorite comic strips, like Bozo and the Baron, Little Orphan Annie, Baron Mun­chausen, the Katzenjammer Kids, and Rumpus. Or you could get out of the house for awhile, walk to the Des Plaines Theater, and watch movies like "Bullets or Ballots" with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Blon¬ dell, "Sons O Guns" with Joe E. Brown (the guy with the big mouth) , "Yours for the Asking" with George Raft or "Captain January" with

57

Shirley Temple. Movies came with sound in 1928, so captions were no longer needed.

There was a township relief office set up in Des Plaines to help citizens here get a few provisions to eat. Some persons came to the office with the intention of finding a job, but it didn't have the authority to locate jobs for unemployed, and many a person stalked away in disgust. Like the marches on Washington, Des Plaines citizens showed their dis­approval with their own small marches through town. They were con­sidered radicals, and these activities did not win the approval of the aver­age person in Des Plaines.

The Depression wasn't something to be individually fought, but something one had to live with and hope for better times ahead. Help started from the top, from the federal government, when F D R set up his host of New Deal programs and governmental agencies that would help pull the economy together as the years went by.

The agency that built Rand Park in 1936, that constructed a water-softening plant, and which also funded part of the new Des Plaines City Hall in 1936 was the Work Projects Administration ( W P A ) . Those three letters became household words in Des Plaines. Not only would this federal agency bring work to hundreds of area residents at the Rand Park project and at the water-softening plant, but it built enduring public works in Des Plaines, increased purchasing power and left grateful mem­ories among Des Plaines residents who, without it, might have lost this hope of salvation that was so essential, and this faith in their nation they so much wanted to keep.

When Des Plaines asked the W P A for funds that would pay 45 per cent of the cost of a new city hall, the W P A refused on the grounds that Des Plaines had filed its application too late. And that was that. But for some reason the W P A soon reversed its decision and Des Plaines aldermen were surprised. Then came a quick change in attitude. Some aldermen suddenly opposed the funding. They thought if they accepted the funds from a Democratic administration ( F D R ) and if the Republi­cans happened to win the upcoming 1936 Presidential race (Des Plaines was a Republican stronghold), then Des Plaines might end up holding the bag and the funds might be withdrawn. Others argued that there

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would be too much red tape to withdraw the funds and that by the January 20 inaugural the city hall would already be near completion. The funds were accepted.

Did the country vote Republican in 1936? Not by a long shot, but Des Plaines did under the leadership of township committeeman Fred Fulle: 2,784 for Landon, 2,420 for FDR. Maine Township voted 2-1 for Landon, with only three precincts going Democratic. Almost all ballots were straight ballots for both parties. The party name meant a lot. Also on the 1936 Des Plaines ballot were representatives for the Socialist Party, the Socialist Labor Party and the Prohibition Party. Three years earlier the prohibitionists could no longer depend on the law to take away liquor from the hands of the public. Prohibition had been repealed in 1933, and Des Plaines followed suit by reversing its local option law in 1935.

Even though Des Plaines agreed with the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment, the City Council still voted 5-4 to prohibit the sale of beer over bars and counters, with the basic fear that it would mean the return of the saloons.

Local beer salesmen said their business would be lost to places outside the city limits that did not pay anything into the city treasury (Park Ridge) if beer was not allowed to be sold over bars and counters. It was also argued that counters were no different than bars during the saloon days. The only difference was that stools had been pushed up to the counter and the brass footrail had been removed.

It was generally thought that few persons wanted to see the old saloons, but would the sale of beer mean their return? What was wrong with beer if it was sold without offense to the general public and without disturbing the peace?

The Suburban Times said it this way: "Beer is beer, regardless of how it is sold and where it is sold. Beer has now become a popular busi­ness trend and the opportunity for business to take advantage of this op­portunity should not be stifled by government. Prohibition of the sale of beer will only drive beer sellers back into the behind-the-doors flats and the hard liquor, vice and gambling that accompanies it. If beer sellers can run clean and decent businesses, there should be no reason why the city should regulate its sale, regardless of how it is sold, over a 'counter' or a 'bar.' "

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There would be no reason to worry about losing business to Park Ridge. It remained dry and still is to this day.

When Des Plaines got rid of its local option law, the annual license for retailers selling beer was $100, for manufacturers $200, wholesalers $25, and at restaurants and other places where beer was sold in bottles for consumption at the place of sale, $25. Where beer was sold in bottles for home consumption it cost $15. Peddlers paid $50, club fees were $25 or $5 for a day's permit. N o license was issued for less than a 6-month period. No curtains could be hung to obstruct the view into beer places, and beer could not be sold to minors or drunkards. It was also forbidden to keep beer places open between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

Heralded as one of the greatest and most far-reaching city improve­ments in years, the W P A helped fund the $225,000 water softening plant. The W P A granted $30,000 outright and loaned another $70,000 toward the plant and reservoir on West Thacker. Because of the annual messy winter months, there were a number of delays with this project, but it was completed in September, 1936.

According to later statistics in 1937, more and more water was being used in Des Plaines after the construction of this water softener. W a s it used for baths? Had bath night been taken out of the bugaboo stage? As one man put it, " W e can take a bath and actually feel clean after­ward." Des Plaines was now using 626,000 gallons per day, a 100,000-gallon increase over the previous year.

There was a W P A Camp set up in 1932 near Dam No. 2 a half mile south of Euclid Avenue along the east bank of the river. It was then changed to a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp for young men who needed jobs. T h e men lived in barracks, and Des Plaines citizens sponsored by civic groups entertained them on stage with song and dance. It stood idle for about five years before it was used as a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers after World W a r II in 1945 and 1946.

Of course, the W P A had its bad days too. It was one day assigned to clean up the Des Plaines River around Dam No. 4 near Devon and River. The men had already begun the clean-up operation when the fore­man decided they should blast the area underneath the dam to clear out the junk blocking the water flow. The crew misunderstood the foreman's

60

orders, however. Instead of placing the dynamite underneath the dam, they drilled holes in the bottom portion of the dam and then blasted. A good part of the dam was left in ruins, but it still continued to function, so they left it the way it was.

The Des Plaines Post Office began distributing the first social security forms in November, 1936. Because this was a new law, postal employees had quite a time answering various questions about these application forms, making sure they were correctly completed so the signer would be eligible for a pension. Des Plaines residents who were unemployed were advised to fill out these forms at this time so they wouldn't have to bother with it when they finally did find work. The law went into effect on the first day of 1937.

If ever there might have been a spokesman for Des Plaines that liked to arouse the public, it was certainly William L. Fabian, editor of the Des Plaines Journal. Satirical? You bet, especially when it concerned subjects like the local sewer system.

"Those of us who for many years have looked with dread on ap­proaching rain clouds, because of the many disgusting experiences with flooded basements as an aftermath, will find encouragement and perhaps a faint ray of hope being relieved of this distressing fear, of a recent passing of a bill in the State Senate, making it now possible for a remedy to this situation to be applied at a cost possible to the slim budget in which both our city and our families operate."

T h e main stumbling block in the past was to keep the cost down to a point in which everybody in Des Plaines could pay their shares in small monthly amounts with their water bills. But who needed water?

Just ten days before in September, 1937, Des Plaines had been smothered with water by an 18-hour deluge which had been preceded by another rainstorm the previous week.

You can imagine what happened. The drainage ditch running north­east of the city and passing through the campgrounds was turned into a rushing torrent and by mid-afternoon had spread to a width of a quarter-mile, flooding Dempster to a depth of 18 inches from Rand to Potter. Maine High School, which had been located at Dempster and Potter for seven years, was virtually isolated on an island as flood waters rose around it. School was closed.

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Some ambitious farmer made a few dollars at this "lake scene" at Dempster during a time when the money was scarce. "This gentleman got out his old model 'T' flivver, which, perched high on its old style chassis, had little difficulty going to and fro. The more adventuresome drivers of late model cars, on reaching the center of the flooded section, soon found themselves stranded, and then this farmer would drive along­side, throw out a rope, and for $1 tow the victims to dry land. Compe­tition soon resulted however, and the price went down to 50 cents." The Des Plaines Journal.

It would be wrong to give the impression that every moment in Des Plaines during the Depression was one of torment and suffering. It was a time when neighbors were more neighborly, when troubled times could not escape the constant rhythm of drastic changes. Des Plaines sang "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" "Ten Cents a Dance," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Deep Purple," and "I 'm in the Mood for Love." When Lee Street was widened in 1937, the city held a street dance between Prairie and Ellinwood, where "everyone can dance to their hearts' con­tent."

Those who had radios leaned close to them and laughed at Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks, Jim and Marion Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly, Edgar Bergen with Charlie McCarthy on his knee, Bing Crosby and Bob Burns on the Kraft Music program. Alone in their rooms they read "Gone With the W i n d " by Margret Mitchell, " T h e Good Earth" by Pearl Buck and "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. Or they could always attend the W P A night classes in Des Plaines — free, of course.

It was a time when the children couldn't spend much money if any at all on the chocolate milk shake, the peppermint sticks, the bubble gum. They had to find other things to do. The baseball players were hoping they'd someday play baseball like Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, who hit 60 homers in 1927. Others couldn't help admiring Lucky Lindbergh, who in that same year made the first transcontinental flight from New York to Paris.

For those in Des Plaines who didn't fly so high, there was always enough happening in town to keep their minds alert.

The rabies crisis in 1937, for instance. One dog died of rabies. It

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was then discovered this dog had already bitten another dog which con­tracted the disease. This dog in turn — a black chow — was known to have bitten and injured six other dogs, a Persian cat and a chicken. There was a subsequent incubation period in Des Plaines for animals that may have been bitten or scratched by rabid dogs. Some animals had to be shot because they could not be caught. Persons were told to keep their animals at home and to warn children of petting stray dogs.

A remarkable thing happened in 1936. Between January 1 and May 1, Des Plaines recorded an astounding 48 deaths in the city, all of them railroad victims. Victim 48 was hit by a Soo Line passenger train that was 35 minutes late and traveling 60 miles per hour through the town. It carried the chassis of the demolished truck more than 2,000 feet down the tracks. For some reason that cannot be explained, there was not a single train injury or death in Des Plaines for more than 100 consecutive days after this fatality — a record.

In the meantime, Des Plaines was in the process of installing at its main intersections and railroad crossings a system of traffic signals with "a comprehensive plan of stop and go lights that will coordinate all types of rail and street traffic regardless of conditions." In the end, only the Lee-Miner and River-Miner intersections received such treatment. Others would be taken care of later.

By this time Des Plaines knew the economy was somewhat improv­ing: the women, because grocery prices were rising little by little; the men, because their haircuts in town now cost 60 cents instead of the previous low of two bits. A revitalized economy when prices go up? It may not make much sense nowadays, but that's the way it was.

In 1937, the First National Bank of Des Plaines reached and sur­passed the $2 million mark in total resources and was thus noted as the largest banking institution between Chicago and Janesville, Wisconsin. " T h e wise, conservative policy of the bank is showing splendid results as a safe repository for the savings of the laboring man and small business people." People in Des Plaines were still griping about the loss of their life savings in the defunct State Bank, but after so many years of degrada­tion and exhaustion, losing all of one's money was just an accepted result of hard times. Skin had grown tough, disappointment was nothing new,

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and life could only get better. For no special reason but to celebrate the splendor of realizing that

"Happy Days Are Here Again," Des Plaines held three-day carnivals under the warm summer sun. Along Ellinwood from Pearson to River was bargain day on Wednesday, when the ladies of the city purchased items at prices they could afford. Band concerts with dancing, a childrens' mardi gras, prize drawings, free movies, bank night prizes followed in rapid order on Thursday. The following day the American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps played, there was more dancing, prizes, an amateur show, the Miss Des Plaines winner was announced and there was an auto­mobile drawing.

Half the proceeds usually went to the fire department for its newest fire engine, the trucks the boys finally bought after months of consulta­tion and collaboration: "Which model and size truck would be right for Des Plaines?" They were all volunteers. "Spike" Nagel, Vic Spiegler, John Hammerl, Wallace Kinder, Ben Stangor, Ed Geisen, Ray Kolze and of course Chief Axel Petterson.

George Kinder's second 2-year term as mayor of Des Plaines came to an end in 1937 and Hobart Ahbe began his term for four years. In 1939, there was still gross unemployment, with 8 million Americans jobless. F D R had given jobs to about half of those without work. By 1943 the others would be earning money in a war economy.

Hundreds of young men from Des Plaines would work with ships, planes and ground artillery in Europe and the Pacific; at least 22 would not return. The men too old to fight would work in nearby businesses and factories, turning out war equipment and supplies day after day, ton after ton. Des Plaines railroad workers would haul personnel and materials for American, British and French battling Hitlerian troops on the Continent. The rest was aimed at Japan.

The Great War, the World War, was called World W a r I. There was now another to replace it.

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Nine

World War II

"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."

While England Slept, 1936

The old-timers in Des Plaines who remember World W a r I might tell you there was more patriotism during that war than during World W a r II. There were only about 3,000 persons living in Des Plaines then. The dozens of young men were given a sendoff at the train station they'd never forget. It wasn't that way during World W a r II, but the youth of this second war — during a hey-day all of their own — probably couldn't imagine a greater feeling of patriotism than they had witnessed during the 1940s.

They were two different eras, two different reasons for military involvement, different fears, deadlier weapons and different attitudes. Des Plaines was now a city of almost 10,000 instead of a village of about 3,000. The children of World W a r I had weathered the Depression. Even though they now had the chance to earn decent pay during the economic upswing of the '40s, they simultaneously had to watch their sons go off to war, a war that would prove more deadly than any other. It was now up to their sons and daughters to protect their nation, while they took charge of industry at home.

The Japanese had invaded Manchuria in 1931, captured Shanghai, China, in 1932, and resigned from the League of Nations in 1933. Italian Fascist Benito Mussolini undertook the conquest of Ethiopia in 1935.

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Hitler employed his armed forces to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1936, virtually nullifying the post-World War I Versailles Treaty that he so detested. In March, 1938, Germany annexed Austria. In 1939, inter­national political tension developed into crisis proportions. Hitler crushed Czechoslovakia in March, establishing protectorates over the Czech states of Bohemia and Moravia and creating the puppet state of Slovakia. On September 1, Hitler attacked Poland and annihilated it. The spring of 1940 saw the Nazis take France, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. Then Italy joined the Axis Powers.

Japan in 1941 occupied French Indo-China, Thailand, Korea, Man­churia and part of China. Then, on the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan conducted a 2-hour aerial bombardment over United States naval and air installations at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, nearly crippling the United States Pacific Fleet. At the same time, assaults were made on United States bases at Guam, Midway and Wake Islands, and Japan's army hit Malaya, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand. The fol­lowing day the United States declared war on Japan. The same week Germany and Italy declared war on the United States and the United States Congress declared war on them also. The stage was set. This nation would now develop a full-time military arsenal.

World W a r I weapons were now obsolete. The British now had their Spitfires, the Germans their Messerschmitts, the Japanese their Mitsubishi Hamp and the United States Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Modern machine guns, hand grenades, bazookas, submarines with accurate torpedoes and detecting devices, heavier bombs, gigantic battleships and aircraft carriers were designed and manufactured with government contracts for industrial firms that didn't exist during World W a r I. It took months and years to develop a near-capacity wartime economy, a military arsenal unmatched by any other. The results would stagger the imagination.

In 1939 only 2 per cent of the total United States economy was being utilized for military purposes. In 1944 it was up to 65 per cent. During these five years aluminum for aircraft increased 500 per cent. Synthetic rubber production, mainly for civilians, increased from 2,000 tons in 1939 to 900,000 tons by 1944. Tire rationing cut down civilian consumption by 80 per cent.

66

In Des Plaines, tires made of ersatz (artificial) rubber, sugar, shoes, oils, fats, canned and processed foods, meats, cars, butter, gas, fuel oils, cheese and coffee were all rationed. It was the only way to assure the military it would receive the supplies needed for the war effort against Germany and Japan. Sugar, a most precious commodity, would be rationed until 18 months after the war ended. The military draft wouldn't be phased out until March, 1947.

Hobart Ahbe just left office and Charles Garland had become mayor of Des Plaines when F D R declared war on Japan in December, 1941. Within a month, tire rationing was underway. Japan was not about to export rubber to the United States.

But well before this, in July, 1941, the first C47 in the country was flown at the Douglas Plant, which is now known as O'Hare Field. More than 1,400 acres of land including runways were part of this World W a r II defense plant constructed by the federal government to produce cargo planes. For the government, it was an ideal location. It was nestled just outside Chicago's northwest side between the city and suburbs, where there was a surplus of untapped labor. Hundreds of Des Plaines residents found jobs here during the war, mainly on assembly lines. There was also plenty of open space for a future international airport for Chicago. Orchard Place, which was annexed to Des Plaines in the '50s, was the closest com­munity to the plant.

When O'Hare Field began to take on more and more air traffic in the '50s, it was obvious to Des Plaines that Orchard Place would be a vital link with the airport, a place where industry and housing would soon skyrocket with the growing importance of the international airport. The annexation of Orchard Place would in the '50s become a subject of increased controversy.

The crucial shortage of steel made it necessary to build the main 43-acre assembly plant of as much wood as possible. Steel monorails were used to move 28 crane hoists, each weighing five tons. The hoists allowed heavy parts to be lifted and transported to other parts of the plant over most of the floor area.

It was true that wood was used as a substitute for steel to construct the building, but even good timber was scarce, so green material had to

67

be used. All timber was fabricated, and 31,750,000 board feet of lumber was needed. The fluorescent lighting system saved 132 tons of steel by using pressed wood reflectors. After ten months of construction, the main building was ready to operate. Moreover, there was an administration building, garage, cafeteria, health center, boiler house, paint shop, hangar, a service area of 1,300,000 square feet, an airfield and parking for 6,800 cars. T h e cost was $40.5 million. The first plane flown, a C-54 "Sky-master," was christened "Chicago." Douglas' chief test pilot W i n Sargent flew the craft for 25 minutes. When he landed, there was a dance held at the plant.

On July 18, 1944, a fire razed the administration building. The wooden buildings had been erected hundreds of feet apart for fire pro­tection purposes, but the heat from this fire was so intense the windows in the assembly plant cracked and melted. Engineering records and pur­chasing records were lost.

T h e W a r Production Board ( W P B ) , which supervised and nego­tiated government contracts with industries and businesses nationwide, was established on January 16, 1942. Des Plaines was no exception.

Precision Tools, which located in Des Plaines in 1938, made snap-on torqometers for the Air Force. After Precision Tools tested the accuracy of the torqometer, it was used to determine the tightness or looseness of nuts, bolts and screws used for attaching propellers, air frames, and the like. Royal Enameling Works was busy assembling P T boats for the Navy. DoAll and File Bands were making saws and file bands for ships, as was Contour Saws.

T h e Office of Price Administration ( O P A ) was established on April 11, 1941. Harry T . Bennett, the last Des Plaines village board president, directed the OPA Ration Board on the second floor of the City Hall. The chief purpose of the board — to distribute coupons to Des Plaines citizens.

It wasn't easy acquiring new retread tires during the war. If you wanted a tire for your car, you had to prove to the board you absolutely needed that tire for your livelihood. Otherwise, you were turned down. If the request was granted, it took time for the customer to get his hands on it. Tires were not made of real rubber, but what was called ersatz,

68

or artificial substitutes. All available rubber was employed for military purposes. Even liquor was rationed, and it was the board's job to prevent the sale of liquor under the table at higher prices. A person could not spend more than a certain amount of money for home improvements — maybe $500.

The Des Plaines Chamber of Commerce placed collection boxes all over town to provide Des Plaines soldiers overseas with money orders. During the course of the entire war, more than 1,500 Des Plaines men and women served in the armed forces during this war, when the popula­tion was less than 10,000. W a r bond drives were constantly undertaken. Members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club and other groups went door-to-door for funds. The war bond drives in Des Plaines were stationed at the First National Bank, where the Des Plaines National Bank is located today.

While young Des Plaines ladies waited for their men to return home, to settle down and raise families, the big bands were in full swing and the songs characteristic of this era were at the height of their popu­larity. The Andrew Sisters were singing "Rum and Coca-Cola" and "One Meatball ;" Tony Martin sang "I ' l l See You In My Dreams" and " T o Each His Own;" Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" and "Take the A-Tra in ; " Les Brown and "Til l the End of T i m e ; " Frank Sinatra and "The Things W e Did Last Summer;" Vaughn Monroe's "Racing With the Moon; " Harry James and "Autumn Serenade" and "It 's Been a Long, Long T i m e ; " David Rose's "Poinciana;" Bennie Goodman's "Don't Be That W a y " and "Stompin' at the Savoy;" Artie Shaw's "Begin the Be¬ guine," "All the Things You Are," and "Lady Be G o o d ; " Tommy Dor¬ sey's "Marie," "Song of India," "Yes Indeed," "Night and Day," and "Manhattan Serenade;" and finally, Glenn Miller's "Sunrise Serenade," "Stardust," "Pennsylvania 6—5000 , " "In the Mood," "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "Tuxedo Junction" and "String of Pearls." These were the songs of the war years, when this music was an inseparable part of this nation's effort to pull together.

With the development of huge transport planes while the war was in progress, it meant the eventual downfall of the famous and prosperous greenhouses in Des Plaines. Nicknamed the City of Roses, Des Plaines

69

grew more than 2 million roses annually under glass, among other flowers. It was also the center of the richest truck farming area in Cook County, according to the July 25, 1937, Chicago Herald and Examiner.

But Des Plaines greenhouse owners quickly found they could not compete with flower growers in warmer states like California. From this state, flowers could be transported by air in massive quantity across the country. These flowers could be grown outdoors all year round, which was obviously less expensive than growing them under glass where expen­sive coal or fuel oil was needed to keep the plants alive. Coal shortages during some winters made the whole situation even worse. As time passed, the market area for Des Plaines flower growers became smaller and smaller and their dependence on the greenhouse business as a total source of income decreased. It was no longer profitable. The fame of the first cast iron greenhouse gutter, the need for the local glazier to install sheets of glass for greenhouses, was ending.

When Victory in Europe Day finally arrived on May 8, 1945, the Des Plaines Journal printed a supplement to the newspaper that expressed the sentiment and grasped the overwhelming atmosphere of those times. Hitler was finally defeated, and the armed forces could concentrate on Japan. The following was contained in an advertisement for the Middle States Telephone Company:

"And now it's your turn Japan! You thought you had it in the bag! Yes sir, by this time — so you thought — your buck-toothed boys would be marching up Pennsylvania Avenue, your fried-egg flag would be flying from the Capitol. And, you figured, the luxury-loving, so soft Yankees would be bowing low before your begoggled troops.

"So sorry to disappoint. So sorry that honorable time-table has upset! "Yes , you figured that while your rug-chewing pal in Berlin kept

us busy in the Atlantic, all you would have to do would be to follow up the Pearl Harbor stab with island hops that would bring you closer to our West Coast.

"Wel l you know what's happened to Adolph. And now it's your turn. What you've gotten so far — the Coral Sea, Midway, the Solomons, the Aleutians and Tarawa — is just pink tea to what's coming.

"You're going to wish you had never heard of Pearl Harbor!"

70

Benjamin Electric said in its ad, "Japanese militarism, Jap horror and brutality still stalk the world. The Jap flag still flaunts from conquered lands — from Bataan to Corregidor . . . Pearl Harbor is still to be avenged!"

Brown's Store wrote "The roar of battle has died in Europe and the Allied nations have been victorious over a foe who would have forbidden freedom in any sense . . . With undaunted faith we continue the good work so well begun . . . Working together the world shall be made safe for all freedom-loving people."

The group of Des Plaines citizens that was not forgotten by the First National Bank of Des Plaines was "The Woman W h o W a i t s : "

"Down the block, across the road, around the corner from you lives the Mother with the Service Flag. You've watched her tend her Victory Garden, you've seen her at the grocery store, the Red Cross, and at church.

"This war is personal to her. And while hers may not be the loudest voice you hear at the War Bond rally and she may wear no uniform of any kind, you can be sure her rationing coupons are her own. Only she and her God will ever know what it means to wait — and wait — as the days go by, though the postman can tell you a thing or two.

"For the Woman W h o Waits, the war goes on. It will not end until her boy comes home."

There were many who disagreed with United States war policy when this nation dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands and leveling hundreds of square miles. It marked the complete destruction of the Japanese war machine in August, 1945. Faced with atomic warfare and the Russian declaration of war on August 9, Japan had no choice. The surrender documents were signed aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945 — called V-J Day.

Almost one full year after the close of the war, Des Plaines housed its own prisoner of war camp in the barracks built for the W P A workers during the Depression near Dam No. 2 on the east side of the river. It was named Camp Pine.

It was opened in April, 1945, by the base camp, Fort Sheridan. At first, German prisoners worked 4-hour days to get the previously unoc­cupied camp ready for an influx of more POWs. The government had a

71

contract with the Cook County Farm Labor Association, in which most of the prisoners were to perform general farm labor, like picking peas and corn. Others did construction work. They received ten cents per hour, worked full 8-hour days, and received either cash or canteen coupons.

A funny thing happened a month before Camp Pine closed in March, 1946. In February, when the camp had dwindled down to 30 P O W s who worked on onion sets, the Chicago Daily News reported the Army and the FBI investigated a "night out" of three Nazi P O W s at the camp. A couple was caught driving three of the prisoners back to the camp, and military authorities intercepted them on the road at 2 a.m. The couple said they picked up the Germans on a road near the camp at 8 :30 p.m. to take them home "for a good supper." Many times the prisoners would wave to residents of Des Plaines as they drove by in cargo trucks to the farms at which they worked. Some of them returned to Germany with the money they had. Others liked it here enough to remain.

One might ask why they were brought to Des Plaines and other camps as well. It was actually a matter of finance. It was less expensive to ship German POWs from Europe to the United States rather than con­tinuously ship food and supplies to them in European camps. It was the obligation of the United States under the rules of the Geneva charter of war to feed and house all POWs as the United States decided what to do with them.

With the boys back home, with the nation returning slowly to a peacetime economy, with thousands of military personnel returning to civilian life, the baby boom period was about to begin. Des Plaines families were once more united. All but about two dozen Des Plaines GIs returned.

G. Walter Pflughaupt took the office of mayor of Des Plaines in 1945 from Charles Garland and served one four-year term before Kenneth G. Meyer took the reins in 1949. For Des Plaines this meant the start of what was to become the fastest and greatest population increase ever. Back in the '30s Chicagoans were already moving to Des Plaines in notice­able increases, but industry simultaneously tended to move out. Now both would move in together to make Des Plaines one of the fastest-growing suburbs in all of Cook County.

72

Ten

Suburban Spectacular

" I f you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will provide their deficiency."

Discourse to Students at the Royal Academy, 1769

The incredible phenomenon of Des Plaines following World W a r II also happened to other Chicago suburbs. Thousands of Chicagoans, Illi¬ noisans and out-of-state persons seeking jobs and living space poured into Chicago's growing suburbs. But Des Plaines, one of the major cities to the northwest, one of the closest communities to the expanding Chicago Orchard Airport, one of the hubs of railroad and highway traffic to and from Chicago, was in the thick of a race for new residents, new industry and new recognition. It was almost a backbreaking pace.

Long-time residents of Des Plaines who knew almost everyone in town saw it explode into a sprawling suburb. It was no longer a farming community, but an urban one. Des Plaines paid for more frequent cen­suses during these years to be eligible for more state tax funds. It was like a dream for some, a disturbance for others. It would take some time to get accustomed to. In 1940, less than 10,000. 1950—14,994; 1953—20,663; 1956—28,502. New retailers and industrial plants moved in. Week after week, month after month, new contractors prepared ground-breaking ceremonies, small-scale models for future buildings were presented, an influx of new teachers to fill the needs of new schools had

73

difficulty finding enough housing because builders couldn't keep up with population. But this period was more than just a residential and industrial boom period. It was also the age of new city management problems never before encountered, the age of new products, a new generation, the age of McCarthyism, civil defense systems, of superhighways and flying sau­cers. Des Plaines was part of all of these.

In 1949, Chicago became the first city to average more than 1,000 plane movements (takeoffs and arrivals) per day. New York City did not have half this many. But most of these movements took place at Midway Airport, not at Chicago Orchard Airport. (This was its name at this time, originating from Orchard Place next door) . Chicago Orchard only had 136,399 movements for the entire year of 1949, and more than half of these were military aircraft.

The first time the name "O'Hare" was suggested for the name of the airport was by editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Colonel Robert McCormick, on the Mutual Broadcasting System's Chicago Theatre of the Air radio program. Edward O'Hare was the navy's first Air Force ace of World W a r II. Chicago Alderman John Hoellen ( 4 7 ) proposed the name "O'Hare Field" for Chicago Orchard Airport in June, 1948. The following year "Chicago International Airport" was also proposed, and both names appeared in the ordinance naming the airport in June, 1949. It was finally named O'Hare Field, Chicago International Airport. But on government reports, weather reports and baggage tickets, the air­port is still listed " O r d " for Orchard.

Early in 1954, it was announced that the Air Force had bought 20 acres of a forest preserve area to use for storing rockets. According to the Chicago Tribune no humans lived within 2,100 feet of the rocket storage area, but it didn't make any difference in 1954. An F-86D jet fighter was being disarmed at O'Hare when a rocket accidentally fired, flew about 3,500 feet, narrowly missed a school bus in the process of loading students, and hit the foundation of St. Patrick's Academy, a school for girls with 365 students operated by the Sisters of Mercy on Touhy Avenue. The explosion left a hole one foot deep and two feet wide in the foundation and smashed windows on three floors. The commanding officer at the base called it a "freak accident" that would "not happen again in 20 years."

74

By this time the Lee Street shopping center had opened (July 9, 1953) and Des Plaines residents were already complaining to the Air Force about low-flying aircraft over the city. The population of Orchard Place was already 1,700 with 500 homes, and according to the Suburban Times, 90 per cent of these voters favored annexation to Des Plaines. It would arrive after three years of decisions.

And the race was on. During September, 1953, Des Plaines was seventh in retail sales among Cook County suburbs, totalling $51,660 from 356 retailers. This was second in the North suburbs, second only to Evanston which led all suburbs. During January, 1954, Des Plaines ranked fourth in homebuilding with $437,000 among 99 suburbs. Leading in this race was Skokie. In 1953, building in Des Plaines almost reached the $10 million mark and in 1954, $8 million. The newest church in Des Plaines was St. Stephen's Catholic Church at Prospect and Spruce. Churches already established in the more recent past were Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at Prospect and Illinois, the Methodist Church at Graceland and Prairie, Bible Faith at Thacker and Webster, Trinity Lutheran at Grace-land and Prairie and Jehovah's Witnesses at Kingdom Hall on Rand Road.

The Des Plaines Fire Department was named the fourth best in Illinois and first for cities between 20,000 and 30,000 population in Cook County in January, 1954. In that same month Fred Fulle, publisher of the Suburban Times, announced his candidacy for Cook County Commis­sioner. He had been a Maine Township Republican Committeeman since 1936.

Then Illinois Tool Works put three divisions on Algonquin. Uni­versal Oil Products built a plant on the same road. Butler Brothers (Ben Franklin) arrived with a warehouse at Oakton and Wolf . On Graceland was built a Montgomery Ward catalogue store and across from Rand Park was built the Singer Sewing Company building. These were all com­pleted in 1954. It was "hats off to Des Plaines industry" when the Han­nifin Corporation, Meyer Coal and Material and Universal Oil Products sponsored the new annual Home and Industry shows at Maine High School in Park Ridge. They were "the men who turn blueprints into pro­duction and downy dreams into glorious realities . . . always in the front line of America's progressive march forward."

75

The controversy of Orchard Place annexation was continual. It was the opinion of many that O'Hare Airport would someday have more developing pains and need Orchard Place, so that Des Plaines should gain zoning control over this area. There were problems that had to be considered before annexation, however. Des Plaines would have to main­tain streets, fire protection, garbage collection, sewer and water systems. Some considered the Des Plaines police force already undermanned and inadequate to handle more ground. What actually spurred on a successful passage of a referendum to annex Orchard Place on March 27, 1956, was Mayor Daley's annexation of O'Hare Field and five miles of Higgins Road to link the airport with Chicago. Des Plaines voters chose to annex Orchard Place by 226 votes of 1,885 voters.

Albert " Judge" Sengstock, police magistrate in Des Plaines, came in contact with most of the Des Plaines youths who "got into trouble" with the law, the ones termed juvenile delinquents. Here was his opinion on this subject in 1954:

"Five or six years ago, the worriers were deeply concerned about the warriors coming out of service. They had been taught to be tough and vicious fighters. Doubtlessly, they would be wild and uncontrollable, unable to acclimate themselves to civilian life. Of course, time marches on, and the warriors are in the ranks of the civilians, buying homes, work­ing at jobs and in offices, editing newspapers and being aldermen in their home towns.

"In effect, the worriers are concerned lest the country go to the dogs, because the youngsters are too inquisitive, too loud and boisterous, and have too much pep. They also ask embarrassing questions relative to governmental policies, expenditures and methods. These youngsters so much want to become juvenile delinquents. This is, for the most part, pure and unadulterated baloney. These youngsters are Americans, 1954 model, just like the old model, just a little snappier. They will give their lives for the USA just as the old models did.

"There are a very few juvenile delinquents in Des Plaines. There are a few exceptions, and the local authorities usually give them as much as they ask for. But you can't brand a whole generation on the misdeeds of a few."

76

The term "flying saucer" was termed when Air Force pilot Kenneth Arnold said he saw a squadron of objects shaped like "flying saucers" over the Cascade Mountains in Oregon in 1947. They came to Des Plaines in 1954. "It 's been said that flying saucers are the creation of an imagi­native mind, but since Monday night there are a few Des Plaines people plus some O'Hare jet pilots who are real believers in flying saucers." According to witnesses, "three circular objects, illuminated by a flame, formed a triangle that hovered over the area for five seconds, veered to the south, then sped out of sight." The Des Plaines spectators said they were not planes and did not seem to be man-made.

A disastrous Des Plaines flood during the spring of 1954 brought dozens of concerned citizens to the next city council meeting. In low spots, cars were completely submerged and — just as in the 1800s — boats were used to do business. The worst spots in Des Plaines were near Wol f and Northwest Highway, Orchard Place and W o l f in Cumberland Terrace, which was flooded by Weller Creek. Residents urged city hall to start a referendum to alleviate flooding. Studies were begun, but no action was taken until more torrential downpours flooded parts of the city.

During the course of 1954 a slogan in Des Plaines was "Des Plaines sewers — something has to be done." It happened again in October. Residents lost thousands of dollars in property damage. No action had been taken during the interim except for planning, and the Suburban Times complained:

"Following the spring floods the city council got all steamed up and demanded immediate work on the sewer survey, to be followed by action. But instead of a report being made complete, it was made incomplete. By this we mean more time was asked to investigate the details of the plan. Another delay.

"Even when the sewer bond issue comes before the people, it must pass. If it passes then months of construction will follow. This means when all has been said and done, it will be a long time before relief is experienced. This is a competition among suburban areas in which Des Plaines should shoot for last place." But Des Plaines citizens voted " n o " to a $2 1/2 million sewage bond issue when Mayor Ken Meyer and City Council put it to the test the following year.

77

At the same time there were more industries and companies anxious to settle in Des Plaines. Borg Warner planned a lab research center on Algonquin and Wolf , but in 1955 still had to file an annexation petition and a request to rezone the land. McDonald's first golden arches in the United States were placed on North Lee Street. A new doctor's building was built near McDonald's the following year. Sim's Bowl opened in the summer of 1956 and the First National Bank announced plans to con­struct a new building at Lee and Prairie when it was the 850th largest bank in the nation with $25 million in assets. The Deville Hotel was built just south of Lee and Algonquin; so was the Northwest Y M C A on Northwest Highway, a new Immanuel Lutheran Church, the A&P at Center and Lee, Littelfuse on Miner Street. For $5 million a new hospital was in the making — Lutheran General. Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights was on the way. Another Des Plaines Post Office at Oakton was built. In 1956 there were 445 businesses in Des Plaines, not including professionals such as barbers, beauticians, real estate and stock brokers.

These were the days when the anti-Communist League headquarters in Park Ridge praised Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy's efforts to ferret out Communists in the federal government. In Milwaukee, an extermi­nator shop called "Friendly Exterminators" nailed a sign by the building that made headlines:

" Joe Must Stay ( W e need him)

The rats must go!" Rats and mice exterminated

The anti-Communist League had editorials published in the Suburban Times. "One of the greatest phenomena of America's history has been the beginning of a vast plot to destroy Congressional Investigating Com­mittees. This plot — currently directed against Joe McCarthy — was hatched in the hell-hole of Communism. It has wrapped its vast tentacles about a vast segment of the American press."

There was a forum held at Maine Township High School in 1956 where a former Communist professor spoke about the evils of Communist

7 8

philosophy. He had received a special certificate of appreciation from J . Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, for "his untiring efforts on behalf of the U.S. in seeking out Communist traitors."

The Suburban Times published in an editorial "Since our town has grown so fast this past decade, and since it has become greatly indus­trialized, the Commies could mark it for a target of infiltration."

Most of this went hand-in-hand with the national and regional civil defense tests and systems. On July 20, 1956, the Federal Communications Commission interrupted all radio and television programs in the country for 15 minutes during a civil defense training exercise. In Des Plaines there were civil defense services offered to residents, to train volunteers first aid, evacuation, panic and crowd control, fire fighting and rescue.

Later in 1964 Des Plaines had 18 licensed fallout shelters within its limits that would accommodate 14,660 persons when the population was just under 50,000. Sirens were tested on the first Tuesday of each month at 10:30 a.m. Fifteen of the shelters were stocked with enough food and water for the prescribed number of persons to last 14 days, which meant 10,000 calories of food per person, 720 calories per day with food such as crackers, biscuits and candy wafers and one quart of water per person per day. Also here were sanitary supplies, a hose to siphon water from the 17-gallon cans, a can opener, cups, a medical kit, and radiological equipment to measure radioactive materials on food and individuals and to measure outdoor radioactivity. The city asked for volunteers to help stock the shelters and to train shelter managers.

"Nike," the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, was the name given the new guided missile installation near Arlington Heights on a tract of federally-owned land. This was part of the defense system for the Greater Chicago Area in 1955. On this site was the nation's first combat-ready surface-to-air guided missile system to be put to use in the air defense system of the United States. According to the army, it was its "first supersonic guided missile to demonstrate its ability to knock enemy aircraft out of the sky."

Meanwhile, the Des Plaines V F W Post 2992 essay contest in 1956 was titled "What Civil Defense Systems Mean to M e ! "

These were the days when Babbo, Dreft and Duz were new deter-

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gents, when Ipana was a new toothpaste, when the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 was sold at Ladendorf Olds on Rand Road. The big movies were "The Robe" with Victor Mature, "Treasure of Sierra Madre" with Humphrey Bogart and Walter Houston, "Key Largo" with Edward G. Robinson and "Thunder Over the Plains" with Randolph Scott.

These were the days when in 1954 Maine High School graduated 450 students; when Herman Rider was the director of the Park Board summer program that included Little League, Pony League, men's soft-ball, swimming, dancing, arts and crafts, tennis, band, baton twirling, dramatics, water ballet and diving; when the maple trees in the Villas were beginning to look unhealthy; when there was now a $1 a month garbage fee in Des Plaines instead of garbage taxation; when the only expressway in the area was the Edens.

The Chicago Bears played their only 1955 intra-squad game at Maine High School on August 10. The names on the team may sound familiar: Coach George Halas, George Blanda, Zeke Bratkowski, Harlan Hill, Jim Dooley, Wayne Hansen, John Kreamchek, Bill McColl, Bill George, Stan Jones, Paul Lipscomb. The rookies that year were Rick Caseres, Andy Kozar, Joe Fortunato, Jim Lavery, Howard Payne and Charley Sumner.

In 1955 Maine High School held another big event — a "Sno-ball Shindig," when according to critics of this new sound of music, "rock-and-roll should have stayed in the jungle." The big Chicago disc jockey's were Howard Miller, Eddie Hubbard, Jim Lownsbury, Jack Karey and John McCormick. "Melody of Love" was the current best-selling disc and "Blackboard Jungle," the movie that featured Bill Haley and the Comets' first big hit "Rock Around the Clock," was playing at the Des Plaines Theater. Elvis Presley arrived on the scene with "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1956, and when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, many thought his wriggling pelvis was obscene. The girls went wild. These were the days of the stereotyped greaseball — the ducktail haircut, cigarettes up the sleeve of a T-shirt, the '57 Chevy with the tumbling dice, the sunglasses, the white bobby socks and the steady girlfriend — all going to the drive-in where roller-skating employees brought greasy french fries and sloppy cheeseburgers.

These were the days when Little Richard was big with "Good Golly

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Miss Molly" and "Tutti Frutti," when the Diamonds came out with "Lil ' Darlin" and "Church Bells May Ring," when the Crewcuts sang "Sha-Boom" and "Earth Angel," when Jerry Lee Lewis blasted "Great Balls of Fire," when Pat Boone made famous "Ain't That a Shame" and "Friendly Persuasion," when Tab Hunter sang "Young Love" and when the Platters were tops on the charts with "Only Y o u , " "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "The Great Pretender." These were the days of Buddy Knox, the Big Bopper, Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, The Skyliners, the Orioles, the Cleftones, the Heartbeats, the Clovers, the Spaniels, the Sil­houettes, the Flamingos, the Del-Vikings, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and finally, the two groups that wrote songs the Beach Boys would later make famous, the Regents and Ronnie and the Daytonas.

A population projection prepared by the Chicago Regional Planning Association showed Des Plaines rising from 29,000 in 1960 to 34,000 in 1970 and 53,000 in 1980. It turned out to be a little short.

Schools in Des Plaines were cropping up all over town, and they became increasingly important, both for residents and new teachers out of college. Des Plaines had the fifth largest school district in Cook County in 1956. There were higher taxes for new grade schools. Algonquin was built in 1952-3, Forest was proposed in 1955. Public school enrollment in Des Plaines reached 3,544 for the 1955 school year, including West, Thacker, Cumberland, North, South, Central and Algonquin Schools. En­rollment at Maine High School was at 2,661, up 11.8 per cent in one year.

There were apparently not enough houses for incoming teachers, and a referendum was on the ballot in January, 1957, to build a 40-room apart­ment house next to Maine High School for the teachers. It was voted down. At this time, the maximum salary for those teachers having 17 years of experience or more and a master's degree was $7,000. The average pay was close to $4,000.

During that same month Alderman Herbert Behrel, the finance com­mittee chairman, announced his candidacy for mayor. Outgoing Mayor Kenneth Meyer and Bert " Judge" Sengstock supported him.

There were other events that might be worth remembering — when a $1 million water storage tank was built at Mannheim and Howard in 1956; when the Chicago and North Western station at Cumberland burned

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to the ground; when the North School was torn down in January, 1958; when Mayor Meyer got into the spirit of the Kiwanis Day Peanut Sale by riding the Kiwanis elephant through downtown Des Plaines; when Vice-President Nixon spoke at the Maine Township Republican Women's Club.

The company that constructed the tollroads near Des Plaines, S-J Groves, needed fill to help construct the roads. They used fill in the Des Plaines limits and the holes were converted into lakes for recreation. Axehead Lake, Big Bend Lake, Peterson Lake, Belleau Lake, Beck Lake, Lake Mary Anne, Lake Opeka and other yet unnamed lakes.

The 80 acres of land formerly owned by the Koehler family -— bor­dered by Howard, Touhy, Lee and the Koehler property to the west — was bought by S-J Groves, the road contractors. After they used the land the contractor had no use for it, so he petitioned Des Plaines to annex the land. Otherwise, it would have cost the contractor to refill the hole. Des Plaines annexed the land and the Park District accepted the 80 acres for the sum of $1. Des Plaines Park District attorney Frank Opeka handled the legal transactions. Work on the golf course began November 1, 1961, and the lake was dedicated on May 31, 1964.

By this time Mayor Behrel was in office and two new high schools were foreseen with a projected enrollment of 9,000 high school students by 1965. There was already an overload of 400 students at Maine High School in 1957. The location of the school seemed no more controversial than was the size. One proposed location at the corner of Wol f and Oak-ton encompassed 70 acres. The other, the site of a former garbage dump on Dee Road, included a proposal to use 65 acres. "But 70 and 65 acres isn't needed for a high school" was the statement made by some who thought 35 acres would be enough for each school.

In the end, the sizes would remain the same. The building at Wol f and Oakton was opened in 1959 and was named Maine Township High School West . The land on Dee Road would be used soon after for a school named Maine Township High School South.

In 1960 the population of Des Plaines was over the 30,000 mark. Des Plaines residents were encouraged during "Get Acquainted W e e k " to "come out of their shells and meet not only their neighbors but make

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many new friends as well." There was a good reason for it. So many new residents were now settled here. Many people were strangers. With­in the next 15 years Des Plaines would almost double its population.

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Eleven

The Way It Was

" A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

My Lost Youth Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807-1882

The life of a child, regardless of time or place, is something that adults cannot completely share. What seems so utterly insignificant to grown-ups can mean everything in the world to offspring, whether it be a batch of new baseball cards, a broken spoke on a bicycle, a new tele­vision show called "Howdy Doody," a new cats-eye, the front seat of the school bus, a quarter from the tooth fairy, the showdown between a pair of ants fighting for a piece of food, or the smell of sap dripping from a sticky pine tree we just tried to climb. And then Mother calls us home for dinner, just when we get the baseball game started.

If Des Plaines was booming with incoming industry in the 1950s, we didn't know it.

T o us, Des Plaines was much smaller than it really was. Des Plaines and the world was our school, our home, our block, our friends. That's all we knew, and we didn't want anything else, except maybe a new whiffle ball. W e knew all the secret passages through the trees and bushes to get from one yard to another; we knew if we got caught taking grapes from the neighbor's vine our parents might hear about it; we knew the best songs on the air were "Water loo" and "Kansas City."

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In 1956 we lived at 1678 Lincoln Avenue, in a 50-year-old 2-story house on the northwest corner of Lincoln and Orchard next to the big park. What great times we had there! There was a sand pit below an old gnarled tree, and we used to "dare" and "double-dare" each other to jump from the higher branches. W e liked to parachute from the swing set and find out who could fly the greatest distance through the air.

Whiffle ball was our favorite game. Ricky Lorenz, Leo Romano, Tony Morano, David Dartsch, Jerry Swanson, Terry Hammer, Bob "Butch" Williquette and Lee LaBadie. I'll never forget the time I went to Lee's house to look at his new "Playmobile" he received for Christmas. He was not a fast runner when we were kids. Little did we realize he'd be one of the fastest milers in the country at Maine West and again at the University of Illinois at Champaign with a 3:57.

Our backyard was full of delightful mysteries. Three huge pear trees, a cherry tree, an apple tree, a grapevine and bushes galore dotted the yard behind the garage. W e always held our annual pear fights when the pears were soft enough. Bees were sometimes nestled in these pears, and when we cocked our arms to throw we occasionally saw a yellow bee aiming for us.

Bicycles were important pieces of property. The boy with the fastest bike was king. My three-wheeler could never match the speed of Butch Williquette's, but I finally learned how to balance myself on a two-wheeler. The first day 1 had my speedometer I bicycled 36 miles, around and around the block on the sidewalk. The street was for cars only. At each corner of the square block was a cross etched into the cement. This meant we had to stop, and we always did. W e never knew who was responsible for those crosses. W e just obeyed our universal rules of bicycling.

Television was something we had never been without, and it was so much a part of our lives. On the bus to St. Stephen's School we sang the song we had just heard on Captain Kangaroo, called "Under the Lolli­pop Tree." Other big programs for us were Flash Gordon, Lunchtime Little Theater (with Uncle Ned and Aunt D o t y ) , The Lone Ranger, Garfield Goose and Friends, Dick Tracy (with BeeBee Eyes, Flattop, Pruneface and Itchy), Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Perry Mason,

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Commando Cody, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Sky King, Lassie, Jet Jackson, and of course, the Mickey Mouse Club with Jim, Bobby, Roy, Annette and Cubby. Later, Lunchtime Little Theater was changed to Bozo's Circus and Uncle Ned's name was changed to Mr. Ned. A corny show called "Car 54 Where Are Y o u " arrived in the early '60s, but it didn't last very long. I'll never forget eating supper at 5:30, watching Huckleberry Hound at 6, then Yogi Bear at 6 :30, then going to bed. Just before the 7 p.m. program came my favorite commercial, and I remember running down the staircase into the living room to watch it before I tucked in for the night. The commercial with "Little Bi l l " the lightbulb, who sang "Electricity costs less today you know, than it did 20 long years ago, a little birdie told me so."

W h o could ever forget Stevie Johnson, who lived across the street? He was the one who ate oranges and bananas without taking the skin off them. He was also the one who made it a practice to scream and dash out of the house naked when he refused to take a bath. One time his brother Corky chased him the length of the block, a full 15 years before streaking became a fad.

When we attended St. Stephen's School in the '50s, many of the teachers were nuns, and all masses were in Latin. Some of us small kids were afraid of the nuns, not so much because they were strict, but because they wore those black gowns that gave them an aura of mystery. When Father Hanley or another priest ever happened to enter the room, which was a rare and important occasion, we stood up and said in unison, "Good morning, Father." If we did this poorly, our teacher told us after he left the room.

The blacktop playground was a special place for the kids who had recess there. In the middle of the blacktop was the recess bell attached to the building. On one side of the bell the girls could play, and on the other side the boys. Nobody was allowed to cross this imaginary line on the ground. There were student patrols whose job it was to report any­one who crossed it. If for some reason a student ever reached the prin­cipal's office, this was considered a major offense. Only once was I ever sent to the principal — for turning around in my seat and laughing at Emil Eck during science class. W e stood in the hall from 10 a.m. to

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3 p.m., except when we sneaked to the washroom during recess. The combination of education and religious training was important,

and it stayed with us in school. The huge school procession down the hall to light the advent wreath, the preparation for First Holy Communion with our new prayer books and rosaries, our religion classes at every grade level. In 1960 John F. Kennedy visited our school, but only the 7th and 8th graders had the chance to meet him. Everybody on the playground was asking each other, "Kennedy or Nixon?" Most of them were for Kennedy, the Catholic, so I joined that group.

When the family moved west of Lee Street in 1961 — the year Pirate Bill Mazeroski hit a home run to beat the Yankees in the World Series — Mark Henkes was in another world. A new Des Plaines home six blocks away seemed then to be a different city altogether. A different house, new neighbors, and most important to a young person, a new school.

One incident stands out more than anything else during my one year at Forest School. It was a spring afternoon. Our fourth grade class was outside playing softball. The batter hit a deep fly ball to right-center, and I chased it. I didn't know it then, but Kent Drysch, the right-fielder, also had a bead on it. Just before we reached for the ball, we collided. I broke my nose, and Kent had a headache for days. Nobody caught the ball. Kent and I attended Algonquin School the following year, and ironically, I ended up with 38 stitches in my leg that year when I fell on the blacktop running after who else but Kent Drysch.

Algonquin Junior High School — the big school with three floors and some tough seventh and eighth graders we had to watch out for. That was the first impression of a lowly fifth grader as he made the push to the junior high. Sure, we played baseball and football, but another game was hopscotch, known as a girl's game. W e weren't ashamed to play it because we knew we were good at it. The tetherball poles were usually occupied during recess, even in below freezing weather when the kid with the warm gloves would usually win.

When President John F. Kennedy was shot in November, 1963, I was sitting in Mr. August Pagel's art class on the bottom floor. He walked in that afternoon and told us he had something to tell us. The

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President had been shot, but we didn't know how seriously. W e turned on the radio and listened to the news for the remainder of the period. The reports of the Kennedy shooting were all that was broadcast at that time. How badly was he hurt? Was he going to live? Few words were exchanged. It was hard to believe. Then, like a nightmare, J F K was gone. That following Sunday, Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of shooting Kennedy, was shot to death in the stomach on national tele­vision while churches were in session all over the nation that morning. The entire week had been like a nightmare that would not go away. One shooting after the next, and nobody prevented it. What was going wrong? W h o would be next? W a s the country up for grabs?

These were the years when Del Shannon, Neil Sedaka, Bobby Vee and Bobby Vinton were making their biggest hits. Chubby Checker had already invented the Twist, and everyone was doing it. Every other song title had the word "Twist" in it. "The Twist," "Let's Twist Again Like W e Did Last Summer," "Twistin' the Night Away," "Twist and Shout," "Slow Twistin'," "Twist it Up, " the "Peppermint Twist." There were other dances too — "Limbo Rock," "Let's Limbo Some More," " D o the Freddie," " D o the Swim," "Ponytime."

Sometimes the teenagers of the '70s don't realize how many times in the past songs have been recorded and made hits. "Your Sixteen"

was a hit sung by Johnny Burnette in the early '60s. "Rockin' Robin" was made famous by Bobby Day in the '50s. He also sang "Little Bitty Pretty One." The Penguins sang "Earth Angel" in the '50s. The Honey­comb cereal commercial that is no longer on the air used the song "Honey­comb" by Jimmie Rodgers —- 1957. " D o You Wanna Dance" — Bobby Freeman, 1958. "Runaway" — Del Shannon, 1960. "Roll Over Beetho­ven" — Chuck Berry, 1950's. For those who were really into music in the '50s and early '60s, the music has long since died. It was the same way when the World W a r II generation came home. The era of the big bands died, and rock music hit the scene in the middle '50s. That's the way it happens for every generation of music.

In the '60s Alan Sherman made it big with his "Hello Muddah, Hello Foddah" album. Ricky Nelson was driving the girls mad with his new singles and his role on the television show "Ozzie and Harriet."

The hula hoop was another big fad. It seemed as though every kid on the block had one. A "hula hoop in every garage, a T V dinner in every pot." T V dinners had just arrived in the supermarkets. Every summer the family camped for three months across much of the country. When we returned, we returned to our music, our schoolbooks and our friends. It was always an annual reunion.

When the Beatles finally made the scene, rock music seemed to change. The guitar was becoming more and more electrified. The emphasis was now more on groups instead of single singers. A new music era had come, and it was sad to see the old one fade away. The Beatles dominated the charts for so long, every other song on W L S and W C F L was a Beatle song as I listened to the radio on my afternoon paper route on Lee, Jeannette, Walnut, Oakwood and Margret Streets. In April, 1964, they completely monopolized the sales charts in this country and set all kinds of records. During that month they were No. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with "Twist and Shout," "Can't Buy Me Love," "She Loves Y o u , " " I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Please Please Me. " They were No. 1 and 2 on the album charts with "Meet the Beatles" and "Introducing the Beatles." It would never happen again. They were quite a phenomenon. They were the new kings of rock music, second alone to Elvis Presley. Then again, that was a matter of opinion, probably depending on how old the rock music lover was. Some didn't enjoy either of them.

When the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show in the '60s, it was one of the few times Ed Sullivan actually lost complete control of his audience. When he began to introduce them, the audience knew they were next. He asked the audience to quiet down, then he told them to quiet down. No way. He finished the introduction, but nobody could hear him. All that was heard was one continuous scream from an audience of more females than males who were pulling their own hair, crying, jumping like maniacs. The television audience could barely hear the Beatles on stage. None of their words were intelligible, but an occasional guitar could be heard. In fact, it was difficult to tell which of their hits they were playing that night.

These were the days when I broke my wrist to help win the seventh grade intramural football championship for Mr. Jolyon Schaeffer's home-

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room; when the same mob of kids sat after school during detention period in the cafeteria; when Mr. Kukla told me to run from Algonquin to Forest School and back to check my pulse rate for science class.

By this time the biggest influx of new Des Plaines residents and industries was on the way, so much so that by 1975 a maximum popula­tion for the city could be realized. From a population of more than 30,000 in 1960 to 57,000 in 1975, residential areas would nearly fill to capacity with little room for more construction. Industry would acquire more and more old farmland within the city limits. The map of Des Plaines would take on even more change.

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Twelve

Yesterday and Today

"In rivers the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with time present."

Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452-1519

With a population of 34,000 in 1960 to an astounding jump to 50,800 in 1965, there was good reason to believe the population projections made at this time. When Des Plaines reached 54,310 in 1967, it was projected the city would take on a total of 81,000 by 1975, 95,000 by 1980, 110,000 by 1985 and 124,000 by 1990. When it was discovered soon after that the population boom was tapering, in 1970 Rolf Campbell and Associates lowered this 1990 prediction to 90,000.

Reality since then has put the Des Plaines population in 1970 to 57,237, according to the federal census. The City of Des Plaines had disputed this figure. Regardless, with little room left for single-family housing, with not much more than that for light industry, the population of Des Plaines has risen only slightly since 1970 if at all. It was realized in the '60s that in order to increase the city's wealth, more land had to be annexed and buildings that would attract modern businessmen had to be constructed. For the most part there was little land left to annex. The emphasis, then, was on the development of the downtown area and the land surrounding it. It was a project of the first magnitude that would put the chips on the table and would be accompanied with much con­troversy that was to be expected.

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One of the most controversial pieces of property in Des Plaines was the more than 100-year-old John Boeckenhauer farm located south of Thacker, north of Algonquin, and east of the North Western tracks. In 1964 single-family Des Plaines residents protested a project proposed at a Cook County Zoning Board meeting. Contractor Julius Cohen wanted the land rezoned so he could build efficiency apartments, a restaurant and cocktail lounge. The 40 acres was "blitz annexed" by Des Plaines when it learned of the possible rezoning by the county, and Cohen pro­tested.

But in February, 1965, Des Plaines lost the Boeckenhauer property annexation on a technicality. The legal description on the engineering plans showed a strip along the south side of Algonquin to be 110 feet, which would have made the Boeckenhauer property contiguous with the city limits. The actual footage was 159 feet, however. The judge ruled the annexation illegal, and Des Plaines appealed the case. After the city successfully annexed the land, it refused to rezone the land for Cohen. This was brought to court and Cohen won this case in January, 1974, enabling him to build 43 three-flat apartments along the tracks. Boecken­hauer retained three acres of the land within which his home was located.

Toward the end of 1964, the Chicago and North Western Railway bought 10 new bi-level coaches worth about $2 million. In 1961, 417 of the conventional coaches were discarded and 200 new bi-level air-con­ditioned cars gave a better seating capacity. It was carrying about 72,000 riders daily in 1964, according to Chairman Ben W . Heineman. " T h e increase in our rider volume also indicates the initial glamour of the expressways has worn off for many commuters who are now trading driver frustration and traffic congestion for the suburban railroad."

By this time 2-car ownership in Des Plaines was much more common than in the past, much of it apparently due to the increased number of teenagers with cars and also with more and more wives needing cars. In 1964 Des Plaines there were 142 cars for every 100 families as compared to the national ratio of 121 to 100 families.

One of the big questions as Des Plaines reached the midway point in the '60s was "Should Rt. 45 be routed around the city?" One citizen at that time said "There is too much traffic affecting local shoppers,

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schools, libraries and pedestrians when transient traffic is allowed to travel principle streets of a city. This is especially true when traffic speed is not held to a safe speed. Twenty miles per hour is recommended in business districts and school districts, but our streets are not so posted."

Others thought it would not be wise to re-route traffic around the city because they said the bigger shopping centers such as Golf Mill were served by highly-traveled routes. Some thought the tollroads and express­ways had not helped re-route as much traffic as had been expected and that re-routing traffic in Des Plaines was necessary because there were more cars on the road in the United States than ever before.

Some thought with the one-way streets in Des Plaines, re-routing traffic would lead to further deterioration of downtown commercial vol­ume. "This thinking has been born out by the diminishing gross retail volumes of certain businesses, with the consequent frightening rise in store vacancy rate. As long as businessmen are forced with diminishing busi­ness, we cannot afford to take a chance of losing business by gambling on losing whatever impulse buying that might come from traffic."

Would traffic stop in town? Or would it just pass through? That was an important question. How much would it cost to re-route traffic? A survey was taken soon after to determine where the bulk of the traffic was going, where it had come from, for what purpose, and the city engineer later in 1965 estimated a $30 million cost to re-route the traffic. The question then was "Where do we re-route i t?" He had come to the conclusion that there was no place to do so.

There was also the question of angle parking instead of parallel parking in the downtown area. One citizen commented " Y o u can't blame our girl drivers for disliking parallel parking. It is my firm opinion that the city should encourage special consideration for the girl drivers, even to the point of establishing all-girl parking at the most convenient loca­tions." He said men also dislike parallel parking. Angle parking was later installed on Ellinwood and Miner.

With these questions came another — the downtown development of Des Plaines. Many wanted the train station moved to the northwest. Others just wanted the building modernized and cleaned. Traffic was stopped when the Chicago and North Western loaded and unloaded

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passengers downtown. The placement of a building northwest could prevent this, they said. Some thought the intersection at River and Demp­ster should be straightened because it was too dangerous. Others wanted a return to the two-way streets from the present one-way system. " I want to go to a certain store, but how do I get there?"

With the first downtown blueprint plans underway, one Des Plaines businessman put it this way:

" I suggest removal of older residences and commercial buildings. With the encouragement of city officials, a one-half mile radius squared should be opened for development with rezoning for small luxury apart­ment use, certain business use.

"Visualize what a 10- or 15-story building would do for downtown! It could be all glass and steel, with three floors of free parking, one floor of modern restaurant and lounge, one floor of service offices for beauty shops, doctors offices and the balance of 1-bedroom, 2-bath luxury apart­ments. Think what it would do for downtown and all the hard-pressed homeowning taxpayers. Let's go Des Plaines, our town is picked to suc­ceed. Turn on the green light. Give investors a chance to help."

One builder said, "There are two types of shopping centers. The latest have adequate parking. In the older sections, in 1920, all residents lived within walking distance of downtown, No one in those days could ever foresee 100 million cars in the United States."

Then a new plan was announced early in 1966. It called for a $7 million, 3-block long parking plaza over the Chicago and North Western tracks downtown topped by a 12-story office building employing about 1,500. " I f realized, it would be the first of its kind in suburban America, and would, in all likelihood, put Des Plaines on the map." It was announced it could be started in one year and both the building and the outdoor parking garage for 1,500 cars could be ready within two years. The only hitch seen at that time by architectural firm Erickson and Stevens was acquiring the air rights from the railroad over the downtown portion of the tracks and the adjoining parkways.

On April 30, 1966, Mayor Behrel could credit himself with an achievement no Des Plaines mayor in modern times had been able to accomplish — help pass a sewer referendum in Des Plaines to help alle-

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viate flooding. It was the fifth time in 15 years the referendum had been attempted. The first four failed. The fifth won the consent of Des Plaines citizens 2,410 to 1,621. The total was $3,750,000.

On the national political scene, Vietnam protests and complaints against protests reached a high point. Senator Dodd, the Democrat from Massachusetts, said in September, 1965, "The evidence is overwhelming that the world Communist apparatus in the United States, in Moscow, in Peiping, in Hanoi, in Havana have been able to exploit the anti-Vietnam agitation and the teach4n movement for the purpose of confusing their own people. It is to be hoped that the facts here will assist loyal critics of Administration policy to purge their ranks of the Communists and crypto-Communist, so the national debate on Vietnam policy can be carried forward between honest men, unencumbered by the participation of the Communists who seek to subvert the entire process of debate, as they seek to subvert our society." This appeared in the Suburban Times.

In a public opinion poll conducted by Republican Harold Collier of the 10th Congressional District representing Des Plaines and surrounding communities, 30 per cent of those asked gave him feedback. A total of 14,800 approved of the present United States retaliatory attacks in Viet­nam, while 2,826 reflected disapproval and 2,431 were undecided. Some 26 per cent said the United States should withdraw troops from South East Asia. Some 84 per cent said the foreign aid expenditure level of the United States should be sharply reduced, and 11 per cent wanted the present level of expenditure maintained.

The Journal tended to publish other facets of news on Vietnam. Some Des Plaines attorneys, for instance, agreed that the draft should be halted immediately, until an actual declaration of war was effected. The Journal focused on protests and other news from the immediate area. The Suburban Times tended to speak out on national issues from a more con­servative viewpoint.

The latter newspaper covered Richard Nixon's speech at Mt. Prospect High School in October, 1968, while in the thick of a national election campaign. "Young girls dressed in white mini-skirts, white sailor hats are moving up the aisles. The girls wear red belts, purple blouses and red Nixon bands across their chests." Those in attendance were Senators

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Dirksen and Percy, Mayor Behrel, W . Clement Stone, Donald Rumsfeld, William Scott (candidate for Attorney General) and others. Nixon won Maine Township in 1968, taking 63.9 per cent of the vote, with Hubert Humphrey taking 31.5 per cent and George Wallace 4.6 per cent.

Nixon returned to the same high school two years later, when his four goals were "a lasting peace, defeat of inflation, peace at home and completion of a program for progress." He also said he appointed "a strong Attorney General (John Mitchell) , had appointed strong men to the judiciary" and had introduced "legislation to deal with organized crime and narcotics."

The "causes and effects for the undercurrent of frustration in today's society" was discussed during a panel session with 200 suburban police at Forest Hospital in Des Plaines in 1968.

There were Vietnam protests in Des Plaines by the Mt. Prospect chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society during the summer of '67. Des Plaines police planned for more marchers than there were and stationed one officer at the downtown intersections of Miner and Ellin­wood. The signs read "Abolish the Draft" and "Stop More Murders in Vietnam." Passersby yelled "Get out of here!"

The Journal also reported that the two children of a man who had run for President of South Viet Nam against incumbent Thieu spoke at the Maine Township meeting of Democrats. Their father, Truong Dinh Dzu, was sentenced to five years in jail at hard labor on charges of advo­cating a negotiated peace in Vietnam. The children wanted United States government support to put pressure on the Thieu regime to release their father.

It was reported the Des Plaines police received 3,431 more com­plaints in 1968 than in 1967. There was a feedback session between Des Plaines police and the public at Maine West at the start of 1969. One student complaint was "Fuz think kids can be pushed around more than adults." Another: "Police are OK, but they don't act nice to us. They think we're dumb." And another: "Cops won't listen to us. They act like big shots." One policeman said, "Kids don't mind authority, but they want the cops to respect kids as much as cops respect themselves."

It was the beginning of 1969 that brought protest from Maine East

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High School students concerning what they thought was an outmoded dress code. Eighty Maine East students gathered in the school to discuss with the administration the subject of dress code in January. The meeting was unexpectedly cancelled by a church minister and sheriff's police who were called to maintain order.

The dress code in part read, "Boys are required to wear belts (when needed), shirts must be tucked in pants. Girls are required to wear dresses, suits or shirts with blouses or sweaters. Slacks are not permitted."

Superintendent Short read from his script, " W e live in a society proud of its freedom. In educating students for this society, the school must help each child adjust to the restrictions necessary if a society is to maintain itself."

One parent, Sylvia McNair, denounced the notion that student dissent was fostered by outsiders and the notion that dissident parents and stu­dents were part of a nationwide conspiracy. "There will be change. The only question is will the change be peaceful or unpleasant."

"You people are so hung up on how other people look," said one Maine East senior. " I could see if something was really hurting you physically, but it's just a mental hangup."

In the dress code the phrase was not "mental hangup," but whatever was determined by school authorities to be a "disturbing influence." Eventually boys would be allowed to sport beards, mustaches and long hair. Girls could wear slacks and could wear their hair however they pleased. Boys could wear shirt-tails hanging out.

By this time, another group of industries was located in Des Plaines. Hart, Schaffner and Marx, Union Bag-Camp Company, Thomp¬ sen Industries, Kux Machine Company, Rex Chain Belt, Chicago Graded Sand Company. In addition to these were Nuclear-Chicago Corporation, Xerox Corporation, Frederick Post Company and D e Soto Chemical Cast­ings, Incorporated.

When the calendar was turned to January, 1967, Mayor Behrel responded to those who were anxious to have a decision concerning the plans for the downtown area. He said that Tec-Search, Incorporated, the planning consultants for Des Plaines, "were hired with the express under­standing that we wanted a completed detailed upgrading of the city's

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comprehensive plan for the entire corporate limits of the city." Applications for funds from the Department of Housing and Urban

Development had been slowed down by the freezing of funds and later by announced cutbacks as an economic measure due to the cost of the Vietnam War , Behrel said.

At the end of that month a snowstorm hit Des Plaines that would never be forgotten here by those who lived through it. A total of 41 inches fell. At first the city estimated the cost would run about $15,000, but within the week the prediction neared $50,000.

The snow began early on Thursday, January 26. School children didn't see what it looked like until they were dismissed that afternoon. As the snow continued Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, School District 214 announced it would be closed for the first time. District 61 announced it would close, this the second time in its history. The four Des Plaines schools in District 59 were closed until Tuesday. Every school in Des Plaines was closed.

E. R. Warnicke, Commissioner of Public Works, said "The gods have been against the Public Works Department. First, the early thaw left the ground so soft our big plowing equipment sank into it if it went off the pavement. Second, well-intentioned industry and business firms length­ened the rush hour. Some began sending employees home Thursday about 1:30. As a result, we had one continual rush hour to about 8 p.m. Third, abandoned cars were a problem, but the locked ones really slowed us down. W e couldn't move them. Fourth, equipment couldn't get from one point to another because of traffic snarls."

A city plow was always stationed at the emergency driveway at Holy Family Hospital. Snow collapsed the roof of the RCA building on How­ard, and the same thing happened to Pesche's Flowers. Restaurants were closed in Des Plaines and crews couldn't get home.

Residents in Devonshire "coordinated an attack" on their 6-foot snowdrifts. They marched through the snow to bring a neighbor a quart of milk or to exchange "how-long-did-it-take-you-to-get-home-stories." So did everybody else in town, once they arrived home. Persons walked for more than a mile just to buy a loaf of bread and a quart or two of milk. Sometimes the limit on bread was two loaves, sometimes just one.

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Milk was limited to one gallon and one-half gallon. Deliveries to super­markets and neighborhood stores were stopped cold.

The snow postponed all Maine West, Maine East and Maine South sports events indefinitely, except two basketball games. Snow flurries continued that Monday night when City Council members walked into City Hall and "applauded everybody including themselves for the way in which the city handled the snow." At this time only 23 inches had fallen.

"In an era when criticism of non-involvement is so often levelled at segments of society, the spontaneous local action of community residents to clear their own drives and streets, re-proved the axiom that a time of trials tends to bring out the best in people."

The everyday schedule of the businessman, the housewife, the stu­dent, were interrupted by Mother Nature, and still the world did not collapse. Indispensable activities were put off for another day. For some the snow was just a nuisance. For others, it was reassuring to know that nature could still have its way. The snow remained for a long time, but it was plowed into piles along the roadsides. Business continued as usual.

The annual report from the City Engineer and the Public Works Department announced in March, 1967, that there were still 535 acres of vacant land in Des Plaines. At that point, the total land area in Des Plaines was 6,600 acres or 10.31 square miles. Single-family housing occupied more than half of this space with 3,923 acres. Industrial was next with 1,095; commercial had 413 ; forest preserve, 345 ; public schools, 285 ; multi-family, 255. T h e lowest elevation in the city was at Oakton and River at 635 feet above sea level; the highest was at Drake Street and Cambridge Road at 670 feet.

River Rand bowling lanes burned to the ground in July, 1967. The loss was estimated at $800,000. According to police, three 6-year-old boys tossed a 10-cent fire bomb into an open loading door and sparks ignited cans of lacquer used to refinish the 32 lanes. According to Police Chief Arndt, "it spread in a matter of seconds the length of the 32 lanes." The lanes have been rebuilt since.

During that summer the first Des Plaines Historical Society meeting was held at the Oehler Funeral Home. The Des Plaines Junior Women's

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Club named Louis Klitzeke, the librarian of the Des Plaines Public Library, as the temporary chairman. " W e do not want to be a dumping ground for old furniture and artifacts. W e do not want to be a musty historical society of the past, we want to be a group of the future." He called for different persons to speak on the Vietnam W a r and other cur­rent events. Ted Napier would be the first president of the society. In November, 1968, the society held its first meeting in the Kinder home at 777 Lee Street, which it someday hoped to make the home of the Museum. T h e grand opening of the Society at the Kinder home was held May, 1969.

With the location of the Des Plaines Public Library at Graceland and Thacker since 1958, the library increased its books from 33,000 to 90,000 during the '60s. Its annual circulation by 1970 was 330,000. On August 12, 1967, a bond referendum of $1 million to expand the library facilities was voted down by Des Plaines residents. The same thing happened the following year. Then in 1970 a garage and service area was added to the rear of the building, and a bookmobile began biweekly service to each of the 18 neighborhoods of Des Plaines. In 1973, with accumulated funds of $275,000 and a mortgage loan of $600,000, the Library Board began the construction of a 20,700 square foot addition, which was dedicated in September, 1974.

During Thanksgiving vacation of 1967, Thacker School students were moved to the new school called Iroquois, and Thacker School was even­tually razed and another school called Central was built in its place.

A delegation of the mayor's council established a committee in May, 1968, for the purpose of building a memorial to the Des Plaines war dead. This committee met with the Des Plaines Park Board to request permis­sion to build the memorial on park property. Permission was granted, and this memorial was built and finally dedicated in June, 1975, at the loca­tion that had been initially proposed — between Lake Opeka and Lee Street south of Howard and north of Touhy.

Meanwhile, new plans were being made for the Des Plaines down­town area while others were in limbo. Mayor John Wood of Arlington Heights wanted a 10-suburb city because he thought this was the only way suburban municipal government would survive the trend toward metro government, in which Chicago would grow further into the suburbs

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with its own transportation systems and other districts. Mayor Behrel opposed this plan.

Just before Mayor Behrel won his unprecedented fourth term as Mayor of Des Plaines in April, 1969, a new plan for downtown Des Plaines was revealed. " A tree-shaded parkway, enclosed all-weather malls, aesthetically-designed combination office and residential buildings, pleasant shopping facilities, extremely convenient parking facilities are all within the realm of possibility for downtown Des Plaines within a few years," according to the architects. It was called Superblock during a time when the word "super" was a common adjective, originating from the famous football Superbowl which was still in its infancy.

Then another plan emerged. It was called "Dial-a-Bus." A commu­nication center would be built, in which any person in Des Plaines could dial this center for a bus. The center would then notify the nearest bus which would be sent to that home as well as others in the same area. Call stations would be scattered around town so that a bus could be called for a return trip home.

Working together with the "Dial-a-Bus" would be the "Personal Transit System" that included a system of cars. "The city may someday be dotted with stations where you can hop into an almost private car on the Personal Transit System and be whisked at high speed to almost any part of the city." The buses would cost $12,000 apiece, and Des Plaines would need five buses. The Personal Transit System would run on rails and cost $500,000 per mile, with the city paying one-third of the total bill, the Department of Transportation paying the other two-thirds.

In June, 1970, another proposed plan was announced. It consisted of three parts:

1. A Superblock crescent-shaped 10-story office/retail/professional complex. It would cost $20 million, encompass the area between Lee, Ellinwood, Pearson and Prairie, and would employ 3,000 persons.

2. A 10-story air rights building on Miner over the North Western tracks. This would cost $5.5 million and employ 1,250.

3. The Moehling Building would be built on Lee between First Federal Savings and Immanuel Lutheran Church. It would cost $15 mil­lion and would employ 3,000.

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The original 1966 plan that called for a building over the North Western tracks and a 12-story office building with a parking garage for 1,500 cars was now floating because there was a lack of federal funds and also because there was no regional transit plan.

During a time when the practice of draft card burning was not an uncommon method of protesting the draft, the Selective Service Board Office at 2474 Dempster was fire bombed on June 29, 1970. The same thing happened again on July 9. This time somebody cut a hole in the roof and dropped a bottle of highly flammable liquid into the office, causing smoke and fire damage. The owner of the building did not want to lose his insurance, so he asked the Board to move to another location. It did — to Glenview. It was the largest Selective Service Board office in the state with 75,000 registrants on file.

After the marches on Washington resulted in the clubbing, tear-gassing and arrest of hundreds of Vietnam protesters for blocking traffic and disturbing the peace, the Suburban Times offered its opinion:

"Mob anarchists who are running disguised under civil rights banners in the United States compare police to Nazi storm troopers. John Mitchell compared last week's mayday mob in Washington with Hitler's Brown Shirts.

" I f civil rights become limited in this country, it will be because anarchists are being encouraged by too many people in high places . . . and martial law is the only antidote which has been proven to be effec­tive."

By this time there were two main ethnic groups that were well-established in Des Plaines — the Greeks and Latinos.

During the Des Plaines population boom of the '50s, Greeks from Chicago poured into the suburbs, some of them setting up restaurants they had in the city. Before 1959 those of the Greek Orthodox faith in Des Plaines had to travel to Chicago to attend the liturgy. But even before this, plans were in the making for a church that would fulfill the needs of the northwest suburbs. In 1957, the Hellenic Northwest Subur­ban Women's Club formed the first Greek Orthodox Sunday school in Mt. Prospect. The following year a temporary church was built in Arling­ton Heights with a Sunday school of 100 children. It wasn't until 1959

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that 35 families bought the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Prospect and Illinois in Des Plaines, and it was named St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church. By 1960 the church included 150 families and 215 Sunday school children. Five acres of land was bought in 1962 for the site of a new church that would be dedicated nine years later with the identical name. The church on Dempster allowed expansion for its Sun­day school facilities, with more than 700 Sunday school students and about 500 families today. The perimeter of its magnificent dome was built in faceted, glass crosses in twelve groups commemorative of the twelve apostles.

During the past few years it had been the tendency of most Latinos in this area to make permanent homes rather than move from place to place with the seasons as they did landscaping and farming chores when it was harvest time. This was the case with Des Plaines. There were about 100 Latin families living in Des Plaines in 1972, about half of these in the downtown Des Plaines area. Some of them worked as full-time landscapers, some in schools, one was a member of the Des Plaines Police Department, and another the pastor of a Spanish Baptist Church.

This created an immediate problem for District 62 schools because of the language barrier. But by 1972 the 31 Spanish-speaking children who attended North and Central Schools were part of a bi-lingual, state-funded education program taught by Pat Barker. Half of the school day consisted of classes in Spanish, like mathematics. The other half day was spent teaching the children how to read, write and speak English.

In that same year ten major Des Plaines industries said they employed 315 non-white workers, of which 189 were Spanish-speaking, 99 were blacks, 20 Orientals and eight American Indians. Of the 315, 24 lived in Des Plaines. There were 241 unskilled or semi-skilled, 24 skilled, two supervisors, 26 technicians, five clerical and 17 professional workers.

The Northwest Opportunity Center said in 1972 it was serving 124 Des Plaines families, with 23 having incomes above the federal poverty level and 87 below that level. Of the 124, 88 families had Spanish sur­names.

Remember when the first non-polluting, phosphate-free detergents were on the market? The first one to be developed was by DeSoto In-

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corporated in Des Plaines. It made an agreement with Armour-Dial to market the product during the summer of 1970. It was the first major breakthrough in this field, and it happened in Des Plaines laboratories.

At about this time in 1970, Ken E. Olson ended his 18-year career with the Des Plaines Park District Commissioners and became athletic director at Maine West. He came to Des Plaines in the early '40s. He had been an All-American in both football and basketball in college and was offered professional football contracts with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants. Instead, he became head coach of the Maine High School football team and began piling up his winning record there before moving on to the new Maine West High School in Des Plaines.

The Des Plaines Jaycees conducted a survey in all eight Des Plaines wards that was released in December, 1971, in order to find the major complaints from Des Plaines citizens concerning their city. In order of the first five, they were: transportation in the city, public transport to other communities, public restrooms in the business district, telephone service, meeting place for teens.

In 1970 a youth center called "Place For People" was established on Ellinwood, but it finally closed in 1973. The basic reason was lack of funds. Some thought Des Plaines citizens, particularly Des Plaines youth, did not participate enough in the organization. Still others thought the organization did not really appeal to the majority of Des Plaines youths and that it failed to adapt itself to a changing lifestyle among young persons.

Thirteen years after Ray Kroc built the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines on Lee Street, the organization built the 1,000th building in 1968 on Oakton just west of Mannheim and then in 1972 constructed the 2,000th McDonald's in the United States at the Market Place Shopping Center at Golf and Elmhurst in Des Plaines.

Meanwhile, the Des Plaines Superblock was rolling along — slowly. In March, 1972, architect Stevens said construction would begin in the fall of that year. It didn't. Des Plaines aldermen had just approved an $825,000 revenue bond to help finance parking lot development. T h e two parking lots, those on Ellinwood and Center, had to be completed before redevelopment officials could begin Superblock constructions, said redevelopment officials.

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The old plan to re-route transient traffic around Des Plaines was still an issue, and a project of this sort was hopefully to be completed before Superblock construction began. A plan had already been submitted in 1971, whereby Thacker would be extended over the Des Plaines River through the Forest Preserve and link with Dempster west of Rand Road. The year before that residents of Thacker protested vehemently because they did not want traffic re-routed on their street in front of their houses and past Central School. This temporarily brought the plan to a halt. But when the Forest Preserve learned of the project, they would not allow Thacker to be extended on Forest Preserve property near Northwestern Park. It would be a dangerous situation for those using the park and it would be a disturbance, they said. Then in June, 1972, Des Plaines tried to accommodate the wishes of the Forest Preserve by asking to build the highway over the Forest Preserve rather than on the land. This proposal was eventually killed by the Forest Preserve. Other plans by the State of Illinois and the City of Des Plaines were on the drawing boards, but no by-pass has been built and there is no sign that one will be built.

It must be realized that Des Plaines has more state and federal high­ways traversing its city limits than any other city in Illinois. Traffic travels through the city in both north-south and east-west directions, from Chicago to the suburbs, from the suburbs to Chicago, and from one suburb to the other. Also important is the heavy traffic arriving at and leaving O'Hare International Airport just south of Des Plaines. The State of Illinois had at one time proposed that Mannheim Road be straightened to eliminate the S-curve just north of Howard and south of Oakton, so that Mannheim would carry heavy traffic along the Soo Line tracks and eventually meet Rand and Golf Road to the north. In the end, it was considered financially and practically infeasible.

About six months before Mayor Behrel ran for his fifth term at that office, he stated that his most important achievements to date had been major storm sewer improvements (the first of their kind in the city) , the elimination of flooding at Weller Creek and the acquisition of Chicago water for Des Plaines, another first. He had also helped the elimination of freight trains through the city limits during rush hours, when Des Plaines and other citizens had to drive to and from work.

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He also said the projects that "have been hanging fire for several years appear likely to bear fruit in the next four years." As Director of the National League of Cities, he was a lobbyist who helped Des Plaines receive what was then to be an expected $400,000 a year for five years under that program. With the passage of that $825,000 revenue bond, the parking lot on Ellinwood was constructed. Behrel said the Des Plaines Redevelopment Association hoped to begin its first Superblock building in the spring of 1973.

When election time arrived in April, 1973, Mayor Behrel was await­ing his fifth consecutive election victory at that position. It almost didn't happen. For more than 14 months David Wolf , a member of the Des Plaines Fire Department for 21 years, had been campaigning throughout the city. Benton Kosmen was the third man in the mayoral race that year. In the end, the incumbent Behrel won the election by a scant 164 votes over Wolf , 5,828 to 5,664. Behrel did not receive half of the votes, because Kosmen had tallied 398. It was Behrel's closest election and was also the third time he would run the city as a full-time mayor. During his first two terms the office of Mayor of Des Plaines was only a part-time job. Des Plaines still has the only full-time mayor in all of Cook County except Chicago.

Late in 1972 the Surgeon General had issued his latest findings — both men and women smokers have more diminished pulmonary function than non-smokers. Warnings had long been on the packages of cigarettes, yet there had been an incredible increase of smoking by Americans of all age groups.

It had been reported that there were 937 suspensions at the three Maine High Schools in 1971 — suspensions for smoking on school grounds. Smoking was the most frequent cause for suspension. It was illegal for Maine High School students to smoke anywhere on school property, and it was illegal for students to carry smoking materials with them on the campus.

Maine South students, 120 of them, walked out of school and called a strike due to the smoking issue in 1972. School administrators com­plained because they said vandalism was increasing in the washrooms each year and "in the washrooms students are lighting paper towels and

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toilet paper. They stuff paper in toilets until they are jammed. They are pushing over stall partitions bolted to the floor and scratching obscenities on mirrors."

One student said, " I f we can't smoke in the washrooms, why can't we have a lounge? If we can't smoke in the johns, why can't there be an open campus? Then there would be no smoking problem. Most smokers don't really like to smoke in the johns anyway."

In the end, smoking was not allowed at any of the high schools. Teachers were stationed at different washrooms and at the ends of halls to watch for smokers.

When the 1970 federal census was taken, the City of Des Plaines questioned its accuracy, saying that it must be higher than 57,239. When a special census was taken by Des Plaines in 1973, it found the popula­tion dropped to 55,573. The City still questioned the accuracy of the 1970 federal census, saying in effect that the federal census in 1970 was higher due to the inclusion of certain portions of the population that were not included in the city's 1973 census.

A great success for the city came with the announcement in June, 1973, that the senior citizens housing building, which would provide for 128 rooms at Lee and Ashland, already had 950 applicants waiting in line to move in once the building was open for occupancy.

What had happened to Superblock? In the summer of 1973, the City Council finally approved a planned unit development zoning district for the area covered by the proposed shopping mall, office building and the adjacent parking lot. This had to be passed by the Council because the building proposed by the developer, the Des Plaines Mall Corporation, would be about 185 feet high. This area was zoned C-4, which allowed a maximum height of 100 feet for any building. Plans were still indefinite about an office tower over the North Western tracks, and the air rights over these tracks had not been purchased anyway.

It was then, in September, 1973, that the Des Plaines Mall Corpora­tion represented by J . H. Gottlieb, said it may begin razing old buildings on Prairie and Center in November, 1973.

"The shopping mall and the 10-story office building will revitalize the center core of Des Plaines, bringing new stores, new jobs, an estimated

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$200,000 per year in additional real estate taxes. T h e mall will also generate more sales tax revenues and will bring business to the remainder of downtown Des Plaines," Gottlieb said. But when?

In November of 1973, Robert Ganser, a vice-president of the Des Plaines Mall Corporation, said "You can go shopping in the new Des Plaines Mall in January, 1975." He said groundbreaking would begin February, 1974, and the old buildings razed in January, 1974. There would be no Des Plaines Mall in 1975, however.

Despite all of this, Des Plaines was third in Cook County and seventh in Illinois in volume retail sales, according to annual sales tax reports of the Illinois Department of Revenue. Des Plaines' total — $10,868,081 in taxes collected ending the year at July 31, 1973, up about $1 million over the previous year. Des Plaines ranked first in Cook County suburbs in car sales, lumber, building materials and hardware. It ranked second in manufacturer sales, fourth in food sales and fifteenth in clothing.

New stores near the Oakton-Mannheim intersection were increasing at the same time. The Walgreen Store at Ellinwood and Center would be moved there. A Dominick's Food Store would do the same. A new Osco Drug Store took the place of the Ben Franklin next to the Jewel Store in the Oak Leaf Commons Shopping Center. A third post office for Des Plaines was announced for the vicinity. An Oakton Terrace Nurs­ing Center was also making plans to locate here. There were already a host of eating places for Des Plaines residents and for businessmen on lunch breaks. Kentucky Fried Chicken, Cal's Roast Beef, McDonald's Hamburgers, Ponderosa Steakhouse. Arby's Roast Beef came and left.

Late in 1973 the Watergate tapes caught the attention of the nation, and the Journal conducted a public opinion poll and the Suburban Times interviewed six persons concerning the subject of impeachment.

The Journal reported Nixon had "lost a great deal of credibility with Des Plaines citizens" when it found 61 per cent of those interviewed thought Nixon should resign or be impeached. The Suburban Times found the opposite. It gave the impression through six interviews with Des Plaines residents that persons here felt he should not be impeached. Three of the six expressed this opinion, one the opposite, and two were undecided. Immediately before Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford, the

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Journal found in another straw poll that only 43 per cent wished Nixon impeached. "Most said the investigation into impeachment proceedings would turn into a political partisan farce," the Journal reported.

T h e winter of 1974 was that of the gasoline shortage, the fuel crisis, the dousing of Christmas lights and the use of white toilet paper instead of pink and blue.

"Autos lined up for gas at a station were approached by an 'attend­ant' who was collecting $5 gas limit payments ahead of time 'in order to facilitate faster service.' He gave each driver a blue chip with direc­tions to turn it in at the gas pump for his allotment. Only trouble was: the 'attendant" was not associated with the filling station. He made off with a tidy number of $5 bills." From the Journal.

T h e following spring the streakers were doing their thing. A group of potential male streakers assembled in a Maine West locker room, wear­ing nothing but ski masks and shoes. Before they could get outside, a coach saw them and turned them over to the Dean's Office for discipline. Des Plaines police said they would arrest and charge any streakers with whatever the law said they should charge them. There were no streakers reported in Des Plaines.

Just after senior citizens in Des Plaines were granted a 50-cent taxi fare anywhere within the city limits, the City Council approved phase one of Superblock. It had been a long time in the making. This was in May, 1974. It included the shopping mall, the office building atop the mall, and a three-tier parking garage. Up until this point the snag in City Coun­cil had been the location of the proposed parking garage on Ellinwood.

With phase one of Superblock passed by the Council, developer Jerry Gottlieb said he was ready to break ground on July 15, 1974, if the city concluded its commitments. According to Gottlieb, it hadn't. The city had to purchase more property for parking, build more water and sewer lines, re-route Prairie Avenue, vacate Center Street between Ellinwood and Prairie, and sell bonds to help finance the project.

During the same month representatives of St. Mary's Church and Central School organized because they were concerned with the traffic that would be channeled south into their area from the newly-proposed three-tier parking garage on Ellinwood.

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While the cottony maple scale disease was taking precedence now over the dreaded Dutch Elm disease that killed thousands of trees in Des Plaines during the past decade, the big issue of the moment was the fate of the old City Hall building, now that the new was under construction. T h e city for the most part agreed to tear it down and replace it with a parking lot. When this idea emerged, the Bicentennial Commission wanted it saved for a Heritage Hall to be used by the community groups. T h e Historical Society also wanted the west half of the first floor for a new museum location. The present location in the old Kinder home at 777 Lee Street is due to come down. First Federal Savings and Loan has told the society the house could remain until the Bicentennial celebration in July, 1976, but after that "they must take a serious look at the situation." The bank will soon use that area for more parking space. The fate of the old City Hall building built in 1937 is still undecided.

With the Des Plaines-based United Motor Coach in deep financial trouble, the Regional Transit Authority in 1974 granted the company $336,000 to operate until the North Suburban Mass Transit District pur­chased United Motor Coach January 1, 1975. The $188 million expansion program revealed in June, 1975, by the R T A would enable Des Plaines residents to travel to almost every part of the Chicago metropolitan area by bus and with not more than one or two transfers. T h e proposed plan would also buy 20 new locomotives and 20 passenger cars for the North Western Railway. This package, if approved by the proposed date of July 1, 1975, will go into effect the first day of 1976.

Des Plaines has attracted a wealth of corporate research laboratories. Universal Oil Products ( U O P ) has been here for about 20 years, but since then has signed an agreement with the Soviet Union's Council of Ministers for Science and Technology in a cooperative effort to control pollution and refine petroleum. T o find the least costly and most feasible way to convert coal into crude oil is another UOP project. Still churning in the minds of UOP administrators is the construction of a demonstration building employing a process that would remove the pollutant, sulfur, from coal. Even one of the plant buildings has a machine that can collect solar energy but this is still in the small-scale experimental stage.

Borg-Warner is trying to design a carburetor that would be more

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efficient for cars that use catalytic converters. It is also trying to produce an automobile air-conditioning system that would give 25 per cent more cool air than today's models but remain the same size.

Searle Radiographics and Searle Analytic is attempting to improve the images taken by cameras to help detect tumors and arterial blockages in the bloodstream. The field of ultrasound diagnostics can detect high frequency sounds emitted by organs of the body.

Experimenting with new techniques and theories is one thing; apply­ing these successful devices on a grand scale is quite another. The prob­lem, of course, is money.

Other Des Plaines businesses include Chicago Dial Indicator Com­pany, the Conex Division of Illinois Tool Company, Nuclear Chicago, Neumann-Buslee and Wolfe , Lawry's Foods, DeSoto. Restaurants and hotels line South Mannheim with an international airport at their door­step.

Mayor Behrel announced he would retire from his post one year before his fifth term would expire in 1977. This immediately raised the question of who he would pick to succeed him for that remaining year and also who and how many candidates would there be for the 1977 mayoral election. The job of mayor has been a full-time one for the past 12 years, and Des Plaines is the only Cook County city except Chicago that has a full-time mayor. The question of making the mayoral post a part-time job has been debated for the past decade or more, but the post has remained full-time. Wil l the City Council decide to change the mayor's job to part-time and choose an administrative assistant to help with the chores of the city? This would indeed allow the city's aldermen to run for the post in 1977, since they would not have to give up or discontinue their careers while serving as part-time mayor.

But what about Superblock? The latest delay occurred in October, 1974, when the City of Des Plaines had to give developers an extension on the groundbreaking deadline. According to Mayor Behrel, the delay was nothing to worry about because it was due to the money market "and other problems usually found in a project of this magnitude." One was the city's inability to begin new sewer and water mains on Prairie Avenue. He said there was also a delay in financing construction of the parking

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lot on Ellinwood, which in turn had delayed the construction of the shopping mall and the office building. He blamed the delay on "a fluctuating money market."

There was and still is obvious speculation that developers of the Superblock have not been able to lease enough of the shopping space to take the risk of building the mall. T o this date only two firms have com­mitted themselves — Spiegler's, which would be the dominant store in the shopping mall, and the First National Bank, which would presently occupy the basement and the first two floors of the 10-story office build­ing. Many of the small downtown Des Plaines businessmen would like to join the shopping mall, but the price for rent is much too high for them to afford.

The developers in the Mall Corporation include J . R. Gottlieb of Chicago, Spiegler Brothers Real Estate Corporation of Des Plaines and Erickson and Stevens architectural firm in Des Plaines.

In October, 1974, developer Gottlieb said this about the shopping mall situation: "Additional tenants have signed letters of interest in rent­ing about 15,000 square feet and considerable interest has been shown by other firms to rent another 15,000 square feet. Of the 160,000 square feet, about 100,000 is still available." The developers have still named Spiegler's and the First National Bank as the only commitments to the mall.

In June, 1975, the Mall Corporation had agreed to cut off two stories of the office building to cut down the cost, but at the same time requested that Des Plaines sell $2 1/2 million in industrial revenue bonds to help finance the office building, in addition to the previously discussed $2 1/2 million to finance the mall.

The last deadline for groundbreaking was July, 1975. By that time City Council will have voted either "yes" or " n o " to the proposed $5 million financing project asked of the city. If the vote was "yes," Super-block might have gotten off the ground during the summer of 1975 — if developers had enough financial backing. If the City Council voted " n o , " nobody can predict when developers will begin Superblock construction and when this phase of the downtown Des Plaines development project will reach completion.

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Epilogue There is a man who lives on Thacker Street in Des Plaines who will

be 97 years old in October, 1975. His name is Harrison Kennicott. He has been called " T a t " as far back as he can remember, and he says he doesn't know how he acquired the nickname.

The man and his background are amazingly difficult to fathom. His grandfather, Dr. John A. Kennicott, built a home just north of Des Plaines in 1856. That area is called "The Grove" today. Dr. Kennicott was the area's first physician, horticulturist and the editor of The Prairie Farmer. His uncle, Robert Kennicott, died before the Civil War . He was a scien­tist in charge of two Alaskan expeditions. His job: T o lay cables across to Russia. His reports of coal, copper, silver and gold in Alaska helped to buy Alaska from Russia for $8 million in 1867. His uncle died on the banks of the Yukon Territory. His father, Amasa Kennicott, was the young boy of 13 who in 1852 composed the descriptions of land in this area for his English tutor that are found in Chapter One of this text. He was a Captain in the Union Army during the Civil War , the 39th Illinois Volunteer Infantry.

Today, Harrison Kennicott remembers the Gay Nineties well. He was on the Des Plaines baseball team that played at Stars Park next to the river. He has been a White Sox fan ever since the team was first organized. He remembers batting averages from the 1800s to the pres­ent. He thinks the greatest baseball player that ever lived was Ty Cobb. The player that closest resembles Ty Cobb today, he says, is Cincinnati Red outfielder Pete Rose.

When he worked for the United States Immigration Service in 1903, he met Teddy Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. He worked for the Depart­ment of Agriculture from 1903-31, making sure that horse meat didn't pass for beef and that milk was clean enough to drink. He traveled across the country.

Talk of "flying machines" when he was a child was talk of foolish nonsense. "They would have led me off to the booby-hatch" if he had insisted that man would someday fly in the air.

When one thinks of nonagenarians, one also asks, "What is your

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advice for young people?" His answer: don't smoke and only eat when hungry. He has no secret for longevity. But he does walk between one and two miles per day, every day without a miss — unless he has a sprained ankle. Then he settles for a walk around the block. Harrison Kennicott is the oldest living person in Des Plaines who was born in Des Plaines.

There are two subjects of interest that continued to raise their heads during the course of this study; one, the subject of snowstorms; two, that of life in general centered about that sometimes distressing question " W a s life better in the good old days, or is it better now?"

First, snowstorms. Was the Great Snowstorm of 1967 the greatest ever? What about the great snows that hit Des Plaines 50 and 100 years ago? According to meteorological statistics, the 1967 storm blessed the city with more snow than ever before. But does this mean it was more devastating, more destructive than the storm of 1917, for instance? Not really. Des Plaines citizens in 1917 were not able to travel by auto for months, until muddy spring roads became dirt again. T h e trains, the crucial means of transporting food and fuel, were incapacitated for days. Horse and buggy could get through only with the sleigh. There were no plows that could push snow aside within a matter of days. Entire cities were confronted with fuel shortages and milk "famines" as they were called. But one should also look at the other side of the coin.

Today Des Plaines is more mobile. W e no longer work down the street or next door. W e work miles away in another city, and we need expressways to get there. There are more cars on the streets today than ever before. Even so, expressways were cleared of snow within four days after the final flakes dropped during the 1967 barrage. In 1917 the snow remained where it fell and melted there months later. Fifty years ago Des Plaines residents were more prepared for such a storm, simply because they knew there wasn't much to be done about it. Business commenced as soon as the trains began service and when people who were snowed into their homes and businesses finally dug themselves out. Sometimes a family stayed in its home for days, using what food it had in the house­hold.

Today we cannot live with snow as we did 50 or 100 years ago. Mayor Behrel was correct when he said that following Monday at the

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City Council meeting, "Nobody is ever prepared for 23 inches of snow." He applauded the city for the way in which it handled the situation (there were still 18 inches to arrive), but he realized as well as anybody else that the snow had to be cleared as quickly as possible. The problem was dealt with and solved. There was no such task force in 1917, and there was no equipment to work with. That overwhelming feeling of bewilderment and awe at the power of Mother Nature quickly disintegrates when snow plows open paths for cars, when the report on the radio does not mention your school as one that is still closed, when you no longer have to limit yourself to just two loaves of bread at the supermarket, when you and your aching back discover there is no more of that white stuff to shovel from the driveway. Today the trials and tribulations of "great snows" bring people together for a few days, and then it's business as usual.

Next, that question of life. Is it better today, or worse? That ques­tion is probably as old as mankind. Dr. Earle, who himself was an his­torian long before the Des Plaines Historical Society ever existed, left many essays and personal writings before he died in 1940. He was the man who, after so many months of searching, finally found the Conant diary with its descriptions of life here when the first settlers arrived. He described in newspaper articles his founding of the Des Plaines Public Library. A year before he died, he wrote a piece that has never before been published in full for the general public. This may best answer the question:

"As the years roll, as wealth increases, as urbanization of the prairies proceeds and the haunts of the deer and other wild game are cut up by miles of hard, smooth roads, I see a tendency to exaggerate the trials and vexations of the Pioneer Country Doctor. My father was a country doctor. My own professional life in a rural community reaches back nearly half a century. I have gone through the horseback, the two-wheeled cart and the buggy age of country practice. Even so, they were safer, if not pleas¬ anter hours than I now experience in going over the same territory in my car. In the early days I was summoned in person by a messenger whom I knew. I knew the people who desired my services. If I had money in my pocket I never thought of leaving it when called out at night. The Pioneer Doctor never feared of being robbed, kidnapped, or murdered

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when making a night call. I might get a leg scratched riding along a hedge row or my horse might stumble, but that was nothing compared to the being ruined by a drunken driver nowadays. One could catch a nap riding behind a faithful horse. I never dozed but once in my car. When I awoke I was in a ditch.

" I do not wish to minimize the hardships of the Pioneer Doctor, for they were many. Nor do I desire to detract from the halo of glory and glamor that a generous posterity has accorded him, but as I see it, human nature was the same in the early days as now. The problems of life were similar and are met with today with the same spirit of helpfulness and earnestness of purpose — if not quite the fortitude — as in the days of yore."

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Photo of the Meinsen Harness Shop and Saloon on Ellinwood during the 1860's. Connecting the two buildings (not pictured here) is the Meinsen home. (All photos courtesy of Des Plaines Historical Society except where otherwise noted).

(Above) The first Des Plaines Public Library, opened in 1907 at Miner and Grace-land. (Below) The Kinder home, built in the first decade of the 20th century and present home of the Des Plaines Historical Society Museum at 777 Lee Street.

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(Above) The Des Plaines Band on July 4, 1907, as it looks north on Lee Street between Miner and Ellinwood. To the right is the freight house, a "Look Out For the (railroad) Cars" sign, and the gooseneck that gushed forth water into the locomotive tenders of the Chicago and North Western. (Below) A 19th century scene of the river near Oakton. Notice the stone bridge across the river.

Employees of the File Bands Department of DoAll clench their fists at Hitler during World War II. (Courtesy of Hazel Minnich Froehlicher.)

(Above) It's time for Julius Kunisch to relax along the Des Plaines River near Algonquin Road in 1898. In 1949 Kunisch was one of the nation's oldest barbers at 90. He was a barber for 77 years, moving to Des Plaines in 1884 and setting up a Miner Street shop. He began his apprenticeship in Germany at 13 and remem­bered scenes from the Prussian-Austrian wars during the 1860's. As an apprentice he had to learn how to pull teeth, dress wounds and set broken bones because the physicians in Germany were inducted into the army. (Below) Members of the Des Plaines Grand Army of the Republic in about 1900, all Civil War veterans. Henry Emerson, Theodore Rogers and James Sadler were the three area residents who lost their lives in this war.

The Standard Oil gas station as it stood on the corner of River Road and Miner in the 1920's. Note the gasoline price of 16 cents per gallon.

(Above) Wash day on the Jefferson farm in 1885 for Gertrude Flentge and Emma Jefferson. (Below) Barns on the Jefferson farm in the 1880's, now site of the Izaak Walton League on River Road.

One room of the Royal Enameling Works on Northwest Highway.

(Above) The North Western Clown Band traveled nationwide and had a tremendous following. Most members of this band were from Des Plaines. Dozens of other Des Plaines residents played in other local bands that played at North Western Park, Schnell's Grove, Hoffman's Hall, Ballard Inn and the Masonic Temple (Miner and Lee across from the present Des Plaines Theater). (Below) Members of the Minnich family during the 1920's stand in front of one of the North Western Park pavilions which they operated during the summer picnic season. A footbridge from River Road across the river led the way to the park — the place to go on a weekend. Next door was the Methodist Campground.

The American House, circa 1910. Note the ladies' entrance to the building, when it was unladylike for a woman to walk into a saloon where men drank.

(Above) Ben F. Kinder established his hardware store in 1873. It is the oldest business in Des Plaines today. (Below) The Benjamin Electric Manufacturing Co.

(Above) While Tom Minnich delivers ice in his wagon in 1910, he chats with jeweler John Kray with his pony. The road turning right on the left-hand side of the photo was the drive that led to John Edward Manuel's horse and carriage service (later United Motor Coach). Next to Manuel's was the Thoma Hotel, then E. D. Scott's Real Estate, Kunisch's Barber Shop, the Held Restaurant and Kray's Jewel­ry. The three children here are Esther Kray Dolton, Helen Kray Hodgins and Al Kunisch, son of the barber. (Below) The Thiede photography studio stood next to the Echo Theater on Lee Street until about 1920. It was in this studio that Walter Oehler began his funeral parlor in 1917, both embalming and holding funerals in the home of the bereaved family. Here Mrs. Ida Thiede and her daughter Evangeline pose after taking part in a parade.

(Above) Downtown Miner Street in about 1920, and (below) the same scene about 20 years later.

The Des Plaines Volunteer Fire Department in 1892 standing behind the new village hall built that year. Far left in the middle row stands William Wicke, who would be Mayor during World War I. On the top row, far left, stands Sid Minnich; third from the left, Frank Scharringhausen; far right, Herman Haas.

North Division School (above) and South Division School.

The two major bridges in Des Plaines that crossed the Des Plaines River in the 1880's — the Jefferson Bridge, now at Oakton, (above) and the Rand Bridge (below). Notice the two white horses and the carriage crossing the Rand Bridge.