(See the map
on the last page) If you started walking south on Milwaukee from Johnson
Avenue the first businesses were on that corner. There was a gas station
with the old-fashioned grease pit in the ground. Cars drove up a small
incline onto wooden planks over a pit in the ground where the mechanic
worked. Memory fails as to how they managed in the rain and snow. By the
late thirties those pits had mostly been replaced by today's hydraulic
lifts. Also at this location was Libertyville Coal
and Ice, run by a burly, good-natured man named Nels
Christiansen. He had his main layout in Rondout for easy access to the
railroad. Between there and the railroad track there was the Proctor
sign shop and at least one house.
The Chicago,
Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was known locally as The St.
Paul, although in the thirties many of their locomotives bore the logo,
"The Milwaukee Road." A freight siding began there and ran west
to Winchester Road. This was a branch line off the mainline at Rondout,
but it had regular passenger service and freights heading toward Madison.
In those days most commuters to Chicago used the North
Shore line because it ran into the Loop rather than Union Station west
of the Chicago River.
Sometimes in the
summer that siding housed carnival trains. The show with its various rides
and tents would set up just south of the tracks in a grassy area. Usually
there would be a modest parade with the show animals and the municipal
band. The war finished off most of those rail-borne shows. Later they
came by trucks to other locations in town.
The train station
was just east of Milwaukee with the parking lot right along the tracks.
Hand-drawn freight trucks were on the platform to move light freight.
The station was standard layout with two waiting rooms joined by a short
corridor behind the agent's space which had two bay windows for vision
up and down the tracks. Heat was by coal stoves. A couple of times daily
a "flyer" would storm past the station and a device would snatch
a mail bag from a pole and drop it into the mail car which rode just behind
the tender. Mail coming into town was thrown from the mail car in a heavy
canvas sack. Most of the trains, though, made the stop, and made small
boys happy to get a nod from the engineer or stand in the billows of steam
from the locomotive.
There was a phone
booth in the station used by high school boys who wanted to call their
girls without being overheard. Once a friend of mine became enraged by
two boys who wouldn't vacate the booth so he tipped it over, door side
down. We often asked how long those two talkers had to wait for rescue.
Right next to the
tracks there was a gas station operated by Shelly
Nantz. He hired high school boys for nights and weekends, but his day
man was Orville Smith who was famous for his
greasy coveralls, in which he was fond of leaning against cars. Orville
lived on the west side of Lake between Brainerd and Lange Court and later
moved to a stucco house on Lange which my parents bought after his death
in the sixties.
Just south was the
house owned by George Small who was the janitor at
Central school for many years. When a teacher had
to leave a class unsupervised George would come in and play a few tunes
on his harmonica. Next was the Town Hall which
was also the home of American Legion Post 329. A
U-shaped gravel drive served the hall and a vehicle garage to its rear.
An alley ran south to Lake behind the stores fronting on Milwaukee.
The brick building
that ran to the corner of Lake held various businesses; an insurance office,
an ice-cream parlor and a Western Auto store on
the corner. Above the alley on Lake there was a similar building that
held a music studio, the offices of Jake Boyes, a
township official, and just after the war a laundromat.
That area around
Lake was often quite busy, after the new movie house opened in the thirties;
and for many years the Legion held Saturday night dances with live bands
and food served by the Legion auxiliary. They had square dancing, polkas,
schottisches, varsuviana. One musician was Percy
Gustafson, who later had a car dealership at Milwaukee and Park.
On the south corner
at Lake there was a gas station owned by Merle
Weiskopf, who in the early thirties had a garage
in the alley behind the stores across from where School street intersected
with Milwaukee that later became a mortuary. The gas station at Lake was
sold to Chet Flagg and Hank Sodt
who ran it for years. Right above them on Lake was a garage that at one
time housed the Ed Sawusch Chrysler-Plymouth garage.
That space was taken over by Bernard Chevrolet
after the war and Sawusch and Wes Froland had an
auto parts store in the part of the garage fronting on Lake.
Just south of the
gas station was Bernard Chevrolet. It had a vehicular
entrance on Milwaukee and another off Lake that also gave access to the
garage on Lake. Chuck Brown's Libertyville
News Agency had a cubbyhole office on the Milwaukee face of Bernard's.
Del Murphy had a car agency next to Bernard's and
memory says that the cars entered it from the alley to its rear. Liberty
Liquors, owned by the Rozhon family was in that space
later in the thirties. The Oasis tavern or beer hall
had a pool table and tables for card players. John
Wheeland and Ray Young had a Gamble
auto parts store. At one time there was a cold storage meat locker facility
in one of these shop fronts.
Opposite School Street
was Ray Smith's shoe store with repairs by Tony
Abbadessa who added a shoe line when Smith's moved to a location south
of the alley. Next was Frank Huber's Royal Blue grocery.
Today we might call it a convenience store, although he cut meat, had
fresh produce, and sold pastry and bread from Charlie
Jochheim's bakery which was in that basement. Charlie lived on Lake, just
around the corner from us on Brainerd and we could have set our clocks
by his regular trips to and from his house and the bakery. Two of his
sons, Bob and Jim, were prominent high school
athletes.
On Sunday mornings
I'd pick up 25 cents left on the kitchen table and go to Decker
and Neville drugs for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, which cost a dime. Then,
it was off to Hubers for a dozen sweet rolls which
were 2 cents each. That left me 1 cent which was good for a couple of
jawbreakers. At one point my cousin, Clarence
(Sonny) Wilson worked at Huber's Royal Blue. He graduated
from LTHS in 1936 and for many years held their pole vault record. Sonny
and Art Newbore later had their own grocery in Long
Lake.
Lester's
tavern was between Huber's and the alley. Originally run by John
Lester, it was later taken over by Joe Hoye, who had
a beer distributorship and who used part of an alley building for storage.
Next to Lester's
an alley ran west to a large open area in the center of the block bounded
by Lake, Cook, Milwaukee and Brainerd. In the early thirties Merle
Weiskopf had a garage back there (see map) that
had an open grease pit. That building later became the Julius
Treptow funeral home. A house occupied by the Jerry
Buski family stood back there and I never understood why it was built
in such an odd location. Part of the open space was used by Bernard
Chevrolet to store old cars. It was a haunt for small boys who coveted
gear shift knobs and such.
In the early thirties
there was a car dealership at the west end of the building just south
of the alley. Waldron's barn stored hearses and ambulances. Harry
Dugan was a driver and occasionally chased away kids who peered into the
various vehicles, wondering about their contents.
 A
large, wormy apple tree stood alongside the path that led through the
open space onto Neville's driveway to Brainerd. In the winters the village
dumped snow by the tree. The huge piles made wonderful forts and igloos.
In the summer the kids had a baseball diamond there. The water tower behind
village hall was a prime attraction. Daring older boys could climb all
the way to the top on a ladder or on a lower platform, risking the wrath
of the police and other village officials who kept a sharp eye out for
trespassers.
On Milwaukee, the
first store south of the alley was Waldron's, a
small grocery. It had an excellent selection of candy. Mr.
Waldron lived on Cook, west of Brainerd. His son, Pat,
lived on Lake at Mrs. Loveland's, where he rented
a room. We often saw Pat, who was prematurely gray, hauling trash to the
burner where our back yards met. In those days some people burned garbage
rather than pay a carter. The store itself became Ray
Smith Shoes at a later date. Flegelman's clothing
store was in that building along side Paul Ray's
furniture store. In the thirties there was a house occupied by the Haines
family. We knew the kids, Jerome (Red) and Bill. That house was razed
in the thirties for a commercial building that housed the A&P.
Our neighbor, Bill Franzen was a stock boy
there while he was in high school and then became store manager, the youngest
in the A&P chain.
A paved walkway to
the area behind the stores was bordered on the south by Leo
Bentson's grocery. During the war years the small, privately owned grocery
was still viable. In 1942 I got a Friday afternoon and Saturday job with
Leo at thirty-five cents an hour, which was the minimum wage at that time.
There would be an occasional tip for carrying groceries to waiting cars.
The store took phone orders and ran monthly bills for reliable customers,
many of whom lived on St. Mary's Road, Oak Spring and the like. The store
delivery truck was driven by Warren Wells. That was
a plum job because of the tips.
Leo
Bentson was rather volatile and ran a tight ship. If you weren't stocking
or waiting on a customer you grabbed a broom and swept the oiled board
floor. My star with Leo began to dim when I accidentally shut him into
the meat cooler, from which he emerged red-hot. On a subsequent Saturday
night he told me to "throw some crackers in the window." He
meant boxes to make a display. Not realizing that and being afraid to
ask, I opened a box and sprinkled a few crackers in the window. The resulting
explosion convinced me that it was time to seek other work. I never told
my parents why I quit and never knew whether Leo had told them the story.
There were different
stores in the next space. There was a Walgreen
drug, Langworthy's clothing store and North
Shore Gas at various times. The last business before the alley alongside
the bank was a Kroger Consumers grocery. They often
had sales and my mother would have me take my wood-sided wagon so we could
buy cases of canned goods. That was the time when Birdseye frozen foods
were introduced. They were a taste revelation and quite a bit more expensive
than cans.
The First
National Bank was run by Frank and Roy Wright. Ray
Lindroth, the cashier, lived on Lake near us. The Silas
Wright family years before had raised my paternal grandmother, Kitty
Boyd Young. Her mother had died on a wagon train heading west. The Wrights
deeded her the house at 606 Brainerd where we lived through the thirties
and forties. Willard's restaurant was
just south of the bank. It had a faintly Moorish or Spanish decor and
served Midwestern food. The Willards lived above.
Paul Macguffin's law office was up there as was
Scotty Robertson's barbershop before the war.
Titus Brothers Electric was on the corner
at Cook. My father and Harry Titus were friends
as were my mother and Bertha Titus. They lived
on Sunset across the street from Frank Underbrink.
Roy Titus lived on Laurel.
 The
village hall was just west on Cook. The American
LaFrance fire engine was garaged in the space next to the alley. At one
time in the thirties the police department and jail faced the Cook side,
but later moved to the rear. C.O. Carlson, who
was village tax collector for many years, had an office as did Hattie
Boehm, the village treasurer. Ed Schneider was
the volunteer fire chief for many years. His son,"Tootie"
worked for the village under Simon "Sam"
Alkofer. Tootie drove the prewar Ford dump trucks that plowed, collected
leaves and did whatever needed doing. In those days road salts weren't
widely used so in a cold winter the streets were often paved with packed
snow. Small boys would, after a storm, shovel snow into street barricades,
but Tootie and the plow never lost a battle.
Joe
Saam was police chief. He was compact and swarthy. He was an expert motorcyclist
and had ridden in competition in cycledromes, hill climbs and such. Joe
led all the parades and funerals on the police Indian, occasionally standing
up on the footboards and moving so slowly it was hard to see how he kept
his balance. He wore a uniform cap with insignia, goggles, a Sam Browne
belt with revolver attached, gauntlets that came nearly to his elbows
and leather boots that were knee high. Frank Druba
was a sergeant, later chief. Other policemen were Herman
Nolte, Pete Hansen, Fitzgibbons
and Churchill, probably not all at the same time,
because at one time in the early thirties there was no night man.
 Cook
Park was the centerpiece of the village. The Cook
House/public library sat roughly in the center of the park. There was
a concrete plaza in front where the municipal band played and ceremonies
were held. Sidewalks ran to the two corners on Milwaukee and a walk led
from the library steps to Church. Kids played hours of rotation baseball
and touch football behind the library where three huge horse chestnuts
made a column toward Cook. There was a tennis court just opposite Dr.
Wiese's house and another to the south across from the post office on
Church. There was a football-type field alongside Church that was flooded
for skating at least one winter. For many years, until after the war,
the municipal band held Thursday night band concerts. People sat in folding
chairs or on blankets or in their cars. After a piece ended those in cars
would blow their horns for applause. The bandleader for years was Percy
Snow. My uncle, Clair Smart, played lead trumpet.
Reynold Geary, who at that time worked with my father
at the Public Service, was a frequent singer. He had a grand, if untutored
voice and I can still hear him singing "The Road To Mandalay".
There was a flagpole,
and a cannon sat on a concrete pad on the front lawn. Its wooden-spoked
wheels were shod in iron hoops. It fired iron balls rammed down the bore
and touched off by a match at the rear of the barrel. There was no breech
or elevating or traversing mechanism. It probably dated from the Civil
War. The story was told, and it may have been only a story, that sometime
in the twenties some local blades fired off a load of apples or walnuts
which smashed the front window and startled the drinkers at the Park
View tavern. The bore was quickly sealed with concrete, so the story went.
Unfortunately, during WWII the cannon and shot were given to a scrap drive.
During the thirties
and forties until the interstate highways were built, Milwaukee Avenue
was a major route to the lakes of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
On summer Sunday nights the traffic was horrendous and locals would sit
in the park and watch and listen to the seemingly endless stream of cars
heading back to the cities. There wasn't much air conditioning or many
radios in cars back then.
 Cook
Memorial Library was my favorite haunt for years.
To this day I can draw a layout of the library, which occupied the main
floor. The children's room on the southwest corner had a separate entrance
and it was a happy day for me when Blanche Mitchell,
the head librarian, decided I was old enough to come in the front door.
She and her husband John lived on the second
floor. He worked at Abbott Laboratories and took care of the library.
The other staff member was Miss Doane. She was what
was then called a spinster. Quiet and intelligent, she knew everybody
by name and reading preference. In the summer there were reading contests
for kids. Every book read meant a star on the score chart. The top readers'
names were posted at the end of summer.
I used the library
until I went to college. Relations were always cordial except for the
time my brother rearranged parts of the card catalog to revenge himself
on Mrs. Mitchell for some imagined slight. The resulting phone call to
our house caused some commotion and he was banned from the library for
some time, until Mrs. Mitchell allowed him back on a trial basis.
The southwest corner
of Church and Milwaukee was graced by Proctor's
ice cream parlor, a favorite hangout of high-schoolers. Its jukebox had
all the latest hits to accompany the thick malteds at fifteen cents and
the huge banana splits that went for twenty-five cents.
Just west on Church
was Perry auto parts. Right after the war Hanlon
Ford used the rear of the building. The Independent
Register office and plant had their own brick building. The paper came
out on Thursdays and kids could search around the loading dock for lead
linotype slugs which were melted and poured into moulds to make toy soldiers.
At one time the Buttemiller-Day clinic was
in the house next to the newspaper building.
 The
Episcopal church and parsonage were next, right
before the post office, which was built in the
late thirties. The Masonic Temple on Brainerd was
across from the Methodist church which housed
our Boy Scout troop. Chuck Sweeney, the Methodist
minister's son, often played football with us. We were somewhat in awe
of him because he spoke Spanish, which he probably was studying in high
school. Father Rogers of the Episcopal church was
often seen on the street in his cassock, smoking a cigarette, which drew
critical comments from non-Episcopalians.
On Milwaukee just
south of Proctor's Chatterbox there was
a storefront that had various tenants over the years. At one time it held
a beauty parlor. A vacant lot held cars from Hanlon
Ford during the thirties and the war years. Later, when Hanlon's moved
it became Sawusch Chrysler-Plymouth. Mesenbrink
florist and home were south of the garage. Then there was Bert
Ree's house and gas station with a small garage
in the rear where commercial trucks were stored.
On Milwaukee opposite
the Broadway intersection Hanlon Ford built a garage
shortly after the war. Bert Ree died in the thirties
and his gas station was demolished to make room for Hanlon's which also
contained a storage cooler used by Kraft cheese. The Public
Service Company leased space from Hanlon to store its local truck which
my father drove, so he had a key to the garage. It was a great treat when
he took me with him on a night or weekend call. I got to manipulate the
truck spotlights and hoped to be seen by envious friends.
There was a big house
on the northwest corner of Milwaukee and Maple and another on the southwest
corner which housed an eye clinic at one time. Then there were a couple
of smaller houses. In the forties Merle Weiskopf
put up a new garage and showroom for his Buick
dealership. The bowling alley was busy during
the war years. High school boys worked there setting pins. The alley had
a jukebox, sandwich counter and rows of spectator seats. In later years
the bowling alley became part of Miller-Krueger
Motors. The Boyer house was south of the bowling
alley. Mark and Bill Boyer
were notable musicians in high school groups. There was a gas station
on the corner at Park and a large house just west on Park later became
the Ray-Burnett funeral home. Dr.
Galloway, who was our family doctor in the thirties had a large house
on the southwest corner.
 Then
came the rail tracks of the interurban Chicago,
North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad,
usually called the North Shore. This was a spur
line which ran to Mundelein from the main Chicago-Milwaukee line, which
was called the Skokie Valley route. The spur also went to Lake Bluff where
you could change to the Shoreline route. That led from the main North
Shore station in Chicago at Adams and Wabash to downtown Waukegan, often
on the same tracks used by local street cars.
The North
Shore folded in the sixties. It was a victim, in part, of the new interstate
highway system and the moves of the big oil companies. The Libertyville
station was on the south side of Milwaukee. For years the agent was Otto
Packer, who lived above the station. It had a large waiting room with
a graveled parking lot and small freight shed to the east. There were
also stops at Fourth street and Garfield which had open-sided shelters.
Most Libertyville commuters preferred the North Shore because it circled
the Chicago Loop, saving another jaunt from the steam rail stations west
of the Chicago River. There was a Shell station at
the corner of Milwaukee and Sunnyside Place. It was run in the forties
by Russ Brown. In the forties you could get your
car a ring and valve job for fifty dollars. In those days you were lucky
to go more than fifty thousand miles without needing an engine overhaul.
For years a dollar would buy five gallons of gas and a quart of oil was
forty cents or less. Russ's brother, Chuck, was the
local distributor for the Chicago papers.
On Milwaukee between
Sunnyside Place and McKinley was Molidor's grocery,
with a flat above. From there to Rockland Road there was a string of large
houses. The Kroll family had a gas station and bar
on the corner of Rockland.
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