Hi Cheryl,
Thank you for thinking to send me the census sheet. Brings back old memories of course and so I will tell you about the neighbors in the Census.
Florence and Ott Vollmer were rather colorful people whose large white house was the west most house left standing when the "hard road" US Route 24 was constructed sometime between 1938 and 1940, since I can remember watching them move houses out of the way for the construction. Florence was a big woman with a big voice, not fat, just large framed. She stood out in among the mothers on the street and Ott was a rather rough looking man with wavy black hair slicked down with oil. The two of them bought the tavern across the other side of the hard road and named it Florence and Ott's Tavern. That name was the local tradition, their counterpart downtown being called "Red and Rosie's" Bar. I used to deliver a morning paper to the tavern and it had that unique smell that pervaded traditional neighborhood taverns and at 6AM there was always someone mopping the floor and customers took the barstools from atop the bar and sidled up for their early morning glass of beer, usually adding salt which was always on the bar and perhaps a hard-boiled egg for breakfast. Their son Dave was just short of being a bully in my mind and he called my sister Janet, "peanut" which made mom very angry and she would shout at him that her name "is Janet Ann, you bold beesum! I don't know what a beesum is either, but it was not a compliment. Roger was his younger brother and my memory of him is my throwing a dart at a dartboard and sticking it in his finger instead. He screamed.
The Edgington's, Paul and Clara and their two daughters, Marie, a friend of your mother Marge, and Margaret who was called always called Peggy. Peggy and Marie both had nice smiles with a mouth full of teeth. Paul however was rather revolting. He was a rather fat man who tended to sit on his front porch with a newspaper and a radio, which always had a ballgame on, while he chewed tobacco constantly spitting off to one side of the porch. His mouth was stained with the tobacco juice. He was silent mostly but secretly treated the gang of kids in the neighborhood well. Actually all the adults were nice to us. Mrs was quiet and I never knew much about her, not even that her name was Clara. However, we used their back yard and the next-door neighbors yards as a football field, baseball field, coeducational tag matches and kick the can with out a peep of complaint from that sainted woman. It was after such a game that Peggy and Bonnie another eighth grader kept me out late for a lesson in how to kiss. I fought it as much as any sixth grader could but they had their way with me, taking turns, loading up with lipstick and kissing me until I finally had to answer to my mother's call which could be heard throughout the neighborhood as a ringing clear bell on the night air, "Johneeeeeee, Johnnie Price!"
Fritz Ewers was another baseball fan, who rarely spoke to us and for some unknown reason, his house was a popular target for us on Halloween. We did almost all our pranks on his front porch, dumping a tub of ashes once, making loud noises by banking on the porch with mallets. I think it was just that he had a house with clear running space on both sides. He never, ever came out to chase us. Then one night while we were lying in HIS back yard resting from our pranks -- he quietly sneaked out of the house and crouched right in our group, scaring the hell out of us. He quietly told us his wife was ill and would we mind keeping the noise down. No name-calling, just a quiet gentlemanly chat in a very reasonable manner. There on a pitch-black Halloween night, perhaps I was taught a lesson in manners that should have been useful, and perhaps it was, though I don't think I was always that kind. Pretty nice man.
The Stewarts lived next door. Irene and my mom were good neighbors. When I broke her window playing catch with a baseball in the Ewers/Edgington back yard, she came out and smiled and said, "Don't worry boys, I have sons, too, just have your dad come over and replace the glass." Ralph, her husband was known throughout the town as "Big Buck" and his oldest son Donald, was just plain Buck. His little brother, Jackie, was known as "Wart" and the two of them could be found almost every day in the middle of Collier Street practicing as pitcher (Buck) and catcher (Wart). They played in the famous "Sunday Morning League" in Bradley Park in Peoria. When he wasn't burning the fastball to Wart, Donald was polishing his big blue four port-hole Buick Roadmaster which gleamed like a diamond in the summer sun. He eventually married EllaMae Jenkins from Peru Street and worked at the lumberyard in town for Lauterbach. Their sister Joanne was really the only person on the street I was afraid of. She sometimes offered to beat me up and she could have done it, too. Once walking along the sidewalk in front of her house, I heard voices and turned to look. She was apparently changing clothes in the front bedroom and imagined I could see through the screen, which I couldn't and screamed at me that I should stop looking at her or she would beat me up. Never saw a thing, but that was nothing you could talk to Joanne about. She was large and mean. Probably perfectly nice when she grew up, right?
The next house lists Herman Bach and his family. Herm was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever knew. It must have been his wife who named their rather timid son, Thrasher, forever labeling with the strangest name in any school he attended, and not helping him avoid being picked on by schoolmates. Nice people, hard working and decent. I had forgotten that they lived in the house because Marguerite Claudin moved in and was the most memorable neighbor to live in that house. Marguerite was one of the few neighbors who had a telephone, a magical device in those days and sometimes I got up the nerve to use it and she let me in, though it must have been a pain to her. She once called my mom to the fence with the news that she could hear me calling, but didn't know where the sound was coming from. I had locked myself in an old icebox that had been relegated to the coal shed when we got a new-fangled electric refrigerator. It was a popular way of meeting your maker at an early age in those days, so I was rescued from an untimely death by Marguerite. Bill Claudin was her husband who was one of a few husbands who went off into the murky world of divorce, there were three in the neighborhood and it was only spoken of in whispers, much like cancer, in the world of healthcare.
Next-door was our little house which you know about. I can only imagine what a shattering event it must have been for my beloved sister Marjorie when she lived there alone with mom and then mom married a stranger Rex and moved in with three sons of about the same age as she was. Then Janet and I came along as if there weren't enough voices to cope with. But you know all about that house. One interesting story you might not know is that the basement was expanded by digging out under the biggest bedroom and throwing the dirt out through a tiny window and then concreting the floor and building walls with concrete blocks. The blocks weren't going up fast enough and my mom, your Grandma, went down and taught herself how to lay blocks. I guess that was her alternative to nagging grandpa to do it. She did a good job too and in doing it she created a three feet deep shelf on which shelving could be placed and filled each harvest season with the most beautiful glass cans of peaches, beans, pickles, tomatoes which would last through to the next harvest season for a family of eight. Sometimes they experimented with homemade beer and root beer with uneven success.
My mom and dad built the house next door mostly with their own two hands, finishing it when I was sixteen, that is, in 1950. Mom couldn't wait for the house to be completed and carried hot water to the new house so she could have a luxurious bath in her new luxurious bathroom. My eternal shame is that I frequently went off to play ball instead of holding the other end of the board that my dad was trying to nail to the outside of the house. Eventually, they got it done, though and lived happily ever after there on Collier Street.
Next door lived Howard (Bow-wow) Lane who was a huge man who it is said almost made the major leagues as a pitcher but got homesick and came back to Bartonville. He pitched in the Sunday Morning League too. Don't know where the truth was, I only know he had hunting hounds penned in the back yard which, if they escaped, he picked up by the hind legs and through them with a slingshot motion over the six foot fence into their pen. His wife Cora or Cory was a gentle lady who I liked and who had a lot of children.
Following along there were the Sampsons. The parents spoke with a heavy European dialect and their children were Ruthie, Norma and Loren. Loren was universally known as "Dude or Dudie.” Ruth looked, talked and acted always as if she were a ranch hand and she was I think, Margie's age. She was lean and always wore jeans and a cowboy cut blouse. She worked in the shop at Laidlaw, as I recall and was picked up and dropped off after work by her "uncle". They sat in his Ford automobile and talked every afternoon for about an hour. I never figured out exactly what they could find to talk about for so long, but it was clearly a close relationship of some kind. Dude was a couple years older than me and taught me to smoke cigarettes down by the cave in the woods.
Beyond where the census page ends, the Turners lived next door and he coached a woman's softball team on which his wife was the star hitter, I think. Their porch was always full of dusty bases and uniforms and bags of bats and balls. They were always pleasant to us kids and went about their hobby of softball with gusto. Every time I see the movie "Their Own League" I think of the Turners.
There was another house, a brick house where I think Jackie Brinks lived, but I don't remember them, and I think the house was a rental and new arrivals from Arkansas and Alabama seemed to favor it.
The final house was definitely Arkansas Territory, and I can't remember any of the names but there was always an old car in the back yard still with Arkansas plates on it.
And then.... my dear Cheryl.... came the Railroad Tracks and the marshalling yards for the Keystone Steel mill and the Rock Island: Lines of song and story, where we spent many a summer day hopping freights which was against everyone’s rules.
Almost all the neighbors worked at the Keystone Steel and Wire Company which has now expanded to own that entire side of the street except for Grandma' Price's house which is now dwarfed by office buildings on all sides. Those neighbors were hard working, law-abiding good people who kept their houses and surrounding patch of land in presentable condition and happily watched each other go about their lives from the front porch which adorned each and every house, most with a porch swing and a couple of porch chairs.
A high school girl friend, Jane and I toured around our old neighborhood after a recent fiftieth reunion of our class. I told her some of these stories and showed her my railroad playground as well. Jane was from Peoria, where I went to High School, was a good student, and was usually being voted things like "Queen of the May” I was just lucky to have your mother for a sister who finally got me to take school seriously so that I managed to pass and go to college.
So, tuck this away with your census sheet. :-)
Your Loving Uncle John
Saturday, October 6, 2012
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