Remember When?

St. Charles, Illinois

These are memories, and we all know how our memories can play tricks.  So remember these are not verified facts.  How do your recollections match up?

City Dump

Back before the 1950s a good sized "city dump", now more politely known as a landfill, dominated the east side of South 7th Avenue.  It was filled with treasures, as any child who visited might tell you -- IF only their parents would let them out of the car when they dropped off the family trash.  

But it was best to go, only when you had a head cold, as the odors of decaying and  smoldering waste often met you blocks away.  Today all signs of the landfill have been gone more than thirty years.

Betty Wallace tells me there once was a landfill on McKinley Street too.

As a teenager in the early 1960s my friends and I rented boats at Pottawatomie Park and spent many a quiet summer day rowing boats up the Fox River and drifting back down.  We usually packed a lunch and had a picnic along the banks under the shade of tall oak trees.  We drank Coke in 6 ounce glass bottles.  Transistor radios were out of our budget, so we just talked or sang as we paddled along.  That was before 'boom boxes', imagine the peace and tranquility!

Pottawatomie Park

There was a time when tall shiny metal slides adorned , sparking thrills and butterflies in the tummies of many a child. Children would carefully save the waxed paper from their lunch and after a long climb on splintered and worn wooden steps, they would gingerly sit on the waxed paper to make the slide lightening fast.  As the day wore on, the sun beat down on that gleaming slide, causing everyone to put their swim towel over the wax paper to protect tender bottoms from the scorching ride on molten metal.  That was in the 1950s.

Betty Wallace recalls swimming at Pottawatomie Park in the 1920s and 1930s.  No, there wasn't a pool yet, they swam on sandy beaches in the Fox River back then.

There was large, (was it bronze?), Indian Chief statue that stood in Pottawatomie Park long before the one that now guards the police department.  That one fell victim to vandals and was a huge loss for the community.

This memory is a bit foggy, so help me out here...

Hahn's Garage, on South First Street, was a gathering place for many of the men in the community.  Seems my grandfather, a farmer, and I spent time a lot of time there before I was five.  As I recall it had a wooden floor, covered with oil stains and huge pulleys hanging from above. I think they repaired cars as well as farm equipment.  Somehow it had the feel of an old time general store.  Weren't there grain elevators and a feed store near by?

The old city building at 15 North First Avenue was once the fire station and municipal court, with a magistrate who heard traffic cases in an office there.  Next door, where the fire station is now located, was Hines lumber yard.  The river bank and trail wasn't a pretty site back then.  But look at it today, isn't it beautiful?

Brick Roads

It hasn't been that many years ago that North Fifth Avenue was paved in brick, much like the other streets where the Aurora and Elgin, or street car once ran.

Kroger Fire

My grandmother grew most of the vegetables we needed, and traded other farmers for milk, but we often shopped at Kroger on Main Street for other necessities.  Fruit and vegetables in boxes, neatly lined the west wall in individually wrapped in tissue papers, the meat counter was in the back.  Gram saved every piece of that tissue paper when ever she bought fruit -- to be used later in the outhouse.  That was before grocery stores were equipt with modern conveniences like conveyor belts to bring the shoppers groceries to the cashier.  Back then they used a three sided wooden pull box that slid on the counter to move the groceries forward.  A cashier needed to be strong to operate it.  Of course, the cash register wasn't the electronic kind, heck, it was even electric, it was the old time mechanical kind with ornate scroll work and gold tones.

Early each morning my grandparents as farmers listened to radio broadcasts from the Elgin Board of Trade to learn about farm prices.  I think that's were my grandmother heard about the big fire, (in the Colson Building) -- or maybe they just smelled the sickening sweet aroma of chared wood in the air.  We went the few blocks to down town that day and saw all the people standing on the sidewalk by the "dime store", shaking their heads, just sick with the loss as they stared across Main Street.  Our Kroger store, burned, never to be rebuilt.  There weren't many grocery stores in town back then and no supermarkets. It was a real loss.  

Being a child, I wondered where all the people in St. Charles would get food.  This was an era when parents nightly reminded children to clean their plates as "There are children starving in China!"  I wondered it if was about to happen to us.

Changing Names and Paths

Route 22 ran through town leaving North on what is now North Fifth Street.  The highway was renamed Route 31 and realigned.  The road was blocked off at the railroad viaduct on North Fifth Avenue creating a new parcel of land where the Boy Scout Council offices are now located.  The new road and underpass were then built close to the river.  Several homes were lost when this occurred including the one where Russ & Betty Forkins lived.  The road was realigned and moved from Fifth Street to 2nd Street.

Dean Street Memories

Paul Weinstock WRITES: paulamatoford@yahoo.com
  Just wanted to ad my .02 cents worth   I have lasting memories of the aroma from the deli of the Dean St market, which was owned by my grandma, Kathryn Verachtert, and who could resist her frozen bananas. Every day the workers from Moline would come over and get lunch. After she closed the store, she worked at Blue Goose for many years, and her daughter (my aunt), Linda Castro still works at the Goose going on 30 years.   Grandma is 92 1/2 and sharp as ever.   Paul Weinstock Mukwonago, WI

Brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells live forever.

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Last Updated 5 Mar 2000, 4 Nov 2004                                        KaneCountyIL@yahoo.com