PEORIA: How Great Thou Art?

                            PEORIA:   How Great Thou Art?

                                    NORMAN   V.  KELLY

 

After thirty-five years of researching, writing and lecturing about Peoria I think I am qualified to talk about us a little bit.  I thrived on the questions that I have been asked about our history, and I most certainly perpetuated the truth about us.  Of course there are folks out there in Peoria that truly have this great desire to tell their version of what Peoria’s history really was.  They got their ‘facts’ from their father’s grandfathers and uncles who knew everything there was to know about us. I battled those people as courteously as I could and never once did I really learn anything from these ‘story tellers.’  Hell, I am no genius, you see, because I only wrote from the available records that went back to 1828.   It is all there.  We had two men who early on kept track of our history and wrote detailed diaries of all the happenings here in Peoria.  The initial source is a book; well I mean books, called the PEORIANA.

The newspapers here in Peoria were a magnificent source, and although I took what some of them said with a grain of salt, they were easy to check out.  Also the courthouse and the archives were rich in history and the coroner’s inquests were truly a gold mine. I had total access to the old records of the Peoria County Sheriff’s office and all the arrests, trials and jury rulings were all there to analyze. For three decades I found the Peoria Police Department keeper of the records, and the county archive people were more than helpful and when I got stuck it seemed they always knew where to look. Hell, the truth is as a True Crime Writer and a Peoria Historian I was more of a plagiarist than I was a writer.  In fact I decided to write fiction just to prove to myself that I really did know how to write.  In all I wrote a total of fourteen books and certainly well over 500 other articles and stories.  All during those thirty-five years of writing I lectured and went out to face the public eye-to-eye and told them that what I wrote was from the best source or used the ‘next best evidence rule’ to bring them the truth. I sold a hell of a lot of books and gave a sizeable amount of money away to local non-profit organizations.  I still write for a couple of magazines, do a bit of radio and have been on way too many TV shows. I had a great relationship with the library; including one hell of a lot of TV shows.  Now to me it is all over. I hope to get most or all of my stories on the computer so that people who are either to damn lazy to research or do not have the patience can still get information on Peoria. Truth is I do not know how to do much on the computer and have to wait around for friends to help.  I kid folks that I gave my right eye to all that research. Old style micro-fiche machines and century old newspapers damn near made a blind man out of me.

 

My friend Tim asked me what made Peoria, Illinois great.  He wanted to do something on video but mentioned that he was hoping to do it in a five-minute segment.  I gave him my view of that and I hope I did not discourage him.  Peoria became a town in 1835, a city in 1845 and here it is 2017. If I could stand up that long I could do at least 24 hours on our history and I think I proved that I could entertain my listeners doing it.  Anyway, I think I asked him what made him think Peoria was great.  He said a lot of people, writer s and certainly me, said it was great and my stories perpetrated the idea that we were a great city to live in and raise our children.

 

I could answer the question of why we were great in one word, if I wanted to be facetious, which I am more than not.  The answer is whiskey!  That’s right good old Peoria Booze; John Barley Corn, the devil’s brew and lots of it.  The distilleries brought in a ton of highly skilled people which led to men coming here for jobs.  They brought their families and that started the schools. Once the population grew, the breweries grew and so did the distilleries and that spawned hundreds of other companies that brought in more workers.  The city went from one square mile to almost ten and our downtown was packed with every kind of store known to mankind.  We had as many as 242 taverns within out city limits and by 1937 we had 102 churches.  A couple of colleges sprang up, and schools, along with the high schools we built all over the place.   Bankers moved in from the East, factories popped up and recreation of every kind was king here in Peoria, Illinois.

 

Our River attracted all kinds of businesses, and the steamboats, barges and trains flourished here through out most of our early history.  We were indeed the Whiskey Capital of the World and we thrived.  We soon had the reputation of being a wide-open, bawdy, lusty, gambling town, and people flocked here for entertainment of every description.  Our store keepers bragged that if you could not find what you wanted in Peoria then you did not need it. Were we great?  We all thought so, and as we grew the county grew as well, and small towns began to pop up all around us, and believe me life was good.  We here in Peoria virtually laughed at Prohibition although it closed down our distilleries, our breweries and our taverns and saloons; but we out foxed the do-gooders.  We were a patriotic town and gave our sons to every war including the Black Hawk War.  Our lives centered on downtown and all the fun we could find there.  Theaters and entertainment venues were everywhere, and there was a time when Vaudevillians wanted to play Peoria, Illinois; and we were happy to have them.

 

Later Bradley University rose to a basketball power, and the Caterpillar Diesels thrilled all of us for years. We were the bicycle center of the world and our parks drew people from all over the Middle West, as did our river and all the activities connected with it. At one time we produced 995 different products.

 

Sure we were great.  In fact we had a lot to brag about… and we did.  Our schools were great, and our homes spread all over Peoria County.  We were surrounded by farms and believe me the farmer knew how to party, and our Friday and Saturday nights in downtown Peoria were about as exciting as most men could handle.  We had gambling and prostitutes and wild taverns and excitement downtown and it seemed like it would never end.

 

Then in March of 1954 Sheridan Village opened up and the thought of parking in a lot and not worrying about the damn parking meters sounded damn good.   Then along came TV and slowly we saw the theaters close and the lights got dimmer down town until one day they were virtually all gone.  Were we a great city?  Of course we were and the folks here loved the town and how easy it was to get from one place to the other.

 

I worked downtown in a law office for 18 years starting in 1962 and believe me things changed.  Seems to me we had a few restaurants, some bars and a lot of open space and vacant stores… and it got worse.  By 1982 the phrase was “When the last one leaves, please turn out the lights.”  Something like that, but I heard that an awful lot.

 

Caterpillar at least blew some life into downtown, but when they went home we had a few saloons that stayed open, but mostly it seemed to me that we were turning into a ghost town.  Now where are we?  Caterpillar apparently got bored with us and who knows what is in store for us?   Sure we were great, and then it all changed.  My question now, I guess is what are we now?

Editor’s Note:   Norm is a True crime Writer and Peoria Historian.

norman.kelly @sbcglobal.net