NORMAN
V. KELLY
Anyone that has read my historical stories over the
last thirty-two
Years, heard my lectures and radio talks knows that I
never spoke beyond 1950. No special
reason, I suppose, but I left in 1951 for four years to single-handedly win the
Korean War. Truth is I was a medic and ended up in the Azores, so I sort of
lost track of old Peoria, Illinois.
In all those years I found out a lot about my
audiences and the People that bought all those books and came to hear me talk
about Peoria history. Facts, statistics
and gangsters, that’s what they wanted me to write and talk about…and I did.
After a lot of pushing, I finally stepped into 1951, and this is what I know
for sure.
The figures were printed in early 1951, so they apply
pretty much to 1950 as well. The population
in Peoria, Illinois was 111,853 and by 1951 my house in El Vista had burned to
the ground, and the City of Peoria was a whopping 12.84 square miles. We had a massive Peoria County and I can
tell you too many farms to count. In
Peoria 92% of us were born in America, and of the other 8% that were not, most
of them were from Germany, England and Sweden. Since we became a city in 1845,
we have been just about 488 feet in altitude, meaning above sea level. There was always a joke in Peoria: “They did not name Water Street Water Street for
nothing.”
We had two major newspapers in town, and one that
published on Sunday. We had 3 weekly and
two monthly newspapers, and I used to deliver one of the weekly ones. Truth is I delivered about half of them and
dumped the rest in the local dump… little brat that I was. We had four radio
stations WEEK, WMBD, WIRL and WPEO. By
then every car a young guy drove had the radio on blasting away. His girl slid over nice and close and off
they went to Hunts or Kramer’s and cruised the downtown area most of the early
evening.
As I tell you these facts try to compare them with
what is going on today in Peoria, Illinois.
That is if you wonder where the jobs and occupations went.
We had five libraries and way back in 1845 we had one
and a couple of book stores, imagine that. Hey, have you seen a choo-choo train
lately? Well we used to have 14 RR companies and even one that was electrical.
Thirteen companies served us with bus service, but
remember until 1946 it was street cars.
Like today, we had two airports and one of those was private. We had a
lot of manufacturers in Peoria
Now the record shows 5 golf courses, but I’ll let you
decide if that number was right in 1951?
We always had one of the best Park Districts in the United States, and
we still do, covering 2,154 acres back there in ’51. Churches, wow, there was a time they out
numbered the saloons, do you believe that? Well, in 1951 we had 118, think that
was enough? You should see the list of
parsons, or clergymen, or whatever they called themselves, I refused to count
them.
What is amusement?
Well we had a lot of that, some not so legal, but we did have the Fun
Palace Arcade, Prim Skating Rink, and a lot of places to play pin ball.
Bakeries, now I always loved those places, not that I ever had any money to buy
all that stuff. But there was one in
town that if we got there at the right time in the morning those tossed out
donuts were ours, even if sometimes we saved them from the garbage cans. I used
to get a quarter from my mom for a long over due haircut in the 1940’s. Now to
me that was a fortune and I was not about to waste that on my straggly hair so
I went to the free chair at the Barber College.
Of course I spent the two-bits on a hot dog, a movie and Milk Duds. It
was not long after that that my mother cut my hair herself. UGH! Truth is that
in 1951 there were 85 barber shops in town employing one hell of a lot of
barbers I can tell you that. Of course the women easily topped that with just
over 100 beauty salons, but they too were often called ‘shops.’
We never played much pool because we never had the
money, but we liked to watch those ‘pool sharks’ take on the suckers, but
billiards and snooker bored us to death.
We had eight major places in town but most of the larger taverns had a
pool table and a shuffle board and some had slot machines. Believe me, by 1946
casino type gambling was long gone, but the slots hung around. Hell that was
not gambling anyway, it was an idiot’s game to lose…and they did.
I remember a big brawl we had when a new bowling alley
opened up on University Street: we fought some jerks over the right to set the
pens. We won. I worked the first
night. I got hit 3 times with the damn
pins and quit. I also hated the jerk that was bowling on my lane. I just picked
his ball up, walked out the back door and rolled his ball toward some garbage
cans and took off. We had nine bowling
alleys but I only remember two of them, Peoria Bowl on Jefferson and Peoria
Auto Parts on Adams.
A lot of Chiropractors and fifteen were called
Chiropodists and vise-versa because we didn’t know the difference. My God, how
many of them do we have today? Of course you have to look under Podiatrists,
for the Chiropodists, huh? Cigars were
a massive business throughout Peoria’s history, but in 1951 we only had 9
left. Here is a business that was called
Cleaners and Dryers, and we had about 80 of them. Can you imagine that? Those
and coal companies, which numbered 25 have slipped away. During Prohibition we had well over
two-hundred Soft Drink Parlors, many listed as Confectionaries but in 1951 we
had 51, which did not sell booze like they did in the twenties.
We had fourteen dairies, 93 dentists, and get this,
fifty-three drug stores, and only one of them was a Walgreen. Some of you have never seen a ‘Service
Station’ Of course we called them gas
stations, but it was a time when they actually looked upon you as a customer. We had 213 of them, and I worked at one when
I went to college. I used to say there was a grocery store on every corner in
Peoria…and there was, just like our saloons, but in 1951 we ‘only’ had 264. We
had a lot of self-service laundries, ten to be exact, and forty-one Music
teachers and seven Piano Tuners, one was Glen Purdue, remember him?
Radios were big, and we had 21 radio repair shops and
of course some of them got into the TV business, which really started around these
parts in 1953. In fact it was Channel 43, WEEK-TV. Imagine if you can 171
restaurants within the city limits. Well
that’s how many there were.
When I was a kid a new pair of shoes was as rare as a
Christmas present and we had a ton of shoe stores, along with 33 repair shops
and five shoe shining places.
We called them bars, taverns saloon, dumps, dives, rat
holes, bum hangouts, and of course dangerous as well. We had 263 of them, up from the heydays of
gambling in Peoria all during WW 11. A lot of old guys who think they are
historians think they could name all the theaters. Perhaps they are out there but I just never
met one yet.
We had the Apollo on Main, the Beverly on Knoxville and
the Crest out on prospect. I have
included a couple that were not within the city limits. The Little was on
Jackson, Madison on Main
as well as the Palace. The cute little Princess was on Adams. The Columbia which was really a dump was gone
by 1951. The Rialto was on Jefferson and
the LUXE was in East Peoria. The Varsity
was up by Bradley and the Warner was on South Adams and by Szolds’, the
Avon.
Other than all that there was not a damn thing going
on in Peoria. Truth is I named just a
handful of the things that made Peoria, Illinois one of the greatest little
towns in all of America.
Editor’s Note:
Norm is a Peoria Historian, True-Crime writer and the author of hundreds
of fiction stories and twelve books. Listen to WOAM, 1350 AM Sundays
7-10 mornings where he joins Harry and Rich with The Red Nose Gang. norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
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