NORMAN
V. KELLY
Octogenarians, like me, are accused of talking about
the way it used to be way too much. They say that we have no future therefore
all we can talk about with any passion is the past. I plead guilty on both
counts but in my defense I hope I entertain you a bit as I relate my true
stories. Only the reader can decide
whether that is the case or not.
Although WW11 started in 1941, I think people forget
that three weeks after it started it was 1942. I can tell you that as a kid I
heard people, well, mostly men, talk about the war in Europe and how America
should ‘Just stay out of what was going on over there.’ Well, it didn’t bother me because first of
all I had no idea where Europe was and when the Japanese attacked us on
December 7, 1941 I most certainly did not know where Pearl Harbor was. They called us ‘innocent children’ and today
I realize they meant we were just stupid.
Well, I can tell you I had a lot of company, including most of the
adults that I had contact with.
Once the war got underway and my three older brothers
and about 23,000 others from around here went off to the war, why we kids
seemed to have benefited by all that activity.
First of all, brothers have a way of bossing their little brothers
around and although I missed them, I enjoyed my freedom.
WHAT DO YA’ WANNA
DO NOW?
At age ten and on that seemed to be the question we
asked each other a dozen times a day. I mean we didn’t have a TV, a record
player, and believe me the small Montgomery Ward Radio in the house was
certainly not mine. So we spent our time in the woods, wading in the creeks,
damming them up, catching frogs and splashing each other. We played Commandoes and earned a few nickels
and dimes selling mushrooms, walnuts, stolen grapes, apples, pares and raided
‘Victory Gardens’ all around ElVista where we grew up. We needed that money to go to the movies
where we could see what today people would call ‘War Propaganda Films’, but to us that was the
only way we had any idea what was going on during the war. It was all hush hush around here, and there
was talk of saboteurs and air raid wardens that told everyone to block all the
light from shining through our windows.
We were told Caterpillar and all the factories were targets for the
Japanese bombers and of course we bought all that insanity. They gave us a few gas masks for our families
which we used in our war games.
We liked to scare each other and there is where the
old Crooked Road comes in. Actually it
was Gale Avenue, named after a judge, and it is still there to this day. But our Gale Road was a crooked, hilly road
that went through ElVista to the North and all the way to University to the southeast.
It was a dream come true; especially around Halloween.
It was lined with tall old trees and snaked down to a
bridge that was torn loose more than once when the creek that flowed beneath it
simply lifted it off its foundation.
Those were exciting times watching that muddy water rise up and scare
all of us.
We would sneak down that old crooked road and see how
close we could get to the people in the cars that were parked there. We called it ‘Lover’s Lane,’ and I remember
one guy jumping out of his car and yelling at us. We retreated, but not much, yelling back
about what he was doing was half the fun.
Once he reached inside his car and came out with a shotgun we
disappeared screaming as we ran. We
heard two powerful blasts from that gun, and that ended our car peeking for the
rest of that summer.
Just up the hill and on the left was an abandoned two
story house with an attic. Of course we knew it was ‘haunted.’ It was boarded up but we always had a way in
and we stopped in there to scare each other. “Shh! Shut up!
Listen…what was that?” That got
everyone’s attention. I think the guys from Loucks School, the guys we fought
whenever they came into our woods, decided to scare us. The back of the house was a rickety porch and
we always left the house through that back porch. Well, we opened the back door and one of us,
probably me, screamed like a Banshee!
There we saw a man…or a body! I forgot what we called it hanging from
the rafters obviously dead. Of course we
flew out of there…everyone but Junior Johnson.
It took him a while to catch up with us and then he scared us to death
by throwing ‘The Body’ at us. It seemed
like those Loucks guys rigged it up by stuffing clothing and a pumpkin with
painted eyes and mouth on the top. They tied a rope around it and in the
failing light it sure as hell looked real to us, fools that we were. Of
course we had no idea who really did it but we blamed everything on ‘Those damn
Loucks rats.”
The Crooked Road took us up to University which was
for us, the beginning of some strange ‘Civilization.’ I mean they had gas stations, repair shops,
stores and houses where everyone had an inside bathroom. I mean it was amazing
to me. We didn’t stay there long because
we always headed for the Mausoleum there at the cemetery, today called Parkview
Cemetery. Maybe it was always called
that but we just called that place the cemetery, we never did know the name of
it.
Now the idea was to get there just before the sun went
down, it was light enough, but the shadows really got the place looking pretty
creepy. I realize now it was always a game of ‘Chicken’ which most of us failed
at, especially me. Hell, to this day that Mausoleum is still creepy looking and
I have no desire to go in there. We never had a problem getting in, the lock
had been taken from that door a long time before we started going in there. The
idea was to go in… line up and walk and I mean WALK slowly past all those
bodies or whatever they had in there.
The guy that broke first and started running, usually me, was supposed
to be the ‘Chicken’ but hell, whoever made the first move to run was quickly followed
by every one of the other guys. The fun
was to argue over who ran first. I was
always good at blaming one of the other guys, genius that I was.
Well on the night before Halloween it had been
raining. We did a lot of trick or
treating, and some people accused us of starting in September, which was
probably true. We never thought of it as
anything else other than begging, and I was especially good at that. Followed closely by stealing, which I was
damned good at as well.
Well we went through the walk ritual and I remember it
thundered, a really big crash and I was gone.
To this day I do not like thunder and I raced out of there. I must have gotten off the pathway because in
an instant I was falling. Now in those
days there were no backhoes, flares, yellow tape or things like that, just darkness
and piles of dirt. I soon began to scream because I was certain I had fallen
into a gooey, muddy grave that the men had been digging. I even remember
thinking that there was probably a dead body in there with me. Finally I rolled
over on my back and looked up. The guys
were laughing at me. “Get me out of here
you bastards!” I screamed. In between
the laughs one kid said, “Norm, it’s only a foot deep, get out yourself.” You know I never lived that down and here I
am telling that story to you.
ONE MORE
STOP
As I tell you this story I can still feel that slimy mud
on my face and clothes and of course I ‘sloshed’ as I walked. We entered the cemetery from Nebraska and
then quieted down. We heard screams and we stopped dead in our tracks. We slipped along quietly until we could see
‘Her’! There she was and surrounding her
were a lot of lighted torches. There
were maybe a dozen older guys and girls all standing there looking up at her. They were Bradley students because we could
see a couple of the guys and gals had those letter sweaters on. We knelt down and watched. They formed a line and as they got in front
of Maizey, the ‘Sitting Angel Monument’ they kissed, first one couple then the next and on down the
line. After they had all done that they
picked up the torches and went west along the path that led out to Nebraska
I suggested that we jump out and scare them, but
cooler minds prevailed. At that point we were all alone in front of the Legend
herself. It was a huge bronze monument
on a pedestal. An angel, wings and all, sat with an open book on her lap. It
was a bronze sculpture by Larado Taft as a monument to Dr. Theodore Burgess,
the first president of Bradley Polytechnic. Of course we did not know any of that, the
idea was to stare at her, or climb up and touch her nose. There were a lot of scary legends connected
with her, and believe me thousands of people visited this place at night. The legend was you would have good luck if
you kissed someone in front of her and death if you stared into her eyes. Hell, we believed everything they said about
her. Some of them painted her toe nails and
wrote filth on her wings and breasts until the family had the monument removed. You can find people today that will tell you
a body or two were found sprawled across her lap; all kinds of crazy
stuff. In fact we started called her “Crazy
Maizey.” Anyway it was fun to go there
with girls and we said and did everything we could to get them to scream. Truth is most of us could out scream the
girls.
And so….that was just a few stories of the Crooked
Road, and how we spent three summers during the war. While we were doing that
our brothers and fellow Peorians were off dying and fighting a war. Truth is
662 of them did not come back at all.
Just five years later most of us were off in our own war, and I bet we used
to entertain the other G.I’s with stories about Lover’s Lane, Maizey and the
Old Crooked Road. Or maybe it was just
me…you think?
Editor’s Note: Norm is a local true crime writer, Peoria
Historian and author of many books and stories about his hometown of Peoria,
Illinois. Contact him:
norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net
or Google him to find the stories.
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