High School Days

At one time, early in my childhood, kids who lived in the 800 and 900 blocks of Maplewood could go to either Manual or Peoria High School. However, by the time I was in high school—1975 for anyone who’s counting—kids on the Field House side of Maplewood, the south side, were in the Manual district. Those who lived on Maplewood but on the other side of Main Street—the north side—were in Peoria High’s district.

Of course, the other choice in high schools then were the two Catholic schools, Academy/Spalding and Bergan. Most of the kids in our neighborhood—the Boesen’s, Keister’s, the younger Mallow kids, the Koperski’s—went to Manual.

My siblings and I went to Academy/Spalding. We lived almost exactly two miles from the downtown campus. During my junior and senior years, on nice days, I would walk to school, often with Bernadette Dries, who lived on Moss. But usually, I caught a city bus that went down Main Street, specifically for the purpose of picking up AOL/SI students. It was called the Special and you would think the time it arrived on the corner of Main and Maplewood to pick us up would be engraved in my mind; I think it was 7:30, but I’m not positive.

There would be anywhere from three to eight kids waiting for the bus. More than a few times, I had to break into a sprint down Maplewood, alerted by those who were already on the corner of bus’s imminent arrival. And also a few times, I would be barely out the front door, only to see the bus pulling away from the corner.

Most of the kids waiting on that corner were from the other side of Maplewood—Cindy Brissette, the Moore’s, the Potts, the Kenny’s—while most of the kids on our side of Maplewood went to Manual. We were used to attending different schools than our neighbors, as we had gone to St. Mark’s and most of our neighbors had gone to Whittier. As we grew older, this difference in schools made more of a difference in our friendships with these kids, not because of any bad feelings, but mainly because we were spending more time now with different people.

I remember the good-natured rivalry that ensued between Kevin Boesen, who lived next door, and me in 1976. Kevin was the middle of the three Boeson boys. I was a sophomore at Spalding and Kevin, a really bright guy, who is now a minister in Hudson, Illinois, was a junior at Manual.

Late in the season, both Spalding and Manual’s football teams were undefeated. Spalding had been blowing out their opponents, and in the second to last game of the year, their record stood at 7-0. Manual was having an equally impressive season and the excitement before this big game was the talk of the school. At our pep rally, all the players sauntered out on the gym floor looking cool and full of confidence—Dave Mischler, John Venegoni, John Girardi, Jim Ardis, Joe Slyman, Don Crusen, Tom George, Ron Mischler, all of whom, I think, were all conference.

A few days before the big game, Kevin was doing dishes in their kitchen. Their kitchen windows were directly opposite ours. He began gesturing through the window at his Manual t-shirt and holding up his finger to indicate #1. I responded in kind, as we pantomimed our messages of school football superiority through the windows. Many of the windows in our house—the landing, some of the bedrooms—matched up with the windows in the Boeson house.

Well, I don’t remember Kevin rubbing it in after the game, and he could have because Manual spanked Spalding 28-0. Ouch! Manual didn't lose until the second round of the state play offs when they were defeated by Danville. Oh well, at least Spalding ended the season by beating our archrival, Bergan.

The 1976 Spalding team plays Peoria High School.

Globetrotting on Maplewood

My dad worked at Bradley for his entire career—almost 40 years. During that time, we met a lot of his colleagues. One of them was Curley Johnson, who served as head of security at Bradley University.

Like my dad, Curley had an association with Bradley before going to work there. In Curley’s case, he was one of the first African-American basketball players at Bradley. After he graduated, Curley worked as a probation officer in Chicago before coming back to Peoria.

One of my dad’s responsibilities at Bradley was student discipline, so he had a close working relationship with the head of security. Curley would occasionally stop by our house.

I remember one embarrassing encounter that I had with Curley. Well, I wasn’t smart enough to be embarrassed by it then. Curley was a very friendly, jovial man whom we immediately took a liking to. When I found out that his first name was Curley, I insisted on knowing what his “real” name was. Chomping down on his cigar, he repeatedly told me, “Curley.” I asserted that this had to be a nickname, and feeling like I was being duped, persisted in asking him, “No, really, what is your real name.” Wide-eyed, what could Curley do but insist upon the truth? I think later when I asked my, dad who confirmed that Curley was indeed his real name, I may have felt a bit perplexed but the embarrassment didn’t come until later.

One day, Curley dropped off his young son at our house to stay with us for a few hours. His son, whose given name was also Curley, had the nickname of Boo. Boo was probably about eight or nine years old and we liked him as much as his father. He was quiet and had the most beautiful afro. What else could we do but go across the alley to the Dougherty’s and shoot baskets?

Boo Johnson, of course, went on to have a glorious 17-year career with the Harlem Globetrotters, where he was known as one of the fastest dribblers in the world. I never had any more contact with Boo after a couple of these childhood visits, but like many Peorians, I followed his career through the newspaper.

I remember reading Boo’s remarks to some students at Harrison School. As a Globetrotter, Boo had gotten to do just that and had been all over the world. He told the kids from the south side of Peoria about the homeless children he had seen in some poor countries, children who didn’t have families or food on a regular basis or a school to go to. You have everything, Boo told these kids—running water, teachers, books, a place to sleep. Appreciate and take advantage of your opportunities was the message.

How many times have Peoria’s children from District 150 been told that from such a credible messenger?

Harlem Globetrotter and Peoria native Curley "Boo" Johnson demonstrates his basketball spinning prowess.

Campus Carnival

Basketball games weren't the only events the Robertson Memorial Field House hosted. Rock groups like REO Speedwagon, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and other acts played there in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. Sometimes during concerts, the naughty, sweet smell of marijuana would waft through the air, tingeing the night with the forbidden.

For many years, the Field House has been home to another event that I looked forward to almost as much as Christmas: the Campus Carnival. This extravaganza was put on by the fraternities and sororities to raise money for charity.

The Field House was transformed into the childhood equivalent of Las Vegas with garishly decorated booths where we tried to win the much-coveted beer holders, beer mugs, beer signs, and—if we really got lucky—beer lights. Talk about marketing to children. Really, the companies probably donated the stuff in deep gratitude for all the business the college students gave them. And, anyway, this was before the days of car seats, bicycle helmets, and no drinking while pregnant. In some ways, children are physically safer now, but emotionally and psychologically, childhood seems under assualt. Beer paraphernalia seems practically innocuous compared to MySpace, gangsta rap, and R-rated primetime programming.

I remember one year during the Carnival after I had spent the amount of money I or my parents—I can’t recall which—had allotted to the festivities. I would race back and forth between our house, which was kaddy corner from the Field House, raiding the stash of 50 cent pieces, kept in a cigar box, that my grandfather gave me, like an addict on the Par-a-dice hitting the ATM machine. For all the anticipation and fun of the carnival, I had a bad feeling walking home empty handed or with stuff that somewhere deep inside I recognized as cheap, having depleted my Eisenhowers and Kennedys. In fact, I would like to apologize now to my grandpa in heaven for squandering these precious coins.

A couple of years, my dad was a participant in Campus Carnival. He volunteered to be a target for a dunk tank and another water game. I had strange and mixed feelings watching kids I knew, as well as some college students, do their best to send my dad plunging into the tank or soak him with water, which, if the above picture is any indication, he seemed to enjoy.

The Bard of Maplewood

I remember standing alone in front of my house after a deep, winter snow. The world evoked Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.

Along came a man, walking down the middle of the street where the snow was packed. He was wearing a trench coat, and a fedora capped his head, above his ruddy face.

It was Daniel Webster Smythe, a poet.

I knew this because my parents had told me, and, like my father, Mr. Smythe worked at Bradley University. I don’t think I ever spoke a word to Mr. Smythe in my whole life, though his friendly wife Ruth, with the sound of Cape Cod still in her voice, occasionally visited my mother. She would take mom to their book crammed house, five places down from ours, looking for some thing or another. The Smythe’s had two children, a boy and a girl, who were grown by the time we came along.

So, all I really know of Daniel Smythe is what I learned reading his poems and bits of public information about him. He was a widely published poet with poems in more than 100 publications, including the New Yorker and Harper’s. He won the Annual Award of the Poetry Society of America in 1940 and many other prizes during his life.

Before his academic career, Mr. Smythe worked on a farm in New Hampshire and on a wildlife sanctuary in New York, which perhaps explains why so many of his poems have nature as their theme. He served in the armed forces during World War II, and he came to Bradley in about 1949 to teach American literature and creative writing.

Daniel Smythe was praised by many influential poets, including Robert Frost, about whom he wrote a book, Robert Frost Speaks.

The book of poems on my shelf entitled, The Best Poems of Daniel Smythe, is inscribed, “For Ed & Mary King With best wishes, Daniel Smythe Thanksgiving 1974” He died seven years later.

I didn’t know when I saw him walking down the street that I would one day take classes in creative writing—poetry no less—as a graduate student at Bradley. Poetry—it’s a word that makes a lot of people, including me, a little nervous. There’s a kind of mystery about it. I think poetry has something to do with trying to see the world with fresh eyes and translating the observations into fresh language, though this is a stale way of putting it.

Well, as the saying goes, “I know what I like.” Here is a poem from Daniel Smythe’s anthology. It’s not one of his many award winners, but I like it.

THE BEACH

Landscape,
sea-bird,
shell shape,
sea heard.

Fog snug,
beach rose,
rockweed rug
grows and grows.

The snail hut,
word-lost shore –
this is what
I am looking for.

Dogs in the Neighborhood

As far as I can remember, few dogs called our neighborhood home. The families around had mainly kids and not dogs. But those canines that did take up residence on Maplewood and Cooper were memorable.

Across the alley from us, owned by the Dougherty’s, was a black and white medium sized mutt named Boots. Boots was a rather fierce dog, as evidenced by the muzzle he had to wear. He was not the kind of dog that you would go up to and pet, but nonetheless, he was a familiar and comforting fixture in the neighborhood.

Boots spent all of his time in the Dougherty’s house, backyard, or most memorably on their back porch. When a bunch of kids were playing in the Dougherty’s yard, incidentally agitating Boots, all John Doughtery had to do was issue the one word command, “Porch!” and with military precision, Boots would march directly to the said porch. I felt a kind of reverence for Boots and John for the obedience and the ability to command it, respectively.

Another neighborhood dog was a friendly German Shepherd-Collie mix owned by the Keister’s, who lived two doors down from us. They received the dog as a puppy. It was an adorable tan dog, and they named him Adolph Bone Hider. Except there was some question in the neighborhood as to whether Adolph was actually a he. One of the Mallow girls, who was an expert in such matters, insisted that little Adolph was a girl. Her opinion was ignored in favor of more established renderings. Well, as time went on, Miss Mallow was proved correct, though I don’t think she was ever given proper credit, and the pup’s name was changed to Ada Bone Hider.

But far and away the greatest dog of the neighborhood was our own Templeton. It was a small miracle that our family even had a dog. I had made half hearted requests for a dog as a child, knowing that it was about as likely as being allowed to have ice cream for breakfast. My mom had been a farm girl, with an unsentimental view of animals. Plus, even as a kid, I could somehow discern that she had enough on her plate.

But parents soften up as each kid comes down the line and my sister, Theresa, four years younger, was more persistent. “I want a dog. I want a dog. I want a dog,” was her mantra upon graduating from 8th grade, until one day I returned home to discover a black ball of fur trying to climb our back porch steps. We named him Templeton, a name suggested by my youngest brother Mike and inspired by St. Louis Cardinals infielder Garry Templeton.

I know I can’t capture the genius of Templeton’s personality in mere words, but here are a few examples. At 11:45, faithfully every work day, he would lie down in the front hall and stare expectantly at the front door, waiting for my dad to come home for lunch, where he would greet him most enthusiastically. (This was one of his big charms; he was gladder than anyone else to see you). On the rare occasion that my dad didn’t come home for lunch, at about 1 pm, Templeton would slink off with his tail down in search of comfort from someone else.

Templeton was a smart dog. In the winter, he always found the warmest place in the house, somewhere near a radiator, and in the summer, he would sprawl out on the kitchen linoleum with his legs straight out behind him.

He wasn’t permitted to go into the living room or upstairs, areas covered in gold carpet or get on the furniture. But when we would come home after Templeton was alone in the house, we would feel the sofa and chair in the family room; invariably, one of them had a warm spot, indicating where he had lounged.

He would also come upstairs during nighttime thunderstorms, which terrified him. Someone would hear the jingling of his chains and eventually he would be led back down stairs and put in the laundry room.

Templeton had a girlfriend named Suzie who lived down the block. Suzie was Templeton’s twin, except that she was white and about 15 pounds heavier, owing to the fact that her owners fed her candy bars. When we wanted to tease Templeton, we would say, “Su-zie!” in a high pitched voice and he would run to the front door hopefully.

He loved cheese, eggs, meat, and peanut butter, which we used to kill ourselves laughing watching him eat. One day as I was getting ready to go to a potluck, I walked into the kitchen to pick up a plate of deviled eggs my mom had made. The eggs only covered half the plate. I didn't have to wonder long what happened to the rest of them, when Templeton nonchalantly strolled into the room, his muzzle ringed with yellow.

When I would come home from college breaks, Templeton would wait at the foot of the stairs until I arose late in the morning, greeting me like he had been waiting for me all of his life. He treated everyone in our family that way, and thus it was a sad day on November 1, 1994, when at the age of 15 and largely blind, deaf and hardly able to move, he had to be put down.

But what a dog, what a dog, what a mighty fine dog.

Pictured above is Templeton, the best dog in the whole world (next to yours, of course).

The Bradley Braves

On January 25, 1975, when I was in eighth grade, I got the chance to serve as an usher at the Bradley-Louisville game. This was a stroke of luck, as Louisville was ranked #2 in the country and all of the Field House’s 7,300 seats and then some were sold out.

The excitement and expectations were intense, as Bradley had nearly knocked off the Cardinals at their place three weeks earlier, losing by two points in overtime. The Braves were having an up and down kind of year, starting out the season 6-0 and garnering a ranking of 19th in the nation, only to fall to 8-6 a few weeks later.

The seniors on the team—Mark Dohner, Tom Les—had a taste of victory against Louisville their freshman year. They defeated the Cardinals 85-79. My husband, John Carroll, was on that team and had the unenviable job of helping guard Junior Bridgeman, Louisville’s future All-American, who was held to 10 points. John played two more years of JV basketball at Bradley. He was the most valuable player on the team his junior year, and also the leading scorer and rebounder, and still has the prettiest jumper this side of Jerry West. There wasn’t going to be much of a role for him on the varsity his senior year and medical school was on the horizon, so he still has one year of eligibility as a Bradley Brave.

Four years later, with Denny Crum’s talented, deep Cardinals coming into town, the seniors and other players had a chance to fulfill a little of the early season promise.

I don’t remember doing much ushering at the game, but what I do recall was the tension of the night. Bradley was down by only two points at halftime. The Braves were in the game! But, this would mean if victory slipped from their grasp at the end, the defeat would be even more painful.

The second half was a whip lasher. Bradley led 50-41 with 12:26 left to play. But then, the Braves would not score a basket again for more than eight agonizing minutes. Fortunately, they played defense, as exemplified by Tom Les’s three steals, and were only down by four points after this scoring drought.

How many times has the underdog team led for much of the game, only to go down to defeat in the waning minutes, a result caused at least partially by not truly believing they could win? Many, many times, I imagine.

Well, not this day. In the last 55 seconds of the game, Bradley scored seven points and defeated Louisville, 65-59 for the Braves biggest victory in my childhood career as a fan.

I had to recreate many of the above details of the game by reading Dick Lien’s account in the Peoria Journal Star. What I remember 32 years later are the tension of the game, and, for some reason, Jumpin’ Jimmy Caruthers, the Braves fearless guard, bouncing the basketball at the top of the key. He made four of those last seven points, including two at the charity stripe. As Lien wrote, “Caruthers is a money player who knows it.”

“Tom Les (older brother of the current Bradley coach) had a great game,” said my husband John. “I remember seeing him at church at St. Mark’s gym the next day.” Mass was held in the gym because the church had almost burned down and was being renovated.

So, finally, in a big time game, Bradley led at the only time the score really matters. The victory seemed unbelievable, but it was true: Bradley had beaten Louisville.

The Field House

The largest building on Maplewood is also being knocked down to accommodate Bradley University’s expansion. That, of course, would be the A.J. Robertson Memorial Field House.

Having served as airplane hangars during WWII, the two structures comprising the Field House were put together and reincarnated as the Home of the Bradley Braves from 1949 to 1982. On game nights, with the lights glowing out of the glass lobby doors, the Field House reminded me of a giant battleship in the sea of night. And from the lifeboat of our house, we wanted to get in.

We finally got our chance. After listening to many games on the radio during the era of players like Sam Simmons, Henry Sylvester, and Seymour Reed, my dad took my brother Jim and I to a game. As a Alumni B-Club member, dad's ticket was free (I couldn’t believe his good fortune). The general admission tickets were $2.50.

The Field House didn’t disappoint; it was far and away the coolest place I had ever been. The scent in the lobby, a combination of popcorn, sweat, and smoke heralded the excitement within the arena. With its raftered, curved ceilings, the rows of benches that seemed to rise out of sight, and the raised wood floor, the Field House was magical. No marketing genius could create that kind of atmosphere. And then at tip off, at the precise moment the ref tossed the ball between the two centers, all the lights in the arena except those illuminating the floor darkened, focusing your attention on what had to be the center of the universe. How could there be a better place to watch a basketball game? And right across the street.

I am happy to report that Bradley won the first game I saw them play live, against a nonconference foe whose name I can’t recall, though I do remember the Braves won by five points. I was thrilled, but my father not so much. “It was pea soup out there tonight,” he said disgustedly, displeased by Bradley squeaking out a victory against a lesser team. I had my first glimpse that there were victories and losses other than what a final score might indicate.

We didn’t go to that many games as kids, but we still got to participate in the excitement of the outside environment. On game days, the cars and people would start to come in the early evening, especially if there was a JV game beforehand.

We would watch the cars line our streets, waiting for the one who would park illegally in front of our house at the corner. The things Bradley basketball would drive a person to do. We were jealous of our neighbors, the Boeson's, who had a long drive way. They could charge people the exorbitant price of $1 or even $1.50 to park for the evening in their ribbon of a driveway, which could accommodate six cars or more.

We might still be awake when the game was over to hear the car doors slamming and the engines starting. Could we tell by the sound of the crowd whether it was a victory or defeat? Sometimes. The muffled conversations were more animated in the event of a victory.

A Tale of Two Trees

Pictured to the right are two trees. The tree on top is a copper beech, located on Glenwood. It is scheduled to be destroyed to make way for Bradley University’s new student recreation center. This is a shame, and I’m wondering if there is any way this tree can be saved.

As you can see from the picture, it is a magnificent tree. I don’t know how old the tree is, but from its size, it’s clearly been around a long time. I think it’s worth some architectural re-adjusting to keep it.

We can’t take trees for granted, especially in urban areas. Besides their natural beauty, trees reduce pollution and act as sound barriers. Apartment buildings surrounded by trees have lower crime rates.

The tree on the bottom is a maple. It sits in the corner of what I am still pitifully referring to as my front yard at 841 N. Maplewood, although the land is now owned by Bradley University and will soon cease to be a yard.

I remember when this tree was planted in 1984. My dad and brother planted it to replace a tree that had died. As you can see, like the copper beech, the maple is flourishing.

I don’t know what the University’s plan for this tree is, but I am hoping that it too can be saved. If I read the map of Bradley’s expansion properly, the space where our house now sits will be part of a quad. Certainly there can be no objection to a lovely tree on a quad.

Predicting the future is no sure thing, but here is one thing I feel certain about: cutting down trees in urban settings will be looked at as a colossal error in not too many years, and not just by environmentalists.

PRESERVE TREES IN URBAN AREAS!!

Bradley Girls

A few posts back, I wrote about my dad’s college connection to 841 N. Maplewood. While my mother didn’t have an association with the house prior to moving in, she remembers a childhood experience in the same neighborhood.

My mom grew up a farm girl in McLean County. In 1950, when she was 15, Lexington, the high school closest to her home, was playing Spalding in the sectional at the Robertson Memorial Field House. My mom’s uncle got tickets and, she and some of her cousins drove over to Peoria, beside themselves with excitement. “I remember exactly where we sat,” recalls my mom. “I have looked at that section many times since and thought, ‘In a hundred years I would never have dreamed that one day I would be living across the street and my children would go to Spalding.’”

A few posts back, I also wrote about the male Bradley students who boarded in our attic. During my childhood years, we also had some female Bradley students live with us. They received room and board in exchange for helping around the house and babysitting several adorable children. These must have been some desperate college women. Though my mother will confirm that we were rather well-behaved children, there were five of us, all born in a span of seven years.

These courageous Bradley co-eds became more like family members than the boys. They ate with us and their bedroom was on the second floor, the same as ours. I remember Chris and Patty and Bev.

One night, Chris didn’t come home. Early the next morning, my panicked mom called Chris’s mother, who lived in central Illinois. “Oh yeah,” the woman said. “She does that sometimes.”

Of all the women who stayed with us though, far and away our favorite was Arlene Horvath Crawford. She was fun, didn’t treat us like a burden, and actually signed on for two tours of duty.

I remember Arlene explaining to me why she broke up with her boyfriend. “I knew he was going to ask me to marry him and I would have said no.” I felt like such a grown up, having the mysteries of the adult world deciphered. Arlene did marry her next boyfriend, George Crawford, who would give us kids “airplane rides” on his back.

Though not natives of Illinois, Arlene and George settled in Peoria and raised their girls here after they graduated from Bradley. They became life time friends. Arlene died, much too young, last year. I will always remember her as 22.

Arlene and me in front of our house on the day of my First Communion.

The Alumni House

Two of my brothers and I can say that Bradley has claimed three of the homes of our youth.

From 1960 to 1964 when I was a wee one and only one of my four siblings was on the scene, my parents rented a house from Bradley on the corner of Main and Maplewood. It’s been a grass lot for a long time now.

The house at 841 N. Maplewood, where we all grew up, will soon be history. Then for two years, my youngest brother lived in the Sigma Chi house on Glenwood which also has a date with the wrecking ball.

And for one memorable year, my family lived in the Alumni house on Glenwood, which has also been sacrificed to Bradley University’s $90 million expansion.

The year was 1970. President Van Arsdale thought it would be good to have a university administrator on campus to hopefully temper the tumultuous political activity. So my mom and dad, who was Dean of Men at the time, packed up their five kids, all their possessions, rented out their Maplewood home, and moved a block away to the Tudor house on Glenwood, next to the stately Chi Omega sorority house.

We lived there for one year. The new president, Martin Abegg, decided that Bradley should provide no housing to its employees, including him, so back to Maplewood we went.

I can’t image what an ordeal this must have been for my parents, but to me it was a wonderful adventure. I thought the new house with its finished paneled basement, complete with exotic travel posters was way cool. The front door had a doorbell—more coolness—and I loved the sunken front entry way.

There were lots of bedrooms; for awhile my sister and I shared one. Then I moved to my own little niche in the attic, a small room with angled ceilings that I had to be careful not to bang my head on. But I tacked a map of the United States to the wall and it was my own hideout.

I remember that during this year my California cousin Mike, who was about 21, stopped in Peoria as he and his friend Little John hitchhiked their way from New York City to Los Angeles. Mike had long hair and seemed to know everything. I was working on a book report about Ulysses S. Grant. “He was a terrible president,” said Mike. “He was a drunk who would pass out in gutters.” The sanitized children’s biography did not mention these details. I quizzed Mike on other presidents and he enumerated all their flaws, though when I asked about Lincoln he grudgingly said, “He was okay.” This conversation with my cousin was my first intimation that maybe the textbooks and those in authority weren’t always right.

The Alumni house was just far enough away from our Maplewood neighborhood to seem
attractively different, but close enough that we could still hang out with our old friends. As adults, we forget how much bigger the world is to children. The extra two or three feet of height that adults possess, to say nothing of our accumulated experiences and knowledge, shrink the world.

But to me as a child, when we lived on Maplewood, the far reaches of my territory were the five houses from the corner of Maplewood and Laura, and the four houses behind us on Cooper. Mystery lurked beyond the Richey’s house down toward Bradley Avenue. And the 900 block of Maplewood was completely uncharted.

The known world was small and so comforting in its familiar details. If you have a happy childhood, as I did, there seems to be an inevitability about the make up of the world and one’s place in it. When I learned that my parents had almost bought a house light years away on Moss Avenue, I shuddered at the unknown ways in which my life could have been different. I calculated in horror all of the people I would not know. A near disaster had been dodged, and I gave silent thanks to the people who snuck in their bid during the night that my parents were sleeping on their decision.

But living in the Alumni house was a happy interlude to my good Maplewood memories.

Built to Last?

The current demolition of the houses on Maplewood is not Bradley University's first incursion into the neighborhood. When my family moved to the avenue in 1964, there were houses across the street on the east side of the800 block of Maplewood.

Sometime—I think in the late 1960’s—some of these houses were razed to make way for a parking lot. I thought this was a splendid upgrade of the neighborhood, as it was a wonderful place to ride my bike.

Besides biking, the other prominent memory I have of the parking lot is of a day when I was about 8 years old. A friend and I were walking home from St. Mark’s school when a scary- looking man approached us. He told us that our parents wanted him to take us to the wiener roast at Bradley Park. Au contraire, our parents had warned us never to go off with strangers. School had reinforced this message by showing films warning us that children who were lured by men with candy could be killed. I remember after one such film, there were several blank seconds at the end. The law enforcement official in charge told us that originally there had been pictures of the dead girls’ bodies, but, sensitive souls that they were, they didn’t want to show them to us children. Message noted; traumatic memory/scar received.

Anyway, I was an earnest child and I stood in the parking lot listening to the man’s pitch until I figured out he was up to no good. I wailed, “Noooooo,” and got my legs in motion, only to see my friend’s back 20 yards away. Possessed of better instincts, she had not stayed to hear the guy out.

The parking lot had a short-lived presence in the neighborhood as it was replaced by Haussler Hall in 1975. With its Olympic size pool, basketball courts, racquetball courts, weight rooms and other athletic amenities, Haussler was big time, though the ugly brown building wouldn’t win any design awards.

Ten years before this as a 5-year-old, I had taken swimming lessons at Bradley’s pool in Hewitt Hall, now the Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts. This pool was derisively named “the bathtub” because it was so small. It may have been small, but to a 5-year-old, it was deep with the shallowest end being, I think, five feet. I clung like grim death to the side of the pool during the lessons given by Bradley swim coach Jim Spink. Somehow, despite my fear, the magic of learning occurred, and by the end of the session, I could swim.

Hewitt Hall was built in 1908 and lives on as home to Bradley’s theatre department. Haussler Hall is being knocked down after only being around only 32 years, which incidentally, is how long my family lived at 841 N. Maplewood. Doesn’t 32 years seem an awful short period of time for the existence of a building? Do you think that the structures that are being built on Maplewood—parking deck, athletic arena, student recreation center—will be around nearly as long as the houses they are replacing?

I’d like to be objective about this. I want Bradley to do well, though we might be able to have an interesting conversation about the definition of well. And I wouldn’t be blogging about this topic if it weren’t my childhood home being knocked down. As my husband John and I were leaving the house a few days ago, I said to him of its imminent destruction, “I guess this is just the way of the world,” and he replied, “At least in the United States.”

The picture above is the view from 841 N. Maplewood of Haussler Hall, which is being knocked down after a mere 32 years of existence.

Pre Post-Mortem

A couple of my siblings warned me not to do it. But in the end, I couldn’t help myself.

Bradley University told the students living at 841 N. Maplewood that they needed to be out of the house by May 20. So on Sunday, May 20, I asked my husband John to meet me there at 2:30 pm. As a Bradley student, John had walked by the house hundreds of times, but had never been in it.

When I pulled up in front of the house with my son in the back seat, the heavy front door was wide open. I walked in with my four-year-old son calling out, “Hello! Is anyone here?” No one responded, which surprised me as a heck of a lot of stuff was still in the house—mattresses, bookcases, clothes, desks, dressers, dishes, even a case of unopened beer on the back porch. I remember guiltily leaving a pair of used skis behind when I left the California university I was attending in the 1980s; the throwaway society is now in full bloom.

But, anyway, who cares about the stuff. I was there to see the house. . . and it was in amazingly good condition. The light fixtures with the crystal dangling things in the hallway and the dining room were still there. The marbled fireplace was beautiful. All of the walls were painted white with the exception of the downstairs bathroom which still bore the orange and yellow flowered paper that my mom now describes as ugly. The kitchen cabinets my parents installed, probably 30 years ago, looked good as did the woodwork that my dad spent months laboriously stripping endless coats of paint from. All of the carpet my parents had put in had been removed to reveal the hardwood floors beneath. A scrap of the light blue carpet in my old bedroom lined the closet floor.

As John and Luke and I wandered through the house, I pointed out the architectural landmarks of my childhood: those are the radiators we sat on to warm ourselves before school; this was the shelf the television sat on until my youngest brother tried to pull it down on himself (after this, our 19 inch black and white TV sat directly on the floor, a placement that seemed normal to us and odd to everyone else); here is where we ran to my dad every evening as his whistle announced he was home. In a pathetic exercise, I took a lot of pictures.

While the good condition of the house—there were no holes in the wall or broken windows, perhaps a testament to the fact that at least recently there were female volleyball players living there—initially made me feel better, the knowledge had a bitter after taste. It might be easier to justify knocking down a wreck of a house, but wreck doesn’t describe the place. The house seems so solid, so well made. As my dad related, a houseguest who stayed with us one Christmas said it was very nice to stay in a place where you didn’t know when the toilet was being flushed.

My husband John, dad Ed, and son Luke stand in front of 841 N. Maplewood.

Part IV: The Kids Are Alright

Growing up on Maplewood, kids were everywhere—33 in an eight house area. The next four houses from our corner were home to the Boesen, Keister, Simpson, and Richey families with three, four, two, and two kids respectively. They were the public school kids, who went to Whittier. Across the alley, fronting Cooper were the Mallows, with eight kids, the Dougherty’s with four, and the Koperski’s, with five, just like our family. They were the Catholics, like us, though the Koperski kids went to Whittier instead of St. Mark’s.

Until I was in sixth grade, I was an unrepentant tomboy and played football, softball, and basketball as often as I could. Then one day as I was playing tackle football in our front yard with the public school boys, some of my St. Mark’s class mates came riding by on their bikes and they saw me. The horror! The embarrassment! My two worlds crashed and clashed, and I sadly hung up my cleats, another victim of the pressure of gender stereotypes.

The Dougherty’s had the only basketball hoop and driveway around, and we would play there even if there was no Dougherty kid around. Kickball was a more integrated sport than football, and this we played, also in the long-suffering and tolerant Dougherty’s back yard. As I remember, we spent more of our time arguing and inventing new rules to cover the improbable places the ball would go than actually playing. The whole thing reminds me of the evolution of the law: organized, non-violent arguing where the decisions are often not final.

We had great games of hide and go seek, spread over a half a square block, where we worked as teams. As the days lengthened, as they are now, our television watching time of Gilligan’s Island, the Brady Bunch, and the Wonderful World of Disney decreased, and we usually had to be called in as night approached. In July, I can remember looking out my bedroom window at 9 pm, tucked in for the night to see the street light in front of our house come on and also one of the neighbor kids on their bike, the beneficiary of more liberal-minded parents than mine. Life could be so unfair.

The Mallows lived directly behind us, across the alley. They had a huge oak tree in their backyard and also a very cool club house on stilts. I hung out with Becky, Tina, Pat, and Connie, the four youngest kids in the family.

It was from a tragedy in their family in 1968 that I first realized the terrible concrete reality of death. Dennis Mallow, the family’s oldest child, died at 16 after a car accident. He was driving his black Volkswagon beetle with the white interior. Smart, kind, with-it Dennis was gone. People weren’t supposed to die so young, especially when they were your friends’ older brother.

And then 38 years later, his mother Virginia Mallow, a hard working, gentle woman who loved her children and the neighbor kids too, was the victim of a crime of bewilderingly, senseless proportions, perfect for the part of the 21st century that insists on being post-modern.

Some things about childhood lose their ability to disturb; but, then, some don’t.

Part III- The Attic

Though my family didn’t move into the house at 841 N. Maplewood until 1964, when I was three and my brother Jim was two, our first connection to the place occurred more than a decade earlier, thanks to my dad attending Bradley University.

My dad had spent part of his growing up years in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where he had no specific plans for college, but a pretty good jump shot. His junior and senior years, the Mt. Vernon Rams won the Illinois State Basketball title, going undefeated his senior year in 1950. Known then as Eddie King, my dad and one of his classmates, John Riley, came to Bradley on basketball scholarships. Their teams did well; the Braves placed second in the nation in the NCAA Tournament in 1954.

In preparing this post, I interviewed my dad about his years at Bradley. Because of space considerations, I can’t include all the fascinating tales he told me, but I do encourage you to talk with your parents and older relatives while you still can. They are carrying around a wealth of stories.

Anyway, while my dad was a student, he faithfully attended weekly Mass at St. Mark’s Catholic Church. One Sunday, he met Bill Motsett, a devout Catholic and Bradley booster, who invited the always-hungry college student over to his house at 841 N. Maplewood for breakfast.

A friendship ensued between my dad and the Motsett’s. When my dad needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks in 1953 during the summer between his junior and senior years, the Motsett’s offered their attic, and dad became an unofficial member of the family. Bill and his wife Teed had seven children, who enjoyed hanging out with my dad and vice versa.

The following summer, dad stayed with the Motsett’s for a couple of months. In between the two summers, the Motsett’s had refinished their attic in knotty pine paneling and installed a couple of extra long beds with my dad in mind.

Ten years later, when my parents were renting a house from Bradley, located on the corner of Maplewood and Main (it’s been a grassy lot for some time), and were looking to buy a house, my father was thrilled when the place he called the Motsett home was for sale. Mom and dad paid $24,000 for the house.

After my parents got settled in the house, they continued the tradition of renting the attic to male Bradley students. This provided an endless source of amusement to my siblings and me. Some of the guys spent a lot of time with us, telling us stories, taking apart radios for us, showing us movies, and giving us teddy bears. We were happy to hear them thump up and down the stairs.

On the other end of the spectrum were a few grouches, one of whom in his white leather coat warned, “None of you bratty kids better touch my car.” After a few semesters of boarding Bradley boys, my mother instituted a rule, which puzzled me until much later: no freshmen. As time went on and our family expanded to five children, my parents needed the attic to house their own brood.

My dad continued to remain friends with the Motsett’s, attending Bill and Teed’s funerals in Florida in the 1990s and more recently the funeral of Msgr. Charles Bourke Motsett, Bill’s older brother, who until he passed last year at age 98, was the senior priest in the Diocese of Peoria.

My dad stands in the attic, where he roomed as a college student, in the house that he later owned for 32 years.

Part II- A Debt to Lydia Moss Bradley

This is not the first time that Bradley has owned the properties they paid an estimated $5-$6 million for last year.

Before my parents sold our house in 1996, I made a copy of the abstract of title, a then 59-page document. The original date on the abstract is March 23, 1870. Our house at 841 N. Maplewood sat on lucky lot 13, on block 10 in the Bradley subdivision, owned by none other than Lydia Moss Bradley.

According to the maps in the abstract, Maplewood was not the original name of the street. Instead of Maplewood Avenue, the street is listed as Tobias Street, presumably in memory of Mrs. Bradley’s son or husband, who started the fortune that made Bradley University possible.

Lydia and Tobias Bradley came to Peoria from Vevay, Indiana in 1847. Soon after their arrival in Peoria, the Bradley’s became prosperous and influential citizens. They amassed a fortune through various business interests, including a distillery and saw mill, banking, and real estate.

Lydia and Tobias had six children—Rebecca, Clarissa, Tobias, Laura, Mary, and William—none of whom lived to adulthood. Bradley University was founded as a memorial to them. Rebecca, Laura, and Clara (now Glenwood) streets were likely named for the Bradley children.

People in the 19th century seemed to be made of stronger stuff than we are. Mrs. Bradley not only endured unimaginable tragedy, but went on to become a successful businesswoman in her own right and had the philanthropic cast of mind to found Bradley.

Besides tracing the ownership of my childhood home, the abstract is a fascinating historical document. It contains copies of Lydia’s 1873 divorce decree from her second marriage to Edward Clark (Tobias was killed in a carriage accident in 1867), the pre-nuptial decree that Lydia astutely negotiated before this second marriage, and the 1896 Certification of Incorporation of Bradley Polytechnic Institute, which was Bradley’s original name.

In 1899, Mrs. Bradley deeded the property between Institute Pl. and Western Ave. to the east and west and between Main St. and Bradley Ave to the north and south to Bradley Polytechnic. The institution owned the property at 841 N. Maplewood for 12 years. In 1911, three years after Mrs. Bradley died, and “sanctioned by the vote of not less than four trustees,” Bradley sold the property to Antoine and Clara Scholl for $1,555.

Over the next 95 years, three families lived at 841 N. Maplewood for 75 of these years. Dr. John and Isabelle Vonachen lived at the property from 1918 to 1945. I have been told that Dr. Vonachen was the first pediatrician in Peoria. In the 1980’s, I remember Robert Jamieson, one of the pillars of 20th century Peoria saying to me, “You live in the Vonachen house.”

Bill and Matilda Motsett and their seven children lived in the house from 1945 to 1961.

And my family, the King family, lived in the house from 1964 to 1996. But, as we will see, my family’s connection to this home predated the 1960’s.

Part I- The Cowboy Wallpaper

When I was three, we moved from the corner of Main and Maplewood down the block to the large, light blue, aluminum-sided house on the corner of Maplewood and Laura, address 841 N. Maplewood. I fell in love with the spectacularly garish, red and white cowboy wallpaper in the back bedroom. The cowboys on their horses with their lassos conveyed a world of excitement and adventure that I knew awaited me. My mother did not share my feelings about this sui generis wall covering, and I was helpless in the knowledge that I did not possess the rhetorical skills to convince her of the importance of that wallpaper staying. And so it went, replaced by a non-descript, but much more tasteful, light green pattern.

The neighborhood was already changing.

Fast forward 42 years and it isn’t just the wallpaper that’s going. Last year, after months, if not years, of stonewalling and subterfuge, Bradley University bought this and all the other properties on the 800 and 900 blocks of Maplewood, 20 plus in all. The university is expanding into my childhood front and backyards and those of many of my former neighbors. In a year, the Robertson Memorial Field House is going, too, all to make way for a new sports arena, parking deck, student recreation center, and quad.

I had read the reports in the paper about the confrontations/negotiations between Bradley and the neighborhood associations. Then one day last year, my mom, who is nothing if not a good sport, called me. “Did you see in the paper where our old house sold for $500,000?” she asked, actually laughing. What?! Who paid that for it? was my incredulous response. Some outfit called Lepomis. Even my non-genius mind figured out that had to be Bradley. What was with the cloak-and-dagger act?

My parents had moved from Maplewood after my dad retired from Bradley and most of their five children were gone. The housing market was soft in 1996 and so they rented the house to a family for a year. When my folks were eventually able to sell it, they got much less than six figures for the house. And yet my mother was laughing, not crying, when she reported what would be the final sale price ever for the house.

“Do you wish you’d held onto it?” I asked. No, she replied. They would have had to get in the landlord business and witness first hand the ravages of student living on our beloved homestead. My parents sold the house to a family who lived there for a few years before they sold it to a landlord.

If I seem to have a rather proprietary air about a house that hasn’t been in my family for 11 years, well, isn’t that the way we often are about the things of childhood? My family, the King family, lived at 841 N. Maplewood, from 1964 to 1996, longer than any other family in the property’s 137 year history.

While the house may be history as soon as the end of the month, the memories will go on. I’d like to record a few of them in a place slightly more permanent than my mind and so over the next several weeks, I’ll be writing about my recollections of the neighborhood. I’ll include a little history and some commentary, too. For me, these posts will serve as a ritual to note the passing of a time and place. So, I offer to you, Requiem for a Neighborhood.

View from the room that had the cowboy wallpaper