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 History of Northlake > Recollections as a Boy |
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The following information is from a letter sent to Mayor
Sherwin from former Northlake resident Pete Barlow Pederson.
I was
a young boy, eleven years old, when, in 1948, we moved to North Lake Village. My folks had bought a
new home there. The home, at 228 E. Whitehall, was sold to my folks as a shell home, meaning that my folks
would entirely finish the interior of the shell themselves and with the help of everyone in the family.
Every weekend we'd load the car with building supplies, tools and food and head out North Avenue to work
on the house. North Avenue turned into a two-lane road west of Harlem Avenue in those days.
I have
have lots of memories of those days. There were a few essential stores along North Avenue for North Lakers.
We had a gas station and Grays Drugs at Roy and North, North Lake Hardware was just west of Prater on North Ave.,
Karpy's Foods just east of Wolf Road on North Ave. All of these businesses were on the south side of the street.
Of course, who can forget the Ding and Fuzz tavern between Roy and Prater, which, sadly, burned to the ground and
killed the Denlinger family, the owners, during the middle of a winter night in about 1950.
There
weren't many schools in town then. There was Roy School, a brand new Whittier School and Riley School. Roy
had all elementary grades, Whittier took kids through fourth grade and Riley took the kids up through sixth grade.
If you lived south of Armitage you walked to Whittier or Riley School. I went to Riley School and thought our
principal, Mr. Murphy, looked like Abe Lincoln. After sixth grade we had another adventure as all of us south
of Armitage got a bus ride to seventh and eighth grades. The bus took us to the town of Berkeley and the Sunnyside
Junior High School at Wolf and St. Charles Roads. That was quite a ride in those days, especially when we kids got
bounced around on the rickety wooden two-lane Mannheim Road bridge that took us over the Proviso railroad yards.
We had to use that bridge because the bridge that crossed the train yards on Wolf Road was badly burned - it never
was rebuilt! After eighth grade we either went to Leyden or Proviso depending on whether we lived north or south of
North Avenue. I graduated from Leyden in 1955. There was no West Leyden and no Proviso West then.
There
were empty lots everywhere and us kids played baseball a lot. What else do you do with a few empty lots
strung together? We'd set fire to the dead grass in the spring to get nice summer grass. There were always
grass fires somewhere in town.
New
homes eventually pushed us off the lots. Sometimes we took bike rides, all the way to Sky Haven Airport at Belmont
and Wolf Road. We'd be gone all day, bicycling. We'd bicycle all over, even to the Elmhurst public swimming pool.
My brother and I had paper routes. Between us we delivered newspapers from North Avenue up to Palmer on the north
and from Geneva on the east to Railroad Avenue on the west. Morning and evening paper routes kept my brother,
Gerald, and I very busy. Sometimes my brother and I would stand on the running boards of my Dad's 1937 Ford as
we drove through town tossing a newspaper from the car as we came to a customer's home. The paper delivery routes
covered such wide areas because there might only be one customer on a block. Rain and snow didn't stop us.
When the creek flooded it was tough though and we had to stop and clean the mud out from between the bike tires
and the fenders, as the streets were mud. Everyone called it “The Creek” but I think it was officially named
Addison Creek. It was good for catching crabs but usually had an odor during the hot summer days. Since all the
homes had septic tanks in those days it's not hard to imagine what caused the stinky water. Every time we had a very
heavy rainstorm East Drive and Parkview Drive would be under water. The Mannheim Road underpass flooded up to the
underside of Mannheim Road and North Avenue and under the train tracks and Lake Street flooded North Avenue from
Railroad Avenue to Berteau Street in Elmhurst.
There
were three churches in town; A Catholic Church and Protestant Church on two-lane Wolf Road north of North Avenue
and the Baptist Church at Roy and the north side of North Avenue (the church with the blue cross hanging on the front
that was lit up at night).
North
Lake Village had a newspaper called the North Lake Star No streets were paved in town except for the two-lane North
Avenue and Wolf Road. The snowplow came around a couple of days after the snowfall. Every early summer the grader came
through and tried to smooth out the ruts and potholes. Then the oil truck would come through and spread oil on the roads.
All vehicles that followed got free undercoating as the tires picked up the oil and gravel. Guess where the first ruts of
summer were!
For
us adventurous kids there was fishing. The dam, located a hundred feet west of where the creek went under Wolf
Road created a lake of sorts behind it, all along Westward Ho golf course and up to Fullerton Avenue. There were
even some favorite swimming holes in there for skinny-dipping. Bluegills, bullheads and carp were the usual catch
of the day. We never ate the fish. The stinky creek water came from there! Some of us caddied at the Westward Ho
Country Club in the summer. The VFW, on Wolf Road south of North Avenue, was used as a teen club until the Grant
Park Recreation Center was built.
Chief
Fred Heck was the first police chief and only officer for awhile. His home, at the northwest corner of Roy and
Country Club Drive, was the station. By then North Avenue had blossomed into a four-lane highway with a wide
median strip and Northlake was a city. Northlake was known as a speed trap as the police strung the wires across
the lanes of North Avenue. We had to pay for the city police car somehow - it was a Fraser four-door car with a
silver siren on the roof, the flashing police car lights came later.
I left
Northlake around 1958. By then we had a Jewel Store and a “shopping center” on the north side of North Avenue at
Wolf Road. We had a Shell gas station and a restaurant at Prater and North, Danklefsen's Bakery and Tirritelli's
Pizza near Roy and North Avenue. There were a few more new businesses but I don't remember them anymore.
I wrote
this because I looked at the Northlake website and saw that the history pages really lacked a personal point of view
as to the everyday real life and history of Northlake.
Thank you for your time, Pete Barlowe Pedersen Albuquerque, NM
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