My name is exactly the same as Dad's, so there's Jr. after Forrest William Andrews. I was born 25 Jan, 1905, upstairs above the restaurant my father ran, on the south (east) side of Lincoln Square in Decatur, Illinois. It was called the Saratoga Café (Bolay‘s Hobbies). My Mother and Dad had an apartment upstairs.

Dad was born near White's Mill in Caroline County, Virginia in 1867. Because of the devastation to that part of the country during the Civil War, there was no way for him to make a living there, so he decided to head west. Dad came by train to Illinois when he was 15 years old, about 1882, as he had earned enough money for a ticket that far. When he first left Virginia, he went to Washington, DC and got off at Washington's Monument and paced it off, at 82 paces on the north side. Then he got on the train heading west and went as far as Cincinnati, where he got his very first professional hair cut for 25 cents. When he saw the Illinois prairie, he decided that it was the richest and most beautiful place that he could imagine, so he decided to stay there. When he first arrived in Illinois, he worked as a hired hand for a farmer named Parker Thomas, who lived between Macon and Elwin. He was a bachelor and an Englishman. His neighbors down the road were Irish, the Reilly boys. Whenever they would meet on the roads, each would hop out of their wagons or buggies, and lay into each other fighting like dogs. I have a news clipping about one such fight. Later Dad saved up $10 and went from Elwin to Chicago where he saw the 1892 World's Exposition. While in Chicago he stayed in the Saratoga Hotel, a name which impressed him enough that he later called his first cafe in Decatur the Saratoga Cafe. Dad then went to United Brethren school, called Westfield College, near Charlestown, which he attended a couple of years. He came to Decatur, and was a grocery clerk and regularly delivered groceries.

Mom and Dad (Forrest Andrews and Ida Morgan) met when Dad was delivering groceries for the grocery store run by Mr. Levee at the corner of Mercer and King Streets in Decatur, IL. Tom and Ada Lunn (Mom's twin sister) lived nearby at the southwest corner of Pine and King and Ada would buy groceries from Levee's store and have them delivered. Ida frequently visited her sister and met Dad as he delivered Ada's groceries one day. The rest is history.

Mom developed a bad case of ringworm after their marriage, and wore gloves for quite some time. Later Dad started his own cafe, on the alley east of Post's Jewelry between Water and Merchant Streets. He sold this and opened the Saratoga Cafe, on the southeast corner of the Square. The lease was $40 a month. He was forced out of business about 1905/6 by bankruptcy. For a while after that he sub-leased the cafe, as I remember Mom taking me in to collect the rent, and the new tenant gave me a nibble of ham from the large shank he kept on the sideboard behind the counter. Mom's sister, Mary, a fine decent person, served meals and waited on tables at Dad's cafe. It was there that she met Mr. Wilson, a customer, whom she later married. The Saratoga was about the only restaurant in downtown Decatur at the time Dad had it. In those days in Decatur, Lincoln Square was the hub of all activities in the city. In the center of the square was a round building called the Transfer House. And up above, in the top part of the Transfer House, was a bandstand. Around the Square, the streetcar tracks and interurban tracks carried passengers to all parts of the city. And, of course, the interurban went to adjacent cities like Springfield, Peoria, and Danville. So there were lots of customers for the Saratoga Cafe. They also had many late evening customers from the live theaters and the Opera house. The Cafe had it's "hey-day" from about 1903-6. And that was certainly a busy place. I remember the area well. Across the street, the old Beestine Building was a focal and meeting place for people going to and from and through Decatur.

History shows that Lincoln Square was where Abe Lincoln came through and at one time there used to be a little courthouse up there on the Square. But, of course, that was before my time. In 1906-07, my Dad and Mother bought a lot out at 700 block of West Grand, which was called Pugh Street then. The streetcar track ran out on Edward Street, ran to Pugh Street, turned west and went up as far as Pine Street. Aunt Ada and Uncle Tom lived just a little bit east of Pine Street, over where the Greening's house was, on the south side of Pugh Street. In later years, Pugh St became Grand Avenue, because the general public got tired of calling it Pugh St.

The reason Dad and Mom decided to buy that lot out on the 700 block Pugh St was to eventually build a new house, which they did in 1908. Shortly after I was born on Lincoln Square my Dad got out of the restaurant business and took a job traveling on the road for some merchandising house named Powell-Webb in Chicago. They lived for a while in a house on the corner of Church and Williams St on the northeast corner where the Elks Club, a big brick building, is now.

It was there I have my first remembrance. I was about 2 years old. There came a terrible thunderstorm one day with lots of lightning, and the lightning struck in the backyard where I was playing. It threw me into a tremendous spasm as my mother told me later. I don't exactly remember that, but I do remember being told about it. The people that lived next door were called Peters. And there was a little girl there that was always picking on me and I was only 2 years old, believe it or not. One day my mother told me to go after her. And I did! Guess I beat the little kid up something fierce and she left me alone after that. One day I took a notion that I wanted to run away from home. I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but the fascination was up on Main St, one block away. So I took off without asking or telling anybody and I ran away up on Main St and at that time there was a tremendous amount of traffic - like horses and wagons and buggies and street cars and people were walking along. And it was really something. But anyhow I got up there and I didn't get hurt. Lo and behold, I was rescued by my mother. How it was I don't know, but she took me back home and tied me to a great big tree out in the yard so I wouldn't run away again. That was my punishment.

She also told me about the time that there was a colored man walking across the street, where the Methodist Church is now, and she told me that colored man was going to "get me" if I ran away any more. My father hated Negroes and used this hate to scare us kids. About this time I was about 2 or 2 1/2 years old, and I distinctly remember my older brother, Evelyn was going to Gasman School in the first grade. He was chosen to play a part in a little play called "Sleeping Beauty". And I distinctly remember my mother making the costume for him. It was out of a royal purple cloth and yellow-gold headgear. I thought that was the greatest thing that ever happened. And the night of the play, I remember my mother taking me there to see the play. It was clear up in the attic part of Gasman School. There was a small auditorium up there that seated maybe 100 people or less. I remember that play distinctly and I thought that was the greatest thing that ever was.

At this time I remember meeting Dad when he came home off the road. He came down from Main St, down west on William St to our corner where we lived. And I guess my mother knew when he was coming, because she'd let me out on the sidewalk and let me run to meet my dad. And here he come. He had a beautiful walk on him, smoking a big cigar and he had a stiff kady (hat). He was a real traveling man. And I remember running and jumping up in his arms and he laughed and hollered. He thought I was the greatest thing in the world then. My dad was a regular business man, because he traveled on the road, and knew all the people that traveled by train, and he knew all the business people. That was his life. I just relished and gloried in him and my mother did too. My dad didn't get to come home only maybe on the weekends.

At that time there was a famous evangelist that was traveling around the country, called Billy Sunday. And he came to Decatur and they threw up a great big tabernacle tent on the southwest corner of Church and West El Dorado. The tent held maybe 500-700 people and I remember my mother taking me up there. Of course, we hadn't been there very long before I went to sleep, but I do remember Billy Sunday and I later would try to imitate him. My aunts and uncles would get me up at home on a chair or on top of a table and let me make a speech like Billy Sunday. Also somebody taught me a few curse words. I don't remember what they were, but they used to think that was awful funny when I would say them. And it made my mother mad, but never the less, I did it. It was an undesirable thing for a little baby boy, 2 1/2 years old, to learn things like that, but that's the way it was in those days.

When we lived in that house on William and Church, it was my first recollection of my brother Paul. I remember it was a big old two story house, probably built before the Civil War. In the back part was a lean-to room where Mom kept trunks and things like that - kind of a storage place. One day Paul and Evelyn was playing back there and I guess I was playing with them too. I remember Paul said something to me and they both ran real fast and I tried to catch them through the front room, but I couldn't do it. That's the first memory I have of my brother Paul.

In 1907, the middle part, Mom and Dad started to build a little four-room house, out on the corner of Grand Ave, which was Pugh St then. And the rest of the fall, winter, and into the spring and summer of 1908, then they moved out there. I remember that place very well. There were all dirt streets. Mom and Dad's house was the first house built in that addition. It was called the Levi-Towell Addition.

The next year, in 1909, Sam Meyers, who ran the Meyers Hotel uptown, built a two-story house two doors west of our house. Meyers had three children, which we played with all that time. Then Chester Buckmaster, who was a big grocery man there in Decatur, built a house west of the Meyers house. We traded with him and bought groceries from him. The whole area began to develop in 1907-12. I have seen that street develop from a country road to what it is today, a busy four lane thoroughfare. The only thing out there then was Pugh School, and it was a small school before they built the addition on it. I remember my cousin, Wayne Lunn, went to that school. He was 21 years old in the top grade of the school. I forgot what they called it - 4th grade or 5th grade or something like that. Nobody thought anything about it, people being that old going to grade school. But they did it. My uncle, Mom's brother Bud Morgan, lived out on North Edward St, two doors south of Harrison on the east side of the street. That was a sparsely settled area out there. He had two children, Dorothy, his daughter and his son, Clyde, and they went to Pugh School, too, from away out there. Uncle Bud used to sell pianos out in the country and he had a big team of horses, and in the winter time when it snowed enough to warrant it, he had a wooden plow fixed, a drag plow, so that he could hitch his team to that drag plow and he'd plow a walk way all the way from his house to Pugh School. Kids and other people could use it without tracking through the snow. And that was a pretty fine gesture on his part.

My mother came from a big family, so we had lots of relatives, uncles, aunts and cousins. There was Uncle Bud Morgan, I think he was the oldest, Aunt Mary, Aunt Etta, Aunt Ollie which I never met or don't remember. Aunt Ada was my mother's twin sister. Then Aunt Alta, and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Charlie and Uncle Arlie. I believe there was 13 in the family or something like that. Some of them were married and had families, some of them didn't. It was in Decatur where they all con­gregated. And of course, Aunt Adie, my mother's twin sister, she had Ralph, the oldest daughter Myrtle died, Irene, Lulu and Wayne. They were just a little bit older than me and my brothers. I remember when I was about 10 years old, Irene and Lulu used to take me downtown. They asked Mom if they could take me downtown on the streetcar. And I think they were girls about 16 years old and they knew some Greeks that had a confectionery out on North Water St that sold candy. It had a soda fountain and all those things. They used to take me in there and I'd get a piece of candy from the Greeks. And I thought that was just out of this world.

I've been told that the early Morgans came from North Carolina, across the Cumberland Gap, thru Kentucky, pronounced Cainetuck, then Indiana, then probably down the Ohio River, up the Mississippi River to the Illinois River, along the Illinois to settle in Sangamon County, Illinois. Mosquito Creek, where my mother was born, was a branch of the Sangamon River. While in Kentucky, they heard about the Illinois territory opening up after Blackhawk was subdued. Lincoln helped as a volunteer to fight Blackhawk up in Northern Ill. Mother used to talk about old times in the family. They had to travel by river because of the lush, dense virgin growth which was too thick even for wagons to traverse. Especially in the spring and fall when the ground was wet, the wagons couldn't cover much ground and the wild grass grew about chest high. Water travel was done mostly in flat boats, very shallow open vessels that would hold all their belongings and were poled along.

My mother was a very young child when her father, Samuel Morgan moved their family by covered wagon from Illinois to Missouri. (Probably near the farm of her grand­fathe­r, Lambert Morgan, who lived in Daviess Co, MO from 1852 until his death around 1864). While there, they lived in a log cabin in a wild God-forsaken area. She told of scrub trees being so thick between their place and the school that her father and some other neighbors had to blaze trees to make a trail for the children to go and come from school, so as to not get lost. They only stayed a few years, went broke, and came back to Illinois destitute. Samuel had enough money to get the family on a train out of Missouri, back to Blue Mound, Illinois. Mother didn't have first pair of shoes until after they returned to Il­linois. Samuel got a job at the coal mines east of Decatur after returning from Missouri, not as a miner, but up above somewhere. They lived near there in East Decatur for a while. Ida went to 7th Ward Grade School on Jasper St, a block south of Eldorado, but never went on to High School. She worked as a maid in homes on West Prairie Street; one of the wealthy ones was Lawyer Buckingham. When her sister Ada married in 1888, Ada and husband Tom Lunn moved to Spokane, Washington for a while. They sent Ida a railroad ticket and she visited them there. When they moved back to Decatur, Ida stayed with them frequently and that's where she met Dad.

All of us kids went to Pugh School, of course, because it was just less than a block away from our house. At that time there was a number of teachers whose names have gone by me. But there was one teacher called Katie Fitzpatrick and I think she taught 3rd grade when I was there. She was a young woman at that time. Would you believe that she was still teaching school when my Esther started teaching in 1930 at Pugh School. Katie Fitzpatrick was still there! That was phenomenal. She was a very, very strict teacher and a good one. Along about the time I was in grade school, we used to go out to Stevens Creek. We'd go out there to go swimming. It was out on North Oakland St where the Illinois Central railroad tracks crossed Oakland St. We'd go swimming and fishing and just have general fun around the creek. There weren't any houses around there then. It was all just farm land. We had a great time. One time, Evelynn made a small submarine out of wood. Painted it black like a German submarine of World War I and he propelled it with rubber bands. We got a picture of it with a pin hole camera that E.J. made with his bare hands out of a wood box with a pin hole in it. It was quite an accomplishment for a school kid at that time.

I remember the first airplane arriving in Decatur in 1910. It landed in Downings pasture, where the circuses were held, north of Garfield St, between Water and Broadway streets. I can remember seeing it when I was about five years old. It was a bi-plane with rubberized cloth covered wings. I used to deliver the Review newspaper when I was in Pugh school. I picked up my papers at Condit and Water Streets where the bundle of papers were tossed off the interurban for us carriers who would get them, roll and stuff them in our bags and head off to deliver them. This point was in front of Fred Siefert's Bakery. I would get two fresh hot donuts for a nickel while waiting for my papers to arrive. When I had packed both bags, one on each shoulder, I'd walk back toward my house, and from there west to Walnut Grove St, north along the interurban tracks to Harrison, east to Maple and back south to Grand Ave and home. I had probably about 100 customers at that time.

During these years when I was 10-12-14 years old, Mom used to like to go to Greenwood Cemetery on Memorial Day or the week before Memorial Day to get flowers and put them on the graves of Grandma Morgan and her relatives. I lacked 3 days of being 3 months old when "Ma", as my mother's mother was always called, died. In her later years, she had lived by herself down by the Lake Decatur dam. She had a cow and chickens at her place off South Franklin St. So on Memorial Day, Mom and I'd get on the streetcar and go downtown to the Transfer House. We'd have a market basket with some fruit jars in it. Then we'd walk from the Transfer House to Greenwood Cemetery, which was a pretty good feat for a woman and a little boy like me. We'd get down there at the entrance of Greenwood Cemetery where there was a flower man who had a big greenhouse. His name was Boomers­beck. And Mom would buy a half dozen or so geraniums for 15 or 20 cents each. If you bought six, the florist would give you seven. She and I would walk clear out to the south edge of the cemetery to where Grandma "Ma" Morgan's grave and all the other relatives' graves were. Mother never stopped much at her father Samuel's grave, as she didn't remember him fondly. She talked of him as being disagreeable and never helping Ma out with things. Not too ambitious, living in the past on his government pension. (He was about 52 years old when Ida and Ada were born). But around Aunt Ollie and the rest of them, we'd put those flowers. And I'll tell you by the time we got that done we were bushed.

It was either 1914 or 1915, that the Herald and Review newspaper put on, through all the schools in Decatur, a garden growing contest to see which child could plant seeds and make the nicest garden. Would you believe it, I won the best garden for growing radishes in Mom's back­yard. And I have that picture showing me with a rake and my garden at that time at Mom's house. And in the picture, you can see the back end of Gard­ner's back porch over on Wagoner St. They were fond neighbors of ours in later years.

Also during these years, Mom used to take me and we'd get on the train once a year. I think it was in July, when they held the big Morganville Picnic out at Morganville, which was there by Osbornville on Mosquito Creek where my Mother was born. We'd get on the train in Decatur and go down and Mom and I'd have baskets of cooked chicken, pies, goodies and things, and we'd get off the train there and walk down the road about a mile and a half to the oak grove of 60-80 acres called the Morgan Picnic Grove. As we'd pass by some of the farm houses, Mom would speak of who lived there that she knew when she was a little girl. 'Cause she was born just south of there about a mile, along Mosquito Creek. She and her twin, Ada, were born in kind of a log cabin house in 1870 and this Morganville Picnic Grove, the ground and all, was owned by her uncles and cousins: the Morgan family. And the Picnic was such an extent that every year it brought from 5,000 to 8,000 people there in horse and buggies and by train. Esther's folks used to go, too, but this was before Esther and I knew each other. They'd have speakers, the state senators came, and they'd have band concerts and they had a wonderful time - everybody.

[From "The Daily Courier", Taylorville, Illinois, Monday, August 5, 1912]:

Macon and Christian counties shook hands, children romped, young folks strolled, old folks reminisced, and politicians spouted in Morgan's Grove near Osbornville Saturday. The occasion was the annual Morgansville Picnic and the slaughter of fried chicken was appalling.

"Uncle Billy" Morgan, by whose grace the 25th annual picnic, like those that have preceded it, was given, and who sits at the gate of his grove dispensing lemonade to those who need it, and welcoming and God-speeding comers and goers, gave it as his opinion that Saturday's turnout was about an average in the point of numbers -- which would mean that there were about 2,500 persons in the grove. The man whose duty it was to count the automobiles got up to 200 and lost count. As it was a country-side holiday and nobody was working hard, except the conces­sionaires, the rigs were not counted.

From 8 o'clock in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, dust clouds arose from roads in a ten mile radius, stirred up by carryalls, hay carts and farm wagons, filled with Rooseveltian families or neighborhood gatherings; and there were the inevitable shiny red-wheeled buggies with young fellows and their best girls, the shinier the buggy, the prettier the girl, of course.

When the sun was high overhead the table cloths were spread under the towering oaks and hemlocks, so thickly that they suggested a snowfall, and from under the wagon seats huge hampers were produced and in milking pails, lemonade was made, and the healthy, hearty appetites of the multitude were appeased. The Blue Mound band played, the Decatur quartette raised melodious voices, and hearts kept time to the lilt of the music and few were the faces that did not reflect the spirit of the occasion.

On the outskirts of the grove a merry-go-round did a veritable sea beach business, with the tots as its principal patrons; the husky farmer lads delivered Vulcan-like blows on the sledge machines, and received congratulations and cigars when they made the bell ring, fathers and families vied with their neighbors and sons in hurling balls at black Dianas, and a diminutive lad of ten nearly broke the ball-in-the-keg man's bank by reason of his good marksmanship.

Young men bought their sweethearts riding whips and ice cream cones, and above the blaring of the band and the hum of talk and the eloquence of the orators arose the squeaking of the balloon whistles in the hands of the children whose lips and chins were blue and red depending on the color of the mouthpiece of the bladder that they inflated.

Jesse L. Deck, Macon's Republican nominee for state's Attorney, hoping that his shots might hit a few of the voters from his own county, was almost as cordially received as H.B. Hershey, Christian County's Democratic candidate for prosecutor. Ben Caldwell, defeated in the Democratic primary last April for Governor, and who grows to look more like a Kentucky Colonel every day, was an honored guest and speaker.

It must be confessed, however, that the audiences consisted prin­cipally of a few gray beards holding vantage points on the platform, and women and children attracted to the seats, mainly by a desire to rest. The voting strength of the gathering was elsewhere, which causes the suspicion that most of the voters already have made up their minds.

Sheriff Thomas Brents of Christian County was on the grounds, and one of the old timers was R.A. Gray of Blue Mound, who helped organize the first picnic in the Farmers' Mutual Benefit Association back in 1887.

By 5 o'clock patient dobbins were being hitched between the thrills by the hundred and autos were chugging their way out of the grove. Leftovers from the noonday meal were hurriedly partaken of and long before sundown the dust clouds were again riding. The C. H. & D. took large crowds. But the boy with the red-wheeled buggy and the pretty girl by his side, were content to wait for the coming of dusk. And as the night was closing in they drove slowly homeward from the Morgansville picnic, just as their fathers and mothers did 25 years ago.

One particular year while at the Picnic when I was 6 or 7, I remember talking to my mother's Aunt Lucinda Morgan. She was born in 1812. She was so old and feeble when I saw her. They brought her in a horse and buggy, which they parked under a nice shady tree, then they took the horse to the barn. Aunt Cindy used to sit in her buggy where she could see the goings-on and people could come pay their respects and visit with her. They would marvel at her age, and her remembrance. I think she was 98 years old the time I talked to her. She was a tiny little lady all dressed in black. She had a black bonnet on and her face was all wrinkled. She looked almost like an Egyptian mummy. I asked her if she remembered the War of 1812. She told me "No", but that she did remember people talking about the Battle of New Orleans, when she was small. This Morgan family was quite an extensive family. I think there were three or four brothers and they each had many children. Between all of them, they owned most of the land around there. That was the reason they called it Morganville Picnic.

I played on the Pugh School baseball team when I was in the top grade there. I think that was the 5th grade. We used to go to the old Marietta St School, which was across the street from Esther's folks house on Church St. The old Marietta School is still there, but it's not the same building that we played baseball at. I remember one game. I hit a home run, and the ball went out in the middle of Church St. It was a brick street, not like it is today. The ball hit in the middle of the pavement and bounced up on Esther's folks front porch and I made a home run. What a peculiar set of circumstances, in years later that Esther and I would be married. This brings back so many memories.

When I was about 12 or 13 years old, my brother, E.J. got interested in Boy Scouts at Grace Methodist Church. They originated the first Boy Scout troop in Decatur. It was Troop #1 and met in the basement of the Grace Methodist Church. E.J. was the scout master and he talked me into joining. I didn't need much encouragement because at that time Boy Scouting was a very new thing. It originated only in 1910. Evelynn had a job at the Herald and Review and he bought me a Boy Scout suit, with a hat, leggings and the whole outfit, which cost $10. He paid for it out of his own money. I was so proud of that. Somewhere in our scrapbooks is a picture of me in that outfit. I was sure proud of it. Would you believe, Grace Church was just around the corner from Esther's house. Of course, I didn't know her then. But I sure knew her brother, Neil, because Neil was in the Boy Scout troop also. From that time on until Neil died in 1963, I knew him well. Played many games of basketball with him. We had a fine basketball team. In fact we won most of the games we played. I didn't know Esther though until about 1930.

In 1917, when World War I was going on, the school system required that us kids graduating from Pugh School had to go to what they called departmental schools. So one semester I had to go to the old Gasman School at the corner of Church and North St. It's been torn down now. I went there one semester, then the next year in 1918, I had to go to the old original Decatur High School on the corner of Broadway and North St. It was an old red brick school and was the first high school built in Decatur. I went there one year. The next year, in 1919, I got to go to the Decatur High School as a freshman where Paul and Evelynn were going. Of course, Evelyn graduated from Decatur High School in 1916, but Paul and I were going there in 1919. Of course, that Decatur High School's been torn down and a Civic Auditorium is there now.

Decatur was a pleasant town to live in, in those early years in the teens and 1920's and into the 30's. Downtown had what was known as the loop district. It ran from the Transfer House, which was on Lincoln Square, a block east to North Water, then north on Water St to North St, then back west to Main St, then south on Main St to the Transfer House. That was known to everybody as the loop. You could walk around up there and at that time there were hundreds of people on the streets at all times. The stores were full of people. Streetcars and interurbans were going. Automobiles started to come in along in the late teens and early 20's. Decatur was a town of about 28,000 or 30,000 people. It was very nice to live in. Of course, a young fellow like me and my brothers - we knew about everybody in town. Irwin's Drugstore on the corner of Main and Prairie St, at the north end of the Denz Block, used to be the hangout for all the teen boys, because it was a good place. It was right downtown. Irwin's had just about everything you wanted. It had the best ice-cream and the best soda fountain. We always enjoyed to hang out there. If you wanted to meet anybody just tell 'em you'll see 'em at Irwin's after while. You go up there and walk around and you see most everybody in town that went by. Linn & Scruggs owned a department store across the street. It was really nice. Esther's father ran a hardware store almost directly across Prairie St from Irwin's. He ran it until about 1920 or the first part of 1921. Of course, that was long before I knew Esther. But I did know her brother Neil real well. We used to have a high old time playing basketball.

I remember that in 1922, the city of Decatur was growing so much, that the old river couldn't furnish the water supply to the city. The Staley Company, out on the east side of town, used a lot of water from the river. So Staley's, out of their own pocket, built a temporary dam across the river and made it out of wood. They backed up enough water so they could use it in their growing plant. That was before 1922, probably about 1919 I guess. Then they built that pumphouse to pump the water from the river up to the Staley factory. That worked pretty fine, but it still wasn't enough water for the city of Decatur. So the city of Decatur decided to build a permanent dam down on south Franklin St, where the dam is located now. They did that in 1922. They built up enough ground on the old river bottoms for miles, clear up past Ferries Park. I remember they had crews in there, cutting down the trees and tearing down some old shack buildings and barns that was in there on the property. My brother, Paul, worked on that dam in 1922 and '23. They finally completed it when the water from the Sangamon River began to fill that basin up. And that is what is known as Lake Decatur and I've tramped over every foot of that ground. We used to take hikes out through there when they were clearing the timber. It was kind of a pretty river valley.

My grandmother Morgan used to live in a little house down at the foot of Franklin St, where Franklin crosses the bridge now. She had about 3 or 4 lots down there. She had a small little home, and she lived by herself, of course. Her sons, Arlie and Charlie, were young men growing up there. That was before my time, but never-the-less, the dam and the water covered up her property. In later life, Charlie was a bum. He got married to a beautiful, fine woman, and got on a train east for a honeymoon. When the train stopped at Okley (a few miles east of Decatur), Charlie slipped off and let the train continue with his bride. I never remember him working at all, but my brother, E.J. reminded me that Charlie worked a short while as a cook for a "greasy spoon" in Peoria. Charlie told E.J. that to make a big batch of dinner rolls, "you take a recipe for 12, then make twice that amount", thinking he had really discovered something fantastic. Charlie had a nickname "Blinky", and was often in trouble. He frequently made the newspapers when he was drunk or seen "sneak thieving", with headlines like "Blinky outruns the cops, again!". His brother, Arlie, worked just enough to keep himself in tobacco money. Arlie worked for a while at Dad's restaurant, then helped at the Puritana Mush Company, which Dad got into after being forced out of the restaurant business due to poor financing. Most of Mom's family (the Morgans) were at one time or the other, supported by my Dad.

Here's some other things I remember about growing up in Decatur. The old Lincoln Courthouse that stood downtown in the center of Decatur when it was first erected in the 1840's has been moved to Fairview Park. Near it is the old civil war cannon. I've been in that old log building many, many times. In fact, one time we slept in there two nights. We got permis­sion from the park department. We had a club called the Decatur Indepen­dents. They gave us permission and it didn't cost anything. That was creepy sleeping in that thing. No heat. Although it had a fireplace, we didn't build any fire in it.

The old #1 firehouse on West Main St was the first and only fire­house that Decatur had for quite some time. When I was a boy, I thought that was the greatest thing in the world to get to go down there to see how the firemen operated with the horses and wagons. The way the harness was rigged up above where the horses stood. It was on pulleys and the minute the fire bell would ring the horses would run and get in that spot and the firemen would loose the rope. The harness would drop down, they'd buckle up, jump on the wagons, and away they'd go. They could do that in nothing flat.

I remember the Wabash and Illinois Central stations when I was a kid and on through the years, up into 1950 when they tore 'em down. The Wabash Station is still standing but it's all boarded up. A sad sight. A street-car used to haul people down to the depot. I've ridden in that car many, many times. I was firing on the Wabash down there when they was rebuild­ing the roundhouse in 1929. I remember the roundhouse vividly.

Today is June 4, 1982. I feel very, very sad today because this was to be Esther's and my 50th wedding anniversary. She's been gone a little over a year now. I had planned we would take a nice trip somewhere to celebrate, but it wasn't to be. We were married June 4, 1932 in Decatur by Rev. Owen W. Pratt, the minister, in the Westminster Church Parsonage on West Main St, a white, two-story bungalow. Pratt was a fine looking fellow and everybody appreciated and enjoyed him. We were married in a kind of private ceremony. Just my mother, Evelyn and Daisy, Mother and Daddy Venters, and Kay Royer were there, and Roy Parmentor was the best man. Kay was Mom's best friend and bridesmaid. This was at the height of the depression and we were unable to have any ceremony or big feast afterward, but never-the-less it was very effective and it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

I kind of got ahead of myself there when I described Mom and my marriage in 1932. I ought to go back and tell you about in 1919, I played quarterback on Decatur High School's football 2nd team. My brother, Paul, played tackle on the 1st team. Also in 1920. Paul graduated in 1921. My class was 1923 and I went into my senior year and I felt like I ought to quit school and so I did. I quit before I gradu­ated. I finally had enough credits to graduate, but it seemed like the world caved in on me. I wasn't doing very well in all things and I felt like I oughta quit. So I quit and tried to get a job. That was one of the low periods of my life. I did get a job, selling shoes. I got $8 a week for working every day and a long day on Saturday. At that time those shoes were selling for $3.50 a pair. I worked at that job for about 8 or 9 months. The store was the Newark Shoe Store there on Merchant St, about half-way up the block on the east side of the street. In 1925, I was out of a job, cause they closed up the store and a few other things. I went down to the Wabash Railroad and I got a job as a fireman on the Wabash. I liked that job very much, cause it was a rough and ready job, and I fired in the yards and also in the trains. I fired passenger and freight trains. In those days, the passenger engines were all hand-fired engines, and the freight trains were all stokers. Of course, the switch engines in the yard were all hand-fired, too. I liked that job very much.

Everything at that time was going along pretty good for me and I was making good money, firing on the Wabash. Times were good. Everybody was prosperous. My old neighbor boyfriend, Pinky Myers, and I got acquainted with a couple of girls, who were sisters. One was named Nadine and one was Dorothy Gosser. I got to going with Dorothy Gosser, and gosh, it was puppy love and before I knew it, I was informed she was in the family way. Well, the upshot of it was, I took up with my brother, Evelynn, and went down on North Main St to Rev. Wells. He was the pastor for Grace Methodist Church, and he married Dorothy and me in the living room of his home, the parsonage. I got called out to work on the railroad that very night, on the wedding night, and later on I went to Peru, Indiana on a freight. I took it because I needed the money. I wasn't very much in love with this girl. In fact I wasn't in love with her at all. I thought I was, but I wasn't.

The upshot of it was, after a while, about a year, she applied for a divorce and I didn't oppose it in any way what so ever. She got a divorce and the judge granted her alimony. I paid alimony for many years after that. So from 1927 to 1931, I was a pretty miserable and lonesome boy. At that time most of the kids that I grew up with, the school class, they were graduating from college or had already graduated and here I was just fiddling along on a day-to-day basis with no job and really I didn't have my claws into anything. My job firing on the Wabash was hooked to the depression and I got put off. They weren't doing any business much until 1935-36, way up there. Anyway I got by, but how I don't know.

Soon I was fortunate enough to get a job down at Sears Roebuck retail store. There I sold hardware and automobile parts and just general things around the store there. That's when I got acquainted with Mom, Esther Peabody Venters. Then my head began to get back on my shoulders again. I began to realize it was a very fine world after all. So anyhow in 1932, I concocted the idea of selling popcorn on the street corners and called it "Andy's French-fried Popcorn". At that time, you could buy popcorn oil and put margarine color with it to make it real yellow and when you popped the popcorn, it was real yellow. I used what they called powdered salt and it salted the popcorn in such a way that you didn't realize the corn was salted, but it sure tasted good. I sold that popcorn for five cents a sack.

Esther and I went together, must have been 2 1/2 years at least, and we were waiting for me to get enough money to get married on. I was getting farther away from it all the time selling nickel popcorn. Finally she said to me and I said to her, "Let's get married right soon". She said, "Alright, how about June? This coming June"? I said, "Well, that suits me". So we had a very quiet wedding at the parsonage of Westminster Presbyterian Church, June 4, 1932.

We struggled along there a few years and I couldn't make a go of the popcorn business. I had to get into something else. Everything was hit and miss in those days. I tried my hand at politics even. I got myself elected as precinct committeeman out there - the 22nd precinct. It wasn't long. One term of that was enough to fill me. There wasn't any money in it, however I did get a job on the highway department from it. That kept us going a while. Eventually, things petered out and then the war began to show up and I was trying to buy our house at 1330 N. Huron St. It was a little bungalow that had been moved in there few years before and Mom and I always liked that little house.

Eventually war production began to take a hold and I got a job with Warren & Van Pragg engineers. It was doing engineering work on some of the big military installations around the country. So I got a job as a draftsman, in the electrical department. I sure enjoyed that. I began to breath a little easier, cause we began to get some pretty good money. Like $100 a week compared to about $20 before. Anyway that lasted for a while. Mom and I began to recoup some of our losses. Our kids were little, Phil, Sally and Jim were babies or near babies. Phil was born in '33, Sally in '37 and Jim in '40. So they were still little. The big Caterpillar Company got a contract with the government to build a big military engine plant out there north of Decatur, north of Staley's. Well, being with the engineering firm of Warren & Van Pragg, I put my application in out there and Allen & Kelly, a big engineering firm from Indianapolis had the contract to draw the plans for Caterpillar. I got a job with the electrical department and the engineering part of it - laying out the plant.

Well, that went along fine. I gained a great education quick. I bought a bunch of books and studied up on electricity. I didn't know a hell of a lot about it. But anyhow, I got through it. And at the end of it, Caterpillar offered me a job when they started to make the plant go. They gave me a job of maintenance construction supervisor. That I enjoyed very much. The salary was $480 a month and that was a little more than I was making in the engineering with Allen & Kelly. But anyhow I took the job right quick, cause it looked like a permanent deal to me. And that was an awful big plant. It was so big we had to ride bicycles around from one department to another.

As I record these things, many, many memories go through my mind. I remember each and every one of them. If I tend to expand on them here in this resume, it would take all afternoon just to get through one or two episodes. But I can't do that, so will do the next best thing: first hit the high spots.

The day that war broke out, we were out to Esther's folks for Sunday dinner. I went in the living room and turned on the little radio to get WGN news report from Chicago Tribune. It come over the air that the Japs had just bombed Pearl Harbor. I said, "My God, we're in war whether we want it or not". We were glued to the radio there for the rest of the day. The next morning I felt inclined to go try to enlist in the Marine Corps. He asked me three questions. He said, "How old are you?" I said, "Thirty-seven." He said, "Are you married?" I said, "Yep." He said, "How many kids you got?" I said, "I got three." He said, "We don't want you. Go on home. Get a job in the war effort, making muni­tions." So I did. I'm damn glad they didn't take me now.

But anyhow, I got a job with Caterpillar like I say. That put me a permanent 4-F, because Caterpillar didn't want to loose me. In those days when you were in an important war job, the Army didn't want you either. So I was safe for the rest of the war without me doing a damn thing about it.

History shows that all was right - we won!