Below is an edited transcript of an interview with Anita Clarice and George Richardson of Lockport Illinois, recorded February 16, 2007 at their home.  They describe what life was like in Joliet and Lockport, primarily in the 1930s and 40s.   The interview was conducted by Joliet Public Library staff members Jack Tegel and Roger Gambrel.

Today we are interviewing Anita Clarice Richardson. Her husband George is also with us. Today is February 16, 2007.  We’d like to talk about what life was like in Joliet and Lockport in years gone by.  

So Anita, we want to start off by saying where you were born, what your childhood was like.  Well, I was born in Lockport, 1922.  My mother married, went to Chicago and her and my father divorced when I was eight years old. Down here with my grandparents…at that time my grandparents had bought this house [the house where the interview took place].  And at that time, I think there was this house, and there were maybe two other ones in this whole area.  My grandfather was a foreman at the crusher. You know where the coke plant is?  Right across the street used to be, not American Steel and Wire, but it was called a coke plant. They made coal and coke, but then the crusher was down a little farther where they crushed stone. Well my grandfather did that. So we stayed here, and I went to Fairmont School, graduated in 1936, graduated Lockport High School in 1940 got married in 40, had my first child in 41, and divorced. 

The neighborhood as time go, it grew, there was a Polish family lived across the street, on the corner was Anzola, he had a grocery store.  George Grohar had a grocery store over on that corner. As you come up the hill, this Italian lived on the corner, owned all those three brick houses; in other words, I think we were the first black family that I can remember. Do you remember Swensen’s construction company? His mother and his sister lived on the next block down, and the other sister lived across the street. At that time everybody was neighborly, and you knew everybody on the street, and they had to pass here to go get the bus, so you got to know them.  And my grandmother was a very, very friendly woman. Everybody come by. I think we had the first telephone; everybody up here used our well for water. As time went on, you know more people came in. The Lavonich’s, a Serbian family, lived behind us.  So we were all just like one big happy family.   They came to visit my grandmother every week. Somebody was here, the neighbors.  So that’s how we grew up, you know, in a mixed neighborhood. Everything was fine. 

Did your mother work?  My mother was a cook, and my mother worked every day.  She worked in private homes. Would you like to know some of the people she worked for?  Sure. Irving Shutts the lawyer, she worked for him, and the Baskins. That’s how I got to know all of those people, then my mother got a job at the Joliet Country Club.  She cooked there for years.  When I was 15, I got a job there in the ladies locker room, where they swam, you’d keep the water so the floor wouldn’t buckle, hang up the kids’ bathing suits, that’s what I done.  When they had big dinner parties and everything, that was very glamorous to a kid 15 years old. I would stand at the top of the steps, and like on New Year’s Eve, I would show the ladies to their powder room.  I just loved it because it was very glamorous and I got to meet a lot of people.  One time they had me collecting money on Thursday night.  Thursday night, that was maids’ night out.  My mother would cook.  I remember once they had men’s day, 500 men at the country club.  She’d leave home at 6 in the morning, take the Richard street bus, and then she would go to work.  Al Agazzi was the manager. Woodruff, you’ve heard of Woodruff, his daughter married Marshall Field. The country club was here, and his estate was there.  They had two great big Great Danes.  Their home and the dog kennel was made identical, the same.  Robert Taylor the movie star.  I think he was affiliated with flying, I think he was a pilot in real life, in World War II, I guess, or maybe not, but he was here.  She knew the Baskin’s pretty well.  He was one of the nicest people, and his boys were too.  When you walked into his store, he met you at the door with a smile.  He had a dynamic personality. I will never forget him.  I got to know all the women, because they were swimming, and they knew my mother was downstairs cooking.  My mother said that you can always tell class, people that were born with money, and people that acquire it.  So coming up, I had a glamorous childhood through her, and meeting all those people in the country club.  I’d leave high school, catch the bus in Lockport, take the Richard street bus to the end of the line, and there was a grocery store called Herzog’s, and I’d get off, cross the railroad tracks, and out to the country club just to be with her.  

What was your mother’s name?  Eleanor Gothard.  Everybody knew her. Where did you go to church? Well, back then they had Shiloh, it was originally in Lockport.  My grandmother helped found that church, so when she died, and my grandfather died, that’s where their funeral was.  I went to a Methodist church, a white church over in Fairmont. I went there when I was young. Then we kind of got lax, went down to Mount Olive for a while, had a few more boys, and that kinda slowed me down, but I was still a member.  

So where did you do your grocery shopping?  Back then?    Grohar’s  We didn’t go to the A& P or nothing, we didn’t have anything like that up here. Wasn’t for a long time after that that I would hear of people going to the A& P and buying groceries, and how cheap it was, and everything like that. But after I got older, I got in the habit of going there.  I met George and had a car, and we’d start going to the A&P.   

Were there busses that ran between here and downtown Joliet? You had to catch it on the highway. You would go down to the hill, cross the highway, by the coke plant.  That’s where the bus stopped.  

Where did you go shopping for clothes?  Well I was a clothes freak. As my mother worked for the rich, we had that kind of taste too.  She instilled all of that into us. So you had a beautiful dress store on the corner of Chicago [street] called Ducker’s.  They had beautiful clothes.  They had a shop called the Fashion Shop. And then when Lytton’s came here, we liked Lytton’s. The Boston Store was around, that was over on Ottawa.  It was owned by Albert Felman, I worked there for a little while.  I didn’t stay there very long.  I guess the first real job I had was at the ammunition plant. I went to work out there, but I never worked in the high explosive area. When they hired us, it was to mend the uniforms.  They all wore uniforms through out the plant, so we worked in the sewing room; put the buttons on, we had a darning machine. That’s what we done.  What years did you work there? 43 – 45? The war ended in 45.  I remember when we went downtown, everybody was jammed up; hollering and screaming, that was in 45.   I imagine it was about then. Then I worked at Sickles, where they used to make television parts, I made coils, it was piece work.  Then I went to Caterpillar, I was there for 17 years.  That’s where I got arthritis. George worked there.  My oldest son retired from Caterpillar.  He went there when he was 18. George got him on at 18, and he left at 48. He is 65 now, and he’s been retired since he was 48, works at St. Francis College [the University of St. Francis] as a security guard.  I had two other boys who worked at Caterpillar.  I lost one son, I have one son who lives out in California, works selling Range Rovers.  Everything for him is high class.   

I remember they had the Princess Theater downtown.  They had the Orpheum, down there by the A&P.  Did you go to those theaters when you were young?  I went to the Rialto most of the time.  I never liked the Princess, because I never liked to go down stairs.  At the Mode theater, you had to go all the way upstairs, so I never went to those theaters unless it was something really good to see.   

Goldblatt’s used to be on the corner of Chicago and Cass.  They had a dress shop called Tru-Value. They had a men’s shop further down Chicago called Harvey Brothers. They had Dinet’s on Cass.  And they had the Anderson Dress shop a couple of doors down from the Mode Theater. Walgreens used to be on the corner of Chicago.  They had Kresges across the street on Chicago. They had Kiep’s Jeweler, then they had Woolworth’s nickel and dime.  I remember Grant’s, they moved Grant’s to the middle of the next block, not Grant’s hardware, [W. T. Grant’s]. I remember they had a shoe store called Hartney’s. It was a high exclusive shoe store, and they had another one down by the Princess called Feltman & Curme.  

Do you remember Dellwood Park?  Yes.  What kind of events did you go to there?  We didn’t go to many up there then, but, it was like an amusement park.  My mother won a waltz contest up there, when I was a young kid. We didn’t have no transportation to go up in the park. They had a waterfall there, you could see if from the bus.  When you were in school, would you need to go to a library to do homework, or would they give you the books you needed right there in school, so you could do your homework at home?  We had a library in the school, but they did have a library in Lockport, but I don’t remember using the library in Lockport too much, see because when we got out of school, everyone was rushing down the hill to get the bus home; we used the city line bus. The high school gave us tokens. Every Monday morning, you got enough tokens for the whole week. When we got out of school, everyone was trying to go down the hill to get the first bus for home. I remember going up to the library in the high school; it was nice. We didn’t have any problems or anything, apparently some of the people did.  I never came into contact with anything like that. They said that Walgreen’s on the corner, they didn’t serve black people, well I just wouldn’t go in there. I was not a martyr for the cause. I was not going no place to be embarrassed.  That’s me.    Now I don’t know if that’s the right way to be or not. I do know that I evaded a whole lot of issues [than if I had?]  I wasn’t like that.  Remember Davidson’s Cafeteria, and then they had Schneiter’s, when you are twenty years old, we didn’t go to a cafeteria to eat.  We’d go into Woolworth’s, buy a soda, a hot dog, and that’s where we sat and ate.  For us to go to a restaurant, sit down and order a steak dinner, I bet you didn’t do that yourself when you were twenty years old.  Therefore if somebody said that you can’t eat at Walgreens, that’s all I had to hear; I wouldn’t go in there. I was not one to go into someplace, sit down, and have somebody walk past me and not wait on me.  I just couldn’t take that.  

Mount Olive Church, every Sunday you would see people coming out of church dressed to kill, not like it is now.  I honestly believe that the dress code has a lot to do with how the world has turned out.  When we went to high school we dressed up.  Everybody dressed up. You didn’t see a man nowhere without a shirt and tie.  Even at a tavern.  Have you ever heard of McGills?  Mr. McGill run a first class tavern. In there, everybody was dressed. The women had on hats, the men had on suits and ties, and if three women came in to drink, and men tried to talk to them, Mr. McGill didn’t allow that. Everybody respected everybody. Not like they do now. He was a perfect person for that kind of a place.  Remember the American Legion, on Chicago street? You went in there and it was the same thing.  The bartender, we called him Slash; his name was Robert Harris. He was the bartender there for years. Everybody knew everybody.  I was never in there when they had any trouble.  They had a band on the weekends; we broke our necks to get down there and dance. Everything was just so different.  

We’d go to Chicago to see all the bands; we were always searching for jazz bands. I was strictly a jazz fan, and my brother [was also].  All the big bands  came to Chicago, would be at the Chicago Theater. We would catch the Blue Bird bus, on top of the hill, to go up into Chicago.  The Chicago Theater and the Blue Bird bus station were side by side.  Who were some of the acts that you saw?  Benny Goodman, that was one of the best stage show, electrifying. I was visiting my father who lived in Chicago, and his wife, I said daddy, let us take us to the Chicago Theater. We got there, say 9 o’clock in the morning, Benny Goodman, Harry James was on trumpet, Lionel Hampton was on the vibes, Teddy Wilson was on the piano. That was the top notch at that time. We went to see that, and the people got up and danced in the aisle.  The only reason I didn’t get up is that I was sitting in the center, and my cousin and I, we’d have had to crawl over a lot of people.  We saw Nat King Cole, Count Basie, Cab Calloway; every band that came, we were on that bus going to see them.  The Legion always had a band on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.   Did you ever hear of a saxophone player named Gene Hammonds, and Sonny Stitt, Glenn Miller.  Any singers you remember?  Do you remember Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme?  They were fantastic.  I saw them here at the Rialto. I saw Ella, [Ella Fitzgerald] I think of all the singers, she was tops, she could do it all.  And she was always a lady.  Where did you see Ella, was it in Chicago or Joliet? Chicago. I don’t think Ella was ever here.  I  think I saw Count Basie here.  I saw Billy Eckstine.  I saw Lena Horne.  The Glenn Miller band was another fantastic band.  Did you get a chance to hear him?  I saw him in person.  

They had a good baseball team here, a black team called the Brown Bombers. Do you remember them?  They used to play at Powers Field. Powers Field was a big field, just before you get to the railroad tracks on Chicago street.   

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