Memories of a Midwestern Town in the 1950's

I gaze back instead of forward, reminiscing about the "good ole days," avoiding any glance at the future. Every person has his era—a past that belongs to him. I long ago left youth:my era is the 1950's—spring and summer—in Galesburg, Illinois. Now, my mind escapes to there, vainly fleeing old age. I grew up on Arnold Street in this Midwestern town. I grew up not quite a mile from Farnham School where teachers tried to educate me. I grew up a half dozen backyards from O.N. Custer Park where summer days were spent on a dusty diamond playing pick-up baseball. Now, I think of the park more than the school. Louisville-slugger-hickory cracking Spalding-cowhide. Rawlings-leather reaching high to snag a popup or scraping along the dirt to scoop a grounder. Throws on the mark—or throws astray. Hours and hours of the national pastime played by naive boys deluded into thinking they were preparing for life's work. Blistering days when we'd cool our exterior by punctuating baseball with fully-clothed dips in the wading pool or cool our insides with trips across Losey to the Park Drive Dairy, choosing not from 31 flavors but from 7—at a nickel a scoop. More often, though, when the game grew long and the sun had cooked us well-done, we straggled up the street, our bats and gloves propped over our shoulders or dragged behind us, to the corner of Losey and Arnold—Sam's. Like neighborhood grocery stores once scattered throughout town, it has been replaced: progress? Owned by Sam and Lena Levenberg, operated by their son Harold—"Cheesy" to us—Sam's was the hub of Monkey Town, our neighborhood; its boundaries and demographics identified by Esther Palm Gayman in her book Tock Sa Mecka: "[Monkey Town is] bounded on the south by the Santa Fe tracks, on the east by Farnham Street, on the north by Fremont Street, and on the west by Lincoln Street...[and] inhabited mostly by Swedes." But no Swedes sit on the branches of my family tree; something I had in common with the Levenbergs. Sam's: Kids—products of passions delayed by war—streamed in and out all day long, slamming the screen door, evoking Yiddish wrath from Levenberg senior and wisecracks from Cheesy: baby boomers by the dozens spending pennies on candy and nickels and dimes on ice cream bars, Dolly Madison cakes, bags of potato chips, and icy bottles of pop lifted from the chilled water of a red pop case. Most of us hung at Sam's, loitering—lollygagging—on the iron bench in front, watching cars and trucks rattle over Losey, paved with bricks, not asphalt in the 1950's. Some trucks were flatbeds carrying pipe down to Oquawka to the “Big Project" that would bring needed water thirty-two miles from the Mississippi to the town's wells. "When they finish that," Cheesy informed us, "we'll never go thirsty or be dirty again." He laughed. "They'd better hurry up." But the “Project” missed the nick of time: Spring of '58 was dry; the town's wells were low—so low, we were mandated to conserve water or be fined: no lawn sprinkling, no car washing, don't dowse the garden, a bird-bath instead of a shower! School officials even let us kids out early on Friday, May 9th. Driven by hormones, that evening my buddies and I decided to forgo Sam's and head to the A & W root beer stand on Lincoln. Hey, we were just hitting puberty and the A & W had car hops—"older women”—sixteen and seventeen; the one working the tap was even eighteen! We hung around “impressing” them with "clever" comments—and awkward passes. Most tolerated us; one lectured—“GROW UP!”; but a couple played along and flirted with us. Oh, sweet youth! It grants you license to be a bore. Having tanked up on root beer and worn out our welcome, we departed the A & W that May evening to the tune of "Purple People Eater," an inane novelty song blaring from the jukebox: a fitting anthem to our budding adolescence. We sauntered southwest on Lincoln, blabbering about what a break this dry spell was—getting us out of school early and all. Halfway to Williams, the night sky shot glowing orange through the darkness, reminding me of a burning Moscow in War and Peace, the movie my friend Larry Sprinkle and I saw up at the Orpheum. The analogy was appropritate: culture was going up in smoke. A taxi pulled up at Lincoln and Williams. A passenger got out. "Hey, mister," I yelled to the cab driver. "What's happening over there?" "Ain't you kids heard? The library's burnin' down." He sped away. I suddenly felt weird. The rest of the guys must have too. None of us spoke, neither did we race home and get our parents to rush us down to watch it like so many kids. No, we didn't see it up close and personal like Hattie Samuelson, the girl who lived across town and went to L.T. Stone School. Seven years later, after we had been married for a few months, my wife brought up the library fire. “I was at Cheryl's slumber party and she begged her dad to drive us to the fire. We were only dressed in our pajamas—shorty pajamas.” They had watched from opened car windows, along with hundreds lining the streets, as the majestic stone edifice—history—turned to ashes: eyewitnesses to Abe Lincoln and Carl Sandburg vaporized. But we Monkey Towners chose to stay put, sitting along the curb of a deserted street, gawking over the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy track embankment at the sky ablaze in the distance. And as I watched the glow, I searched my feelings. Finally, I put my finger on the emotion: a sense of loss, like when your best friend moves away. Even now it seems strange that I would feel like that. Back then, I wasn't much of a reader, had never even checked a book out of the Galesburg Public Library—a Carnegie Library. In fact, I could only remember being in it once—when my mother took me as a small child to get a volume my father wanted. The library hadn't been that important to me, now it suddenly was. Three summers before, I had passed it each morning with my swimming buddy Mike Wetherford as we walked to and from our lessons, taught to us by Mr. A. Fish (great name for a swim teacher) at the Steele Gym, just a block west on Simmons. I realized, sitting in the dark watching the distant inferno, that the Galesburg Public Library had been a life's fixture—a thing that marked the place where I lived. I also realized that it had waited there to help me find out who I was—but I had tarried, and now it was gone. Later, when I returned to Galesburg and taught fifth graders about their town's history, I used the library fire to teach the word "ironic":Wasn't Cheesy Levenberg's admonition for them to “hurry up" ironic?” For the problem that night was water pressure: there just wasn't enough water to reach the top of the library where the fire had started. If the ”Big Project” had been wrapped up sooner, so the pipeline gushed Mississippi River water into the wells in May instead of September, the firemen would have immediately knocked down the flames, and a life's fixture would have been preserved for me. Cheesy had been a kind of prophet. Over the years, I would think of him as greater than a prophet:Cheesy would become a friend, a sage, a counselor. He imparted wisdom: no matter your problem, he had a way of helping you shrink it. And he was always there for me, in the store from early a.m. until late-night closing. Trekking to Sam's became a ritual for me, like attending synagogue or church is for the observant. Sam's was where I heard the "latest news”—gossip. But it was also the place I got information, learned to debate—and studied the art of storytelling. Storytelling:Cheesy Levenberg was the greatest storyteller of my era. He had a way of personalizing a tale, making you feel that it was told just to you, even though you were only one in a crowd. He tagged every Monkey Towner with a nickname:"Bummy," "Tuti," "Whitey," "Schwartzie," ”Sprink,” ”Olie,” ”Swanie.” I was "Jake."And, as he wove his tale, he sprinkled the nicknames throughout the yarn: "You know what happened next, Jake? " or "It's like I always say, Bummy...." or ”Whitey, it reminds me of the time when....” He made you an owner of his story. Once, when we were sitting alone on the iron bench, Cheesy mentioned that Sam had come from a place called Lithuania. “Never heard of it,” I remarked, my eyes following a passing car. "It's part of the Soviet Union now.” Enough said. I mean, this was the height of the Cold War. The Soviets were the reason our teachers at Farnham made us bow on knees, hands covering our skulls, quaking in fear as we waited to get nuked. "Did Sam leave because of the Commies?" Cheesy removed the cigar which seemed perpetually in the corner of his mouth. "Before the Communists." There was a silence—then, "Jake, let's just say it could be a tough place on Jews." I got his meaning. Cheesy Levenberg was a hard guy to put a political label on. Wasn't a liberal: staunchly anti-communist and worshipped General George S. Patton. But Cheesy wasn't exactly a conservative either. He had a grasp of equality rare among Galesburg whites of that day, often declaring, "I've never denied service to anyone who came into my place." What's more, he sympathized with the civil rights movement—no comfortable position in the 1950's. You see, although abolitionists had founded the town (it had been a stop on the Underground Railroad) and we claimed some special link to the "Great Emancipator" through his debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Knox College, and although its favorite son is Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, Galesburg was racist. Evidence? African-American and Mexican-American children were isolated into three of our town's fifteen elementary schools, while black citizens couldn't get served at many of the town's restaurants or find a decent job. Racial epithets were common. Housing was segregated by gentlemen's agreement: "colored" sections of town and Mexican families forced to live in railroad camps. And the most obvious sign of bigotry: Lake Storey—our summer hang out—featured a "white" beach and a "colored" beach. Yes, Cheesy Levenberg's hospitality to those people of color who entered Sam's drew sharp contrast to other whites who claimed Galesburg as their town. Perhaps it was the experiences his father had as a Jew in Lithuania that honed Cheesy's sense of fair play. Or maybe it was just something that Cheesy had worked out on his own. I don't know. But he had a grasp of equality I had yet to develop. Once, near the demise of the old Negro Leagues, the Kansas City Monarchs came to Galesburg to play a local semipro team. Anyway, the Monarchs wound up at Sam's. "Sold them everything they needed—meat, bread, cheese, pop. They had their supper right here at the store," Cheesy bragged. Then he added, "Probably had a tough time finding a joint that would serve them." Fair play: He showed me it wasn't just a story. One summer night when the 50's were nearly the 60's, I rounded the corner and found Cheesy sitting on the iron bench, smoking his cigar and taking peeks at the traffic. A couple kids were hanging out, gabbing and laughing at his jokes. I took my place beside him on the bench and became one of the group. After a few minutes we went inside. We three kids had money burning holes in our pockets and we proceeded to spend it on what is known today as "junk food." We were gobbling chips and guzzling pop, still listening to Cheesy expound on various topics, when the screen door squeaked opened. We turned and stopped cold. A “Negro.” He wore work clothes—blue collar. Cheesy removed the cigar from his mouth, smiled, and stepped toward the black man. "Sir, what can I get for you tonight?" I studied the two of them: Cheesy, inviting, and the black man now more relaxed. "I need something for lunches.”. "Step over here." Cheesy directed him to the meat case. The man selected half a pound of a particular lunch meat, then he asked for a variety of other items from around the store—items any working person would pack into a 1950's lunch bucket. Cheesy got them for him. At last, with the three of us still looking on, Cheesy packaged everything up for the gentleman, just as he would for any other customer, then he took the man's money. They thanked each other. As the man was opening the screen door, Cheesy said, “Have a good evening.” The man turned, nodded, and said, “You too.” An indelible scene. Cheesy Levenberg would have never called himself an activist—not an activist in the sense that Dr. King was. But he set before me an example, demonstrating how one should treat others; he was a man whose actions spoke to me. In one sense, Cheesy was like the old public library—he marked my life; however, Cheesy was not just a monument of time and place. Instead, he was one of the people who helped me discover myself and helped to shape me for my future:Cheesy was a living fixture. Hometown of the poet Carl Sandburg. Site of a Lincoln-Douglas Debate and the “Great Carnegie Library Fire.” The city where you can still find a place called Monkey Town—my neighborhood, Cheesy Levenberg's neighborhood. My era was the spring and summer of 1950's Galesburg, Illinois. I often retreat to that time when the present—and the prospect of the future—overwhelm me. Not a perfect time; in many ways the present is better. But in some ways the present is not as good. You see, water systems can be improved, new businesses can replace corner groceries stores, and libraries can be rebuilt, but where is Cheesy Levenberg? “Memories of a Midwestern Town in the 1950's” was last published in the literary/art magazine Phizzogs, vol. xxxv, spring 2008; it first appeared in The Zepher, a political commentary weekly, which is no longer published.

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