September 1, 2003
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Dave Uphoff

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Streator ain't no town for wimps

Every town has an image to uphold or to downplay depending on its reputation. Here in Central Illinois, Bloomington is considered a refined town with bluebloods sitting around the country club sipping chardonnais and eating brie. With its two universities and insurance companies, it is considered a white collar city with a genteel reputation. Peoria with its riverfront past replete with bawdy houses and breweries had a national reputation as a place to have a good time where anything goes. Peoria has been trying to downplay its reputation for the past 60 years.

And then there is poor ole' Streator, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Twenty five miles northeast of Minonk, Streator has no interstate highways passing through. The city is situated on a second rate river called the Vermilion that has more of a reputation for being a depository for toxic chemicals and human waste than a place for sailing boats or transporting cargo. A joke that has been around for years is that whenever someone in Streator wants a drink of water, someone in Pontiac twenty miles upstream has to flush their toilet.

The once proud capital of the glass bottle industry has lost its many factories to the changing times. Years ago Streator was a brawny, tough, and thriving city that was a haven for blue-collar workers. No room for computer nerds, file clerks, or typists in this town. Streator had two glass factories, 2 brick yards, fertilizer plants, trucking firms, and numerous smaller factories and machine shops that employed hard-working, hard playing, and hard drinking men. There were no stiff collar wimps who shuffled numbers by day, read The New York Times at night. Streator workers shuffled boxes during the day and read the tip sheets after work in the local bar.

Unlike most other Central Illinois towns that had a familar mixture of people with English, German, and Irish backgrounds, Streator had a lot of Czechs and Poles with funny sounding names. Being the glass capital of the world, Streator drew a lot of immigrants from Czechoslovakia where glass making was a prevalent industry.

While Streator had a reputation of being a tough town, it did have excellent shopping. Streator was known for its clothing stores years ago. My mother used to go to Streator to buy her clothes. Even people from Bloomington would go to Streator to buy clothes. Paris Cloak was one of the clothing stores that I remember. Hills sweetshop was located on Main Street and had an old fashioned soda fountain similar to the Princess Sweet Shop in Minonk.

Streator was a fun place to be 50 years ago. It had a lot of night life for a town of its size. Indian Acres at the north edge of town on Route 23 was the biggest dance hall around in the 1940's and 50's. It drew all of the top name bands of that era. It was a great place to meet women as well. When I lived in Chicago back in the 1960's I used to brag to my friends at our house about what a great place Streator was for having a good time. One Saturday four of us jumped in a car and drove to Streator's Indian Acres which was still a jumping place. One of the guys made friends with a girl and went back often for dates with her. We used to kid him about going to see his Streator Woman.

In a complete turn around, the building that formerly housed Indian Acres has been converted into a church.

Owens-Illinois glass factory was the main employer in Streator. It was a tough place to get hired into and a tough place to work. In fact, Smitty, the personnel manager who wore an Owens-Illinois athletic jacket, would ask prospective employees for their rap sheet instead of their resume. Just kidding! Even though this was in the days of the IBM dress code for office workers, none of the office workers at Owens wore ties that I can remember.

I worked at Owens-Illinois in the early 1960's loading trucks with cartons of glass bottles. It was a tough but friendly crew to work with. Every few hours we got a 15 minute break. As soon as we got to the break room, a deck of cards would hit the table and we would spend the entire break playing euchre for money .

The workers at Owens-Illinois were proud of their work and were loyal to the company and its products. I played on the Owens-Illinois softball team one summer and everyone was supposed to bring a six-pack of beer to the game for an after-game party. I showed up with a six pack of Schlitz in CANS. The other players and fans just about tarred and feathered me when they saw that I had brought cans instead of bottles.

Right across from the Owens-Illinois factory were four taverns. The most popular bar was the 820 Club. Workers would stream into the taverns after work, especially on Friday after being paid. Many workers wore their Owens-Illinois athletic jackets which were either gray or black with red trim. As I said, workers were proud to advertise their affiliation with Owens. I am not too sure that workers nowdays have that same loyalty and respect for their employer.

Streator was teeming with night life. Besides Indian Acres, there was Stoney's, also located on north Route 23, where if you were high enough to reach the bar, you would be served. Delmonte's was located on some side street west of Bloomington Street where a fight would break out every 5 minutes. Downtown at the corner of Bloomington and Main Street was Rokey's Flame Room which always had a rock band. One of the last times I went to Rokey's was with a girl I briefly dated. I accidently dropped a cigarette ash on her new dress and burned a hole in it while I was sitting next to her. She wept quietly in the car all the way home. I felt like a jerk. That was one of my first inklings that perhaps smoking wasn't too cool.

My favorite bar was the Stork Club a half block west of the Flame Room. We called it Dutcheys after the name of the owner. He was a quiet little guy who tended bar with his wife Alice who we called The Woman from Bath because she had a gap in her front teeth just like the Woman from Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Stork Club had a great Country and Western band with Little Dale Ross on the steel guitar whose wife Goldey tended bar there. The singer was a guy by the name of Red Tuck who came from Arkansas. This place did not have the same ambience as the Stork Club of New York fame. One time my late friend Ed (Bird) Dishinger and I double dated and took our dates to the Stork Club. As the night wore on Bird and I started to roam around the bar. When we returned both of our girl friends had left the bar with two other guys. We never did know how they got home to Toluca. Eddie and I returned home by ourselves.

After a year of loading boxes at night, I ran back to college to get my degree. My working days in Streator were over. Streator was the perfect place for me at that time because I was making the transition from an irresponsible, carefree juvenile into an adult. I worked with vigor and played without guilt and had the time of my life. I am just glad that I survived.


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