Don's Blog '29 Dover' 7 More memories 1-17-2020

Hi Stacy, 

Its hard to believe that when Harold

Zook added on the Master Bedroom and the garage in the early 1930's ( the plans may be on microfilm some where at the Village Hall) that he did not enlarge the master bathroom. But yes this is the dinky Master Bathroom in all its unpretentious glory. I never thought of it as such.

My folks slept in the middle room with its Pine Room extension. We three boys slept in the large 

bedroom above the garage with its cantilevered balcony. My dad and the boys used this bathroom.

My first recollections are that as a very young boy I would take a bath and regularly my mother would wash my hair with shampoo. At the end of this I would close my eyes tight and she would rinse my hair with lemon juice.

Then we would fully rinse my head under the faucet.

Every bathroom medicine cabinet that I have had since leaving '29 Dover' has been dwarfed by my dad's which  is shown. I  remember when it was added. It was filled with his shaving mug and  brush and razors and a lifetime medicines. I was not close with my dad but remember often sitting on a hamper watching him shave. Later he switched to and electric razor and the romance disappeared.

As boys grow older it is sometimes necessary to get out of the house and not always with your parents knowing. One of our exits was through this bathroom window. With the window open it was easy to slip out and slide down the gutter down spout to the ground.  It was a little more difficult to get back in. I am not at liberty to discuss what happened on these outings.

If you ever had to back a car out of the left side of the garage you probably wondered why the driveway had that strange curve on the left. When the house was first designed Harold Zook planted a single birch tree  between the house and the sidewalk. As you know these are not common trees in La Grange but this one thrived. When the garage was added  with its stone  walls it was decided to save the birch tree. The tree died

when I was in high school.

.

29 Dover 6 1-16-2020 The Aura

Hi Stacy,

I loved the images of your pet squirrels and bunnies. The home was indeed unique. It had an aura that

can't be matched. Our home in Anchorage came close but nothing surpasses the feel of '29 Dover'. There was a sense of safety and security in the midst of the chaos of the neighborhood - houses so close you could smell them, cars coming by day and night, commuters always walking by, children of all ages making noises kids make (shouting,crying screaming, laughing, shooting off caps), bicycles, motor scooters, hand lawn mowers, leaves burning - but all anchored by your own count-on-able family in the home.

One domain that helped create this ambiance was the closeness of the railroad. Having grown up forever by the tracks the sound of the train going by was like hypnotic music to me. Many times I was asked by a visiting friend, "How can you stand that noise coming by all the time?" And I would routinely answer, "What noise?". The only time it ever bothered me was at a time in my life when I was sleeping in the Pine Room (off the central bedroom). In the early 1940's we had one radio, a large tabletop Philco, which my folks would listen to in the living room and when I was supposed to be asleep. When the train would go by I couldn't hear the radio in the most exciting part of what they were listening to. It never lasted too long. I really miss it. I can hear distant trains go by now where we live but its not the same.

On the landing shelf above the living room we had a clock that played the Westminster Chimes sequence all day and all night. But the most compelling tone audible at '29 Dover' was the sound of the gong from the clock in the LTHS Bell Tower at Cossitt and Brainard. I can still remember the 'feel' of the sound coming in at one in the morning - "Booooom".

During the war the neighborhood was especially close. My dad was too young to fight in WW I and too old to fight in WWII. He was the neighborhood Air Raid Warden. He had a special hat and a long flash light and would go out on designated blackout nights to make sure that all lights were out. One time the Chicago area had a test Air Raid. It was during the day and bombs were sent down from airplanes. The bombs were rolled newspaper about 3" wide and 3" long with several strands of red crepe paper attached like a kite tail. We were supposed to stay inside but one came down in our yard and I ran out and got it. It would have been a direct hit near our house. I kept it for years but it somehow disappeared along with my classic collection of trading cards.

The memories of our home at '29 Dover' get better with age. More to come.

29 Dover St. 5 The Neighborhood 1-15-2020

My parents were proud of their Zook designed Irish Hut. It sits on a triangular lot that was once a park. When we were growing up there  was a  large concrete fountain (a remnant of the park) in the corner of our next door neighbors , the Grogan's, house (to the east). Dover Street was distinct from Dover Place, a one block long street on the south side of the Auge's House across the street. Dover Place had no houses on it. Dover Street started at the gas station two blocks to the southeast, curved around our house and then went north across Ogden Avenue and ending 3-4 blocks north  at the Salt Creek Woods where the street turned east and with another name.

The Grogan's lived to the east of us. Barney Grogan owned the Florsheim Shoe store on La Grange Road south of the tracks on the east side. Barney had a machine that allowed you to see your feet in the new shoes for fit. I loved seeing my toes wiggle. After awhile we learned that such machines could be dangerous because of the radiation but it was a cool machine. Barney was a friendly neighbor but the pressures of life in his later years were too great  and he did himself in. We kids,of course, wondered what the room where it happened looked like.

The Hoags lived to the north of us with their elderly parents, the Bancrofts. They had several children and my brother was close to their son Chuckie. The Hoags moved and were replaced by the Fries, a large family from Tennessee, with many teen age daughters. They were very 'country'  with southern accents which added a lot of drama to the neighborhood.

The Leverings lived next to the Hoags. Dorothy Levering was my age and when she was five had polio requiring an iron lung. It was a time of concern. Polio was felt to be contagious and this fear was one of the reasons we were sent out of town for July and August for several years. Dorothy had been our playmate and I can still remember visiting her when she was in the iron lung. She passed away after about a year and a half (right at the start of the war). This was scary for us kids.

We all had the usual childhood infections such as measles and mumps and chicken pox. The village required contagious disease specific red signs to be put on the front door for several weeks when we had these diseases. Once while riding my bike near a friends house on Park I was bitten by a dog. Because the bite broke the skin  I had to take the two week series(14 days) of the dread anti-rabies shots in my hip. They were not really as painful as advertised

Our home was very well positioned. We could walk one block to the IGA grocery store and Schneider's Drug store a little further. Down from the drug store on Hilgrove was Nick's  Barber Shop.(One day I went to Nicks and asked for a Heiny haircut. My hair had been somewhat longer so Nick who was very smart  told me to go get my mother before he would do that, which I did). Further east on Hilgrove was the Park Movie Theater where almost every kid in town went on Saturday afternoons. It was during the war and each week we would see a news update and then either a war or a western movie. My favorite war movie was "The Commandos Strike at Dawn", a 1942 film with Paul Muni and Lillian Gish. My favorite western was any Hoppalong Cassidy film starring William Boyd. The kid noise in the theater was deafening. 

My dad worked at the Thorsen Real Estate office which was right across the street from the railroad tracks,an easy walk from home. 

29 Dover 4 1-14-2020

The MLS listing shows some great floor schematics.

A comment on "Cubbie Storage": From1930 into the 1940's this was the dread "Coal Room". Through an opening in the upper right corner of the room the coal was delivered regularly to the room from the outside via a chute.Over half of the room would be filled with coal. My father would shovel the coal into the furnace. The room was scary but the furnace was not. The unheated room was somewhat frightening because it was mostly dark (one dim  light) and was coal black and dusty and always dank. My father deserves a medal for keeping us warm. I still marvel at how the heat was transferred from the furnace to the radiators that warmed the house. We did have storm windows at times for really cold winters.

Above and to the left of the coal chute opening on the side of the house was a small rectangular window for the delivery of ice for the ice box. I loved seeing the ice man coming from his truck with a big block of ice on his shoulder. He had a heavy leather drape on his shoulder for the ice. He lifted it with heavy tongs and the ice was always covered with saw dust. He would open the latched door on the house and then open the ice compartment on the back of the ice box. Placing the ice gently (on my mothers command) he would sometimes go get another block. At some point in the 1940's we got a refrigerator and the romance of the ice man was gone but not forgotten.

We did not have a mail box or a mail slot up front. The mail was delivered to a slot opening through the back door.

My mother did the family laundry every Monday. The clothes from the upstairs came down to the basement from a clothes chute which was across from my sisters bedroom. The laundry room was elevated above the  basement floor.  We had a  small electric washing machine and a hand crank wringer. The wringer got most of the water out of the washed clothes. In good weather she hung the clothes on a line in the back yard and in the winter they were hung in the basement. She used a cotton clothes line with wooden clothes pins. We got a clothes dryer sometime after 1938. How was my mother able to do this mostly by herself for all those years?

The basement had a central area and to the left was a little used work bench with a vise and some tools. Beyond that on the left in the center was the squat furnace which was painted white and behind that the coal room. Across from the clothes chute a small toilet was added. The most basement fun that I had was when we got a ping pong table. We literally played for hours and got pretty good. I later played on the winning Intramural Table Tennis team in college. We were undefeated for two years.

During the war years the whole neighborhood would gather in the basement to "put up" various forms of tomato products that had come from our Victory Garden, a vacant lot by the Turk's house on Dover St across from the Hoags our northern neighbors. The tomatoes were put in jars in various forms: tomato segments, catsup, and chili sauce. They were ground up using a mortar and pestle like device called a Foley Food Mill. The results were equally shared but the patriotic neighborhood fun was the main take away.

29 Dover St. 3 1-13-2020

To: Stacy McClure

Hi Stacy, 

We all love our memories and this is especially fun now with new snow stifling our outdoor aspirations. We handled the basement flooding with a standpipe that screwed into the floor drain by the furnace. It was over four feet high. We never had flooding from the garage or the wash room. I think it became more complicated when we installed a toilet. We always had everything down there up on blocks but even then when it flooded it was disastrous. We lost a part of my father's 1865 four poster bed to one flood. It was too large to get up the stairs to the attic where the the headboards and the mahogany posts were stored. We have a dry basement now - a godsend.

The original roof was wavy shakes. It was just too hard for the roofers to figure out so when the roof had some damage in the 50's it was replaced with shakes but they were straight across. Years later when my folks had to replace the roof they switched to standard shingles, much to our distaste. 

But their finances had changed after sending three boys through medical school and a daughter through nursing school.

We had a number of beloved dogs in the house. They were Susie, a Springer Spaniel; Blaze, a Pointer; Shine, a black Lab( who was tragically killed by the Denver Zephyr), and Topsie, a spaniel that was contrary and seemingly lived forever.

We never realized how small the kitchen was until we left home. My mom cooked for the six of us with no problem. Storage was always an issue.

Although I was unaware of ghosts in the house but if they were there they would have been kind ghosts with a great sense of humor. I am sure the parties and music that you heard were from those happy times our family had in abundance. We were fortunate to have been surrounded by happiness and love despite floods and a World War and losing occasionally to Hinsdale.

More to come as my memory bank has been upended.

Don

On Jan 12, 2020, at 11:40 PM, Stacy McClure wrote:

Hi Don,

Thank you for sharing your wonderful memories. We love the house and even my daughter Evey says when she gets older she is going to buy it back.

Your story of the basement flooding with sewer water happened to us 4 times. There was a drain in the floor of the garage which would spew sewer water like a geyser. The water would run straight into the basement. When we tore up the floor of the basement we found another drain there too that was covered by an elevated floor.

We, of course, plugged up both these drains. That and a sump pump still didn't stop the basement from flooding every 1-2 years. We would tear out the entire floor and 2 feet of drywall each time. Finally 2 years ago we had Permaseal come and fix the problem. Cost a bit to do but it had been dry ever since.

I don't know if you noticed but the roof is also new. I wonder if the house had the wavy roof at one time? It would be beautiful to put back. 

We installed gas logs in the fireplace so can't throw anything into the fire. It's a nice big fireplace and is great to have it instantly. 

We installed a vinyl wood planks in the kitchen floor where the red brick tiles were. It keeps it warmer in the winter. We also installed a antique style tin ceiling and rustic chandelier in the kitchen. My kitchen growing up in Texas was half the size and my Mom too made meals every night so this one seemed big to me. 

One night when my daughter was about 18 months old(she is now 12) and my husband was out of town, she started singing, "There's a ghost on my ceiling yes there is, and his name is Harry". Of course this did not sit well with me as I thought about Harold Zook. She then said, dada has a ghost that follows him around named Fifi.

I dare ask if you had any pets by that name?

I hope I don't come off weird but my Mom and myself included sometimes hear parties and music in the house at night.

Anyway, I'll keep you updated with what happens!

Stacy 

On Jan 12, 2020, at 7:46 PM, Don wrote:

Stacy: See what you started. As you can see my whole family loved our house. As I  remember: My folks lived in Marietta Georgia after they were married. It was during the depression and my dad (Arch) and mom (Gladys) moved to La Grange in 1929 or 1930 when my dad got a job at the First National Bank of Chicago. My grandfather (Robert V. Thomas) was quite successful (Hooker Paint and glass Co.) and lived on south Seventh Avenue in La Grange. He and my grandmother had five children - one died at childbirth; two died over one weekend in 1909 of Scarlet Fever; my mother and her brother were the only survivors. My recollection is that when Arch and Glad moved "home" Grampa Thomas bought them the Zook 

House which was always described as an Irish Hut possibly from either Mr Zook or more probably from the Bancrofts. My folks added the master bedroom and the garage in the thirties. It was before I was born (1935) as one of my earliest memories was being in a crib in the folks master bedroom with them.

From: David Sessions

The Hoags lived next door to us. Bobby Hoag's parents the Bancrofts built the house with Zook as the architect. I don't think they ever lived in it. They lived with the Hoags when we were kids. Mr. Bancroft went to the Christian Science Reading Room (religiously). 

On Sun, Jan 12, 2020 at 3:12 PM Gordon Sessions  wrote:

Not sure when they bought it?

There is a plaque on the wall in one of the pics staring the architect was Harold Zook.

 Roscoe Harold Zook (21 May 1889 – 17 April 1949) was an American architect best known for his work in suburban Chicago, Illinois. He received a degree in architecture from the Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology, or IIT) in 1914. In 1916 Zook married his first wife, Mildred Barnard. They divorced in the late 1930s. They had one son, Harold Barnard Zook, who followed in his father's footsteps to become an architect in Corona del Mar, California. In the early 1940s, Zook married his second wife, Florence (Barkey) Nissen, whom he met through mutual friends (and clients). Zook died in April 1949, just short of his 60th birthday.^[1][2]

On Jan 12, 2020, at 4:03 PM, Chris Sessions wrote:

Grand memories indeed. It's pretty wild to see the place now. I remember how big the place used to seem back then. A wonderful place. Do you know who originally built the place? Were your parents the original owners?  

Chris 

29 Dover St - 2 1-12-2020

One Sunday morning we were all getting ready to go to church (First Congregational). We heard a tremendous crash. When we went downstairs to check we found that about 25% of the dining room plaster ceiling had spontaneously fallen down onto the dining room table which was fairly new at the time. Other than the ceiling there was minimal damage. There had been a leak to the left of the valley on the roof.We got the leak fixed right away but it took some time to repair the ceiling. I could always see where it had been because the plaster swirls were different. I wonder how it looks now?

Dover St. 1 1-12-2020

The current owners of our family home have put it on the market and kindly sent me some images.  It sure looks different. Some memories have been triggered which I will share.

When we were smaller (1940's) we used to play tackle football between the side walk and the street. We had to dodge around huge elm trees. During  the mid 1950's the towering elms that fully shaded the surroundings succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease. It certainly changed the character of the entire neighborhood.

When we were growing up La Grange was a big commuter town with many of our neighbors walking by our house on the sidewalk to the Stone Avenue Station to ride the train (the Burlington Route) to Chicago each morning and home in the late afternoon. We knew almost everyone. 

My older brothers taught me to ride my bicycle on this sidewalk. 

Don's Blog I Join the Met 1-11-20

It is always interesting when you remember something from your distant past that makes you smile. 

It was in the Spring of my freshman year at Washington University Medical School, in 1959, when we students

were given an offer we could not refuse. We were asked to help out that evening at a performance of the New York Metropolitan Opera at the Kiel Opera House in downtown St Louis. They needed some "supers" to support the visiting troupe. A "super" we were later told would go on stage in costume and perform only by its presence.We med students equated this in value to an anatomical anomaly called a supernummery nipple. These accessory or 'extra' nipples about which we had recently learned occur sometimes in humans and  although of some interest have little functional value.

I had gone to college near New York City but had never attended let alone been 'in' the Metropolitan Opera.  We all signed up. Late that afternoon we assembled at the Kiel and were given our costumes. We were to walk on stage, say nothing and not look out at the audience. After our routine we were to walk slowly off stage. The stage manager chose what our individual parts would be. We then got into our costumes and did one run through without the music. Then we went backstage again to wait our turns. When it came time for me and my partner to go on stage the opera was in full swing with lights and music. Before we went onstage we could see the darkened audience. 

As the pressure mounted I played my role with authority. I was unable to see anything because my contribution was to be the rear end of a horse. I could only see the back end of my roommate Charlie who was the front of our horse. I know you will agree that I did not need any practice to play my part and you will surely not be surprised to know that I played the role expertly. I remember walking on stage all bent over, standing for awhile, and then shuffling off again. There was no applause. 

And that was what it was like to be in the Met. Per union rules we each were paid $2 for our part - cash. We were allowed to  stay in the wings and watch the rest of the opera. Then the real magic began. The star

appeared in the wings. He was short and stout and had a large gnarly nose. He stood alone and began to sing while still offstage then still singing he went onstage. From this short homely man came the most beautiful voice we had ever heard. He was Richard Tucker and was America's greatest tenor. We watched the rest of the opera in total awe. Richard Tucker gave a total of 724 performances for the Met and his rendition that night at the Kiel is still indelible to us. He died in 1975 at age 62 and his is the only funeral to have graced the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. 

As for us we went back to our books and cadavers knowing that there was a  possibility of something inspiring

ahead in life. So you can think of me as a retired surgeon, gnome meister, blogger and photographer, formerly of the Metropolitan Opera.

Don's Blog "Surface At The Pole" 1-9-2020

My interest in the arctic began at age seven when my mother gave me a copy of "Bertram Goes to The

North Pole". This interest was re-kindled when I was stationed in Anchorage Alaska in the Air Force. I spent every Tuesday on loan to the Public Health Service Hospital where I did ear surgery on Inuit children. As we learned more about Inuit culture we became involved with Inuit art. Subsequently through my son Lee I participated in multiple canoe expeditions to the Canadian Arctic. This has been accompanied by  reading many books about early polar exploration. For many years I have been a mostly silent participant in a Facebook Group (Remembering the Franklin Expedition) with an active interest in the history of polar exploration. More recently I travelled on a ship from Greenland to Nome which continued to solidify for me the history of the region and its relationship to contemporary arctic life.

I have just finished a book entitled "Surface At The Pole" by James Calvert. It is a fascinating story about another government sponsored polar exploration. Calvert was the commanding officer of the USS Skate which was our country's third nuclear powered submarine. The book described how USS Skate became the second submarine (after the Nautilis) to go under the North Pole and then the first to surface at the pole in March of 1959. It is well written, exciting and suspenseful. Calvert is aware of the historical importance of his voyages quoting explorers Fritjof Nansen of the Fram (1893) and Vilhjalmur Stefanssen of the Karluk (1913) regarding their ill fated expeditions. Both explorers though they both lost their ships became world famous.

What was interesting to me was Calverts descriptions of the Arctic Ocean. 

At its deepest the Arctic Ocean is 18,050 feet but the average depth is 3,240 feet from the ocean floor. The ocean is perennially covered with sea ice (frozen salt water) which is usually ten to 200 feet thick. The excitement in the book revolves around concerns about the depth of the water and the thickness of the ice. Commander Calvert proved several times that if the ice is too thick the submarine would stop as if it hit an impenetrable wall. Concerns about the fragility of  the "thin skin" covering the nuclear submarine and the possibility of catastrophe are well presented. 

Calvert and his crew had to find thin areas of ice through which light shined in their search for "open leads" and polynyas (small lakes) in attempting to surface. Once they could surface they became quite aware of how totally desolate were their surroundings. This was exceptionally notable when the surfaced in Stefasson's Zone of Comparative Inaccessibility which appears to be south and west of the pole. This was an area where surface ice movements historically would not have been expected to carry trapped ships. Certainly Calvert and his crew would have been among the first persons to be in this area.

Of further interest to me was Calvert's description of the underlying topography of the Arctic Ocean. From the late 19th century when Norwegian explore Nansen discovered an ocean in the central Arctic until the middle of the twentieth century it was believed that the Arctic Ocean was a single large basin. Explorations after 1950 showed that rather than a single basin the Arctic Ocean consists of two deep basins divided by three transoceanic ridges. Calvert followed and studied the most central of these ridges called the Lomonosov Ridge. It extends from the continental shelf off Canada's Ellesmere Island to the Russian New Siberian Island's. The two deep basins separated by the Lomonosov Ridge are referred to as the Eurasia Basin on the European side of the ridge and the Amerasia Basin on the American side. The Lomonosov Ridge varies in width from 40 to 120 miles, and its crest ranges in height from 10,800 to 12,400 feet  above the 13,800 foot seabed.  Slopes of the ridge are relatively steep, broken up by canyons, and covered with layers of silt.  This enormous submarine mountain range was discovered by Soviet scientists in 1948–49 and reported in 1954. Calvert was able to "see" and study this ridge with instruments in 1959.

Of personal interest is that my brother-in-law Bill knew Commander Calvert through some business dealings. He found him to be an impressive, highly effective no nonsense leader.

Don's Blog "Tectonics" 1-8-2020

Ted Kooser is a poet who lives outside of Garland, Nebraska. A friend recently wrote me that memory is everything. If that is true I am in trouble.

          Tectonics

In only a few months

there begin to be fissures 

in what we remember,

and within a year or two

the facts break apart

one from another

and slowly begin to shift

and turn, grinding.

pushing up and over each other

until their shapes

have been changed

and the past has become a new world.

And after many years

even a love affair,

one lush green island

all to itself,

perfectly detailed,

with even a candle 

softly lighting a smile,

may slide under the waves

like Atlantis,

scarcely rippling the heart.

Ted Kooser

Delights and Shadows

Copper Canyon Press 2004