Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

and oh, we'd - I recall going to St. Louis. He'd take mom and I and my sister and brother
down to - we'd see a game and we'd - the ballpark was at Grand and. . . . Of course
you took the streetcar out. You went down on the streetcar. We didn't have a car. My
parents never owned a car. And you'd go on the streetcar out there and then you'd come
back, and there was no night ball.
We'd always eat down at the Nuggent's and that was a forerunner, I guess, of Stix, Raer
and Fuller. And the building's right down there yet at Sixth and Washington. I think it
might be Fourth and Washington where Nuggents was, but I recall that one time my dad
didn't have a coat, and they furnished him a coat. (chuckles)
Q: Oh really? Well, I'll be darned.
A: They wouldn't turn him away, but they just furnished him a little black blazer like -
a thin one you know - like maybe these people wear when they work, in pink . . . or something
like that.
Q: Well I'll be darned. (chuckles)
A: It was black, but they furnished him a coat. My dad, when he was in his career at the
glassworks and made some good money, he took care of his family when he had it. And
he bought us things.
Q: Could you kind of characterize what the industry was in Alton in your youth back in
the teens and 1920's.
A: Industry?
Q: Yes. What type of
A: Well of course there was - I'm going to go down to Wood River and Hartford in Roxanna
now. Standard Oil Refinery was a big refinery when I was a youth. Of course Shell came
in here right after World War I, and they prospered. Of course the Owens-Illinois Glass
was the chief employer. Or one of the chiefs. Of course the old one - the old Western
Cartridge, well, that was probably the biggest employer and it might still be right
now. They used to run the Plug. They called it the Plug. The Terminal, the Big Four,
they ran a train out of Alton and they'd get on down there to - I think Broadway and
Woods or down at the old C & A depot, which isn't there now, in what they call River Front
Park now, and they'd run a plug. And it - oh, it would have five or six coaches and the
men that worked there, and of course some women too, rode the Plug, that's what they
rode. Now its hours - it made a run down in the morning and it made a run back at
night. Now whether it came back in between the day, I wouldn't know that.
Of course there was Beall Tool Company and the Duncan Foundry which closed. Rut the
glassworks - and Western Cartridge it was called then, it wasn't called Owen Company
at that time. It was called the Western Cartridge. And one of the Owens just died. The
Owens boys' dad, he died I think the first year I went to the assembly, I believe, and I left
in 1946 or 1947. I believe he died about then, because I remember there was a resolution
that was introduced that had the fellows from Madison County - they put their name on
them. Someone else introduced it, some friend of the family. But I think Harris and I
- and Orville Hodge may have introduced that, I don't know, but I was on that
resolution. But one of his boys just died here in the past thirty days, Donald, wasn't it?
Q: Yes.
A: Rut I don't know this, but I understand that - 1 have no proof of this - the father
of the Owens boys went through Western Cartridge at the turn of the century. Now it's