Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

een that far back, in that era, maybe 1904, and 1905, and 1906, in there, and sold stock
for that company to the employees.
Q: I'll be darned.
A: Of course they had to buy it but real real cheap.
Now how the glassworks was organized I don't know, but I know this: the glassworks had
an office in St. Louis and their executives would go down on a boat. Now there must have
been, besides those steamers, daily transportation between Alton and St. Louis. In those
days. Of course there was train service and interurban service, but I guess for the people
that could travel leisurely, that could get on a packetboat and go down to - there always
was a lot of river traffic, not so much barge traffic, they hadn't thought the barges yet. But
the river traffic, oh, there was always a lot of river traffic.
By the way, when I - of course this is closer back to the 1930's again, I told you that 1
went to work for Shell in 1927 - I worked in what they called the light oil treating
department. We were just operating engineers. That was our official title. That was the
union we belonged to. And we handled the transportation of gasoline. And we loaded
barges, I suppose the first barges were loaded in this area. This is quite a barge center
now you know, down in the marine terminal down in Hartford on the Mississippi River. If
you go down Route 3, you'll go by and you'll see signs pointing to the barge traffic. I think
the Shell refinery and the Clark refinery, and I believe that there's another refinery comcs
in there - one of these, that one over in Robinson has a barge terminal there. They load
a lot of petroleum products, mostly gasoline I guess, but they load asphalt and barges and
there are some oil barges. I think it's one of the largest barge terminals on the Mississippi
River outside of New Orleans, that down at Hartford, or Hartford Terminal I think they
call it.
Q: Now does that traffic go north and south or .
A: It goes both ways. If you have ever noticed it, and wondered why, if you see a petroleum
barge, when it's full, it's just almost level with the water. If you see one that's sticking
up, maybe seven or eight feet, it's empty. And of course coal and steel are loaded on barges
now too. Laclede Steel's got a barge landing. Laclede Steel was here of course. I failed
to mention them, and I think that, if you've noticed, you mentioned about going to Mount
Vernon, there's always those hundred plus coal cars going through here.
Q: Yes.
A: Route 3, they're going north, or you see them deadheaded back, they're going up, I guess,
to Commonwealth and Edison or Northern Illinois Gas up there with their coal, I would
think that's where they'd be going. Maybe they're going west out to Kansas City, which
probably some of them do go that far. I imagine that Union Electric plants - there's a
couple along the Mississippi and I guess they get their coal that way. I've never paid that
much attention, but you see them going through. Hell, when I rode the train to Springfield,
you'd get to see them all the time. Because they'd be on the siding, they'd get on the siding
for a passenger train, but if they were ahead of a passenger train, you had to follow them
until they got to a siding.
Q: Well.
A: Because we were - oh, I've been delayed numerous times out at the cutoff stations -
C & A, I call it the cutoff, it's the official station - because there's a coal train ahead of
you, see? But they'd get to the siding around Carlinville or there's a couple - there's one
up around - well just south of Springfield - what are some of those towns, Waverly?