Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

School as a student, you always took a walk out to, near the Statehouse, well there's a monument
out there, but it's not the Lewis and Clark monument, I guess it might be the Waan
Disaster. There was a big explosion, maybe from where - I don't know if it was from Western
now or not, but down and out in that area someplace, or a train wreck or something,
where a tremendous amount of people were killed. Waan Disaster. Now where it happened
or - but that's one of the things that came up when we were in school, particularly at Horace
Mann because I think it was in the - I can't recall but I believe that one of those teachers
must have had an ancestor in it or something, because she'd talk about that all the -
we took a hike out there.
And of course when we were at St. Patrick's, why, I'd serve mass and Beltrees at that time
was a mission church. Now you come right down Beltrees, you go right by it. It's on the
- not the river side, it's on the bluff side. It's - you come right back there, down between
Elsah and you go by Chautauqua and you go by - between the Clifton Terrace and Chautauqua
is the old Beltrees Road, it goes up by - you've probably seen the sign, Lockhaven
Country Club, it's back in there. There is still a mission Catholic church there. I think
it's the same church. I think Grafton has it now, but we - we used to, there was only
three Catholic parishes in Alton when I was kid, St. Mary's, St. Patrick's and the Old
Cathedral. And when I was in grade school at St. Patrick's . . .
SESSION 2, TAPE 3, SIDE 2
A: . . . in fact for the pastor of the day, and we had a little room downstairs that we bunked
in, and they'd take two fellows out. They'd go out on a Saturday night, maybe they'd go
out on a Friday night sometimes to stay the weekend, but not often. Maybe in my four
years at St. Patrick's, I might have been out there a half a dozen times. But that church
is still there, and it's still a mission.
Q: And this was to function as altar boy you mean?
A: Yes, as altar boy. That's the altar boy. That's a good - that's a term we don't use,
but that's right. I call it servant. But now most of the services that I go to are - at 6:40
in the morning, why, adults do that but they have the altar boys at the children's mass,
and most of them are at eight o'clock or 815.
But I recall Beltrees and, although there's of course the Owens-Illinois and Western Cartridge
and Beal Tube and Duncan Foundry which just closed but it's been there for years
and years and years. The old Gas and Electric up on Bell Street. If you read the Alton
paper - of course you wouldn't - they were trying to change the name of Bell Street to
Federal - there's a federal building there - to the Federal Way, and I'm not for it, but
I'm not in Alton. I think it's silly. Bell Street's alright with me. But as a kid, the old
Gas and Electric, that was prior to the Union Electric. They had a big explosion, and I
think I was in high school then or maybe - I think I was. But I don't know whether there
was any fatalities or not, but a big explosion there. I can recall that.
But Alton always had a lot of industry. It was kind of a - of course everybody had a gas
and electric, some - and then the old water company. Of course that's owned by the Alton
Water Company. You pass that when you go down the River Road to Mt. Vernon because
they've got a lot of barricades there I think.
Q: Yes.
A: If you recall, that's just about three or four miles downstream
Q: Yes.