Leland J. Kennedy Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

And of course, hell, I guess, when I was a kid, that the streets of Alton were paved with
brick before they - yes, because, hell, they paved Washington Avenue and State Street -
State Street where the old cathedral was, and they was paving that when I was in high
school.
Q: Well.
A: Paved it with brick and we'd see the sand and we'd race up on the sand and take our
shoes off, when we were in school at recess, or after school and race in the sand, and they'd
lay brick. But you'll see a lot of brick streets in Alton yet I guess that were paved with
Alton brick. Of course that was to keep the money in town you know, and of course in
those days property owners paid for their paving. And I guess they still do. Because we're
paying for this. If you want to - your subdivision - but probably like Washington Avenue
is the main thoroughfare and College Avenue is a main thoroughfare. State Street was the
main thoroughfare, Central Avenue, those name streets, and I'm sure that you were allowed
to have ten years to go on your tax bill. But they paid for those, the paving of those
streets. And I guess they still do, if they get any repairs. You put in your own sidewalks
and the way the real estate taxes have gone now, I doubt whether you can afford much of
that.
Q: Yes sir. (chuckles)
A: I guess that was an accepted custom in those days. There must have been hrick - I
wonder where the Calhoun Brick Company would peddle its bricks. Jacksonville or any
place I guess.
Q: I don't know.
A: Rut there was something in the paper about that in the Fifty-year Ago column recently,
some guy took a wagon ride to Calhoun and he said, "It was fifty years ago 1 had hot bricks
from the Calhoun Brick Company to keep my feet warm."
Q: Oh is that right? I'll be doggoned. (chuckles)
A: Yes. Just a little item you know, the Fifty-year Ago column.
I believe the way it came up, we were - I had asked whether there were railroads, just
as you had, in Calhoun County, and he indicated that one to the brickworks. Also it seems
to me that the brickworks must have been there for a long long time because the hotel,
the bricks in the hotel were made at that brickworks and the hotel was built in 1848 J think
or someplace along there.
Q: One thing - now you've mentioned several, quite a few, of these businesses as being
family-owned. I guess that's changed through the years has it not?
A: Oh sure, sure.
Q: The large conglomerates?
A: Alton was noted for that. As a kid, I had often hcard - I couldn't verify this - that
Alton had more millionaires per thousand population than any city in that category in the
nation. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I guess you could find that at the
library. It's not essential knowledge, but the truth is that some of these historians is sometimes
inaccurate you know. It makes good reading so they just say it, that's all.
Q: Yes sir.