Posted by hawk3ye on Mar 6, 2009 in
History One night enjoying some brandy and babbling with my friends Tom & Kathy a long-forgotten family story popped into my head. Although it had always been there and to my mind was just as well-worn as most of my tales, apparently it was new to Tom & Kathy, and when I repeated it later, to Jim as well. So sit right back and you’ll hear the tale:
Rufus Reuben Tucker was one of those “no-good” relations that family has little nice to say about later (many apologies to cousins Judy & Bill Tucker & families). He was married to my grandpa’s much-loved sister Petrona, who died too young of breast cancer in the late sixties or early seventies. [Update Per AP: She had breast cancer at one time, but died of heart disease in 1975.] They had a bitter divorce and she destroyed most photos of him, so the one shown here is a rare specimen from the family archives.
The story I remember has to do with the famous 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” You may have heard that the broadcast was mistaken for breaking news by American listeners and created a panic, although Wikipedia says this is largely a myth:
The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast was presented as a series of simulated news bulletins, which suggested to many listeners that an actual Martian invasion was in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ’sustaining show’ (i.e., it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the dramatic effect. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic, careful research has shown that while thousands were frightened, there is no evidence that people fled their homes or otherwise took action.[citation needed] The news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode launched Orson Welles to fame.
According to family lore, Rufus Reuben Tucker, then employed as much of my mom’s family was in the coal mines of Southern Illinois, was caught up in the (perhaps mythical) wave of panic. He grabbed up a coffee can containing his all of his young family’s savings, left wife and children behind, and hid down in the mine to escape the Martians.
The practicality of this move aside (do extra-terrestrials accept US currency?), you can imagine that forever after Reuben would have been known as 1) an ass, 2) a fool who believed the “War of the Worlds” broadcast was real, 3) a coward who immediately abandoned his wife & kids in the face of alien invasion, without seeing one flying saucer or little green man.
Flush with recent praise for this gem of a tale, I asked my Uknavage family if they remembered any more details. And none of them knew what I was talking about! What? Did I make it up? Did I overhear it sometime at a family gathering when neither of my aunts, my uncle, or my sister were present? It seems unlikely but possible.
We do have some video archives from the late 1980s of my grandpa & his aunt Susie — a couple of hours of old family stories in fact. So I have some research to do to find the source of this story, where Reuben & Petrona lived in 1938, what mine that might have been, how widespread the radio broadcast was in Southern Illinois, etc. Another fun mystery to be solved.
Tags: family, legend, southern illinois, war of the worlds
Posted by hawk3ye on Mar 5, 2009 in
History I just read an amazing blog post by John Tolva about tracing his ancestors arrival in Chicago from Italy.
The blog reminded me that I had found an address for Jim’s ancestors at 259 Hermitage Avenue in Chicago, an address that no longer exists. Suddenly I have the resources to find out if that address might have been renumbered or to view what the map of that neighborhood looked like in 1890.
As for my own Chicago ancestors… When I chose to move to Chicago 12 years ago it was because I had grown to love the place during many weekend train trips throughout high school and college. My family, however, all lived in Kankakee & Iroquois counties in Illinois, with other relatives spread across Colorado & points west. As I’ve lived here though I have found that I do have roots in Chicago: My great-great-grandparents, Nikolaus Posing and Mary Virginia Bensler, left Luxembourg as young people on the same ship in 1882, and after a few years on the east coast, were reunited up in Chicago. They were married in Rogers Park (or “South Evanston” as it reads on the certificate) on September 19, 1887, and still lived there in 1890. By 1900 they had relocated to Kankakee County.
I think it’s about time to track down those Bruckers and Posings in Chicago history and stand for a time where they did.
Tags: chicago, family, genealogy, maps
Posted by hawk3ye on Nov 11, 2008 in
History Jim and Toni and I went to the 2nd play in our subscription series at Illinois Theatre Center this week—”The Subject Was Roses.” Great acting in a family drama about the blame game. ITC is a unique small suburban Equity theater that has been in their town for 30+ years, headed by producing director Etel Billig, who always entertains. On the back side of the theater, which is in the old downtown shopping center, is a mural that has a cool painting of the Billigs.
There is also an art gallery adjoining the lobby of the theater which we had a few minutes to explore. There were sculptures of clay, rope, and waxed index cards from a library card catalog. Really worth stopping by if you are ever in Park Forest.
We talked about how the times have left this downtown shopping center behind, and it never really recovered from the advent of Lincoln mall (1973) & Orland Square mall (1976). Many of the spaces are empty and others house village offices, such as the Rich Township Senior Center where Toni works. In another bit of trivia, Jim’s step-grandfather’s old family farm is now the site of Lincoln Mall in Matteson. A little tidbit for future genealogical research.
It reminds me of the older Meadowview shopping center in Bradley we went to when I was young, and how it suffered when Sears and Penney’s moved to Northfield Square mall (1990). Meadowview had a great bookstore called the Little Professor where I bought my treasured editions of Frances Hodgkins Burnett and Shel Silverstein. I would buy shaker-knit sweaters off the clearance rack at Sears with my babysitting money. On the far side of Sears there was also a whole store devoted to stickers! And there was a Baskin Robbins as well (one scoop French Vanilla, one scoop Chocolate Fudge Brownie on a sugar cone please). Meadowview also had a big Woolworth’s complete with soda shop counter. I think I ate a BLT there once with my grandma, although it was rare to be in Kankakee/Bradley with grandma. We made the 35-mile trip with mom almost every weekend to this town where she grew up.
Posted by hawk3ye on Aug 6, 2008 in
History Monday night we had the rare treat of hearing the tornado sirens sounded in our Chicago neighborhood of Logan Square. National Weather Service bulletins were sure to include the addendum THIS TORNADO WARNING INCLUDES THE CITY OF CHICAGO for any remaining disbelievers.
That’s because we in Chicago don’t commonly expect tornadoes to hit us. But where I grew up, on a farm halfway between Donovan, Illinois and Morocco, Indiana, we definitely did. I’ve seen the term “tornado alley” used when referring to the Great Plains states in general, but at home I commonly heard this term used to refer specifically to the Donovan-Morocco corridor. And yesterday I began to wonder why this was.
My mom once told me a story that may have originated from my step-dad’s grandfather, Grandpa Lyle, who lived across the road from us. But my mom was also the bookkeeper for the local Ford dealer, one of the only businesses in town, where Grandpa Lyle and other retired farmers frequently gathered to drink coffee and gossip—so it could have come from any one of them. For many years these were my mom’s primary circle of friends, from whom she collected stories, amusing expressions (”well for cry-eye!”), surplus corn and zucchini, and recipes for window wash. She is now buried in the same cemetery with most of these old guys.
But the story… A family was passing in their wagon by the old church than once stood 1/2 mile to the west of our house. A storm was coming and people in the churchyard called to the family to take shelter there. But as the family lived just a short distance away (1/2 mile to the east of our house as I remember it) they thought they could make it easily. In fact they did get home, but a tornado hit as they were trying to get in the cellar, demolishing their house and killing all of them. My kid’s mind always imagined the family being partway down the cellar steps and getting halved by the flying house. It was a gruesome and sad story.
In the 80s I remember two major tornado incidents witnessed by my parents. My mom left her office at Hewson Ford to make her daily walk 2 blocks west to the post office, on an average breezy day. Halfway there the sky darkened, the wind whipped down the block, and she looked up to see a tornado on the horizon, framed neatly by the buildings on either side of the street. She was able to scurry back to the office without peeing her pants, and the tornado did not hit town after all.
My dad, whose work on gas wells frequently took him to Indiana, was driving back to Illinois when a tornado formed near Morocco. He followed it for quite a few miles along his route. I think that tornado did some damage that year, and possibly involved a guy saving himself by hanging on to a refrigerator. I remember that the “Welcome to Morocco” sign on the north side of town featured a tornado, as well as a major league baseball player born there, which I always thought was a funny juxtaposition.
Anyway, I thought I would toodle about the Internet yesterday and see if Donovan and Morocco really do form a sinister path of death and destruction. These towns have somehow escaped Web chronicles outside of some perfunctory entries in Wikipedia and City-data. So here’s what City-data has on the tornado occurrence rates:
Donovan-area historical tornado activity is near Illinois state average. It is 93% greater than the overall U.S. average. On 3/12/1976, a category 3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 9.9 miles away from the Donovan village center killed one person and injured 15 people and caused between $50,000 and $500,000 in damages. On 5/15/1968, a category 3 tornado 16.5 miles away from the village center caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.
Morocco-area historical tornado activity is near Indiana state average. It is 93% greater than the overall U.S. average. On 4/3/1974, a category 4 (max. wind speeds 207-260 mph) tornado 38.0 miles away from the Morocco town center killed 18 people and injured 285 people and caused between $50,000,000 and $500,000,000 in damages. On 4/23/1961, a category 3 (max. wind speeds 158-206 mph) tornado 16.9 miles away from the town center injured 4 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages.
Chicago-area historical tornado activity is slightly below Illinois state average. It is 58% greater than the overall U.S. average. On 6/13/1976, a category 4 tornado 18.2 miles away from the city center killed 2 people and injured 23 people and caused between $500,000 and $5,000,000 in damages. On 4/21/1967, a category 4 (max. wind speeds 207-260 mph) tornado 11.7 miles away from the Chicago city center killed 33 people and injured 500 people and caused between $5,000,000 and $50,000,000 in damages.
Hm… so rates in Donovan and Morocco are higher than Chicago, but still on par with the IL and IN averages. And in Morocco, 17 or 38 miles from the town center means, um, not in Morocco. Those tornadoes indicated above would be past other towns. So perhaps some narrative data would be more useful:
From gendisasters.com (yes, who knew?) Morocco, Indiana Tornado – April 21, 1912 – Nine persons were killed, five others so severely injured that they are expected to die, half a hundred others bruised by flying debris, and thousands of dollars’ worth of property destroyed in and around Morocco, Newton County, when a tornado swept out of the West this evening. The dead are: Mrs. Charles Rice, Morocco, Ind.; four young children of Mrs. Rice; Frank Rice, a son; Mrs. Frank Rice, his wife; Miss Cassie Smart of Morocco; infant sister of Miss Smart. Those who may die are: Charles Smart, Charles Rice, Bruce Hanger, Medde Hammell, Miss Conn. As near as can be judged here, the tornado started in Iroquois county, Ill., and then swept eastward. Stock was killed when farm buildings went down. – The Washington Post, Washington, DC, 22 Apr 1912
From Wikipedia entry on Sam Rice: Rice grew up in various towns near Morocco, Indiana, on the Indiana-Illinois border, and considered Watseka, Illinois, his hometown. In 1912, Rice was playing with a low-level minor-league baseball team in Galesburg, Illinois, near the Iowa-Illinois border, when his wife, two children, mother and two younger siblings, along with a hired hand on the family farm, were all killed in a tornado that swept through the area. Rice’s father Charles died from injuries sustained in the storm a few days later. Rice left the area shortly afterward, working various odd jobs and eventually joining the United States Navy and fighting in the ill-fated Occupation of Veracruz in Mexico. Rice never publicly revealed the family tragedy in his past. He married twice more.
A comment on another site: P.J. Clark wrote on Feb 14, 2008 – Edgar Rice lived in Donovan Illinois at the time with his wife and children. They were buried in The Praire Dell Cemetery just west of the town of Iroquois. The father and family were buried in The Beaver Cemetery just across the road from their farm. Charles and his family are in unmarked graves. I’ve been to the farm and I think it is in Illinois.
Based on these articles, it seems that the Rice family was likely the one from my mom’s story. Beaver Cemetery (in fact the one where my mom and her cronies are buried) is 1/2 mile east and 1 mile north of our house. It is only 1 mile from the Indiana border, and a household there could easily have family in both states, causing a little confusion over whether the Rices lived in Donovan or Morocco townships.
It also seems that Morocco put their one famous resident, major league baseball player Edgar “Sam” Rice, on the Welcome to Morocco sign along with a TORNADO which had famously killed his whole family and which he’d been trying ever since to forget. That’s really kinda jerky. Anyway, there are more gruesome details here http://tinyurl.com/58trna that may shed some light on why my mom always ran to put on clean underwear in a tornado warning.
Tags: illinois, indiana, mom, stories, tornados
