Freeport Journal-Standard from Freeport, Illinois • Page 6

Page 6 Freeport (HI.) Journal-Standard. Wednesday, October 4, 1972 Stadium Drainage Problem Outlined The Freeport School District asked the City Council what can be done to correct a drainage problem at the Freeport Pretzel Stadium in a letter read at the council's meeting Monday evening. Drains of the quarter-million-dollar high school field have burst twice because they were unable to handle the flow of storm water, the letter said. The letter complained that runoff from the Avenue shopping center flows across the Freeport Junior High School campus and cascades down to the football field. The letter was referred to the City Engineer's office for a report back to the council on what can be done.

First reading was given an ordinance adopting the voting- precincts mapped last year by the County Board and grouping them into seven wards. Difference In Population Aid. Frank McGee commented that there is quite a difference in population between some wards. Aid. Karl Smoyer answered that the difference is not so great in the city wards as in the County Board districts.

Aid. John Rutledge reported that county officials want to know if their planning for a new county building should take city needs into account and what the city's feeling is about constructing the county building on the city's parking lot north of the jail. Mayor Mark McLeRoy said the intergovernmental relations committee would meet on the questions this month. Candy Sales Planned The Lions Club is planning its annual candy sales to benefit visually handicapped Friday, and the Salvation Army will have a brigade of cadets from Chicago in town next Monday afternoon to conduct short open-air meetings at a couple of locations. The council granted requests of the Lions Club and Salvation Army to conduct their events.

A bid by Vernon Marsh to repair the City Hall chimney for $492 was accepted. It was the only one received. The traffic and parking committee Speaker Tells Club Mission Of Church Sometimes Disputed Why should the church be involved in controversial issues? The church may at times be involved in controversies that it should not be involved in, but the direction the church must move in fulfilling its mission as the "suffering servant" may involve it in unpopular controversy that it cannot avoid, the Rev. Jonathan Gosser told members of the Freeport Kiwanis Club Tuesday noon. The Freeport Area Church Cooperative (FACC), of which the Rev.

Mr. Gosser is staff coordinator, has been involved, in controversial issues, but there are other FACC programs lacking in controversy that are apt to be overlooked, he said. He mentioned the adult literacy program attempting to reach an estimated 3,000 functional illiterates in the county, emergency food and clothing provisions, a walk-in ministry, "Meals on Wheels," program, the International Student program, ecumenical worship services and services in local nursing homes. HCC Pompon Squad Members Selected Members of the Highland Community College pompon squad have been chosen. They are: Gracilla Diaz, Cindy Koester, Kathy McKillip, Margaret Meyer, Sandy O'Grady and Joanne Thomasson, all of Freeport; Joyce McCarthy and Paula Muehleip, Galena; Penni Drosopoulos, Savanna; Linda Hill, Stockton; Sharon Randecker, Mount Carroll; Garnet Engelman, Scioto Mills, Diane Dornink, Ridott; and Linda Lydon, Greenfield, Iowa.

was given power to act on a suggestion to mark lanes at E. Stephenson St. and Liberty Ave. After the council meeting the committee approved the suggestion, pending state Department of Transportation approval. The mayor gave a short report on last weekend's Illinois Municipal League convention and told how his serving on the league's pollution committee has kept him abreast of pollution legislation.

When McGee then suggested the mayor for a league vice presidency, McLeRoy demurred. McLeRoy said such a league office would require him -to be out of town and he felt that during "my first four years as mayor" he should be in the city as much as possible. The aldermen granted Northern Illinois Gas Co. permission to open the street at 1308 S. Rotzler Ave.

to install a new service. Gerald Murray, assistant city engineer, explained that normal requests for permission to dig up a street are handled by his office and that the council gets only those requests to open a street which has been resurfaced in the past five years. Other Business Aldermen also: Voted first reading of an ordinance prohibiting parking on East Pershing Street and on the west side of North West Avenue on both sides of West Douglas Street. Adopted the National Electric Code, 1971 version, as the city's law. Laid over an amendment of the CATV franchise ordinance to recognize the change of name of the franchise holder from TV Cable Co.

of Stephenson County to Freeport Cablevision Inc. Aid. Milton Babcock asked about four deteriorating houses on the north end of North Powell Avenue and was told that the city is now in court seeking an order to demolish them. All 14 aldermen attended the meeting, which lasted about 80 minutes. There were about eight persons in the audience.

A SPOOK'S HOUSE proved the major attraction at a carnival to raise funds (or the Freeport Catholic schools. The carnival was staged by eight girls at St. Thomas Aquinas School recently. Carnival Raises $52 For Catholic School System A girls club at St. Thomas Aquinas School raised $52 for the Freeport Catholic school system with a "nickel carnival" recently at the school.

The money will be given to James Gastel, chairman of the Catholic schools' fund-raising campaign. The biggest attraction at the carnival was a "Spook House," with skeletons, "flying" bats and weird noises. Other attractions were a fish pond, concession stand and throwing tennis balls at tin cans, darts at balloons and wet sponges at a member of the club. There also was a ring toss. Five fifth grade boys entered into the fun by staging an "Ugly Boy" contest for a penny a vote.

Members of the "Girl Bug Club" are: Stephanie and Shawn Gorman, Jeanine and Joy Urban, Wendy and Beth Nilles, Suzanne Richter and Carol. Dowdle. Governor Replies To Letter Decrying Area Road Conditions Gov. Richard Ogilvie has written a Freeport housewife that deteriorated Illinois 26 is a concern of the state Department of Transportation. His letter to Mrs.

Robert Albert, 1207 W. American came after she recently wrote the governor, criticizing the condition of some state roads in the area. In her letter she enclosed various newspaper articles on the subject. "You are certainly correct that Illinois 26 is in need of improvement," the governor wrote. "Our Department of Transportation is aware of its condition and has plans for over $8.5 million in improvements for it in the immediate future.

Funds simply have not been Annual HCC Bike Race Scheduled For Friday Highland Community College will sponsor its annual bike race from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Friday on the campus. Students, faculty and staff will participate in the race, which will begin on the Circle Drive, east of the student parking lot. available to undertake the needed work sooner because of so many other critical highway needs." (State plans call for reconstruction of the highway from the Wisconsin state line to Princeton. D.

E. Sunmark, district highway engineer, said in August that reconstruction in the Oneco and Orangeville areas could take place in 1973 and 1974 and the stretch between Cedarville and Orangeville, in 1975.) The governor said in his letter that funds were not available this year to resurface U.S. 20 in Freeport, a job which the city is subsequently doing itself. "Other municipalities and county governments in the state have completed similar improvements on state highways where we were not in a financial position to improve them immediately," Ogilvie said. Stephenson County has received more than $1.1 million annually in highway improvements in the last three years, a figure almost five times the annual construction during the 1960-68 period, the governor said.

School Board To Get Reports The Freeport Board of Education will receive reports on federally funded programs as they pertain to reading when it meets at about 7:30 tonight in the Administration Building, 1205 S. Chicago Ave. John Hartog, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, David Goulart, instructional materials director, and Robert Wachlin, director of the remedial reading program, will explain the programs to the board. The board also is expected to approve hiring a reading coordinator or instructor for the district. The reports will come after two closed hearings on discipline cases.

Freeport Lions To Sell Candy Freeport Lions Club members will sell candy Friday on the Downtown Plaza in conjunction with the statewide Lions Candy Day. Receipts go to help the visually handicapped. Major beneficiaries among agencies helping the blind are Leader Dogs, Rochester, Hadley School for the Blind, Winnetka; Illinois Camp Lions for Visually Handicapped Children, Hastings Lake; Dialogue, a recorded magazine for the blind; the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Blindness, and the Lions of Illinois Funds For Emergency. On a local level, clubs help the blind and handicapped by providing tape recorders, Braille writers, transportation, job placement, large print books and scholarships. The state goal on Candy Day is $850,000.

Stephenson's Share Of Revenue Sharing Bill Funds Given The final version of the federal revenue-sharing bill which is to come up for the U.S. House of Representatives vote sometime this week would provide $956,983 to Stephenson County governmental units, according to Cong. John B. Anderson's office. The city of Freeport would receive $335,404, villages in the county, a total of $64,551, townships, $237,919, and the county, $318,109.

The figures would apply to calendar year 1972. Story Hour Visitors To Tour Fire Dept. In observance of Fire Prevention Week, a trip to a local fire station is scheduled for children attending the story hour at the Freeport Public Library Saturday morning. The story hour is open to all school- age children. Parents may accompany their children.

The group will assemble at 10:30 a.m. in the Young People's Department. Favorite fire story books will also be displayed. School Official Attends Trades Committee Meeting John Hartog, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in the Freeport school district, attended a meeting today of the Industrial Trades Committee of the Illinois State Apprenticeship Conference in Rockford. The meeting, the first to involve school representatives, was to explore ways of including apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship training in schools.

Hartog is president of the Administrative Council for the Area Vocational Center. Hospital News Births At Memorial Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Krupke, 321 W. Carpenter are parents of a daughter born today in Freeport Memorial Hospital.

A son was born Tuesday to Mr. and Mrs. Duane LaBudde, 1524 S. Bidwell Ave. Parents of a son born Tuesday are Mr.

and Mrs. Dennis Alden, 510 W. Elk St. Mr. and Mrs.

Lynn Collalti of Orangeville are parents of a son born Tuesday. A son was born Tuesday to Mr. and Mrs. Terry Sigafus of Apple River. Patients At Memorial Roy Wybourn of Waddams Grove is a surgical patient in Freeport Memorial.

Medical patients include Mrs. Harry Karstedt, 946 E. Garden 0. DeVore Hitchner, 906 E. Empire Allan Newman, 1649 Hilltop Place; Mrs.

James Schultz, 1227 W. Stover Brian Melcher, 621 W. Avon Murl Fluegel, Freeport Route Eston Preston, Lanark; and Mrs. Klasina Winch of Forreston. He Healed (Or Maybe Heeled) Shoes For Fifty Happy Years By DUNCAN BIRDSELL Journal-Standard City Editor The front door opened to the shoe repair shop across from the Adams Avenue firehouse.

"Are you the mayor of the Third Ward?" boomed the incoming voice. Clem Michel slyly glanced up from his stitching machine and grinned. The title would fit. So would a few other handles check casher, rent collector, stamp seller and raconteur, but above all a genial storekeeper. Next Monday Michel will observe 50 years in the shoe repair trade.

All but the first have been spent in that long familiar Third Ward location where Freeport area folks regularly stop in to have their footwear, handbag and zipper ills treated. Service, smiles and social commentary are dished up by 71-year-old Clem. His cronies delight in dropping by to chatter with him and the "can you do it in a hurry" shoe repair customer is rarely disappointed. Michel has long since mastered the knack of carrying on a running dialogue with whoever is in the shop, amid the clatter of his work, and the background radio, while never missing a stitch or nail. The art of conversation is his forte.

Busy Routine Time hums along during a typical afternoon in the shop. A young man enters with two uneven heeled shoes. "Can you get'em to go by tomorrow night, Clem?" "Will do it, Larry." Hardly had he departed when a woman comes in. "I know you're from up around says Michel, taking her pairs of worn-out heeled shoes and some strap-loosened sandals. "When are you going home?" "When can you have them done?" she replied.

"Give me an hour and I'll fix you up," Michel replied. Michel returns to repairing a purse. Minutes later the door opens. "Hi Homer," says Michel glancing up. "What's the trouble?" The stocky middle-aged man pulls off one shoe and displays a tack sticking up through the heel.

"That's only one tack. That shouldn't hurt you," grins Michel. "Sit down for a minute and I'll fix that." And so the routine goes. Shoes are left, boots are picked up, a small check is cashed, a small lad comes in and departs with a stick of gum. Between everything Michel recounts his.career in shoe repairing and tidbits of trivia.

"Don't put a for-sale sign in your car and park it in the street. Clem didnt once and ended up with a $15 fine. "I couldn't believe there was an ordinance on that until they showed me at the police station. Now you see a dozen cars driving around town with signs in the windows." (For the fat conscious don't eat wieners. Clem saw an article in a Chicago paper the other day telling how the fat content of franks has gone up from 15 to 26 per cent.

His wife kind of likes them, he keeps warning her and I've really got it on her now. (Don't always believe those "No Solicitors" signs on houses. Clem had a shoe repair route for 10 years before World War II, covering Forreston, Shannon and Pearl City. "You know I'd go right up to those houses with signs and they were my best customers." (Clem once won a new Packard in a 1932 Knights of Columbus raffle in Springfield. The old placard on the walls says that.

Michel didn't need the car. He had a new Ford, so he unloaded it on a Springfield car dealer for $1,425. "Before I went down there to get it, a local dealer offered me $1,000 and I said, 'you go to For Michel, a lifetime Freeport resident, his initiation into his trade was early and not without some later indecision. "I quit school when I was 15 years old and got a job delivering meat on a bicycle," he recalls. "That lasted through the winter.

"Then my dad said, 'You quit school. What are you going to do I said, 'Oh I'll get a Two days later he said, 'Go down and see John Pera. He wants a boy to learn the shoemaker's The job turned out to be an apprentice shoe repairman in Pera's shop under the old Hill-Garrity drugstore in downtown Freeport where the Woolworth store is now. Michel started out at the modest salary of $5 a week ($1 a day for a 10-hour day). In two years he worked up to $22 a week before teen-age itchiness led him to quit.

Tries Railroad Michel went to work on the Illinois Central to pursue the machinist trade. The senior Michel was a longtime 1C laborer. "Dad asked me how I'd like to be a Clem Michel. .50 Years Of Repairing Shoes -Journal-Standard Photos. machinist.

I said, 'All I think back. It was the time a father ran the 'house. Not now. I went down and I told the boss, 'I'm Frank Michel's Would you catch a kid doing that today?" Almost immediately Michel sensed he was not destined to be a machinist he stuck with it for four years, primarily in deference to his father. But the lure of shoe repairing was strong.

"Two years after I went to the railroad, I found I couldn't stand to be away from leather," Clem remembers. "I put some equipment in the basement at my house. St. Francis Hospital had 39 nuns and I did their (shoe) work, besides the neighbors' and guys' at the railroad." Own Shop The big day arrived on Oct. 9, 1922.

The Clem Michel shoe repair shop opened up in a 14-by 20-foot building behind a grocery store at the corner of Walnut Ave. and Elk St. "I pretty near Mildred Michel. Zippers Are Her Style starved the first winter," is how Michel explains it. Maybe the fact that Freeport had nine shoe repair shops then (there are four now) had something to do with it.

Nevertheless, business gradually picked up, and in March 1926, Michel decided with some trepidation to relocate into the Third Ward business block where he is today. The fears proved groundless. Business was so good that Michel started his day at 7:30, worked till noon, delivered shoes over the noon hour, put in another five hours on the job in the afternoon and was back at it for another hours in the evening. The routine went on six days a week for 10 years. Michel did find time in July 1926 to get married, climaxing a three-year courtship of the former Mildred Myers of Baileyville.

The budding tradesman and telephone operator had first met at a band concert in Taylor Park. The marriage produced two sons, Jeron (Manny) and William, two daughters, Mary (Mrs. Richard Tappe) and Jane (Mrs. Tillman Smith), and at present 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Both sons worked in the shop when young, but their dad's occupation never rubbed off on them.

"They wouldn't look at this business," says Clem of his two boys, who are now insurance adjusters. "When they dropped a nail I said, 'Pick it They thought I was crazy. They ought to be here now with nails a dollar a pound." For Michel there have been both change and continuity in the shoe repair business. "When I started everything was leather, and it didn't wear as good," said Michel. "Composition soles were unknown until 1929, and for the first 15 years the average person couldn't wear them because they burned the feet so badly.

"Up to 20 years ago, the shoe repair suppliers furnished some free nails in a little envelope with every box of rubber heels. Then you had to buy them for 10 cents a pound. Now they're 75 cents a pound." Shoe repairing equipment has remained rather static through the years, Michael explains. Witness a sole cutter he still uses after years. "Shoe repairing machines are not too much different now," Michel said.

"The toilet in your house today whistles and howls and gurgles away like it did in 1900. That's the way with shoe repairing. I was in to the shoe repairing convention the middle of July. In the last dozen years, they have a machine to take heels off, but you still have to pull out the nails. There's a machine that drives nails, but you still need to finish them off.

It's really nothing to holler about." The zipper end of Michel's business has mushroomed in recent years. Nowadays Mrs. Michel, who is the real pro on zipper work, puts in six hours a day and Clem works an hour on them at the end of his 10-hour day. Zipper Impetus Clem recalls an incident back in the 1950s that got the zipper work rolling. "I was putting in a zipper in a heavy jacket when a girl came in the shop.

She said she had a coat at home that needed one. I told her to bring it up. Well, I got the zipper in and then my wife saw it. 'You didn't do that she said. I had it in cattywampus.

She tore it out, took it home and put it in right. From then on we were really in the business." Maybe the largest single zipper order came in 1955 when Charlie Bamberg, who ran a bargain store in an old barn north of the city, brought the Michels 50 pairs of surplus Marine Corps pants to convert from buttons to zippers. The job was done for 85 cents per pants, each zipper taking 12 minutes. The years have wrought changes in the 3rd Ward neighborhood in which Michel became a fixture. Neighborhood Change Gone are.the days when in Clem's words, "nine out of 10 railroad men lived right close." Clem resides at 497 S.

Benton Ave. around the corner from his business block. Former business associates along Adams Avenue, such as druggist R. A. Cone, barber Lawrence "Boob" Reasoner and butcher Jack Finn, have departed.

Only Bump Jones and his lunchroom are still around. There's plenty of life remaining in the shoe repair shop, although Clem readily acknowledges that he's "ready for anybody to come in and buy me out. I'll stay with them till they know the business. I want to get out," he declares. He figures that he has paid his dues, buoyed along by the help of his wife.

"I lay most of my success to her," he said. "She's very good with people, chases down to the bank, fixes things she's always on the ball." Clem has comment on most anything. Ask him about the old print on the wall of an elderly cobbler at his bench whose facial features resemble Clem. "I got that when I was about 35 and thought that guy sure looks old," Michel reflects. Intercity Bus Service To Be Cut A morning Greyhound bus into Chicago and an afternoon return through here to Dubuque, Iowa, will be discontinued after their Oct.

28 trips. Two other round-trip Chicago-Dubuque runs through Freeport will remain. The third round-trip service was added to Freeport's bus service April 30 to answer some of the pleas for transportation into Chicago after the discontinuance of the final Illinois Cen- tral passenger train a year before. Conflicting schedules for Oct. 29 on have been received, and he is awaiting confirmation of one or the other of them, 0.

R. Dennis, station agent, said Hugh Grow, Chamber of Commerce manager, told the City Council of the discontinuance Monday and said he would like to see the Freeport-Chicago service retained. The Freeport-Chicago portion of the schedule is profitable, but the service west from here to Dubuque does not make enough money to justify its continuance to Greyhound officials, Dennis said. One of the runs to be stopped leaves Dubuque at 6 a.m. and Freeport at 7:40 and arrives in Chicago at 10:15.

The return trip leaves Chicago at 4 p.m., Freeport at 6:40 and arrives in Dubuque at 8:20. Freeport Park Board Meets For Bid Openings The Freeport Park Board opened bids Tuesday noon for playground equipment, a maintenance and storage building at Krape Park, dredging the lagoons at Park Hills Golf Course and electrical work at the Read Park pool filter house. The bids were referred to park committees for further study before they are awarded at the regular board meeting Tuesday..