Berwyn Years Back

[berwyn senator]

Berwyn was neat as a pin years back if we dropped a popsicle stick on the ground in front of a neighbors house and didn't pick it up you were in trouble.The neighbor would either come to your house and complain to your parents'r grab you by the neck and make you pick up the stick.Never were there cans,wrappers,or any type of garbage dropped in the alleys or by the curbs.Kids never ran over lawns or damaged anothers property.If some of the old Czech neighbors were alive today I am sure they would not believe what goes on in Berwyn today.

[berwyn senator]

Berwyn residents were hard working tradesmen all skilled and trained in their professions.Many built their own homes or garages, people did this to save money,also in order to build the type they wanted. The Czechs believed in paying off their homes as soon as possible, lived with no liabilities.They believed if you could not afford it you did not need it! When the Europeans came here the first thing they did is learn english so they could get a job.They saved money bought homes and built their neighborhoods there was a pride in ownership.Imagine coming here with nothing loosing during the depression most everything one owned then starting all over again and succeeded again. Education was very important for their children, they wanted them to have a better life then they had.There children also learned how to work hard at young ages, delivering newspapers, working as stock boys in local stores, doing any available job. Look at Cermak Rd. all the S&L's their money built, quite a number even some of the Western suburbs.Every pay day checks were cashed money put in the bank,money kept to pay the bills.

[markberwyn]

The ideas of keeping a clean home, pursuing gratifying work, and valuing education weren't unique to Czechs. Nor are these ideas relics of the past.

What's the highest level of education you reached, senator?

[berwyn senator]

How long did you live in Berwyn? Why did you move?Do I sense a touch of bigotry?If your so interested why not move back? Who  were the dominate people that lived in Berwyn?Built Berwyn? Did your education come from Berwyn or did you move?How long did you live in Berwyn? Like most who move out you were running from change, they may say different the truth is the truth.Do you come back to Berwyn to shop?why not? Probable afraid of Berwyn or Cicero,tucked away nicely in your conservative burb.Your ego will not let you return? What would your friends think of you moving back to a blue collar town? Your just one pissed off dude that never succeeded in life and likes to feed your ego by following people around Berwyn Talk.Hiding behind a computer what a life! What other ethnic groups were dominate in Berwyn?What stores sold mostly Czech china, crystal,etc?Were you a member of Sokol? Name one butcher shop in Berwyn that had a name other then Czech? I don't want to waste my time any more on Berwyn Talk with assholes like you I am aware why most people did not return jerks chased them away.

[markberwyn]

How long did you live in Berwyn?

I grew up in Lyons and attended Morton West. Then I moved back in the mid-oughts for a few years, living in south Berwyn.

Why did you move?

Better work opportunities for myself and my family.

Do I sense a touch of bigotry?

I can't speak to your feelings, but if you feel I've expressed something bigoted, I hope you'll explain it to me.

If your so interested why not move back?

I may yet.

Who  were the dominate people that lived in Berwyn?Built Berwyn?

Let's say that those people were Czechs when you were growing up. What of it? No sensible person would say that Czechs have a monopoly on being the decent people of Berwyn. If Berwyn has been a historic home for anything, it's been a place where immigrants have settled---Norwegians early on; Czechs, Poles, Greeks, Lithuanians and other Europeans after; Latinos now. I gather you feel that Czechs deserve some kind of special pleading, but I tend to think that the best parts of Berwyn weren't so exclusive.

Did your education come from Berwyn or did you move?How long did you live in Berwyn?

See above.

Like most who move out you were running from change, they may say different the truth is the truth.

People move for all sorts of reasons. I have little doubt that there was plenty of white flight from Berwyn. Go to the "Old Neighborhood" Facebook page and you'll see the occasional racist flareup accusing blacks and Latinos of "ruining" Berwyn, somehow, and how grateful they are for moving to Plainfield or some other, whiter, suburb. But if you leave to look for a better job, or want a bigger house, is that "running from change"? I don't think so. Berwyn is predominantly a middle to lower-middle-class town, which makes it a place where you get your starter home; if your status improves, it makes sense to go somewhere else.

And, as you know, those old-line Berwynites have rejected any tax-based improvements to the Morton school district for decades now. That is another reason people move. They want their children to have access to the same top-flight education you received---again, what's the highest education level you reached, senator?---and they don't believe that can happen in Berwyn.

Do you come back to Berwyn to shop?

When I'm there, yes.

Probable afraid of Berwyn or Cicero,tucked away nicely in your conservative burb.

What would I have to be afraid of? Seriously, explain this to me. I've never run into any trouble during my travels in Berwyn and Cicero.

What would your friends think of you moving back to a blue collar town?

I have a lot of Chicago-area friends and family, and if I moved to Berwyn, they would a) be happy I lived a little closer and b) understand that Berwyn is in many ways a hidden gem with solid housing stock and good access to appealing parts of Chicago and the near-west suburbs. I don't have the kind of friends who would shun me for moving back to Berwyn; I was certainly never criticized for living there.

Your just one pissed off dude that never succeeded in life and likes to feed your ego by following people around Berwyn Talk.

I think this quote reveals what you really want to say to me: You're upset that I ask questions that challenge your vision of what Berwyn is supposed to be. Which is to say, what it once was: Predominantly white, with a workforce largely involved in manufacturing. As you may know, I have been chastised both publicly and privately for asking these questions of you. But you have never once suggested that my questions were out of line, and I don't believe that they are. Again, if you wish to wax nostalgic about the good times you had in Berwyn growing up, that's super. What I lack patience for is your habit of painting present-day Berwyn in a horrible way, and in a way that is contradicted by facts.

Hiding behind a computer what a life!

You're behind a computer too, are you not? You're posting here just as much as I am if not more, are you not?

What other ethnic groups were dominate in Berwyn?What stores sold mostly Czech china, crystal,etc? Were you a member of Sokol?

Would that be Sokol Tabor on Clarence Avenue? If so, that'd be the Sokol Tabor that has lots of youth gymnastics programs. That would also be the same Sokol Tabor that a few years ago had a board member, Peter Colagrossi, who was arrested and convicted for dealing in child pornography. That'd also be the same Sokol Tabor that, to the best of my knowledge, made no public statement about that arrest and conviction, and instead just cowardly disappeared any mention of his name from their website. If this is the Berwyn Czech culture you are asking me to admire, fuck Berwyn Czech culture.

http://www.berwyntalk.com/smf/index.php?topic=13564.0

[berwyn senator]

I never thought you would take the time to answer,I have been retired for years so time I have plenty of. Lets see why not travel to work and stay in Berwyn?I never worked for a company very long,worked for myself I chose to be independent,as far as schools a poor excuse to move.My kids graduated from Berwyn schools, went on to obtain Masters from very good schools, so I believe children can exceed at any school if they have a solid upbringing and with parents that are involved. I succeeded didn't have to move never thought of a larger newer home was necessary to impress anyone. Czechs were the dominant group to migrate to Berwyn,others were in Berwyn but were not as prevalent until later years.Czech's were arrogant and did not mix well with other nationalities,I am half Polish,my family had a tough time with the Czechs when they first moved to Berwyn. Berwyn is and has been known for the houby and being Czech,things have changed I think for the better. North Riverside and Westchester is where the Czech people moved to when Berwyn started changing.Bigotry I would say! I would guess this all comes from living in Chicago,when their neighborhoods changed and they were scared by block busting tactics of realestate people.Loosing money on their first homes, fear that this would happen again. Wonder why the CSA moved out west? Easy to answer! Cicero always had a terrible reputation as a mob town so Berwyn would be associated with Capone,so was Stickney. People to this day are afraid of Cicero,and the bad reputation, the recent scandels  have not helped. I feel if you look at any town today none are immune to crime or corruption, no matter how upper scale people think they are.Berwyn has had its aches and pains but has surrvived. I often think if no one moved what would Berwyn be like today?

[markberwyn]

This is a bit more even-tempered than your usual posting, but you're almost comically naive about American life today.

Hawthorne Works doesn't exist anymore---there aren't massive factories anchoring communities, like you had growing up or like my father had when he immigrated to the United States. Lacking that kind of stability, more people move around more often (https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how-many-times-the-average-person-moves/). If a nursing assistant at MacNeal hospital gets her RN certification and sees that there's not a job opening in Berwyn but that there are more options in Ohio, what would you expect that person to do? Suck it up and wait for an opening? To what purpose?

In my case, my wife and I got jobs in Washington, DC that were specific to that place; commuting obviously wasn't an option, and there were no jobs in Berwyn, let alone Chicago, that were comparable. You seem to have a romantic notion that if you like Berwyn you should stay in it no matter what, but that often isn't practical. Have your children, with their advanced degrees (though perhaps not as advanced as yours!), stayed in Berwyn? If not, why not?

Your assertions about housing and schools are similarly goofy. The Berwyn Georgian that's fit for a couple with one kid may not be practical for a couple with three, and though I suppose you can argue that good old fashioned stick-to-it-ive-ness means a family of ten should be happy living in one 10 x 10 living room just so long as they're in Berwyn, I can't begrudge somebody wanting a more comfortable home if they can make the mortgage. Same goes for schools. I went to Morton West at a time when it was beginning its decline, and was often mocked by other high schools in the area. And I turned out OK, getting a BA from a good school. I made it work, and I support public schools. But I also think that parents would do well to have their kids educated in communities where education is valued, and though I know Berwyn has its support groups, en masse it hasn't demonstrated much care about education.

[berwynson]

Most interesting dialogue, this. Hawthorne works mentioned, half my relatives worked there, but Berwyn lacked manufacturing facilities of any large scope. There were indeed family-originated and owned small businesses; Frejlach's Ice Cream comes to mind, located on Harvey and 26th, main plant, I think, the other in Riverside, just west of Harlem, right by the CBQ tracks. The old man often ran us over there to watch the trains as we enjoyed that home-made ice cream. The "City of Homes" was already just that when I was born there. Let's what all else my weakening old memory bank might call up.

Major manufacturing of consumer appliances, heavy manufacturing, was then present. Of course, Western Electric, "Maker of Bell Telephones" cannot be left out, that logo present on virtually every hand-held receiver to be found. The odor of "Phenol Fiber", as my Mother called it, poured from the open windows when we passed by the main building, with it's corner tower on Cermak & Cicero Ave, in summertime, bound for my Grandma's house in Chicago. western had even a Wire Plant there. Thor Washing Machines, Sunbeam Corporation, north of Roosevelt off of Laramie, Kropp Forge Co., Danly Machine Specialties, of of the few makers of very high capacity Punch Presses which formed and blanked car body parts, capacity to 4,000 tons. Goss Press on 31st. St., builders of printing presses. Victor Manufacturing and Gasket Co., on 58th. Ave. and Roosevelt, had 5 plants at that location.

Victor Gasket hired me as a Development Technician right after graduation from DeVry Technical Institute with a degree in Electronics Technology, September, 1963, exactly two months before JFK's assassination. The Victor Co. was started by two Polish brothers with real foresight, cutting gaskets for automobile engines in their garage. Their full name was something like Victorovich. They built a near-empire, under the logo "World's Largest Maker of Gaskets". The family sold their entire company to Dana Corp., a major maker of automobile driveline parts and transmissions in 1966 for a reported $16 million. A steal. I worked in the Gasket Development Lab, adjacent to a large toolroom in which die sets were built and refurbished, that toolroom employing perhaps 30 or more, the Foreman was Bill Dau; he put up with a lot of my work requests very diplomatically. It had become common knowledge that despite attempts by many of Victor's technical people to install strain gages on cylinder head bolts, I was the only one who succeeded. I was treatred very well, taken "off the clock" within 6 months.

Victor had two major Divisions, Gaskets and Oil Seals, each having separate VP status Managers of their own. In 1969, the Oil Seal VP offered me an Engineering position, his sites set on building a revolutionary new kind of oil seal molding machine, which I and a coworker were destined to design and build. Here it is during construction, in the Victor-Dana Plant No. 9 in Churubusco, IN, that plant having been opened by the Victor Family shortly before I was hired.



The two of us toiled for two years producing working blueprints of the parts we designed. The point of all this: Many parts were custom made for us by Danly Machine in Cicero. Below, the two curved, T-Section steel beams which lift and move the mold carriers into and out of the big oven pictured above, are visible. I searched the Midwest for a company having a Boring Mill large enough to make the beams. Found one, up in Wisconsin, Allis-Chalmers, had a 30-foot boring mill. The cost to make the two beams was estimated way up in the thousands of dollars. Danly proposed an alternate: they had a state-of-the-art numerically-controlled mill, which could be programmed to move it's cutter in tiny steps, thus producing the curved surfaces. Starting with huge chunks of steel over a foot wide, 4 inches thick, and 6 feet long, their mill whittled away all that metal to make curved beams, charging us $600 EACH! The result was most gratifying.


In the pic above, the large machine partly seen through which the carriers are traversed, is our custom-designed hydraulic press which closed, locked, unlocked, and opened the mold carriers. It exerted a force of 30,000 lbs. on each carrier, two at a time. My co-worker, Bruce, and I assembled that press on-site. I ran a fork-lift truck to lower the parts in place, having secured a guarantee against Union grievance.

In 1972, the process of completely moving the Chicago Oil Seal operation to Churubusco was underway. I chose to leave the company, and my wife and I left Berwyn, having sold the bungalow I was born and raised in, bought from my retiring parents in 1966. After a number of years, in 1978, having completed my B.S. Degree in Engineering, I returned to Plant 9 as Facilities Engineer. Newly divorced, I met a sweet young lady, working on our molding machine, loading seal parts, and we married a year later. The girl in the top pic is my first wife's sister, then 15. Senator will remember her.

Perhaps this long-drawn out look back into my past in Berwyn will help ease some of the tension here.  berwynson

[berwyn senator]

I would guess your much younger then I and Berwynson,Naive about American life today wrong my friend.I am well aware manufacturing has been gone a very long time.I understand people must move for employment, unfortunately this is a way of life.But the Czechs started moving way before manufacturing, early 70's the migration started.Mid 70's companys started closing.I was very fortunate self employed I depended on no-one company or anyone but myself! So I was able to stay in Berwyn live in a large home. Being self employed I became aware of changes well before the Corporate Arena adjusting much sooner then an employee who was laid off and never saw it coming.Yes I did some traveling but not much, didn't have to.The lesson to be learned is if you can't afford large numbers of children don't have them unless a good Catholic!We grew up in Berwyn at a much earlier time when a neighborhood was a neighborhood,something that does not exist any more.Heres an example how life was in the twin cities, went to a barber shop in Cicero sitting in the chair getting a hair cut several limos pulled up in front two tough guys exited went around back two came in the shop chased the guy next to me out of the chair.Two more came in with a very well known ganster,pulled off his coat a pearl handled gun under his shoulder sat down.I paid the barber and left.Many of the gansters kids were in Morton East,they were difficult, stayed away as much as possible never get involved.So we got two different types of educations,books and street, learning fast how to keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble.There were gangs called clubs no guns just 2x4's and chains and brass knuckles.I also have supported education, but very difficult no matter what town because politics rule especially in Berwyn,this is a whole different story. Lyons was a mobed up town as I remember enlighten me as to the time you lived there many friends and family were there.You only think I am naive about life today, how silly to think so.I know you could learn plenty from Berwynson an myself. Our life experience is priceless! Maybe were grouchy old farts but this comes with age!!!  You'll be there some day!   

[berwynson]

Senator, thanks for the testimonial. At first I thought you were addressing me! Sorry! Agreed, Mob influence was there. But I never knew much about it.

Did you remember the girl?

berwynson

[berwyn senator]

Yes I remember the whole family, they lived above the Fountain inn on 16th. and 58th ave. if my memory serves me correctly.Do I appear as a grouchy old man? I would say life does humble an individual.After years of making a living dealing with all different people both professional and layman.My ass gets tired of dealing with the incompetents that work for companys today, lucky to find someone that speaks good English,or is even in this country. Never can I expect to get my request completed on the first contact.So after many calls maybe were lucky,but the chance is remote.The people are not trained ,they just read off a script from a computer. The other day I had two incompentents from two different companys on a three way call,I just sat back and laughed by ass off.Neither could you understand each other both argued about issues I never called on, problem never resolved.So I just ordered same part from each different company I will try them both the one that fails again will be returned and I will keep the one that works.Sounds crazy, days are gone with trained skilled technicians responding and solving your problem.No one can understand their own product how it works or where specific parts fit. Many years back I went to seminar the man speaking was a self made millionaire his projection for future business was service orientatied. He projected in the future the U.S. would create a part of civilization that could not be trained, didn't want to work or become educated.Sound familiar?

[berwynson]

I talked to Charlie yesterday. He said you guys plan to get together in Feb. Good deal! I wish I could be there!

Have a great time!

[berwyn senator]

One of these days some how some where it will happen.

[berwyn senator]

There was another wackey bar across from Fountain Inn called Donna's open all the time old fences would come in to sell or trade their wares!!!!!