Rockdale, Illinois

My trilogy, Ikons, Banners and Slogans, weaves together the tale of two villages; Hutava, Belarus, and Rockdale, Illinois.  In my previous posts I provided background stories of Hutava.  In this post, Rockdale, Illinois takes center stage.

Nestled along the banks of the Des Plaines and abutting the city of the city of Joliet to its east, lies the village of Rockdale.  In the early 1900's it was a small mill town that owed its existence to several industries including the United States Steel's Wire Mill.

Map of early Rockdale

The Wire Mill

My main character, Massey Pribish, was one of the thousands of Eastern European immigrants drawn to the labor intensive factories dotting the northwestern Illinois landscape and and one of the hundreds that gave Rockdale its Slavic flavor.  His story in Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, is told through the heat and glow of molten steel of the wire mill.  Six days a week Massey trudged to this basilica of modern technology as its smokestack loomed over him like a modern Colossus of Rhodes.  Ten hours a day he labored in that hell driven by a single goal -- bring his wife and sons to America.

Rockdale Wire Mill - 1910

The Old House on Fisher Avenue

Massey, as did most immigrant men, lived in the cramped quarters of rooming houses clustered around on Moen and Otis Avenues.  It wasn't until the late 1920's that Massey saved enough to purchase a multi-family house on Fisher Avenue.  The basement's dank confines is where each of my novels began.

Massey Pribish's home on Fisher Avenue in Rockdale.

This picture clearly shows the style of homes of early Rockdale.  Note the stone foundation supporting the first floor.  Rockdale's limestone substrata made raised basements a necessity.

The Rockdale Streetcar

In Ikons, the long-gone Rockdale streetcar played an important role gliding along its single track from the village to the city.  I was fortunate to work with the nephew of the car's conductor.  He introduced me to the intricacies of the trolley operation and thus put a human touch on this rather mundane mode of transportation.

The Rockdale Streetcar

Rockdale Taverns

I would be remiss if I left out another of Rockdale's bustling industries--taverns.

Typical tavern in early 1900

I'm not sure how many bars and taverns existed in Massey's period, but during mine in the 40's and 50's Rockdale sported nearly forty, one for every twenty-five residents.  It was from these free-flowing taps I populated Massey's world.  Since my father partook of Rockdale's establishments of relaxation, I experienced the Jockey Club, Brosman's, Eniche's, Schmik's, and the 400 Club.  But the place that impressed me the most was Bill's Tavern.  Bill's was owned and operated by the Tallman family and young Buddy Tallman was my grade-school best friend.  It was my memories of Bill's that supplied the inspiration for Tallman's Tavern, my character's favorite watering hole.

Instead of William Tallman, I created the proprietor Wilhelm Tallman, a German veteran of the American Civil war.  Old Wihelm's past allowed me to decorate his bar as I recalled Bill's back in my day.  I furnished it with racks of civil war rifles, photos of old Union regiments and batteries, and bearded generals.  But the one imposing item I still vividly recall and would never forget was the barroom's lithograph of Custer's Last Fight.

While not historically accurate, the lithograph was spellbinding

To our gang of eager eight-year old boys, this battle scene depiction was the source of many arguments and reenactments.  I was naively optimistic that the horde of riders on the right were reinforcements coming to rescue Custer.  No one else agreed. But what I could never have imagined was that sixty years in the future, this image would still fire my mind and find itself in my first novel, Ikons: Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker.