CITY BEAT: ABANDONED COAL MINES, TUNNELS FOREVER HIDDEN UNDER DOWNTOWN AREA
Paul Osborne
Editor/Publisher
More than a few of our readers have responded with surprise in recent months, when I’ve mentioned something about Decatur’s coal mines.
That’s why this week’s Scrapbook on pages 4 and 5 of the print and online editions takes a look back at an earlier time in our city’s history when coal mines were an essential part of Decatur’s economy.
I can remember coal being critical to heating my parents’ and grandparents’ homes when I was a child.
About every house in our neighborhood and community had a coal house (along with a cob house and a privy) that was loaded with coal (not the privy) before the cold Illinois winters began.
Some houses had “coal bins” located in the basement to make filling the furnace more convenient.
During about all of my first four years of grade school, I attended a one-room country school near Hiawatha, Iowa, which had a pot-bellied stove in the front of the room that the teacher filled with coal each morning school was in session during the winter.
I can still remember the scent of wet, cold gloves that students placed on the stove in order to dry them out.
Apparently, no one thought about the gloves catching on fire!
When we moved back to Illinois I remember taking a “coal bucket” to get coal (of course) to bring into the house for use in the “coal stove” that was a part of most homes back in those days.
When the winter was over, the coal stove was moved out of the living room and stored during the warmer months.
Some homeowners just left the coal burning stove in the same location year around — although it wasn’t used in the warmer months. (Obviously)
Coal, and trucks delivering coal, were big business back when I was a kid — but with the advent of electric and gas stoves, the market for coal went down dramatically.
The last time my dad filled a coal furnace was when I was in the eighth grade.
The booming coal business in Decatur, and beyond, that once heated so many stoves in homes and businesses lost a lot of customers — after many decades of providing employment for countless area residents.
A lot of businesses in Decatur were connected to the coal industry. Check out this week’s “Scrapbook” on pages 4 and 5 of the print and online editions for a look back at Decatur’s booming coal industry.
• DECATUR CELEBRATION founder and ramrod, Fred Puglia, called last week and we had a great conversation about the “good old days” of the street festival’s many years’ run for a weekend in August each year. Fred, who now lives out-of-state, is going to put together some short, interesting items of interest in a kind of “behind the scenes” look at what happened during some of the Celebrations and send them to me for possible publication.
I was at all 34 Decatur Celebrations, and for several years, had the honor as mayor, to officially start the Celebration with publicly announcing “Let The Celebration Begin” — which was something like “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines” that is said before the start of the Indy 500!
It was always a thrill for me to look south on Franklin Street, from the stage next to Franklin and Eldorado, and see the street filled with people as far as I could see!
Fred, Jim Masey, Orv Graham, and many others, kept the annual event going for most of the 34 years.
When Fred was pitching the idea of the Decatur Celebration to anyone who would listen, he came to my office (the newspaper was located on the northwest corner of East Main and Franklin streets back then) and I remember that day so clearly and listening to what Fred wanted to do in the community because not much was happening during the summer back then.
That was about 40 years ago.
Today, the Decatur Celebration is a fond memory and that building where this newspaper was located when Fred spun the idea to me, and many others, is gone, replaced with a parking lot.
However, the excitement that Fred, and those who worked with him, during the Decatur Celebration’s golden years, remains in the happy memory bank of local history.
It was good to reconnect with Fred. It’s been a long time.
I look forward to reading some of the highlights of the Celebration years and sharing them with you.
I’ll have to dig out some of my Celebration photos shot with characters Fred sent over to my office in promoting the Celebration each year. I even have one with a guy in a gorilla suit! (I think it was a guy in the suit. Knowing Fred, it might have been a real gorilla.)
• SO SORRY to learn that Brad Cain, son of Dick and Sue Ann Cain, passed away last week. (His obituary is on page 20 of the print and online editions of this week’s Decatur Tribune.)
I’ve known Dick Cain since we were kids in the Sullivan and Hammond Church of Christ congregations, and I’ve known Sue Ann about as long. Both are in my thoughts and prayers, as is their family, for their loss of son, Brad.
As I’ve mentioned before in this column, I am the first one who reads the obituaries when they arrive at the newspaper and that one was especially sad to read this week.
• TAX RELIEF NEEDED!!! Every time I turn around it seems like I’m paying more taxes on something!
Let’s face it: property taxes are skyhigh and, early indications are, that we are going to be paying even more on the property we are buying, or have paid for, just for the privilege of owning a home in Decatur or Macon County.
The City of Decatur is certainly looking at a tax increase for next year in an effort, at least at this point, to secure an additional million dollars — mostly for increasing police and fire pensions.
The City of Decatur catches most of the heat on tax increases but look more closely at your tax bill and you’ll find that the City of Decatur receives a small portion of our property taxes when compared to some others who receive property tax revenue — like the Decatur School District, or for others who live in some parts of Decatur, other school districts.
Check out your tax bill and you’ll find a whole list of public bodies that get a cut of your property tax revenue.
From personal experience in selling a house several years ago, I wasn’t able to sell it for the “property tax worth” which meant that I paid a portion of my property taxes over the years for a fictious amount — the difference between what I actually sold the house for and the amount taxing bodies said it was worth.
A property’s true worth is the price you get out of it when it is sold — not the amount of its tax appraisal.
• A DOWNTOWN employee I often see at the post office when both of us pick up our mail, told me last week that she was almost run over by a driver making a turn off of North Park Street onto Franklin, while she was walking across Franklin in the pedestrian lane.
Not only that, she said the man lowered his vehicle’s window and shouted “IDIOT” at her!
I told her she should have yelled back: “Don’t be so hard on yourself!” (Trying to be helpful.)
I about got run over the same day in front of the post office by someone driving a pick-up truck who came flying off of Prairie onto Franklin as I was crossing the street inside the pedestrian walkway. I jumped back on the curb (with my lightning quick moves – smile) and he did stop his truck and let me cross — and he didn’t call me an idiot!
• I JOIN Brian Byers on WSOY’s Byers & Co. every Thursday morning at 7:00 for the “City Hall Insider” –something we’ve been doing for over 22 years.
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