Reminiscences of Warrenville, Illinois and Ivan Albright

By Carol Schacht

The book is best described as a memoir of my early life in Warrenville, Illinois. It was a small town then with a mix of several ethnic groups, some who recently immigrated to the United States.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524657093

Carol Schacht

I have a master’s degree in biology from the University of Illinois. I have been a science teacher at grade school, high school, and college levels. I have enjoyed teaching chemistry and environmental science as well as biology. We have five children and nine grand children from two to twenty-three. On seashore and mountain vacations, I enjoy nature and observing local wildlife. I enjoy reading about science, nature, and interesting novels.

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© 2017 Carol Schacht. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   12/22/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5710-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5708-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-5709-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016921286

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Contents

The River

The Train

Hugo

Gram

Nin

The Town

The Church

The Fourth Of July

The Schools

Ivan Albright’s name and his association with Warrenville and my family seem to reoccur with regularity in my life. I lived my childhood years in Warrenville, where there is an Albright Street and where there was a house that everyone knew had belonged to the Albrights. The father, Adam, who was a painter, had lived there and whose painting of a young boy with his fishing pole had hung in the local library for as long as I can remember. I knew about the library painting as I did go there on occasion and had even been locked inside when a girlfriend and I had gone in but could not get the door opened to let us out. It was a Saturday afternoon and all we had for sustenance was one candy bar for the both of us. After what seemed like several hours, but was probably more like several minutes, we got the attention through the window of some other kids playing across the street. They came over and opened the door.

The two Albright sons had also lived in Warrenville. They were also artists. I do not know why the Albrights chose Warrenville as a place to live, possibly because of the Du page River, which ran through the town. There were many scenic places to paint for the elder Albright. What I know about him was that he painted children, who often played along the river. I spent many hours at the river myself with my cousins and friends, playing by the dam, where I once slipped on the moss as I walked barefoot across the dam and my cousin pulled me up before I fell over the edge, where people said there were whirlpools that would pull you under. We also would fish, ice skate, or just look for crayfish or other wonders that we would find in the river. Once, with my dad, I went looking for snapping turtles in the river which were then fried or made into soup, which I did not try. Maybe they chose Warrenville because it was a small town, where the people who lived there liked it that way. They probably could work without being bothered. My grandmother once said that Al Capone had had a place out there in the country. Most people lived there because they had a farm or because it was pretty and the Chicago, Aurora, & Elgin train ran through it. They could work in Chicago, Aurora or Wheaton or other intermediate stops, and go to work by train. My mother’s dad had worked in Chicago at the Board of Trade and he commuted by train.

When I went to work, I had to drive to Wheaton to the train, as the train no longer stopped in Warrenville. It was when I was working in the city that I went to see the Ivan Albright exhibit at the Art Institute. Ivan and Melvin were the two twin brothers that had lived in Warrenville. I had been told that Ivan had painted a picture of my father’s father, who had had a blacksmith shop in Warrenville. It was quite an experience to see this painting for the first time. After all, not everyone gets to see a portrait of their grandfather hanging in the Art Institute. The picture is dark, with a lot of browns and black, and my grandfather’s muscles and the lines in his face were more pronounced than I remembered. Someone told me that the artist was known for showing the humanness in us all. My grandfather was not tall, a gentle quiet man, who used to let me sit on his lap as he gazed out the window while he ate his breakfast of rye bread and oatmeal. He did have pronounced muscles as he worked hard all his life supporting my dad and his four brothers and one sister. I used to like to watch as he shod horses by the big tree in front of his shop and as he hammered on the red hot metal of horse shoes or something else, then toss the metal object into water where it sent off a spray of steam. My uncle told me that