Nelson Budd Wilder Oral History

              JUDY KLEIN: I'm here doing an interview with Mr. Budd Wilder.  Today is October 9, 1991,
and I'm sitting here in his lovely living room and we're going to talk a little bit about the early
history of Mount Prospect, which he is going to fill in a lot of the blanks that are missing for us.
So I understand, Mr. Wilder, when I first talked to you oh, before I go on I have to say on there
that I have to thank you.

NELSON WILDER: That would be a good place for a pause.

KLEIN: I have to thank you for signing a release form and for giving us the permission to talk to
you and for putting this down on the tape.  Okay, now I understand when I first talked to you on 
the phone that you lived here in Mount Prospect for a while and than you moved away and then
you came back.  Is that correct?

WILDER: Right.

KLEIN: Okay.  So since you lived here in the early years, so to speak, we'll talk about those first
because, as you know, you took your training and stuff for being an interviewer yourself that 
they want a lot of the early part of the history of Mount Prospect and you'd be a good one to give
me some of the early and then contrast it with some of the later years.  When is the later years 
just so that we have some form of reference here?  When did you come back?

WILDER: 1958.

KLEIN: In '58 you moved back, okay.  So were you born here in Mount Prospect?

WILDER: No.

KLEIN: Okay.  And did if you weren't born here, what year did you come and how old were you
when you came?

WILDER: We moved here in '31 when I was six.  I went to the Central School, which had been,
as I found out since, had been built in '27.  I remember taking an exam to see if I would be in 
first or second grade, and it turned out that I didn't know how to spell well, so I was in first 
grade.  In the beginning of February I suppose they thought it was maybe close enough or one 
year that I could have gone into the higher year or something like that.  Being born in '25, that 
made me six.  I forget what month we moved out.

KLEIN: Did you move here, of course, with your parents?

WILDER: Right.

KLEIN: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

WILDER: One brother and a sister.  My brother was born in '31, so he was one about that time.

KLEIN: So he was younger than yourself?

WILDER: Six years younger, yes.  So he was born about then, but he was born in Kansas City.
There's also my sister, who was four years younger than I.

KLEIN: So you're the oldest of the family?

WILDER: Oh, yes.

KLEIN: When you moved here to Mount Prospect, did you move into town or did you move out
of town?

WILDER: Into town.

KLEIN: Into town?  What part of town did you move into?

WILDER: We moved to I can't remember the address 112 Lewis Street.  It was the second 
house from the corner on Busse and Lewis.  Somehow that doesn't sound right 102 Lewis.

KLEIN: Now is Lewis closer to the east side of Mount Prospect or the west side of Mount 
Prospect?

WILDER: That's the east side.

KLEIN: The east side?

WILDER: Yes.

KLEIN: Is it still a house?  I mean is it still a residential area?

WILDER: Oh, yes.  We lived there for two years and then we moved to 306 South Edward.

KLEIN: Okay.

WILDER: One block east and two blocks south.

KLEIN: Did you know why those streets were called Lewis and Edward and stuff?

WILDER: Yes.  Yes.  For the Busse boys.

KLEIN: Oh, was it really?  Why did they name them after the Busse boys?  Do you know?

WILDER: No.  Do you?

KLEIN: No, I don't.  I was just wondering.

WILDER: Well, I suppose can we suppose?

KLEIN: Oh, sure.  I don't see why not.

WILDER: And I'm sure I have heard the reasons, too, that the Busses, of course, I don't know. 
 I'm trying to remember which family it was.  William Busse was the bank president, and I sup-
pose it was his.  There's so many branches of the Busse family.  It was the commissioner's fami-
ly, Commissioner Busse.  I wish I had all that down.  They had a big family and they just deci-
ded to name the streets.  Why not name them after the boys?

KLEIN: Yes.  That's a nice remembrance for the boys.

WILDER: Elwin, Lewis, Edward, Albert, George.  I guess that's all of them.

KLEIN: It sounds like about all of them.

WILDER: Because there's a School Street next to the St. Paul School and they______.

KLEIN: Okay.  So let's bring you back to Lewis and you're six years old and you're living in 
town in Mount Prospect and stuff, so can you give me some idea of about how big the town was
or what it looked like or what were some of the stores you might have gone to or some of the 
businesses or where did you go buy your candy?

WILDER: Yes.  You're good.  The thinking of a six year old, seven year old, eight year old, nine
year old.  It always stuck in my mind the town population was 1,400.  Now somewhere along in
those four years that we lived in town between '31 and '34, it must have been 1,400, or I heard
that.  It was proven that it was not too far off from the census of '30 and the census of '40.  But
it was a small town.  Houses were scattered, and you could walk almost diagonally from about
any place in town to downtown or to Central School, which was then on the corner of Emerson 
and Central where the library is now, by the east end of the library.  And there was a little store
that was next to Meeske.  There was a vacant lot from Busse, the southeast side of Buss, and 
Main.  I think it was a vacant lot as I recall.  Then there was Meeske Grocery Store.  It seems to
me that the next store was a little variety store where we bought our candy and little things.  I 
think they had some toys and that sort of thing.  I remember going there frequently.  The post
office was also along that street.  We had to go pick up the mail.

KLEIN: Oh it was that?  Okay.

WILDER: I think there was another dime store around there and there must have been another 
grocery store, but I'm not really sure about that.  I can't picture it in my mind, and I don't remem-
ber having determined what thy were.

KLEIN: You probably didn't go to them that much.

WILDER: I wasn't conscious as a child of those things.  I remember going to Meeske's though. 
For some reason, the thing that impressed me was they had a little produce section, and they had
a spray, a water spray, to keep the produce wet, and I thought that was so remarkable, so modern.
It impressed me as a child all the spraying of the water on the counter of the oranges and apples
and whatever.

KLEIN: That was pretty impressive.  They're still doing it downtown at the Dominick's.

WILDER: Are they really?

KLEIN: They're still spraying it.  And you know what else the inside of Meeske's looked like?  
Did he have a butcher shop in there or did he have like, you know, where you picked your meat
up from the counter, if you ever went to the store for your mom or your dad or anything?

WILDER: I really can't picture any of that.

KLEIN: You never had to go to the store that often?

WILDER: I guess I wasn't reliable enough to have been sent on my own.

KLEIN: You mentioned the post office, though.  Did you have delivery of mail at home or did 
you have to go?

WILDER: No.  You had to go.  You had to go pick it up.  That was a long haul . . . 

KLEIN: Was that your job? 

WILDER: . . . on foot.  Apparently so because it stands out in my mind.  At least sometimes I had to go down there and get it.

KLEIN: Do you remember at all if they had a local newspaper or anything?

WILDER: Yes, they had a newspaper.  It doesn't seem very big, as I recall.  There didn't seem to
have been much to it, and I don't know how frequently it came out.  It seems to me that I've 
heard since that it just came out once a week.  I certainly wish I had a copy of it.  But I have seen
copies of actually a larger edition of the Herald, Mount Prospect Herald.  What did they call it?
They called it the Mount Prospect Herald.  I think they called it that.

KLEIN: I thing it was some sort of Herald that they called it because I remember ordering it for 
the library, you know, the film strips way back, 1917, '18, and I think they referred to it as the 
Herald, so I can't be that sure.  Did your dad work in town here?

WILDER: No, he worked down in Chicago.  He took the train.

KLEIN: Oh, there was a commuter train then?

WILDER: Oh, yes.  The commuter train has been around for years.  Yes.  He took the train 
every day and night.  He worked for the Chicago Title and Trust Company all during the Depres-
sion, which was when we lived here during the Depression.  And he had a good job.  I've still
got some of his records.  He made $220 a month, I think at that time, which was a good salary. 
A lot of people were not making anything.  The______for unemployment _________.  I don't 
know what year.  I wanted to ask George Busse, but one of the realtors always tried to get Dad
to buy a house out here.  And I wished he had, but he just rented.  Two years in these two loca-tions.  Yes.  In fact, he built he used to repeat this, so I remember it at 306 South Edward, they
built a house, which would be 310.  They built it for him, apparently thinking that he was going
to buy it or that they hoped he would buy it.  Yes, 310 South Edward.  That house was built for
my dad, but he didn't buy it.

KLEIN: He didn't buy it, huh?

WILDER: He got to the point where he felt that he couldn't he had asthmas and he couldn't
breathe to well, so he moved.  He thought he'd have better breathing in the city, so he went back
to the dark, dirty city, which was a dark day for his kids.

KLEIN: Yes, they probably enjoyed it out here.  Was the train station a lot like it is now?

WILDER: I can't picture it.

KLEIN: You can't picture it, hud?

WILDER: I've always been interested in railroads, but I can't picture what the station looked 
like.  I've seen pictures of the station at different periods because I'm working on the calendar for
the 75th anniversary, but I can't picture what it was at that point.  They had a little small rectangu-
lar building initially back about the turn of the century, and then eventually they got into a larger
building where they consolidated the milk and the baggage and what all.

KLEIN: They actually had milk and the baggage?

WILDER: Yes.  Our cover picture on the calendar will show the old, almost square original 
depot and then down it must be a couple of hundred feet is a milk platform.  That was a regular
thing, loading milk from all of these suburbs.
KLEIN: Oh, where did the milk come from?

WILDER: From the farms.

KLEIN: There was enough farmers around here then at that time to bring the milk in?

WILDER: Yes.

KLEIN: Oh, that's interesting.  So it was still like a small town, but basically a farm community
back in '31-'34?

WILDER: Yes.

KLEIN: There wasn't a lot of the industry that we see now?  

WILDER: No.

KLEIN: Was there any type of industry at all at that tiime?  Any type of factories?

WILDER: Well, Wille Lumber and Fuel, I guess, was in town to supply people with fuel for one
thing.  And then, of course, now I found this out since that there was a creamery that was by 
what would be Maple.  I think it was Maple Maple and Northwest Highway.  It was just recently
torn down for the new condos there.

KLEIN: On that side of the street, okay.

WILDER: Yes.  Then the coal company.  I don't know.  I wish I could think of what they did.
R. Crow and Company, which was on Evergreen, next to the creamery.

KLEIN: Next to the creamery?

WILDER: Yes.  Just west of Busse Flowers, their greenhouse.

KLEIN: Oh, they had the florest and the greenhouse back in the '30s already, huh?

WILDER: You know I can't picture it.  I'm assuming they did, but I really can't picture it.  I 
don't remember going there.

KLEIN: Well you weren't dating or anything so . . .

WILDER: No.  I had few dates in those days.

KLEIN: Just a kid.

WILDER: Just a wallflower.

KLEIN: Did they have an ice house or anything?

WILDER: I don't remember an ice house at all.

KLEIN: I was just wondering because I know . . .

WILDER: They had to have one, didn't they?

KLEIN: Yes.  I would think they did because I would think they delivered ice yet.  Do you re-member if they ever came around, if the ice man ever came around or delivering the coal or any-
thing like that?

WILDER: No I don't.  Why don't I remember it?

KLEIN: Maybe they didn't do it.  You must have been busy at that candy store.

WILDER: Yes.  Right.  Probably was.  Starting a bad habit in those early days.

KLEIN: Who were some of your early teachers in school that remember?  You were in school for
a couple of years.  Do you remember any of their names?

WILDER: No.  No.  There were some good ones, I'm sure.

KLEIN: And you don't remember any of them?

WILDER: And I don't remember any of the names at all.

KLEIN: When you went to Central, was it a grade school?

WILDER: It was a grade school, yes.  There had been a grade school before.  Of course, I've 
found that out since.  It was built in '27 and it had four rooms when we were there.  There were
two grades in each room.  And then we would have lunch in the basement.  Now, I don't know if 
that's a regular thing because I think we went home for lunch, but that was a long, long walk 
from Central School to Edward Street.  I remember in a blizzard one year, I got lost.  I was much
smaller and it seemed like the snow was up to my head.  It felt like it was ten feet deep, but it was
because I was so small.  I remember I was plunging along in this blizzard and some nice person
took me into their house, called from the door, and then called up my mother.  She didn't drive, 
though, I don't think.  My dad must have come and got me later on.  This is when we lived on 
Edward Street.  I must have been seven years old at that time.

KLEIN: That must have been, what, 1932 or something?

WILDER: Yes.

KLEIN: 1932, '33 when there was a blizzard or a bad snow.

WILDER: 1933.

KLEIN: You mentioned your mom driving or something.  Do you remember if they had cars at 
that time or do you remember any of the horses?  Where there any horses around at that time?

WILDER: There must have been a lot of horses.  When my dad bought his first he had a car be-
fore that, but he hadn't had a car for a long time.  We moved to town without a car, as I recall.  I
don't know how that worked.  Then he bought his first car in Mount Prospect in 1931, a '31 Mo-
del A Ford.

KLEIN: Did he buy it from a dealer?

WILDER: He bought it from Norb Huecker's and I found that out since father.  It was where 
Culligan's building was on Central just west of Main, which would have been right next to and I
found that out since Norb Huecker's on the corner there.

KLEIN: Oh, was it?

WILDER: Maybe back slightly west.  Then there was a small Ford agency just apparently adja-
cent to it or maybe fifty feet further down.  My dad bought his first car there.  It was a real sporty
job.  It was real neat.  It had a side mount and luggage carrier on the back.  It was a Victoria 
coupe.  I had it when I first started driving.

KLEIN: Oh did you ?________.

WILDER: Yes.  Yes.

KLEIN: They lasted a lot longer then than they do now.

WILDER: I guess so.

KLEIN: So when you came to the stores and the merchants or shopping downtown, you probably
don't remember too much because you were such a youngster at that time?

WILDER: I remember the fun stuff like playing in the barn.

KLEIN: Where was the barn?  What barn?

WILDER:Well, my friend, Bob Landon and we covered it in an interview I made with his sister,
Janet Heideman.  But Bob Landon lived over on Lancaster, just north of Central at the top of the 
hill.  There is a little hill there.  His family lived up there and we used to play trains and I would
walk over there after school with him and then we'd play in the barn.  It was right on Central just
south of Lancaster or right before We-Go comes up there.  Right along in that area.  Right on 
Central.  We used to play in the barn and jump on the hay, and that was loads of fun.

KLEIN: So the farmers didn't mind?

WILDER: No.  Apparently he agreed to all that.  He was a good guy.

KLEIN: It sounds like a lot of fun back in those days.

WILDER: Yes.  That was really good.

KLEIN: To have the ______.

WILDER: Well, yes.  There was wide open space and we could play baseball everyplace.  And 
that's the thing that stuck out in my mind that you could play baseball everywhere.  Not in the
winter time, obviously.  But, you know, whenever you could find some people, you'd go just out
and play.  Fly kites.

KLEIN: What did you do in the winter?  Did they have any place you could ice skate or anything
or sled or anything or did you stay indoors?

WILDER: Must have done a lot of sledding.  I don't remember ice skating, though.  There was
ice skating later in Chicago, but not ice skating.  I don't remember the winter sports much.

KLEIN: Then there probably wasn't that much.

WILDER: I was building kits airplane kits and different things at home and was inside, I guess.

KLEIN: Do you remember any of the police or firemen that were around in 1931 in that area, in
that time period?

WILDER: Not that I remember.

KLEIN: You never got in any trouble where they had to come?

WILDER: No.

KLEIN: You didn't steal any apples?

WILDER: No, nothing like stealing apples.  Never got in trouble with the law.  I don't think 
there were too many policemen at the time.  There weren't too many vehicles.

KLEIN: There probably wasn't.

WILDER: It seems to me that they had only one or two police people, policemen.  It does seem,
though, that they had a motorcycle.  Every once in a while you'd see a policeman tear off down
Northwest Highway on a motorcycle.

KLEIN: I bet Northwest Highway didn't carry a lot of traffic at that time.

WILDER: It didn't seem to be too much.  I remember one time when we lived on Edward Street,
I took off with my little car like a little toy automobile and I went across Northwest Highway 
and the railroad and I walked all the way across to Willard Creek, which was quite a little ways,
and played over there for a long time.  I don't think my mother was too pleased with that.

KLEIN: Probably not.

WILDER: Finding out where I'd been, you know.  Of course, I was seven and eight years old.  I
wasn't that young, but she was not too pleased with the whole fact that I crossed the railroad
tracks.

KLEIN: No, I can imagine.

WILDER: More than anything else.  That seemed to be quite an adventure, though, to go all the
way over to Willard Creek.  It was such a deep, deep _____in the ground, I can remember.  High
banks on both sides with the creek way down below.

KLEIN: Do you ever go over there now and look at it?

WILDER: Yes.  I haven't recently.  Not at that particular area, which was on South Edward 
Street.  We used to buy eggs for a penny a apiece, I remember that sticks out in my mind from 
what apparently must have been a Busse farm.  It must have been on Rand Road, but I picture it
being on Central about at Albert or somewhere along in there.  But apparently it was just a little 
north of Central, in that area, which would put it over closer to Rand Road or somewhere be-
tween Rand and Central.  Twelve cents a dozen.

KLEIN: Really?  Did you go to them to buy them or did they bring them to you?

WILDER: No, we went over there and picked them up.  For that you didn't get delivery.  For 
twelve cents a dozen, I guess you didn't get delivery.

KLEIN: Okay.  No let's take you away and bring you back again.  So then you left in '34 and evi-
dently you moved away.  Did you move to Chicago?

WILDER: Right.

KLEIN: You moved to the city, the big city?

WILDER: The big, dark city.  What a gloomy, gloomy day that was.

KLEIN: Yes.  I imagine it was especially for a younster.

WILDER: We moved into an apartment building, of all things.  You know, a three-flat.  Awful.

KLEIN: Well then what brought you back out here again in '54?

WILDER: Well, it's just the fact that I had to get back to my home town, I guess.

KLEIN: How old were you then?

WILDER: When I came back we were married, we were married.  Oh, my mathematics is bad. 
You can probably figure it faster than I can.

KLEIN: No.

WILDER: Let's see.  I must have been 33.

KLEIN: So you were in Chicago all those years and then you got married in Chicago?

WILDER: Yes.  Met Helen in Chicago.

KLEIN: So then when you were about 33 years old, you moved back to Mount Prospect?

WILDER: Yes.

KLEIN: Okay.  And when you moved back here, where did you move to?  To the house you're in
now?

WILDER: Now we moved over on Walnut Street, which was a block long, between Ridge and 
Prospect Manor, just behind what is now Baird and Warner.

KLEIN: Okay.

WILDER: It kind of cuts the corner of Northwest Highway and Central.  We stayed there for ele-
ven years.  We had a nice little Cape Cod over there.  We lived there for seven years and then we
moved to Florida for a year.  And then came back to Mount Prospect again for the third time.

KLEIN: Oh, so it sort of just kept bringing you back, huh?

WILDER: Yep.  Yep.

KLEIN: Okay.  So let's talk about Mount Prospect a little bit now in the 1950s when you came
back.  So you're going to have to tell me a little bit about the town then.  Was Central School 
still here?  Was Meeske's still here?  And was your candy store still here?  So let's start with the
school.  Were the schools still here?

WILDER: Central School was still here, and the kids went there.  Allen went there, and he was in
the 1959 kindergarten class.  Yes, '59.  I got the picture in the calendar.  I think I'm going to 
sneak him in the calendar.  Just happened to run across it.  Out of all the pictures of the Historical
Society, there happened to be a picture of his kindergarten class of 1959.  But it was a larger 
school then.  It had an addition to the west end.  I don't know how many _____.  I can picture the
basement.  I don't know how many first and second floor rooms there were.  But it was extended
on the west.  The gymnasium took . . .

KLEIN: It had grown somewhat?

WILDER: It had grown somewhat since we left, yes.

KLEIN: What do you remember most then about shopping downtown?  Did you do your shop-
ping downtown?

WILDER: I know the theater had appeared since I had left.

KLEIN: Oh it had?

WILDER: Back in the '30s, we had to go to Des Plaines.  I forget the name of the theater there.
But the Pickwick was always in Park Ridge in those days.  I remember seeing some Shirley Tem-
ple movies at the Pickwick back in those days.  And the Dionne quintuplets I remember seeing 
on the news.  They must be still living.  There are other ones, but those are the ones that stand out
in my mind at the moment, at least.  But a theater had appeared.  But back in the '30s, my dad
bowled in a bowling alley that was on Busse Street about where Olde Town Inn is, I think.

KLEIN: Oh, really?

WILDER: Yes.  There was an eight-lane bowling alley there.  Dad bowled on Wednesdays.  We
used to go watch him bowl.  I remember that.  And the hardware store and the bank was there in
those days.  I used to bank there, even when I didn't live here.  I'd come out and bank, and the
bank was on the corner, the northwest corner of Busse and Main in those days.  And it still was, I
think, when we moved no, I guess not.  I don't remember when the bank had moved.  Hardware
store.  I used to get my hair cut in the '30s at a little barber shop.  It's still a barber shop today,
that little building.

KLEIN: The one that's by the Olde Town Inn and on _____Street there?

WILDER: Yes.  Josie what's her name, the barber in there now.

KLEIN: And that was there in the '30s, huh?

WILDER: That was there in the '30s.  I think it must have been a dime.