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From their first home, Charlie and Edna overlooked the river which was to play such an important role in their lives. Just five years later they began building across the street, at the 914 Front Street address where they lived and worked for the rest of their days. Charlie recalled those early days of youthful energy in a 1957 letter:
When Ma and I started our house Oct. 11th 1907 (note the date) close to cold weather, I mixed the cement work by hand on a board and got the house up before it snowed (7 inches in one night), and I laid up and worked sometimes until midnight and never got tired, that was [a] delightful time of our life, get up early morning and go to the dam and catch 3 or 4 nice bass, come home dress and cook the fish and eat breakfast and get to my gun shop up town by eight o’clock, go over during the week and shoot rail birds and were they good eating? It was then wild rice and lotus. Take the history of it all and you will have stories that present shooters can’t believe. |
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This recollection is an excerpt from the book, Perdew: An Illinois River Tradition, written by Ann Tandy Lacy. A copy of this book can be purchased through the museum. |
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Photograph by Joseph B. French |
