Gerdes, Alfred - Interview and Memoir

              University of Illinois at Springfield 
Norris L Brookens Library 
Archives/Special Collections 

Alfred Gerdes Memoir 

G313A. Gerdes, Alfred (1891-1982) 
Interview and memoir  
1 tape, 65 mins., 28 pp. 

SANGAMON RIVER PROJECT 


Alfred Gerdes discusses his experiences living near the Sangamon River: wildlife, floods, fishing, alterations of the natural environment, changes in rural life and farming, trespassers and dangers of the river. Also mentions the Sangamon River Improvement Association.  
Interview by Judith Haynes, 1981 OPEN See collateral file 
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 
University of Illinois at Springfield 
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 
Springfield IL 62703-5407 

© 1981, University of Illinois Board of Trustees 
PREFACE 
This manuscript is the product of a tape recorded interview conduc­ted by Judith Haynes for the Oral History Office on January 14, 1981. The interview took place in the narrator's home. Cathy Caughlin transcribed the tape and Judith Haynes edited the transcript. 
Alfred Gerdes was born May 11, 1891, in Menard County, Illinois. He presently resides on his farm in Athens where the Sangamon River flows through his property. Mr. Gerdes was one of several persons inter­viewed who has lived on or near the Sangamon River. He provides the perspective of a farmer and long-time resident who believes the river should be left to its natural course. 
Readers of the oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, narrator and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is 
inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon River University is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge. 
The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois, 62708. 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 

1
Birth Date and Place Farming on the Sangamon River 1 2
Flooding 2
Fishing 3
Dredging the Illinois River 
4
Varying River Depths Animals Along the River 5 Hunting Resort 5 Coon Hunting 6 Raising Orphans 8 8
Floods and Levees Lake Springfield 9 Sangamon River Improvement Association 9 Sanganois Conservation Area 10 12
Trespassers 
14
Harvest Season 
14
Retirement Travels Changes in Rural Living and Farming 15 The Sangamon River as a Natural Place 18 19
Drownings 20
Sandwich Precinct Map German Methodist Church and German Traditions 21 22
Further Travels 23
Alfred Gerdes: Oldest Mason 24
Reflections 
Alfred Gerdes, January 14, 1981, Athens, Illinois. 
Judy Haynes, Interviewer. 
Q. A little background. Where and when were you born. 
A. I was born four miles north of Petersburg, Menard County, May 11, 1891. 
Q. So how old are you today? 
A. Well, the eleventh day of this May I'll be ninety years old. 
Q. That's quite a lifetime. Have you lived near the river 
A. I've lived in Menard County with the exception of seven years I had a farm in Sangamon County, or Mason County and then I sold that over here. Then [I] bought this farm thirty years ago. 
Q. So you have lived here a long time. 
A. I've lived here thirty years, since 1951. 
Q. Does this farm, or have any of your farms, touched the Sangamon River? Does it run through any of your property? 
A. This farm is divided nearly fifty-fifty on each side of the river. And from one edge of the river front to the other it is about a mile and three-quarters frontage on the river. 
Q. What kinds of things do you grow? Crops? 
A. We grew corn and soybeans, mostly. We alternate those about fifty percent. And we use fertilizer, of course, so we have pretty good yields. 
Q. Has farming been a good life for you? 
A. Well, I worked in an office, for the SCS Office for seven years. I don't know whether that is true or not, but I had a heart attack and quit the business so I couldn't say but what farming is a better life. 
Q. And what is the SCS? 
A. Agricultural . 
Q. Is it Soil and Conservation Service? 
A. Soil and Conservation Service. 
Q. How has the river affected your farming? 
A. Well, as I've seen it in the years I've been by it, which has been, well I was born almost right on the river--just a short ways away from it--and my father bought the first land, I think, in or around, possibly in 1900. Somewhere around there. I've been a per­son who has cultivated the soil ever since I got old enough to work and I've seen lots of changes on the river. It seems to me like back in those days that we had terrific floods. Far worse than we have now. In fact, I should say the best I can just offhand right now recollect, I've only lost two entire crops on this farm since I've owned it. I've had a little flooding. We've got about half of it [the farmland] on the west side of the river leveed against the floods and this side is subject to floods. I don't have no levee on this side. 
Q. But that's only happened to you, serious floods, once or twice, you say? 
A. I think about twice is the best I can remember that they took an entire crop and then one year it wasn't so late but what we got to replant some of it. And we haven't lost very much, we have some low places, some old lake beds and sloughs as we call them that fill up with water some times when the river gets bank full probably and then stays very long at a time. In other words, I have no complaints at all just as it is. 
Q. Do you get any enjoyment from the river? Did you ever use it for recreation? 
A. Oh, yes, we used to when I was younger, we used to go down there and fish and what not but there isn't anything to hunt anymore. We have a lot of fish in this river right now but the river's so low now, I don't know how they're going to live through the winter. 
Q. What's the biggest fish you ever caught down there? 
A. Twenty-two pounds. 
Q. What kind was that? 
A. Carp. No, excuse me, it was a buffalo. Twenty-two pounds. We had had a rain, and had a little flash flood and the big fella got out on the sand too far and he couldn't get back in and I came along and picked him up. (laughter) 
Q. That's a different kind of fishing isn't it? (laughter) 
A. Yes, that's right. 
r-------------------­
Alfred Gerdes 3 
Q. That's probably the only way I would ... 
A. I like to fish. I have a son and his wife fish an awful lot. I go to Lake Shelbyville with them and camp out a week at a time and fish over at the lake. But I like to fish here in the river but then it got so I had nobody to go with me anymore and so I just don't get down there. 
Q. When you did go down there, what was it like? How was it different than it is today? 
A. Well, nature has a peculiar way of doing things, whether people think that they don't or think they can control it, they can't, because when I lived here there was possibly on an average of fifty, sixty feet of timber left along the edge of the river, all the way along with the idea of preserving the banks and keeping the river in its course. So today I've got quite a lot of it that there isn't any timber left. It's gone down the river or else still is lying in the river, just washed off down the river. But, while it was doing that it was just kicking that soil someplace else and building up a bar or something else someplace else along the river so it really wasn't losing too much of the soil. It was just changing the place of it. And that, you can't stop that. Well, I guess if you treated it like--I lived on close to the Illinois River for a while--and if you treated it like those fellows do, well, yes, we could do that but we can't afford to do that. 
Q. What do they do on the Illinois River that's different? 
A. Well, they have work crews that work continually and they go in places to keep that barge course deep enough to float those barges. With large pumps, they pump that sand and mud and gravel all out into the barges and take it other places and deposit it. That's one thing they do and other places they would take and drive what I call a wing made of piling in the river to let the current bounce off of that and make it cut its own course. 
Q. What did you call that, a wing? 
A. Well, that's what I'd call it. I don't know what they call it but that's what I call it. It just extends out in the river at an angle. Suppose this was a stream, it extends out and the current hits it here and causes it to dig that channel out a lot deeper. 
Q, Why do you think there's less timber along the river today? Has some of it been cut down? 
A. Oh, yes. Over here a few years ago, when we had had elm disease, I cut the elm trees all out of mine down to the bottom because they were just going to be thrown away and that took some of the timber away from there but I don't believe anybody is really trying to take the timber off the banks just to sell it. They're just leaving it there to preserve the channels. I think they see how nature has to be helped a little once in a while. But now, of course, today, you couldn't go up and down the river with a motor boat. There isn 1 t enough water in the river to do that. 
Q. It's that low? 
A. Oh, yes. 
Q. Is it because we've had a couple of dry years? 
A. That's right. Now there's places where you couldn't float a boat unless you'd get out and push it. 
Q. And your memory is that it was much deeper or there was a lot more water years ago? 
A. Years ago, we had more water in the river. Well, I've lived in, on the Illinois and then I've lived here on . Well, I've lived all the way from here, Athens, spotted up and down the river clear to Metansa Beach in Mason County. 
Q. Metansa Beach? 
A. Different places I've farmed along the river. And there's no one section of the river that you could say, "well, they're all just alike." They're not. Where I was born and raised, the river was awful crooked and it had an awful lot of deep holes in it, de.ep holes. And right now, there's only one that I know of and I don't know how deep it is and nobody does yet. They have never touched the bottom of it. 
Q. That sounds pretty deep. 
A. Well, you can take a cane fishing pole and the line and you can't reach bottom. So I don't know how deep it is. And I asked somebody that owns the land now and they said it's .still that deep. They can't hit the bottom. I don't know what it is. But anyway, down in that section we have a lot of crooks in the river and a lot of deep holes and there's where the fish were, with all that protection. So then when I carne up here, when I fished a few years ago, I couldn't find water here over six foot deep. Couldn't find no holes. 
Well, then, when I moved over in Mason County, the six, seven years 
I lived over there, I fished in the Illinois over there. It's really 
not the main course of the river at that, but that's where I lived. 
They have a stream running around the island there, Grand Island, 
the water runs around that and over there there's no holes over there 
that I could find at all and it's just a level bed with just a terrific 
course of water with a terrible pressure behind it from someplace. 
It's got an awful . • . If you get in a boat, first thing you know, 

you're way down the river. (laughter) So I don't know; I enjoy being around the river as far as that's concerned. I've been around it all my life and I just enjoy being around it. 
Q. What do you like about the river? Do you like the trees or . 
A. Oh, I like the forest, yes. I've got a lot of timber on down my farm here, a lot of it, and every few years I harvest some logs off of it and try to keep it going. And you know I've got to be a good fellow with my neighbors. I've got to furnish them a place to hunt squirrels (laughter) and other things but right at the present time we don't hardly have any game of any kind. Well I haven't hardly seen a rabbit track in all this snow this winter or haven't heard the boys say anything about it. The fellows that came here and hunted here this summer--! only let a couple or three guys come and hunt but they said they didn't hardly find any squirrels at all and up until about three years ago we used to have quite a few quail here. Now I haven't seen but one covey I think in three years. 
Q. Where do you suppose they've gone, all the animals? 
A. Well, we had that snow about two years ago, or three, that just stayed on all the time. It never left. It never melted. And I think a lot of them just froze to death and starved. I have a big porid here, two acre pond here for a source of water for my cattle feeding. We feed cattle here. And I had bullhead catfish in there and I had bluegills and crappies and some bass and I lost all my scale fish. That snow just stayed on the ice so long it just smothered them out. The catfish survived but the scale fish all died. 
Q. Do you suppose the catfish survived because they stayed on the bottom? 
A. They stayed right on the bottom. Yes, I think that was one thing. And the pond wasn't too deep because the last time I measured it we still had sixteen feet of water in it. It was just a matter of the snow coverage, it just smothered them out. 
Q. Did you ever hunt along the river yourself? 
A. Well, yes, I hunted some. I never did hunt as much ever as • For seven years I lived in Mason County, I had a hunting resort. 
Q. You had a hunting resort? (laughter) Lots of people came to stay with you, is that what you're saying? 
A. I had a group of men from Chicago. There were nineteen in the company. Men of all walks of life. And I don't recall now just how many places I had fixed for, that is how many places to shoot but I 
had several places to shoot. And I had about three men employed 
beside myself and if nobody ever run one of those things, he ought to get into it just for a while because I was almost up day and night and guys would call me from Chicago one, two, three o'clock in the morning, get me out of bed and said, "We're coming down today." Of course, we had a limit on them, we could only house and feed eight at a time. So I don't know how many years I ran that service, six or seven years something like, five or six years anyway. 
Q. Did they find plenty of animals to hunt? 
A. What they was hunting was ducks more than anything else. 
Q. Ducks? 
A. Ducks, Once in a while we'd get some geese but not very often. Just duck hunting. That was when you could feed the ducks at your pens and the limit was still fifteen ducks per day per man. But when they stopped feeding ducks and things, that put everybody out of business. 
Q. And this was on the Illinois River? 
A. Well, I was close to it. 
Q. You were close to it? 
A. Yes. 
Q. Did you ever see any ducks on the Sangamon River? 
A. Yes. I killed a few here. 
Q. Did you ever do any trapping? 
A. Not very much. No. Never cared too much for that. That was my sport when I was young. (points to photograph of himself with hunting dog) 
Q. Coon hunting? 
A. Coon hunting! (laughter) 
Q. Did you catch many? 
A. I could walk all night and work the next day. (laughter) Coon hunting. 
Q. Are there still lots of coon around here? 
A. Well, if there had of been as many coons them days as there has been, I could have made a lot of money. But I had good dogs and no coons. Now I got coons and no dogs. (laughter) My barn out there is full of baled hay pretty near every year and it's just full of coons. They get in there, a parade of little ones and hibernate for the winter. 
Q. Do they create a real problem for you? 
A. The only thing, I like pigeons, don't want too many, but they keep them down in number all right. (laughter) The pigeons filled in what we call those cupolas up there and them coons get up in there and they can't get out and they catch them. 
Q. So the coons catch the pigeons? 
A. Yes. 
Q. But the only way to get rid of the coons would probably be for you to hunt them? 
A. Yes, right. I'd have to trap them out. But I don't let anybody trap up around there. I try to preserve the wild animals and things more now than what I used to. 
Q. Is that because there are, or there seems to be, less of them? 
A. Oh, yes, there's a lot less, lot less coons now then there were ten years ago or even I think five years ago. The only animals I have been told that's been increasing from the trappers standpoint has been the skunks, this year. And they have increased terrifically in a lot of places and they're worthless. 
Q. I wonder why. Perhaps one of their predators has been killed off. 
A. Well, a few years ago, they got that disease, you know. You had to vaccinate dogs and 
Q. Rabies? 
A. Rabies. And I think probably what happened, they just died off. They got a new generation. Then they might have moved their places of living too. I know we, a few years ago, had foxes that would come up here and get in our building and die with scabies. And now these fellows that were trapping them don't seem to catch any that have it anymore. I think that's the only way it could be eliminated because you can't catch all of them and vaccinate them. 
Q. True. What are some of your very earliest memories about the river? 
A. Well, our families all through the generations I can recall had 
taken in orphans and raised them. I don't think we've had a generation that hasn't raised orphans. My dad and my mother's folks took a young lad in and raised him and he stayed with our family until I guess he was forty-five, fifty years old before he got married. He was quite a fisherman and my dad went with him a lot and they fished. And of course I was about six, seven years old or eight maybe and I always wanted to go. Well, they'd always work of a daytime and they'd go down of the night and raise their traps or whatever they used in the boat and so they didn't want me to be along, afraid I'd fall in the river and drown or something so one night they just grabbed me up by the feet and dumped me overboard in the river. Next time they went I was right there on the job. (laughter) 
Q. Did that teach you to swim? 
A. I finally got to swim but I had to teach myself. (laughter) 
Q. That's pretty good. 
A. But I don't know. The river seems to me what you'd call an old lazy river now. We don't have the floods like we used to anytime anymore that I can recall since • • . These last thirty since I've been on here, it's just been an old lazy river. We have had two, yes two, . . • I don't recall what year we built our levee over there, my son [Weldon Gerdes] and I, but the water has been over the top of it twice in all the years we've had it. 
Q. He [Weldon Gerdes] mentioned 1959. 
A. I'd forgotten. 
Q. That was quite bad. 
A. Yes. And that's because the road on the north side of our farm is lower than what our levee is and we can't get the county to do anything about raising the road up. 
Q. Probably be a pretty big project, would it? 
A. No, it wouldn't. I would give them all the ground they would need to built it up higher and wouldn't take but only about two feet and would put us on an awful safe footing. 
Q. So have you seen a lot of floods or just a few floods? 
I 
A. Yes, I've seen quite a few. My folks lived on the plot where Gene's Store is in Petersburg and in 1943 the water got up within thirteen inches of the floor of their house and my father and mother got pretty excited and they called me up about two o'clock in the morning and wanted me to come down and move them out. So I got one of my boys and a hired man with us and we went down there and we moved her goods, most of it out to our place. I think we stored some some­place else. We got them out. And by the time daylight came there was a flock of them--the city folks wanting me to help move them out. We worked all that day till it got so dark we couldn't see nothing and I never was any tireder in all my life, moving pianos and every­thing else. We worked all day. It used to be in Petersburg everything down below what they called the railroad track, used to flood out almost every spring. But I don't know, they built the road up higher and the natural changes came. Now they never have to move out. I don't know. It's been years since any of them had to do that. 
Q. Do you think it had something to do with Lake Springfield? 
A. Yes, I do. I sit up there with their Council a good many times and pleaded with their water commissioners and the fellow who has charge of those gates they've got in the channel. Because they've got five gates that are five feet--can be lowered and raised five feet--and are fifty-two feet long. Well, you figure that up and then compare it to the channel we have to carry that water in and if they want to drown us out, all they got to do is raise them up just a few hours and we're gone down the river. The last time I was up there--! think there was seven of us farmers went up there--they put a new man in as commissioner of the water. And we met with him one morning and we have an agreement with him that he would carry the level, the water level of the lake six inches lower than what they had originally done before. So that helps us out a lot. Just that one thing. They've been mighty good about lowering those lakes. They'll lower them gradually just a little bit at a time and try to help us fellows down here. 
Q. So that too much water doesn't end up in the river and flood you out by lowering them [the gates] gradually? 
A. Yes. My understanding was when we organized this SangamonRiver Improvement Association--there were five of us on the board--Senator John Knuppel and Howard Montgomery. That's two of them. Been so long ago almost forgotten them myself. Maybe I can recall the others afterwards. Anyway, we saw where there might be a possibility of they'd want to dredge this river which was talked, and we didn't want that because my father used to own some land on what they called Sangamon, it was right in the corner where Salt Creek and Sangamon River come together. 
Q. And what was it called again? ~Vhat was the name of this area? That you mentioned? 
A. This organization that we got? 
Q. No, you mentioned the area where the Salt Creek and the river 
A. Oh, my father used to own some land right in the corner where this river, Sangamon, and Salt Creek come together and then it extends on to the Illinois River. Known as the Sangamon River from there on down. They dredged that when I was a small boy. I don't know how old I was, maybe, oh, I'd say twelve years old. And all they made was just a sandboil. It just ruined fishing. It ruined everything! They got a wide, flat bed there but they haven't got any water in it and it's just worthless. And then when you get clear down towards the Illinois, this flat place would just spread out water all over everything, don't have no force behind it, and the Illinois just backs it up and it just fills a great big sand barge and it's just filling up down at that end. Now today, I have a daughter at Beards­town that I go to see very often. Today, in the channel of the Illi­nois River at Beardstown, there's willows growing up and cattle are on it now to where it used to be navigable. 
Q. Navigable river? 
A. Yes! 
Q. And now it's just farmland? 
A. In other areas they just got one narrow course where those barges can go up and down and that's all. My son-in-law, I asked him what people think about it, what are they going to do. "They're going to have to dredge that out." And there's acres and acres and miles of it there that is happening to that river. That's what's changing in the Illinois down there at the end of the Sangamon. I talked to a fellow one time [at] the Hunter's Association. They don't want to see it drained or anything because that's. about all the duck shooting that's left in the state is down in there. That water spreads out over there and those fellows can get some duck hunting down:there. I asked one of the fellows, I said, "How come you didn't go on down?" They temporarily went down there and opened up a little stream so they could get out a little faster. Well, he said, '~e had to please both sides." 
Q. Is that area called the Sanganois, Sanganois Conservation Area? The area between the Illinois and the Sangamon that you referred to? 
A. No, I don't know what they call that area in there. I couldn't tell you if they've got a name for it, I don't know but it's more or less just a flooded area that's . . . I was down there just a few years ago. Some of my relatives took me down there just to see the changes that had been made down there. Some of our big baseball fans from St. Louis had come up there and bought large tracks of it and they've had bulldozers in there and they're cleaning it off and farming some of it now. And it's changed terrifically. They've taken an awful lot of that timber and stuff. It's just got so shallow that the water's just fallen enough so that they could farm. 
Q. That's really a change isn't it? 
A. Yes. That's why I say, we don't have the floods here because I think our water level is lower, and especially stayed down so much longer than it used to. It used to, when we had the floods, well that would raise up and down and up and down, every little bit. Now today we just don't have that raise. We don't have the water. 
Q. Did you ever swim in the river? 
A. (laughter) Yes, I think I have. Good many times. 
Q. Was it clean water then? 
A. Well, I couldn't say as I see too much difference. No. It's not like when you get in California, see, the water run on through the mountains. It don't look that way. (laughter) But it's carrying off so much sediment and we can't help that. No place for it to run, only on the ground. Naturally when it runs on the· ground it's going to work its way and work up loose some of that soil and carry it off. 
Q. Do you think if you didn't farm quite so close to the river it might prevent some of that sediment from going into the river? 
A. No, I don't believe that would help it any. My farm here, we lay in what you might call a bay and in that is included six farms and I'm on the lower end. These [are] old lake beds--the water pocketed there years ago and couldn't get away. Well, today they're all dry. And when I bought this farm it had one big drainage ditch on it to carry the water out of the lake bed into the river. But there was nothing in the waterway or drainage ditch to keep the water from going back in the river, to fill it all up again. 
Well, I had another old lake bed that had a lot of water in it and I wanted to get it lowered down a little bit because all the water above me, up here on another level, all accumulates down here on my farm. I get it all. I'm the last fellow that gets it before it goes down the Sangamon. And I dug another ditch down there. I then went back about one hundred and fifty feet up the channel and I put in a sewer and then put in a fill so I could drive across it and in that sewer I put an automatic doorway. Concreted up a doorway and then put a steel door on there so when the water comes down off these hills and runs down in there, before the river gets up that will all run away. But when the river gets up high enough to get against this door, it pushes, automatically pushes the door back and stops it from flooding my ground. 
Q. And that works fairly well? 
A. It works fine. 
Q. Good. 
A. And I have two of those. 
Q. Do you have any favorite places along the river? 
A. No, we don't. We only extend our road from the public road here where we're at. This is the end of it. It's got the sign up here that says "dead end." From here on down in the bottom we just have a narrow road, just wide enough for us to go in and come out with our equipment. Otherwise, when I first came here, a man owned this land that lived in Springfield and I guess he had too many friends and I had almost a continual course of people driving in and out and they'd leave the gates open and let my stock get out and they'd even cut the wires and let my stock get out so I had to just put up gates and put locks on them. And I'm just now beginning to get it stopped. And they'd haul junk from everywhere and take it off down there and dump it in my ditches in places. I didn't want that. 
Q. No, I wouldn't want that either. They were using your land as a dump. Were some of them using the land for hunting and other purposes too? 
A. Oh, yes, lots of them go in here, sure. No trespassing, I've had trespassing signs right here visible for years and years and years. (laughter) A man came in here and parked his car right in my road, right in the way, went off and left it. 
Q. Never even asked? 
A. And I called my sheriff. He sent two deputies over. They drove down there. They saw him going across the field. They .never did catch up with him. He outrun them. They waited around till noon and he never did come back so they finally left. At noon, he came. He went that way, west, when he went down. When he came back he came back on foot up here and came right through my tenant house up here where my daughter-in-law lived and liked to near scared her to death. She was scared to death anyway of trespassers. He came right through the yard and scared the dickens out of her, so she come after he disappeared, she come running over here and told me.what happened and I said, "Well, I saw him going down the road. He's going back after his car. I'll stop him when he comes back out." So when he came back out, I hailed him. He got out and commenced to hand me a card and I said, "I don't need your card, I can tell you what your name is. I don't need your card." The deputies had gone out with their little equipment and they called his wife and his wife lived in a new divi­sion right north of me here, where he lived too. And they got her on there and they talked to her and found out. He had a state job. When I got done with him he found out he didn't have no more business here than somebody else so he's never been back. 
Q. What was he trying to do ... 
A. He was making out some kind of report, something, I don't know, 
I didn't . . . He started telling me. I said, "I don't want to know 
what your business is. I just know you're not coming back over here 
and getting away with it." I said, "You've laid yourself for libel." 
I said, "Did you see that sign?" "No." I said, "Have you got a 
driver's license." "You know what's on there to get one don't you." 
And he wouldn't answer me. Because I've got one on each side of the 
road. (laughter) He's pretty near one of my neighbor's. 

Q. Well, it wasn't very good manners of him not to stop and ask. 
A. Well, no, but they don't think about that you know. A farmer is just nothing. (laughter) They think he hasn't any authority. They can get awful badly fooled if he wants to press charges 'cause I could have had him arrested in twenty minutes. And he knew he was guilty. (laughter) 
Q. Sure. He was trespassing. 
A. That's the strongest sign you can put up. Trespassing sign. No hunting don't mean much. 
Q. What happens if you trespass and press charges? 
A. It would be up to the judge. Depend on what . . If he had left the gates open and let my cattle out or my hogs out, well it's hard telling what he could have got because I might have lost some of them, you know, or if they got to running. I've had one or two run off in the river and drowned and just all kinds of things like that so it would be up to the judge what he'd do. 
Q. But it's a serious offense. 
A. Yes, depending on how serious it was. If he just trespassed and not destroyed anything, but yet he didn't know enough to get the car out of the road, he was right in our way. And it was right by a gate, too. Little thing like that he might have given him $25.00 or $50.00 [fine], something like that. 
Q. Well, I hope I parked in the right place out here. 
A. That's my private drive, you're all right. (laughter) 
Q. That's good. Was there a favorite time to go near the river or something that you particularly liked at a particular season? 
A. Oh, yes, I guess now since the age I am and my son does all the farming and everything, I just like to drive down there and watch him harvest the crops. 
Q. When is that? In late summer, early fall or ... 
A. Well, these harvests usually starts in September, the first of 
October and then corn follows, right, well, lot of times they work them both together if they can. But it generally, well, we'd say from the fifteenth of September on till they'd try to be done, oh, by the first of December or a little sooner if they can. 
Q. And then what do you do during the winter when you're a farmer? 
A. When I was farming? 
Q. Yes. 
A. See that lot full of cattle up there? There's only a few of them out there now. 
Q. They keep you busy. 
A. Over a hundred head up there. 
Q. You'd have to get out and feed them? 
A. Yes. I got a man now that does that for me, I'm not able to do it now. He lives in my house over here where my son used to live. He takes care of the cattle for me. My son and I feed those together. But then I got a herd of brood cows over here. I raise little calves. 
Q. That's a full-time job. 
A. Yes, it's just a twenty-four hour job, that's all. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. 
Q. What happens if you want a vacation? 
A. Well, just keep on working. (laughter) 
Q. Can't get one? 
A. No, as long as my wife was living we never had but one vacation. She passed away in 1963 and we had one vacation. 
Q. Did you go away on vacation? 
A. Yes, we got a reservation down in the Ozarks. We went down there and stayed two weeks. Another couple went with us. We had a room for two couples. But since then I've been in all but five states in the United States. 
Q. How did you manage that? You mean after you retired, you did a lot of traveling? 
A. I've done it with Presley Tours, all the trips. 
Q. They have some nice tours. 
A. Yes. I've been up in Canada, been to four of the providences [provinces] in Canada. I got to go to the bicentennial trip which took us to Washington DC, and through all the New England states. That was a nineteen day trip that time. 
Q. Did you like that? 
A. Yes, only it begin to get a little bit tiresome before we got back. But I didn't go anywhere last year. Two years ago, I went to South Dakota, Wyoming and that part of the area. And I don't know, I've been in Pennsylvania, New York, three or four times. About the first trip we took was down to the Mardi Gras. 
Q. Down in New Orleans. 
A. Yes. 
Q. Well, I bet you've seen a lot of changes in your lifetime. 
A. Oh, yes, I've seen a lot of changes. A lot of them. 
Q. In your ninety years, what strikes you as the most significant change? Would it be lifestyle or people or the cars or technology? 
A. Well, summing it up, it's just been a great revolution. The entire thing has changed. The world itself has changed, our soil has changed, our climate has changed to a certain extent, our river stages has changed terrific. And our people have changed yet more than anything. 
Q. Do you think for the good or for bad ... 
A. Well, at the present time, what I'm looking at now, it isn't better than it was. I couldn't say that. I think our times back a few years ago was more satisfactorily kept by everybody than they are now. We didn't have the drug problems, we didn't have murders and break-ins and what not. We didn't have them. We didn't know what they was. We felt safe. Today, the women that are living in the country are almost scared to death to (clock chimes). Lot of them are. Keep their houses locked, their doors barred .•• 
END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE ONE 
Q. Have there been break-ins in the farmhouses? 
A. Well, just where you came from, my son's house over there. He built his new house there just two or three years ago and they broke in before they had it anywhere near completed. They were just installing all of their inside equipment and they took everything that was loose that they could get and stole all the carpenter's tools. Then, that didn't satisfy them. They came back again after they got it completed and broke into it the second time. The boy went to college and graduated in electronics. 
Q. This was Gary Gerdes. 
A. Gary. And he had a lot of electrical equipment and what not and they just cleaned him but that got them into trouble so I understand. They caught two of the guys and they found his electrical equipment in New York and my son's television, they found it in Mississippi. And they're looking for one more fellow. My son is in the insurance business in Petersburg and he has a nice home out at the lake. They broke into it Saturday night, just last Saturday night and they were so close to catching him that his tracks went out one door when they came in the other door. And they could see his tracks but he undoubtedly must have had his car sitting on the backside of the house and they didn't see it and he just . . . . And he had a blanket down, had silverware all wrapped up in it ready to take and a lot of other things all laid out ready to go. 
Q. It's sad, isn't it? 
A. Yes. Their house is, oh, they got a lot of glass in their house and he pried one big glass open and never broke it. Somehow. 
Q. Well, what other changes strike you? How about changes in farming since you've done a lot of farming all your life. 
A. Oh, yes, farming isn't anything like it was. Our extension advisor, Elmer Rankin, who just moved to Sangamon County from our county here had an article in the paper Sunday. Cost you $389.00 if I recollect the figures exactly, to grow an acre of corn this year. 
Q. Wow! 
A. Three-hundred and eighty-nine dollars. And three-hundred and three dollars to grow an acre of beans this year. Well, now we can't survive if they don't do something and you're not going to eat if they don't do something. Fertilizers getting too high. Gasoline. 
Q. Could you use less fertilizer? 
A. We could do with less, some. To a certain extent. Not too much. Years ago, when I was a boy this family moved to Ohio. They went there on account of land prices was too high here and they went out there and they bought some of that land where they had been using fertilizer and we didn't even know what fertilizer was. 
Q. What kind of fertilizer? Artificial or •.. 
A. Yes, artificial. He said, they told him out there once you start with that, you can't stop. Well, now I don't know, I don't know any­thing about what happened out there but here, you just leave four rows that you don't put nothing on, you won't get nothing off of it. Once in a while that will happen with the equipment. 
Q. How about manure or something like that? Old fashioned fertilizer? 
A. Well, that helps an awful lot and then we sowed our clover seeds and things and that green fertilizer to put back on it and all that was plowed down. Course today they don't think about that. 
Q. But wouldn't that help? 
A. It did help. Yes, it did help. 
Q. If we got into a real crisis, where we couldn't use chemicals, do you think people could go back to using manure and natural ferti­lizers? 
A. They could. I read an article in the paper a short time ago where one man doesn't use anything. He grows all of his own, well we call them by-products, whatever you want to call them. And he told about his yields and stuff. Why, it didn't pay to put on this farm ferti­lizer because he was producing too much according to what he had invested and there was no comparison. 
Q. Did he say what he was using? 
A. Well, no, I don't think he did. He didn't make no explanation of it. 
Q. Just that it was natural. 
A. Yes. 
Q. I imagine you've seen a lot of changes in equipment. What kinds of changes have you seen that would seem, say very primitive compared to what we have today in farm equipment? 
A. Well, my father was a machine man: threshing machine, corn shellers, and what not and I was raised up that way and naturally I kind of have that blood in me and I was farming four or five hundred acres and I thought I had to have a tractor. That was needed. Tractors were needed. I didn't know anybody around that had one. But I went down to Peoria and bought one, came back and I used it. Well, it was a great big tractor that weighed, I guess almost as much as the ones that pull five or six bottom plows now and I couldn't hardly pull three plows. 
Q. What kind of a tractor was it? 
A. It was an Avery? 
Q. Avery? 
A. It was made in Peoria. Avery Tractor was there. And I've had tractors ever since. That was 1919 when I bought the first tractor. When I stopped farming a few years ago when my hired man left me and I couldn't find nobody to replace him, my equipment is all standing in the shed, I never did sell it. 
Q. So it could still be used possibly? 
A. Well, with this size farm and as much pasture ground as I've got-­I've got over two hundred acres, pretty near three hundred acres of pasture fenced--and that takes a lot of work to keep that up. I've got to have tractors and wagons to get around to repair that fence with. Got to have them. So that's one reason why I never sell it and then my son uses it a little once in a while but now, his machin­ery's got so big, mine looks like toys to him. (laughter) 
Q. That's quite a difference, isn't it? 
A. Yes, it sure is. 
Q. Well, I think I could talk to you all day about all kinds of things but to get back briefly to the river, are there any other reminiscences or memories that you have that you would like to share with us about the Sangamon River particularly? 
A. Well, I would say this. From what I've seen, with little tribu­taries like this, that are not used as navigable streams, I hope I never see the day as long as I live that they'll come in with boats and clean all the debris out and straight.en them out. The reason number one is that if we want a good, nice fishing place, we've got to have debris and things left in there to protect the fish. Fish go nest, and then the male fish comes along and fertilizes them. Well, if there's no place for that nest of eggs to lodge and stay there, we haven't got any fish in the river. And that's why I don't want to see it cleaned out, I don't want to see it straightened out. I want it left just like nature made it. 
Q. It's probably prettier that way. 
A. It's better that way. I like it. I like it that way. As far as boat riding and excursions and stuff, we don't need this little old tributary river. Put that on the lakes where they've got miles of it like Shelbyville's. I think that they tell me it is twenty-two miles long and I don't know how wide. Hundreds of boats get on there if they want to pleasure ride and they haven't got nothing in the way to cause a wreck or anything like that. No obstacles in the way. That's like the Lake of Springfield. There's a lot of lakes, even in this state. Carlinville. I've seen about all of them. 
Q. Yes, I think that I would agree with you. I think we shouldn't straighten out the river. We should leave it the way it is. 
A. The way I see it, the good Lord laid it all out. He knew when he put that soil in the farm that it would have to have a drain and that's one of the drainages. And it was naturally laid out. So let's keep it that way. 
Q. I agree. I've heard that it's a dangerous river. Have you heard that it was a dangerous river? 
A. Oh, any river is dangerous. As far as this one's concerned, this is to a certain extent treacherous but that [depends on] how you want to use it. My granddaughter was in the boating excursion that they had here a few years ago and they were loading up here at Springfield to get ready to start down and somehow or other she got a little off balance and a log or something was in the river that she didn't see, or a boat might have hit her or something, and knocked her over and she hit her head and knocked her unconscious and she couldn't go. You see, it's all in how you use it. They're dangerous. 
Q. Did you ever know of any drownings in the river? 
A. Oh, yes, we've had a number. Yes, we've had a number of them. Some of them was unavoidable because they couldn't swim or something or they just waded out too deep. There are undertows in there, fur­ther down the river. I don't know as I ever found one here but down the river where we had those big deep holes, there are undertows of current in there and if one of them gets ahold of you--! never was in but one and I finally did get out but I thought I was going to drown. It just pulled me down, just set me down, just seemed like, just held me there, just carried me off down the river. 
Q. It was a real strong current? 
A. Yes. And when people don't know how to swim or even though you do, you get into that. I don't care how good a swimmer you are, you just got one out of ten chances to get out. And, too, you let kids go unprotected and they get to playing and pushing. Just first one thing and then another, falling out of boats. 
Q. Did you ever read the book called Sangamon by Edgar Lee Masters? 
A. No, I never read that. Never read that. It's interesting, I guess. 
Q. It's pretty interesting. He writes a lot about the different 
places and people along the river too. 
A. My son that's in the insurance business--he's the boy who was raised in the same locality I was raised--and he asked me one day whether I would prepare a map of the roads running north out of Petersburg in Sandwich Precinct and put the names of the old people and locate the houses of those who used to live there when I was a kid. 
Q. Oh! 
A. So I've just got it perfected the other day and my oldest daughter came over here and she and I worked it up. So we've got a map--she's redrawing it now again. 
Q. That would be an interesting piece of history. What are some of the names of the people that have lived around here? Some of the old families that have lived along this area. Are there lots of them? 
A. Oh, lands, there's so many, they're so old, old, old. 
Q. Really'? 
A. My mother's family·was a family lived near what they called the Bonnet Corner. That's eight miles right straight north of Petersburg. 
Q. Bonnet Corner? 
A. Bonnet Corner. And that's where they got the name of the family that 1 s Bonnet. That's been years and years ago when that road was laid out. Yes, and what always gave me quite a thrill and I never will forget it, it looked so nice that I couldn't keep from recollecting it. They had three boys and a girl and they were all older than I but occasionally I'd go down and stay all night with the younger one. And people living near always called him Uncle Bill and Aunt Mary. They were very religious. And the boys slept upstairs, the girl slept downstairs and on Sunday morning Uncle Bill would have a table arranged, a little old table, right in the middle of the kitchen floor, and he'd have the Bible on the table and he would wake the boys up and the girl and get them down there and they had services. And the old kitchen floor had been scrubbed with lye so much it was white, almost. 
Q. And they had their service right there? 
A. Right in the kitchen. 
Q. And who were these people? What relation were they to you'? 
A. That was my great-uncle and my great aunt. 
Q. Your great-uncle and aunt. 
A. And then, about two miles from there, they had a German church, German Methodist Church. And that's where my mother went to church. But she come from the opposite direction, west of that church. 
Q. And this is north of Petersburg? This area? 
A. Yes. On that Bonnet Road going to Bonnet Corner going to Oakford. That street goes right into it. And they, oh I don't know they kept that church years and years and years and finally it was dissolved. And they had a cemetery that still is maintained from the source of what they saved up in that land and the old church site when they sold it. And my father was secretary of that for years and years and years. One thing that he had to have was to have a service once a year on that cemetery. Had to have a service on that little cemetery. 
Q. How do you suppose that tradition came about? Was that a family tradition? 
A. Oh, yes, that was carried up through the old people. I guess maybe through the German people, maybe it was just one of their thoughts. Now that's right, just almost by New Hope Church, what they call New Hope Church today, the Baptist Church. What I had in mind when I said that, they all farmed with horses and the horses worked six days a week if they got a full week in. Well, they felt sympathizing enough with those horses and said "No, we can't hitch them up and drive to church. We '11 walk to church." And that 1 s possibly two miles down there. The sun would come up, you know, they'd go early to church too. The sun would be up here and you could see those people walking down there and there was old ladies, you know, with them big white collars on you know. Their shirts white and you'd see them walking down there. That always just impressed me and I never did forget it. 
Q. You can actually remember how they were dressed? 
A. (laughter) Yes. 
Q. It's really interesting. 
A. Well, that was quite a sight. 
Q. Was it a long way for them to walk to church? 
A. No, they didn't think so. They used to walk in them days, you know. No. Walk about, I guess it was two miles to where Bonnet Corner is. No, they'd just come from all directions. You'd see them coming. That was one thing that aroused my curiosity when I was up in Canada, most of the people walk up there. The mail carrier walks twenty-three miles a day delivering mail. 
Q. I'll bet he doesn't have a weight problem! 
A. He has a box collection every so often. Maybe ten or fifteen boxes and he just goes from one to the other. He don't deliver right up to every house. 
Q. What part of Canada was that? 
A. Well, I was in the four lower providences. 
Q. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? 
A. And Quebec and we spent more time in Quebec than anyplace else. That's quite a place. Quebec City itself. In the evening we got there they were just finishing, well, I guess you'd call it a rally of all the younger people in college and high school. They were there by the hundreds. All a-foot. Nobody drives. Had their sleeping bags. Next morning when I got up, I got up early and you just see them laying around all over town. 
Q. And about what year was that when you were there? 
A. Well, the centennial year. 
Q. 1976? 
A. When the centennial was, yes. And I don't know, we saw a lot of things there and there's seventeen universities in Quebec, seventeen, and I never saw as many colored people in one city as there is in Quebec? 
Q. Really? 
A. Well, I said never. I'll take it back. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is about equal. But they told me they built three new colleges there and they were all colored. And the driver took us over quite a lot of the town and there were really a lot of them there. 
Q. You've seen a lot of interesting things. 
A. Yes, museums and what not, been to several of our presidential graves, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Harry Truman and the one that's buried in Iowa, [Herbert Hoover] him and his wife. Goes back to Harding. Wasn't Harding, it was the one that was next to him. 
Q. I should know but I can't think of it. 
A. Well, I should too but I can't think of it now. 
Q. Cleveland, was it Cleveland, then Harding or Roosevelt or. No, it's not Roosevelt. 
Q. And apparently, from what you've said, a lot of men are living that way. 
A. Well, I've known some that was going down hill the wrong way pretty fast but they come from stock that they thought they could better them and they asked to become a Mason and I've seen them just change their life overnight almost, be a different person altogether. 
Q. That 1 s good. 
A. I belong to Petersburg but my neighbor here belongs out here. Last week they buried a man--one of five brothers--all were Masons and their wives were all Eastern Stars. 
Q. Years and years ago, I belonged to the Rainbow Girls. 
A. Did you? 
Q. Yes. 
A. That's a nice organization. 
Q. This was affiliated with the Eastern Stars and the Masons. 
A. Yes, I know. My granddaughter in Beardstown and her mother--just fell down and broke her wrist in four places • . . 
Q. Oh, dear! 
A. She was a Rainbow Girl and her instructor helped her and she got to the place where she instructed and they sent her to Chicago and I don't know where all they sent that little rascal. (laughter) 
Q. She got to travel by being a Rainbow Girl. 
A. Yes, she did. She travelled a lot. Her father's a 32nd degree Mason. My son in the. insurance business is a 32nd degree Mason. And my son where you just come from, he just joined the Masons within the last year. And his son is twenty-two, I hope to see him taken in pretty soon. And my father, I don't know, he was way up in the Masons. 
Q. So it's kind of a family tradition? 
A. I guess. I guess that's what you'd call it. 
Q. Well, do you want to make a kind of summary statement or summing up of your feelings about the river? 
A. Well, taken as a whole, looking back over my life, I hope that things changed as they have in the past, for better. Well, I look back to the time when the college students were tearing up their buildings and what not. 
Alfred Gerdes 
Q. In the sixties? 
A. And Billy Graham got over there and taught them some lessons 
which accomplished more than anything in the world. They just quit all at once. Now if that's all it takes, we need more people like Billy Graham and others that I could name by gosh. Especially for the younger generation. I'd like to see this drug business done away with. I don't want to see it get like it is in some of those olden countries where they raise all those drugs and have people starving to death and dying on the streets and everything like that. I don't want to ever hear of that. I'd like to see our country change for the better and as far as the river down here, I hope that it is left 
forever just like it is. 
Q. Okay. Well, with that we'll close. Thank you very much, Mr. Gerdes. 
END OF TAPE