Diverting Diary of an Errant Youth – Part 1
Leon Allen was a young boy who lived in Kenilworth at the beginning of the 20th century. The Kenilworth Historical Society has in its archives a diary he wrote in 1903 and 1904 describing some of the adventures he and a group of friends had in the early days of the village. Mr. Allen was later prevailed upon to share his diary at meetings of the historical society, much to the enjoyment of the attendees.
October 1, 1903. “I have joined a fraternity. The members are me, Clider Taylor, and Stubs Taylor and then there is Vin Taylor, and Bob Lester and Ned Badger and Phil Maher and maybe we will take in some of the other fellows but we are not going to take them all in now because then there would be nobody left to initiate and what would be the use of having a fraternity if there was nobody left to initiate into it?”
October 2. “This is a very secret fraternity which we have organized. Its name is the Phi Nu. Those letters are Greek letters and the deepest secret of all is what they stand for. We have not thought up what they stand for yet but that makes it a much deeper secret.”
October 3. “Our fraternity is building a fraternity house. It is out in the North Woods, just north of the new street which some people call Winnetka Avenue. It is so far in the woods that nobody can see it from the new street or from Sheridan Road. At first we didn’t know what we could build the house with but there is a new house not far away and we thought it would be all right to take a few boards. At first we thought that this would be stealing which is a very mean thing to do but Lester said it wasn’t stealing, it was just rustling boards which is the same as taking watermelons out of the Pease’s garden or cantalope out of the Sears’ garden or anything like that. So we decided that rustling boards is not stealing because how else could we build a fraternity house anyway?”
October 5. “It being Saturday we worked all day. It is getting to be awful hard work. It is harder for Clider and me because we bent so many nails and split so many boards that the fellows won’t let us be carpenters any more and so we just carry boards from the place we rustled them last night to the house. I have decided not to ask my father about rustling boards. My father is very unreasonable sometimes and maybe he would be unreasonable about this. I am pretty sure he would be.”
October 6. “We couldn’t work on the house. We were all dressed up and if we got our clothes dirty or changed them we would get asked a lot of inquisitive questions and it would probably be best not to explain about those boards just yet and besides this is a secret fraternity. So we just went over to Insull’s poultry farm and shot ducks and pigeons with sling-shots. A fellow had ought to behave on Sunday anyway.”
October 7. “We finished the fraternity house today. It was an awful lot of work but it is a swell house and we chipped in and bought hinges for the door. We are going to sleep out in it all night tomorrow if we can get loose.”
October 8. “We didn’t sleep in our fraternity house at all. We haven’t got any fraternity house. We went after school and we couldn’t find it. At first we thought we had forgot where it was but we found the place where it was and it wasn’t there. It is a very deep mystery.”
October 9. “ We have found our fraternity house. Clider and Bubbles were down in Evanston on their bykes at a place where there is a big new building being built and there out in front of it was our fraternity house and they were using it for a tool house and it had a sign on it showing who was building the building and it was the same sign that was on the house where we rustled the boards. That man just stole our whole fraternity house. He stole our hinges and everything. I think any one who would steal should be put in jail!”