The Tree By The Well by, Lillian G. MERKLE HEBERT In the thirties many of the old homestead trees: elms, cottonwoods, willows, ash and box elders, began to show their decadence and, one by one, fell or were blown down. Pa [Christian A. MERKLE], and a day laborer he hired, Mr. LaCROSSE, went to a tree farm and bought 50 Chinese elms and set them out around the house and farmyard. They ended up with one little puny one and Pa was going to throw it away but Mr. LaCROSSE insisted, "No, put it by the well. That way if one of the others dies, you will have a replacement." As time went on and World War II came along and gas was rationed, we did not make many trips to the farm and many times, it was in the evening and we didn't look around the yard much. It must have been in the summer of 1945, because Clarence [MERKLE] was home from service, that I drove into the yard and there behind the well stood a tree, topping the 40 foot of the windmill. Clarence was walking across the yard and I asked, "How in the world did you transplant that big tree?" He laughed and said, "That grew there. It's one of the Chinese elms Pa and Mr. LaCROSSE planted years ago." I argued, "It can't be a Chinese elm. It's too big. It has to be an American elm. There -- those are the Chinese elms." I pointed to a row of trees about the size of a large apple tree. "Yes, but they got only ordinary rain. This tree got all of the overflow from the well. That's what they mean by saying you should give a tree lots of water." A few more years went by and the windmill became unoperable and, since the pump was electrified, it stood there rusting away. They talked about trying to take it down but it was too dangerous a job. What with all of the nuts and bolts being rusted and only a skilled person with an electric arc cutter could do it safely. Nature took care of it. In May of 1951 a tornado came through the area and touched down in the yard, tearing the elevator off of the crib, carrying off 200 six-week old chickens, 30 guineas and their young, moving the milk house off of its foundation and twisting the windmill like a cork screw as it wound around the tree, slicing its branches on the ground, leaving only the tall trunk. In the years since, the other trees have stood but none has grown to such a stature as the little puny almost discard. Mr. LaCROSSE, by the way, was the one who made the sage remark: "Don't plant a $10 tree in a $1 hole." Street Signs by, Lillian G. MERKLE HEBERT Sometimes, you hear about a city council having to decide on a name for a street but one of the streets in West Kankakee didn't have to go through that formality. It was the farthest west street off of West Station Street and went south from the front of the old EZY Way factory, later ROPER. Having been originally a country road, a few people had settled nearby and it was still just the "last road to turn south." A man named MARTIN, who had lost part of his hand in a saw accident, had a gas station on the corner for a number of years. There is still one there, new and modern. After Franklin D. ROOSEVELT was elected he decided that would be a good name for the street, painted Roosevelt Ave. on a board and nailed it to a post and that is how the street got named. Just to the south of the corner, on the west side of the street, is a small two story house that belonged to Uncle Henry HEBERT. He raised his family there and, later, Pete (Viator) [HEBERT] and Yvonne [DIONNE? HEBERT] raised their family there: Lucille [m. PHILLIPS], Camille, Rita Mae [m. MADDEN] and Doris [m. DION]. The house originally stood at Greenwich, just north of Rte. 17 at what is now called Pipeline Road. Mr. NESBIT, father or grandfather of the NESBIT who does house moving now, moved it to its present location using horses to draw it on the big dollies or rollers.