From Hardware to Hot Shaves: The Story of 11014 Front Street

   Viewed as a whole, Mokena is divided up into lots and blocks, looking like a cross section of squares and rectangles. If we see it as a surveyor’s plat map, it is sliced up like a pie. Considered with a more flavorful bend, the individual flavor and persona of each slice can be fully appreciated. To look at the history of each lot in town, is to be face to face with our narrative on a grand scale. Taken as an example, 11014 Front Street is no different, boasting of a rich story that goes back almost 160 years. 

   This tale begins with the humble family of Andreas and Margaret Schuberth, late of the tiny northern Bavarian village of Wolfersgrün. They arrived in our environs in 1847, as part of the great Germanic wave of emigration to eastern Will County in that era. They settled here in a world where neither Mokena nor Frankfort yet existed, nor was there any township government to speak of. The railroads that would come to crisscross our neighborhood were but a distant dream. By 1862, the Schuberths had prospered and owned a farm of no small means on today’s 191^st Street, just east of the modern intersection of Route 45. 

 

   Aside from being early settlers to what would later become Mokena, the Schuberths also earned their place in history by being one of the founding families of the St. Mary German Catholic Church in 1864. Four years earlier, a federal census taker recorded Andreas and Margaret on their homestead with a family of four living children, ranging in age from 22 to 14. Their oldest, John, was working as a carpenter. As the Civil War began, he struck out on his own and moved to Mokena, a young and growing community that had only existed for ten years. Decades later, it would be recalled through the haze of time that John Schuberth erected a building at today’s 11014 Front Street in 1862. Typical for its era, this quaint two-story structure housed his new hardware store, and was fitted out with living quarters not only above it, but also in a small wing on the building’s east side.

 

Having formerly stood at today's 11014 Front Street, this ca 1910 image shows the historic structure was built by John Schuberth in 1862. (image courtesy of Richard Quinn)

 

   The Schuberth family became firmly rooted in business affairs of 19^th century Mokena, as John’s younger brother Nicholas opened a long-lasting saloon not far from the hardware store around 1870. John was doing well enough by 1872 to take out a large ad in that year’s county directory, in which he described himself as a “dealer in general hardware, iron, nails, copper and sheet iron ware”, as well as highlighting the stoves and agricultural implements he had on hand. Further illustrating the array of goods that could be had at the store was an insert that appeared four years later on the front page of the Mokena Advertiser, that boasted “John Schuberth would inform his friends and the public generally, that he has just put upon the floor in his store the largest and most complete assortment of cooking ranges, stoves, parlor hard and soft coal and wood burners ever shown in Mokena or surrounding towns.”

 

This ad from John Schuberth's hardware store appeared in an 1872 Will County directory.

 

   A respected man in our community, in the spring of 1882 the town solons appointed John Schuberth the village’s police magistrate. As Mokena had no established police department to speak of at the time, the hardware dealer presided over cases of local legal infractions that were brought before him by the town constable. Typical instances were those of alcohol-fueled mayhem that occurred when area farmhands came to town to ring in the weekend in Mokena saloons. Involvement of the owners of this property in village law enforcement would become a common thread in its history, and would be seen in more than one figure in its future. 

 

   In addition to selling iron goods of just about every description imaginable, John Schuberth demonstrated his versatility by becoming an agent for steamship travel by 1888.  Somewhere in the sunset of the 19^th century he moved to Chicago, where he branched out into real estate. He lived there for the rest of his life, before breathing his last in 1927 at the age of 89, three decades past the life expectancy for an American male in this time. 

 

   As is so often the case with our history, there are a series of blank spots in the narrative of this property, things only coming back into focus with the emergence of a Mokenian named Jacob M. Zahn. The scion of an old Mokena family, he took up ownership of a new hardware store in this spot sometime in the years leading up to 1900. Zahn’s business here was successful, and in the spring of 1904 he began to carry the new-fangled spiral washing machine manufactured in Tinley Park, which users declared to be “the best made.” In 1901, mere three years after telephones made their debut in the village, the Northwestern Telephone Company put a switchboard in Jacob Zahn’s hardware store, it being operated by the faithful shopkeep and his wife, Alice. A news report from that fall described Jacob as being “busy as a hive of bees” in his diligent work manning the board. 

 

   Zahn also took a seat on the village board as a town trustee in 1897, a local office he held until 1905. His popularity amongst town folk is evidenced by the election held in the spring of 1903, when he received a whopping 50 votes from the men of Mokena, at a time when our population was barely 300. During his time as trustee, he worked on various projects around town, including the 1898 construction of our first water tower, which stood for many years on Front Street, just east of its intersection with Division Street. 

 

   Jacob Zahn was a well-known Mokena businessman in his day, but he was not blessed with good health. In the fall of 1904 he was bowled over with particularly severe case of bronchitis which resulted in his traveling to a “fresh air camp” in Ottawa in the early weeks of the following year. He manifested signs of improvement there, and also procured a tent in which he lived upon his return to Mokena to continue the treatment. However, in spite of all the efforts of early 20^th century medicine, severe hemorrhages developed, and he expired at his Front Street home on May 31^st, 1905, a young man of 38 years. Leaving behind his wife Alice and two young daughters named Viola and Pearl, his mortal remains were interred beneath the green sod of St. John’s Cemetery just outside the village. 

 

   That autumn, Alice Zahn sold the hardware store to Fred and William Niethammer of Kankakee County, while not only keeping ownership of the apartments in the building, but also continuing to run the telephone switchboard. Soon after they set down their stakes here, in the fall of 1907 village correspondent William Semmler of the Joliet Weekly News, referred to the two brothers as “wide awake hardware dealers”, and that October William bought out Fred’s interest in the store, who then went to work in Chicago, before ultimately becoming an Indiana farmer. Like those who went before him at this location on Front Street, William became active in local affairs and cared deeply about our community. He came to be an important part of St. John’s Brotherhood, a men’s organization of the church, where he served as chairman of the building committee when the new church was dedicated in 1923, as well as a school trustee and clerk of the local camp of the Modern Woodmen of America.  Like John Schuberth before him and those who would come after him at this spot, Niethammer had a hand in law enforcement in Mokena, being appointed police magistrate in the spring of 1907 by the village board. Aside from patriarch William, the Niethammer family was composed of matriarch Ida, and their two children Ruth and Hugo. The family came to live in a roomy, historic house on First Street, lending their name informally to the narrow stretch of today’s Midland Avenue that ran north to Third Street from their homestead. 

 

William Niethammer of Mokena, circa 1922. 

 

   The tenure of William Niethammer brought modernity to the old hardware store, with glistening electric light being installed for the first time in August 1913. His business withstood the trying years of the First World War, before Niethammer ultimately closed up shop in the early 1920s. The last hardware enterprise to be housed here was the store of young Mokena brothers Milton and Roy Krapp, who moved their concern two doors to the west when they traded the property to local newcomer Walter Fisher in the spring of 1923, who opened a general store here. A fresh-faced man of 26 years, Fisher was born in the Russian Empire of Jewish heritage, before he and his family flocked to America’s shore in the early part of the 20^th century, likely in an effort to escape the czar’s hostility to people of their faith. Having first come to Mokena by way of Joliet with his wife Ethel and two little daughters in 1922, Walter Fisher’s store handled everything from pail candy, union suits to fancy dress suspenders, as well as phonographs, at the going rate of $98 (or about $1,500 in today’s money) and individual records for 49 cents each. 

 

   Following the already long-established pattern of owners with law enforcement connections, Walter Fisher was appointed a Will County Sheriff’s deputy at the end of 1922 to combat Prohibition era bootlegging in the neighborhood. During his tenure he did much to fight crime in and around the village, his biggest moment being when he and Mokena constable John Frisch intercepted a truckload of illicit booze passing through the community in March 1923. Alas, Walter Fisher is one of the most tragic figures in our town’s history. While pursuing a car thief in April 1926, the Front Street storekeeper-turned lawman was shot and killed just outside Orland Park. As a hero in Mokena’s story, it bears noting that nothing in the village, neither street nor park nor public building, bears Walter Fisher’s name in memory of his fearless sacrifice. This is a glaring omission in our community. For the complete account of this case and Deputy Fisher’s life, the reader is directed to this author’s 2018 book The 1926 Orland Park Murder Mystery.

 

Walter Fisher, a hero in Mokena's history, seen here around 1920. 

 

   In the wake of Fisher’s untimely death, the property was host to several short-lived enterprises. Not only did Ethel Fisher carry on her husband’s store here for a brief period, but Fred and Alma Brown had opened a rooming house in the upstairs of the building by the end of the decade as well as a combined ice cream shop and snack shop in the structure’s one-story eastern wing. Operating at the same time in main western side of the building was the oft-forgotten Bethard Chevrolet dealership. In the crisp early morning hours of November 2^nd, 1929, a guest of Lizzie Moriarty, who lived in the house immediately east of the property in question, was jarred from her slumbers by the sounds of breaking glass and the acrid smell of smoke. Fearing the worst, she woke Mrs. Moriarty, who went outside and discovered that the west side of the Fisher building was engulfed in flames. In the way in which it can only be done in a small town, word of mouth stirred the volunteer fire department to life, who sounded their alarm on the village water tower a few doors to the east, and in no time they were out in full force, with a crowd of sleepy onlookers to boot. In what would prove to be one of the most spectacular fires in Mokena’s chronology, the firemen vigorously fought a blaze that would be momentarily tamed, only for it to reignite time and again in another part of the sprawling building. The News-Bulletin glumly quipped that the fire “was a stubborn one”, and that the flames “appeared to be between the walls.” All the equipment belonging to the Bethard dealership was lost to the conflagration, as was everything in the Browns’ section of the building, who carried no insurance to offset their loss.  

 

   By the time the last ember winked out, the story was only just beginning. Almost two weeks after the fire, the state fire marshal showed up in town, who had more than a passing interest in Mr. Bethard, whose first name has been lost to time. In an interesting detour to the story, it turned out that Bethard hadn’t been seen in Mokena since the fire, and that he was in no small amount of debt. To top things off, he had recently invested in an establishment called The Green Gables just south of the village at today’s Wolf and LaPorte Roads that the News-Bulletin referred to as a “roadhouse”, implying in the lingo of the day that shady business was afoot there. Stories were making the rounds in town that illegal alcohol was could be had there, with the News-Bulletin winking to its readers that “quite fast company was seen there” and that “the place was open all night and looked like one of New York’s famed night clubs.” Talk of Bethard’s alleged speakeasy even came up at a village board meeting, where it was intimated that “gun play” had taken place there between a scorned husband and his wife’s supposed lover. 

 

  Mokena was agog, and the gossip titillated residents. How much of it beheld the truth was never ascertained, but Mr. Bethard re-surfaced in time to communicate from Chicago to the News-Bulletin that he vehemently denied everything that was being attributed to him, and declared that he was “trying hard to get on his feet again” after the Front Street fire. In any case, he never went back into business in Mokena. The burnt hulk of this historic Front Street building was unable to be saved, and was ultimately knocked down.   

 

   In the aftermath of the 1929 fire, the lot sat vacant for years as life carried on without it. In time it became an overgrown tangle of foliage, with one account in the News-Bulletin describing it as a “young forest” in 1945. At this point in the narrative, we can open the books to a new chapter in the history of this property. Enter now the family of Anthony and Evanis Dina, both natives of Chicago. When the Dinas first arrived in our midst in 1947, they became one of the first settlers of the new Sunny Acres subdivision, which sprouted up north of the village proper in the days after the Second World War. The Dinas came to raise five children in the community, while Tony, as he was called by those who knew him, was a barber by trade, having first taken up the scissors when he was nine years old. All paths led to his becoming a tonsorial artist, for the young Chicagoan attended barbering school at the age of 13, and became the proud owner of his barber’s license as a 17-year-old. Part of the revered Greatest Generation, Dina served in the Marine Corps for one year during the war, before getting a medical discharge on account of a spinal injury suffered during judo training. 

 

   Tony Dina hung out his shingle in Mokena, and in 1950, had a new building erected of concrete blocks on the foundations of the old Fisher building on Front Street. His first local customer was the shop’s builder, who got a trim while sitting on a sawhorse. A year later their home subdivision was struck by a nasty tornado, and while the Dinas and their property were lucky enough to be spared, matriarch Evanis felt the family would be safer living in the confines of the village. So it was that comfortable living quarters were added onto the north end of the barber shop soon after, and the Dinas moved home and hearth to town.

 

The former barbershop of Tony Dina at 11014 Front Street.

 

  Tony Dina’s barbershop was quite the busy place in Mokena, and by 1955 had the luxury of not only being air conditioned, but also had a TV that customers watched as they waited their turn in the chair. The shop was very much a family place, where no racy mens’ magazines could be found, and no rough language would be tolerated, as it was common for village lads to stop in to have their ears lowered. Dina was a man who built relationships with his customers, as he was known on occasion to pack his tools into an old doctor’s bag and visit them if they should happen to be at Silver Cross Hospital, doling out haircuts, shaves and facial massages while refusing to take any payment for the same. 

 

  In his decades of residence in Mokena, Dina became a pillar of our community. He was active with the town chapter of AmVets here he served as post commander, was a founder of our Civil Defense Unit, and even served as a village trustee from 1967 to 1975. Adding to this already impressive list of accomplishments, he was a volunteer police officer, and later took a seat on the village’s police commission. Evanis Dina, known as a very caring and compassionate woman, made history when she received an appointment as our community’s first policewoman, a position in which she wore a badge issued by the town government.   

 

An idyllic scene of 1950s Mokena, Tony Dina Sr at left, with his brother Dominick on the right. The home of Mrs. Lizzie Moriarty can be seen behind them, which still stands at today's 11008 Front Street. (image courtesy of Dominick Dina)

 

  1968 saw Tony Dina Jr come to work in his Dad’s shop, cutting hair in the chair next to his father. After more than three decades years of serving Mokena, Tony the Elder retired in 1981. Tony Jr took up the torch and kept up the business in the time-honored shop on Front Street, where he was known far and wide for his adherence to the old traditions of the barbering trade. Tony Dina Sr passed away in 1989 in what would have been his 80^th year, followed by his wife Evanis, who reached the dignified age of 98, in 2016. 

 

   Many are the people in Mokena’s narrative who have some attachment to 11014 Front Street, be it business owners, customers of long standing, or simply residents who have considered the buildings here, be it the old barbershop or the much older building that went up in smoke in 1929, to be old landmarks. A fair number of the stories of these places have been remembered, being inscribed upon the old pages of local history, while others have disappeared into the ether, with all those who remembered them having long since crossed the great beyond. This historic property is now for sale, and soon, a new owner will be on the scene. Maybe the old barbershop will be mercilessly erased from our landscape like so many of the other landmarks that have graced Mokena. Whatever happens, let us never forget those who came before. 

Skyscraper of the Prairie: the Mokena Grain Elevator

   Mokena is built upon a solid foundation of agricultural bedrock. Farmers were the lifeblood of our community for well over a century, and when one looks in just the right places, traces of this old way of life can still be found amongst the blur of modern suburban living. One building in the heart of the village is a stalwart reminder of this heritage. The steel-clad eminence rises behind Mokena Street’s Eggcetera café, standing defiant against the tide of time, the weathered metal sign across its side reading “Ebert Farm Service” bearing mute witness to its former purpose. Turning the pages of history even further back, this hulk served as a grain elevator, a place where our farmers stockpiled their harvest. It may be hard to imagine a time when this old structure wasn’t here, keeping watch over Front Street and the Rock Island tracks, but it’s not even the first grain elevator to stand on this site. 

 

The Mokena grain elevator, a village landmark for over 135 years. 

 

   What can verily be called the first industry in Mokena started on this spot as early as 1855, a mere three years after the village was first platted, when early entrepreneur Noble Jones and his uncle, Cyrus Cross, had a flour and saw mill built here. These two men are inseparable with the early development of our community, and did business under the name of their firm, Cross & Jones. Alas, this enterprise’s success wasn’t written in the stars, and by 1858 the steam-powered mill had eaten up all of Noble Jones’s savings, and the concern winked out. After a succession of other owners, the huge structure was gutted and converted into a grain elevator in 1865, with the end of the Civil War. 

 

   The world of our forefathers was one of wood and open flame, that on one hand brought shelter, heat and comfort to their lives, but on the other, could prove to be the scourge of their existence. The many disastrous fires that dot the history of Mokena starkly attest to this. Business hummed along at the local elevator until the dreadful winter’s night of February 26^th, 1884, when one of the worst conflagrations on record occurred. At about 11:30 that night, while returning from a party in one of the village saloons, resident William Miller in some way happened across a fire that had started in a corner of the structure’s basement. According to the Mokena correspondent to the Will County Advertiser, Miller “immediately gave the alarm” and in no time the fire brigade and a large number of village dwellers materialized on the scene. Our community’s ladies were in fine form, and the same correspondent described “the zeal and energy shown by a number of our very best women in carrying water”, while the writer lamented what he saw as a lackadaisical effort by a few of Mokena’s men, who “stood around with their hands in their pockets.” A real scribe with a flair for the dramatic, he ended his reportage with the quip “Bah with such specimens of Homo.”

 

    Despite the sweat and toil exerted by the Mokenians who fought the fire that night, it was all for naught. The blaze made short work of the wooden building, and despite the best efforts of those who came to fight the flames, the granary was completely destroyed. Five railroad carloads of grain stored inside also went up in smoke. By the time all was said and done, the total monetary loss of the elevator alone came out to about $3,000 or close to $88,000 in today’s figures. Villagers were at a loss as to how to explain the origin of the fire, and in time it came to be assumed that it was the work of an arsonist.

 

   In the aftermath of the conflagration, a heap of scorched timbers and an empty foundation marked the site. From this smoldering ruin arose a new edifice, a marvelous phoenix from the ashes. This rebirth was had at the hands of John A. Hatch, a man whose mark is still visible in more than one place in our community. Readers of this page will be familiar with him, a lifelong Mokena area resident who was born in the wilds of the yet-unnamed Frankfort Township on February 27^th, 1842, and who later served as a hero in President Lincoln’s army at the siege of Vicksburg with great distinction. After the end of the Civil War, he married Nancy Matilda McGovney and together the couple brought nine of children into the world. A wearer of many hats in town, John A. Hatch also served as Mokena’s first village clerk upon incorporation in 1880.

 

   Hatch had already been a grain buyer in Mokena before the 1884 fire, and on June 25^th of that year, he paid the princely sum of $700 for the site upon which the old elevator had stood, a fee which included the remnants of the original building’s foundation, along with track and wagon scales and some outbuildings that still stood. Construction then began on a new granary, one of the biggest projects in the history of the village up to that point. Piece by piece, it rose over the roofs of Mokena, and when it was finally completed by the beginning of that September, the faithful village correspondent to the Advertiser was given a personal tour of the premises by John Hatch. In the lines of the paper, with great pride in his voice, he reported that:

 

“All is in readiness to receive grain. The power and shafting have been put in, and ascending to the upper floor we peered down into the depths of eight large bins with chutes accessing two separate elevators, one for oats and one for corn. Everything is handled by machinery, and the turning of two or three levers puts the grain in any part of the building from the basement to the top, or into the cars. In front of the elevator a set of railroad track scales has been put in, and also a set of platform scales has been put it in at the office. Altogether the elevator is complete in every detail. We have reason to be proud of it!”

 

   John A. Hatch kept a thriving business at this location and in the small grain office just west of the elevator, the front door of which opened to Mokena Street. He was still going strong 15 years later, when a November 1899 ad in the Advertiser stated that his firm bought grain and paid the highest market prices, sold hard as well as soft coal, (from which most of the town gained its heat) as well as all kinds of feed and did “grinding on the most reasonable terms.” 

 

The granary of John A. Hatch, seen here around 1900. Mr. Hatch stands in the foreground.

 

   In July 1902, wishing to devote all of his energy to the flourishing general store he also kept in the village, Hatch sold the granary and its associated businesses to William Henry Bechstein of Seneca. While the exact details of the transaction weren’t openly discussed in town, some said that the elevator must’ve changed hands for around $5,000. While Bechstein was late of LaSalle County, he was an old Mokena boy at heart, having been born here of robust agricultural stock on February 13^th, 1872, later being wed with Emma Cappel, daughter of a long-established Mokena family in 1895. A former employee of John Hatch’s, W.H. Bechstein was an old hand at the grain business, having been involved in this trade while he lived in Seneca, while a contemporary of his confidently wrote that Bechstein “understands the business from A to Izzard” and that he was “a hustler and a young man of the strictest integrity.” The same writer gushed that the grain man was “genial and obliging, and therefore popular with all. Mokena gains by securing him and his good wife as citizens.” 

 

   The name of W.H. Bechstein is one that is writ large in the village’s history. One of the most prominent citizens of Mokena in his day, not only did he run the grain elevator in the early 20^th century, he was also one of the founders of the Mokena State Bank in 1909, serving as its first secretary and much later having ascended to the president’s chair. Bechstein was an active Freemason, a dedicated member of St. John’s German Evangelical Church, and was also associated with the village camp of the Modern Woodmen of America. He amassed no small fortune through his business ventures in town, and would also later be remembered as the owner of the first auto in Mokena, a Ford touring car which he purchased in the spring of 1912. 

 

   Towards the end of 1903, after having had ownership for a little over a year, W.H. Bechstein set out to improve the elevator. First, he had a new roof put on the massive structure, then ordered a new 12,000 pound hopper scale for use in weighing grain into railroad cars. By the end of February 1904, Bechstein’s concern was also the proud new owner of a six horse power gas fueled engine. The next year, a fresh business venture enticed the agriculturist back to Seneca, where he purchased a large share in another grain firm. Back in Mokena, the spring of 1905 saw the elevator rented to none other than John A. Hatch, who set forth grinding feed with his adolescent son Alfred. In November of that year, W.H. Bechstein formally sold the elevator along with its grain and coal business to Frank and Charles Liess, two Mokena brothers who also kept a general store on Front Street. They spent a total of $7,500, which included not only the stock on hand, but also figured in Bechstein’s recent improvements to the property. The Liesses had already dabbled in grain in our neck of the woods by this time, but were hindered by the fact that up to this point, they had no storage buildings to speak of. 

 

   Alas, the Liess chapter of the granary’s history is a brief one. As history often returns to familiar faces, our old friend W.H. Bechstein and is family moved back from Seneca to their old Mokena stomping grounds after only having been away for three years. On the crisp first day of 1908, papers were signed and Bechstein re-acquired the granary with its coal and feed business, and was soon back in action. By the end of the month, things were humming to such a degree that one Friday night, the machinery in the elevator was kept running until well past midnight, filling railroad cars with shelled corn. A man with an eye for betterment, Bechstein also had the elevator painted red in this era. 

 

The grain elevator during the W.H. Bechstein years, circa 1910. 

 

   The granary was a focal point for our farmers, and a place from which a good chunk of their income came. A typical case would be that of Dan Lauffer, who sold his first batch of oats for the 1910 season to Bechstein, and received 33 cents per bushel. Things were especially good for farmers six years later, when upon shipping the season’s first load of corn to the Chicago market in November 1916, Bechstein paid the highest price for the crop in Mokena since the Civil War, a hefty dollar a bushel to Conrad Bettenhausen.

 

   For the second time in the elevator’s history, the terror of fire struck again. On Sunday morning, November 5^th, 1916, Elmer Cooper, a newly minted garage owner, saw smoke pouring out of a barn that was near the granary. It was known that a horse was trapped inside, and local auctioneer Herbert Moriarty was the first on the scene to try to rescue the helpless animal, but was beat back by the dense clouds of smoke. The horse, badly burned and asphyxiated, was eventually dragged from the burning barn with a rope. A Frankfort veterinarian was summoned, but nothing could be done for the poor beast, who died that night. 

 

   While World War I was being waged overseas, its effect was also being felt in Mokena. In January 1918, the village was in the grip of a pronounced coal shortage, that also coincided with one of the worst blizzards in the community’s history. With hardly any coal to be had from local dealers, some residents were taking to soaking old ashes in their stoves with oil to gain their heat. Not wanting to leave his fellow town folk in the lurch, W.H. Bechstein took to selling wood cut to stove size to his customers in this time frame, which was better than no fuel at all. By February things had gotten a little better, but still weren’t quite where they should’ve been. On the morning of the first of the month Bechstein received a railroad car’s worth of soft coal, and by noon, it was all gone, after having been parsed out to 75 customers. 

 

   After having been in business at this old Mokena location for a combined total of 21 years, W.H. Bechstein had paid his dues and was ready to rest open his laurels. On August 7^th, 1926 he sold the elevator and its concerns to his brothers in law, Fred and Albert Cappel. They had much in common with Bechstein, as the two brothers, aside from being his kin, were also born into an old Mokena family that had much to do with the building up of the village. In Albert Cappel’s youth, he had also been an employee of Bechstein’s at the elevator.  As their predecessors did, Cappel Bros. handled grain, feed, as well as salt and tile, not to mention the all-important coal to boot. The latter they were known to deliver house to house, a service that yet a handful of Mokenians can still remember. A 1928 appendix of Mokena businesses called Fritz Cappel, as he was known, a “live, progressive man” in the village, while the same authority called his younger brother “one of the prominent young business men” in town. 

 

A 1929 advertisement for the local business of Fred and Albert Cappel.

 

   Cappel Bros. steered their business through the hard years of the Great Depression and World War II. After the war, the elevator went through a succession of hands, including the partnership of Robert Hohenstein and Harold Schuldt, who bought the granary from the Cappels in the first days of 1946. By the time of their tenure, the old elevator was starting to show its age, so a new aluminum roof was put on and the sides of gargantuan building were clad in steel, which is still in place to this day. At the time of these improvements, it was noted that the elevator had a capacity of 15,000 bushels of grain. In this timeframe, the old grain office just west of the elevator was pulled down and replaced by a bigger, steel-sided building.

 

   A new page in the history of this time-honored property was turned when Robert Niemann sold the elevator in 1966 to Chester and Dorothy Ebert. Chet, as he was known by more than a few around town, has a place in Mokena’s history that is just as venerated as John Hatch and W.H. Bechstein’s. A true son of the soil, he was born in August 1918 on a farm in Frankfort Township that stood on today’s St. Francis Road. After his family moved further north to a different farm north of the current intersection of 191^st Street and 88^th Avenue, as a lad he went to school at the old one room Summit Hill schoolhouse, and later became an alumni of Mokena’s two year high school. Like so many others of this Greatest Generation, Chet Ebert rose to our country’s defense during the Second World War, having served the duration in the Army Air Corps, spending nearly three years in Panama. 

 

Chester Ebert, far right, inspecting a corn crop in September 1963. (image courtesy of Ruth Welzen)

 

   In the years after the war, Ebert was no stranger to business in our community, and was already a familiar face here when the elevator came into his family’s hands in the 1960s. As early as 1946, he started a concern in a simple building just east of the grain elevator, selling limestone to area farmers, which they used to enrich their soil. In 1950, Chet Ebert took on Warren Mancke of Tinley Park as a business partner for a brief period and expanded into a phosphate service, becoming a pioneer in this line. Phosphate was favored by local agriculturists who valued it for its use as a fertilizer, who would receive it delivered by Ebert, who would also spread it in their fields. To accommodate his growing business, the same year Chet Ebert had a large storage bin built just to the east of the grain elevator, it measuring 25 feet high by 16 feet in diameter, with a respectful capacity of 175 tons. 

 

   Aside from being a successful Mokena businessman, Ebert wore many hats in town as a respected local leader, having a seat on the boards of Immanuel Lutheran church, Mokena Public School, the Will County Farm Bureau, as well as the village board of trustees from 1969 to 1973. In conjunction with the phosphate business, he also founded Ebert Farm Service, which for many years operated out of the steel-clad building on Mokena Street immediately west of the grain elevator. A wide array of products could be had here, all reflective of the needs of Mokenians in this era. A 1976 ad listed everything from “feed, seed, grain, fertilizer and horse supplies” to “lawn and garden supplies”, making the store truly a one-stop shop for villagers. 

 

The grain elevator and Ebert Farm Service on Mokena Street, as they appeared in the 1970s. (image courtesy of Ruth Welzen)

 

   The family business reached into the end of the 20^th century, when Chet Ebert’s daughter Ruth, and her husband Dave Welzen, took over the former Ebert Farm Service in 1981 and re-christened it The Feed Bucket, to let Mokenians know that the concern was under new ownership. The Welzens started out primarily selling livestock feed, which would come to town on pallets, which would be stacked inside the now century-old grain elevator. Live ducks, geese and turkeys were also for sale here, along with baby chicks, which a visitor to the store would find in wooden crates bathed in golden light. 

 

   The era in which The Feed Bucket existed, was a time of great change for Mokena. With the population climbing to astronomical heights, the village was rapidly changing from the rural farm town it had been for generations to a Chicago suburb. By the 1990s, Main Street America was in decline as big box stores made their headway into our environs. One of the many casualties of this unfortunate development was The Feed Bucket, which ultimately shut its doors on Mokena Street in 1996. 

 

   Today we can look back over a century and half of history at this storied location. Most of the figures that make up the long narrative of this landmark we can only see through the hazy eye of memory. Their contributions to our community were great, and they deserve our dearest reverence. The grain elevator still stands triumphant, a monument to their love, work and lives in Mokena.