Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
This week, instead of our usual episode, we wanted to introduce you to a new podcast Honeymoon Road.
Pete and Me and Our Model T On the show, my cousin Marie and I celebrate the 100th wedding anniversary of our grandparents by retracing their honeymoon trip from Chicago to Los Angeles in a Model T.
Now, we didn't take a Model T across the country, but Marie did learn how to drive one.
Come with us on a road trip across America and learn a bit of history along the way.
It's something you might want to share with your students.
Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
And I'm Marie Felde.
One hundred years ago, our grandparents, Gertrude and Peter Felde, got married.
They immediately set off on their honeymoon, driving from Chicago to Los Angeles in a Model T Ford.
Kitty and I are retracing their road trip to find out what remains of that 1925 America, using our grandmother's letters as our road map.
Welcome to Honeymoon Road, Pete and me and our Model T.
Our road trip actually began at the airport.
My cousin Marie was supposed to meet me at LAX after flying down from Oakland, and then the two of us would catch a flight to Chicago.
That is, if we could actually find each other.
I recognize that person.
Hello.
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
We made it.
I know.
We're here.
We're ready.
I almost didn't.
What happened?
We got through the tunnel right from East Bay to Oakland.
Completely closed.
What happened?
Big rig carrying sod overturned.
The freeway is still closed.
Oh, my gosh.
So only because we had this much space to move over and get off.
I said, Jim, you've got to get over there.
I'll get hit.
No, you've got to get over there.
That we were able to take the back way through my tennis club back into oakland.
When we got on the freeway, no one was on the freeway and they're still closed, and if we hadn't gotten off right at that moment, we'd still be stuck anyway.
Well, i spent an inordinate amount of time at tsa because at this point i held up my extremely long microphone, but this is very scary.
Oh, on 9-11.
Yes Yes, of course it is.
Yeah.
So anyway, we're on our way.
All right.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
This will be great.
We hadn't planned to fly on September 11th.
In fact, once I got past the TSA x-ray machine, I forgot all about it.
Until the flight attendant started the usual routine of showing us how to buckle our seatbelts and put on the oxygen mask, and most of us passengers just tuned her out.
But then she deviated from the usual script, reminding us why we go through this rigmarole before every flight, trying to keep passengers safe, something their fellow flight attendants were doing that September day back in 2001.
It's for your safety.
It is not to inconvenience you.
It is not to upset you.
All of it means something.
And it is about making sure that we are all safe and secure.
As we move about this country, and we hope that today and every day you remember that.
As you move throughout the airports today, be kind to the people you meet.
Many of those people have lived through this.
They have family members.
Some of us were at work on that day.
Despite the date, it was a full flight and we sat a row apart.
Marie reached over the seat and tossed a packet of letters for me to read on the plane.
Kitty, those hundred-year-old letters weren't casually tossed back.
They're probably the most precious Feldy family treasure we have.
They're so much fun because we get to hear our grandmother is a young and adventuresome bride.
She's a lively correspondent, too, often surprisingly sassy and irreverent.
After all, she's writing home to give the scoop on her brand new married life to her unmarried sisters in Chicago.
For Kitty and me it kind of feels like we're kids hiding under a blanket in the backseat, eavesdropping on 25-year-old Gert and Pete.
It's crazy.
They're married for less than a week, but they're ready to head off for a month or more in a rickety Model T Pete's outfitted for sleeping.
He's taught Gert to drive so she can spell him on the road.
And she is more than game to ditch her secretarial job for adventure and discover what's ahead.
I love that she signs the first letter home.
I am your married daughter.
Mrs Gert, with love and kisses from my husband and me.
I am your married daughter, Mrs Gert Kasser Felde.
But let's take a step back.
Just who were Pete and Gert long before they were grandma and grandpa?
Gert was born in 1900.
Her father moved the family to Chicago from Elgin Illinois after his job at a watch factory disappeared.
He found a new job working on the boiler at the William P Nixon Elementary School, about six miles from Wrigley Field in the Lincoln Park Zoo.
As was usual in those days, Gert only went to high school for two years, but she learned bookkeeping, shorthand and typing and found work as a secretary.
One of her jobs is working for the Big Yank Work Shirt Clothing Company.
Back in 1925 the original Big Yank chambray shirts sold for between 95 cents to a dollar and a quarter.
Today you can still buy a Big Yank shirt, but it'll cost you 199 plus international shipping charges.
That's because the company was sold to a fashion company in Japan.
Peter A. Felde was a year older than Gert, born in Chicago in 1899.
His father had emigrated from Germany.
Pete spoke some German.
He was known for swearing and sometimes did so in German.
Despite the swearing, Pete seemed headed for the priesthood.
He loved to sing at Mass and attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary.
My dad said that for years our grandfather would wear a heavy wool, badly faded Leatherman sweater with a large orange Q on the front.
But the Catholic Church lost a priest candidate.
Pete got work in a grain mill and later as a stationary engineer attending the coal-fired boilers for the Ryerson Steel Company and later for Chicago's school buildings.
We don't know for sure how Pete and Gert met.
Maybe it was because both Gert's dad and Pete worked in local schools as stationary engineers, or maybe they met at church, since they lived just a few blocks away from each other.
Or maybe they ran into each other on the L train into town.
We had questions.
And the logical place to find answers was at the beginning, in their neighborhood.
Which was about seven miles northwest of downtown Chicago.
Once we'd landed in Chicago, we spent quite a bit of time picking out our car.
Now, it wasn't a Model T, and we considered an electric vehicle but settled on a compact SUV.
Then we set out to find the houses where Pete and Gert grew up, to see for ourselves what their neighborhoods were like.
Our plan was to stop by and be on the road by noon.
We failed miserably.
So what we're looking for is Grandma's house at 4319 Costello.
This was a house that her family had lived in for something like 20 years or more.
We had Gert's address and we found Costello Street, but we hit a dead end, literally.
Houses had been replaced by a huge food factory and a UPS warehouse and a carpet company.
And there was only one Costello Street in Chicago.
So we licked our wounds and thought about it.
Maybe city planners had renamed the street over the past century?
Later we found out thank you Joe, at the Chicago Public Library that Chicago has quite the history of renaming streets.
And in fact, Costello had been renamed Shakespeare.
And it was on Shakespeare that we tried to find Gert's childhood home.
Wait, wait, wait.
This is 4319?
Look at the address.
4319.
And it's a little bungalow, two-story.
Not 1890s or 1900s.
No.
But, you know...
It's pre-war, I would say 1920s, maybe.
And it's certainly in a neighborhood, if you look around, of a whole variety of older homes.
You know, it's been here for a long time.
Probably not back to the turn of the century.
No, no.
But what charming.
I mean, look, there's a big yard out in front.
Sunflowers.
Sunflowers and marigolds and...
Yeah, you can kind of visualize the big house that would have been here.
So I don't know if we found the house or not, probably not.
But we certainly have found the Anne address that matches.
On the other hand, it's fun.
So here's a little something about this house from Grandma's sister, her youngest sister.
Anna.
On March 13, 1900, another girl was born.
She was a healthy baby and very lively.
She was named Gertrude.
It was decided that a bigger house had to be found in a neighborhood where the family could be raised with more chances to play and go to school.
There were some new houses built on Costello Avenue on the northwest side of Chicago.
These houses were built by Mr. Disney, the father of Walt Disney.
My parents were proud to tell that the Disneys often came to visit.
They were very friendly.
All the neighbors were very congenial.
Every family on the block helped to make their neighbors happy whenever they could.
So maybe the happiest place on earth had its roots right here in Chicago.
We had to find out more about the Disney connection to our grandparents' story.
A few blocks away, we found the house where Walt Disney spent his early years.
Walt's father, Eliah Disney, came to Chicago to work as a carpenter on the 1893 World's Fair.
And after the fair, he started building houses, including the one where Gert grew up and this modest two-story house a few blocks away.
It's probably the original gate.
OK.
Should we see if anybody's here?
Yeah.
There's a lockbox on.
That's not a good sign.
Probably not here.
Not here.
All right, let's peek in the windows at least.
They've certainly kept it looking great, haven't they?
Oh, they've got pictures of the house.
The rugs on the floor.
Some old furniture.
That wonderful mahogany door frame.
The house is being restored, but we have some pictures at our website.
HoneymoonRoad.com where you can see it and find links to the Disney house where you can learn more.
Next on our list, Grandpa's house.
Oh, what a pretty church across the street.
4918 and the church is 4919.
Such a pretty church.
It is a pretty church.
Isn't that funny?
Grandpa would not have approved because it wasn't a Catholic church.
Oh, well, yeah, yeah.
All right, now, wait a minute.
What are you doing?
You're going to get arrested.
No, I'm not.
Come here and look.
I think...
I think Grandpa's house was torn down in 1927 and they got the church built in 1944.
Because right here is a cornerstone that says 1927.
On the front of the pillar is a stone carved 1944.
So I think this probably recognizes The history of what happened right here from 1927, 1944.
We must have looked either suspicious or crazy, wandering around commenting on the local architecture and piecing together our family history.
Hello, sorry.
And that's where we met Jorge Reyes, or George as he liked to call himself.
We are in search of our grandfather's house.
Walt Disney's father built my grandmother's home.
Really?
Yes, that's the family lore.
So he built in this neighborhood.
Kitty, it has to have been that house.
Walt Disney's father built homes in the area.
His home also was in the area, but he built homes here, too.
That's what he did.
And, according to one great aunt's story, is that Walt Disney's father and mother would come by and have dinner with our grandmother's family.
So wouldn't that be fun?
So what would be the oldest house in England, if you were to guess?
A lot of these have the two flats and we have bungalows here all over the neighborhood.
It's hard to say which one is the oldest because a lot of them are built about the same time.
Like on this block, as far as I know, the house next to the church is pretty old.
It's pretty original.
So I know you're going to be searching down your grandparents soon.
Oh, no.
My grandparents first generation.
When I've asked my parents about it, they know where they came from.
They came from a little town in Mexico called San Luis Potosi.
It was the state.
And they came from different rural places.
It's just a... circumstance that my grandparents got together.
And then all of a sudden my dad said, I want a better life.
So he came over here, made some money, went back to Mexico, got my mom and said look, I found us a place, brought her over here.
And then we just kind of sprouted.
Well, I mean, that's a classic immigrant story.
Yes.
Well, for a lot of people, yes.
Our next task was to find the church where they got married.
Marie made some calls and found out that the church records for baptisms, weddings and the like were being held at another church.
Okay, so we thought this was going to be like really easy walk into the clerk's office for the church and get a copy of the marriage certificate.
And we do just that, and she brings out these big dusty books.
She says, but I haven't been able to find anything with your grandparents' names.
And it's like, well, that's crazy because we know they went to church here.
We know when they got married.
They were really good Catholics.
So they had to have been married in a church.
But there is no record in these great books with the most ridiculously elegant, almost undecipherable handwriting per name.
There's nothing there for them.
So I think we'll walk over now to see their church and figure we have to go through some county records to see if they really got married.
My goodness, wouldn't that be something?
But we at least wanted to see what their old church looked like.
So we tracked down Our Lady of Grace.
But the church itself was just too modern.
What had happened to the old Our Lady of Grace?
Had it just been knocked down?
The answer came from Christina Cartagena, the principal of the little Catholic school next door.
So as we walk up the stairs here, this is what the chapel used to be, which is now a school.
And the altar was back that way.
But however, this was when you would exit.
So this is from the original part of the chapel.
So that was the choir loft where the statue of Mary is.
Absolutely.
Did they close it because there were too many people or you have no idea?
I have no idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we don't have like pictures of how it looked back then, because that was such a very long time ago.
The church next door, as you've seen, it was built in 1934.
I think so.
Yes.
So then and this was built in 1901.
So they would have been going to church in here because they were parishioners through the 1920s.
That's so great.
Do you have an idea what the parish is? members of the church might be these days?
Oh my goodness, I'm not for sure.
So like right now we are combined with another church.
So we have St.
Sylvester, Lady of Grace, and now it's called Jesus Bread of Life.
So all the same mass days and times stood at both facilities, but it's just one priest.
So in 1925 we went to where our grandmother may have lived and where our grandfather lived, and it was nearby here.
They probably could have walked here, don't you think, Kitty?
So this would have served that community.
This would have been their church, Catholic Church, wouldn't it have?
There is another Catholic Church that's really close by, which is St.
Hyacinth's, and that is still there as well.
It's about two and a half blocks away, but I'm not for sure how old that building is.
We'll go look it up.
Yeah, and that's a basilica.
Oh, very, very beautiful.
Maybe they wanted a fancy pants wedding.
Very beautiful.
The name of that, again, is?
St.
Hyacinth.
St.
Hyacinth.
Do you know if they have a rectory office or where they would keep their records?
So then they would have the rectory there and the church there, but the school is closed.
It's been closed for some time.
So we went in search of that third Catholic church in the neighborhood, the Basilica of St.
Hyacinth.
Let me trip on the stairs.
Only two problems.
They weren't kidding when they described it as a Polish church.
Everybody spoke Polish.
Eventually they found an English speaker.
Our grandparents got married 100 years ago.
We thought it was at Our Lady of Grace.
So we were thinking, what if they got married here instead?
But again, another dead end.
So we just stopped by the Basilica of St.
Hyacinth.
And a very nice nun tried to look up records until we told her the marriage was 1925.
She came back very quickly and said, we don't have them that far back.
We said, okay, so now we've been to three Catholic establishments, churches, offices, basilica.
And have come up empty in each one of them.
They're all within a radius of, I don't know, Kitty, three miles at max.
I think probably closer together than that.
Yeah.
So we know they got married.
We think they got married.
Yeah.
But we're not having any luck finding the records.
Now, come over here and look.
There's a banner.
And look.
It's the 125th anniversary of St.
Hyacinth.
So it was here when they were getting married.
That's a good point.
Oh, aren't you clever to see the sign?
Now, I mean, it is a Polish Catholic church now.
Maybe a basilica is more fancy than a parish church.
Maybe they went to a basilica because it was more elaborate.
We don't know.
We've also, by the way, we've also been to the library, as we mentioned.
That came up nothing, but we hope maybe we can get some Cook County records.
So it's crazy.
So the bottom line is that we have discovered that we are really lousy detectives.
We couldn't find the church.
We couldn't find evidence of their wedding.
We couldn't even find the wedding license.
But tomorrow is another day.
We'll head out on the road bound for California.
First stop, September 15, 1925.
Dear folks.
My husband and I are spending the evening at Winona, Illinois, about 25 miles south of Star-Franc.
It rained a good part of the way, but I enjoyed every bit of the trip.
That's coming up next on Honeymoon Road, Pete and me and our Model T.
Honeymoon Road is written and produced by Kitty Felde and Marie Felde.
You can follow us on our road trip at the website honeymoonroad.com.
That's where you can find copies of Gert's letters, photos and a road map, as well as music credits and other information.
That's honeymoonroad.com.
I'm Kitty Felde.
And I'm Marie Felde.
Thanks for joining us and our adventures on Honeymoon Road.
THE END
THE END
Thank you.
Thank you.
THE END
