Lithuanian immigrants at the turn of the 20th Century were mostly “people of the land.” No single phrase better captures the totality of their lives and identity as subsistence farmers before they were driven into new lands and new occupations, mostly industrial. It describes a thousand-year-old spiritual and practical tradition whereby the land from which they drew their existence not only belonged to them, but they to it.

How did this deep-rooted identity survive immigrants’ drastic uprooting? One answer can be found in the abundant gardens that many Lithuanians cultivated all over Springfield well through the 1950s: a proliferation of “urban agriculture” that dwarfs our modern concept of “growing local” and community gardening.

One local Lithuanian garden was particularly memorable for its diversity and scale: that of Barbara Bertha (Wallick) Stankaitis, born in Lithuania in 1886. Loving granddaughters Barb (Stankitis) Pelan and Marita (Stankitis) Brake still recall with bliss their Grandma Stankaitis’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” which covered 2.5 city lots on South 17th Street from about 1931 to 1980. (Did any readers ever see this garden?)

Barb and Marita report that their father, John Stankitis, bought the house and adjacent lots for his mother when he was about 20 years old and his mother was about 40. Grandmother Stankaitis proceeded to garden for hours every spring and summer day for the next 50 years, often in a long cotton dress with deep pockets covered by an apron, her hair coiled in a bun at the nape of her neck.

Grandma Stankaitis with her flowers

The “Garden of Earthly Delights” had everything in abundance: vegetables such as red and white radishes, spring onions, leaf lettuce, carrots, cabbage, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, green beans and cucumbers. Cherry, apple, pear, peach and apricot trees. Livestock such as chickens and rabbits. Granddaughter Barb Pelan remembers Grandmother Stankaitis killing and preparing chickens for Sunday dinner, and making egg noodles from the eggs Barb collected as a child, taking great care not to rile the resident rooster.

At the back of the garden were blackberry and raspberry bushes and rows of ripe, red strawberries. A grape arbor produced plump purple grapes for grape jelly. All of the fruits and vegetables that could be preserved or canned were, making for a very busy harvest season.

I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up so close to the earth in the glow of such a gardener extraordinaire. Barb and Marita describe it as a life-shaping experience that nurtured in them a special kind of imagination and creativity. Marita grew up to become a published writer and composer of folk music who performed at Carnegie Hall and the 1997 Clinton inaugural. Barb writes on her blog, “Prairie Ponderings:” When I was a young child, I would wake up in the morning and look out the second floor window to the golden glow over my Lithuanian grandmother’s garden. It was like a Monet painting and seemed surreal in its beauty. I was mesmerized…”

Marita (Stankitis) Brake amid apple blossoms, like her grandmother’s

Perhaps the most special part of the garden were the flowers: bridal wreath, hollyhocks, four-o-clocks, zinnias, daisies, orange tiger lilies, purple irises, and roses, which were especially beloved by Grandmother Stankaitis and which reined in pink, red and white in their “own private spot.” Barb recalls making dolls of all different colors from the hollyhocks, and Marita remembers “playing bride” in the white blossoms of snowball hydrangeas.

After Grandmother Stankaitis died around 1980, her son John–Barb and Marita’s father–transferred his mother’s beloved roses to his own yard on Bennington Drive and tended them in loving tribute for the rest of his life.

John Mack, Sr. on far right at ribbon-cutting for his second McDonald’s on S. MacArthur Blvd., 1961

Anybody who’s eaten a McDonald’s hamburger in Springfield has feasted on a bit of local Lithuanian-American history involving a family aptly named “Mack” (Lith: Makarauskas). McDonald’s first local franchisee, John Mack, Sr., was born in Lithuania in 1912 of parents Stanley and Agnes Makarauskas. He was a coal miner before operating Mack’s Food Store at 1501 Keys Ave.

In 1957, John, Sr. and his wife Mary (Gidus) Mack had the foresight to make the leap from their corner grocery to the brave, new world of fast food. After a personal call from McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and then being turned down by many banks, a $100,000 loan for the Macks from Illinois National Bank finally came through, and John and Mary opened their first restaurant on S. Sixth St. at the perfect location: just outside the gates of construction machinery factory Allis Chalmers, where two shifts a day of hungry workers could appreciate a 15-cent burger with 10-cent fries. (The AC workers only got paid $1 an hour back then.)

S. Sixth St. ad, circa 1957

At the peak of their McDonald’s empire, the Macks were exclusive franchisees of 8 McDonald’s all over Springfield, including the Old Capitol Plaza and White Oaks Mall, according to the State Journal-Register. (There was an additional McDonald’s in Jacksonville.) It is said that John Mack, Sr. was one of the first politically active Lithuanian-American in Springfield. His son Tom recalls that John, Sr. was a member—perhaps a leader– of the Progressive Miners of America (see The Mining Life and The Mine Wars pages on this site). Over and above that, John, Sr. was famous for providing groceries on credit to under-employed and striking miners–most likely from a home-based “commissary” during the Mine Wars and later from his corner grocery.

On page 92 of Benedictine University Professor Carl D. Oblinger’s history, “Divided Kingdom: Work, Community and the Mining Wars in the Central Illinois Coal Fields During the Great Depression,” Progressive miner Tom Rosko says, “He ‘carried’ them all in Springfield, John Mack!” (In the lingo of the time, store credit was referred to as being “carried” or being “on the book.”)

Back in the 1920s, coal miners opening corner stores seemed to be a trend. Former miner Paul Kasawich opened a grocery/tavern next to his home on East Reynolds. My own Hungarian immigrant grandfather, Joseph Kohlrus, was a coal miner before he opened Kohlrus Foods on Converse at the RR tracks, not far from Mack’s Food Store on Keys, in 1932. It must have looked like a good way to give the family a solid alternative to dangerous, sporadic—and disappearing—work in our local mines. The violent “Mine Wars” that accompanied mechanization and massive layoffs, locally, by Peabody Coal (1932-36) that are detailed in Oblinger’s book sadly proved these miners-turned-grocers correct.

After John, Sr. died in 1974 at age 61, Mary Mack (1911-1990), daughter of George and Anna Posiponka Gidus, continued to operate all the “Mack McDonald’s” in Springfield and Jacksonville with her sons Tom and Jim, daughter Mary Ann and son-in-law Gary Butts until the family sold its franchises in 1989, again, according to the State Journal-Register. (Mary Mack and family were also was the founders of Springfield’s Ronald McDonald House.)

In 1988, the couple’s son Tom Mack went on to become the founding and long-time president of the Lithuanian-American Club in Springfield. Son and Lexington, Ky-area businessman John Mack Jr., 70, died in 2008. He and his ex-wife Beverly had three daughters: Leslie Preuss of Florida, Carole Mack-Joefreda of Lexington, Ky., and Marilyn Mack of Virginia; and a son, John Mack, III, of Nicholasville; Ky, who carries on a proud family name.

For more information, see “Here’s the Beef / How Springfield Got its First Fast Food,” by Dave Bakke in the April 27, 1999 State Journal-Register.

Many thanks to Elaine Alane, Bill Cellini, Jr. and Hannah, one of John, Sr.’s great-granddaughters, for assisting with this post.

Any wedding party that could last three days is worth at least two good blog posts. (Don’t we wish we had an event like that in us today?) Elaine Alane, daughter-in-law of the lovely bride Eva Kasawich Alane, helps me answer your questions about the 1927 wedding featured last week:

l to r: back row: Anna and mother Anna Kasawich, front row: Paul and Eva Kasawich

Eva Kasawich Alane became a bride when she was 19 years old on Sunday, September 25, 1927. The party went on for three days. I imagine her family could afford it because it was the “Roaring ’20s” and they had a grocery store next door to their home, at 1900 E. Reynolds St., that was opened by Eva’s Lithuanian immigrant father, Paul. (A former coal miner, he died in 1926 of lung disease, so missed his daughter’s big wedding.)

Eva got married in her lovely Charleston wedding gown sewn by a local woman named Tillie. The bridesmaids’ dresses were pink, though that doesn’t show up in black-and-white photos.

A huge banquet table set up in the basement was loaded with chicken, kielbasa, bread and traditional Lithuanian wedding fare, including (probably kugelis) and many homemade sweets. When the wedding cake was delivered, the baker had made a mistake and sent a very small cake. Eva cried and cried. A while later, a new, beautiful and VERY large cake arrived as a replacement.

The Wedding Party; notice Kasawich home in left background and model T on right.

Upstairs in the living room, there were three musicians: a concertina player, a fiddler (and Eva couldn’t recall what the third instrument was). The carpet was rolled back and there was dancing. A lot of polka music was played. The bridegroom, Victor Alane, loved to polka and danced any chance he got, even after he was old and his knees were arthritic.

Homemade beer was served (we can assume, barrels of it, over three days). It was made in the attic of Eva’s home by her mother Anna. Though Prohibition was in full swing, some whiskey called Old Mule also was served.

The Wedding Party

The company that supplied bread to the Kasawich grocery store donated all of the bread for the reception. All the rest of the food, except for the wedding cake, was prepared at the bride’s home by her mother and older sister (both named Anna) and teams of neighborhood women. It took them two days in the backyard just to butcher and clean the chickens.

When the bridegroom arrived at the reception with his bride after the wedding ceremony, some of the guests blocked the door and wouldn’t let them in until Victor paid them. (I don’t have any more details about this custom.) However, by the time Victor left the reception after three days of feasting and cracking plates with guests’ silver dollars to win the dollars, the huge bag of silver dollars he carried off to the bank was so heavy he could barely lift it.

Corner grocery store / tavern of Anna Leschinsky Kasawich.

I think the photo at right is from the early 1990’s. The bigger home two doors down on the left of the tavern/store is, I believe, where the wedding reception took place. The home attached and just to the leff of the store was the Kasawich family’s original home and was used in later years by other relatives until they could afford a home of their own. The little house way in the back on the right of the store also belonged to the Kasawiches, and Eva’s sister, Anna, lived there for many years. After Eva went off into her new married life, her mother Anna and older sister Anna continued to run the store for many years.

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This week we can thank Elaine & Dick and Clarice & Vic Alane (Lith. Alaunis) for details of a traditional Lithuanian wedding party in Springfield that lasted for three days.

The date was Sept. 25-27, 1927. The location was the E. Reynolds St. home of just-deceased Lithuanian-born coal miner Paul Kasawich (1872-1926) and his Lithuanian-born widow Anna Leschinsky (1877-1967), mother of bride Eva Kasawich (Vic and Dick’s) mother. Vic and Dick’s father, the groom, was Victor Alane, Sr., son of Lithuanian-born coal miner Joseph Alane, 1876-1907 (who had died in the Pennsylvania coal fields at age 31) and Petronele Spendzninas (1876-1938).

The bride: Eva Kasawich Alane, Sept. 25, 1927

Eva and Vic Sr.’s three sons were not yet born, so our description of the three-day wedding comes from Lithuanian-American coal miner Larry Mantowich (1911-1994). Larry remembered the bride and groom sitting at a table piled with cash gifts, with concertinas playing, dancing and eating–all for three solid days. He reported that single “boarder” miners without their own families or any idea of a proper wedding gift made ostentatious shows of their generosity by proudly tossing $10 and $20 bills on the gift table. ($10 was a good two days’ pay for loading 10 tons of coal.)

Eva Kasawich, Charleston-style wedding gown, 1927

Mantowich also reported that all the women of the bride’s neighborhood made food for the three days of continuous feasting and dancing, and that after the first night of the party, the miners would go to work, come home, get cleaned up and return to the party for day two, and repeat the process for day three.

He recalled that dozens of plates were bought and stacked for an interesting tradition. If the bride or groom managed to crack a plate with a silver dollar, the dollar was theirs to keep. Apparently, they could keep on trying different plates until they succeeded.

Left photo: Wedding musicians Adam Pazemetsky with clarinet, Mr. Karalitis with fiddle, and Mr. Petrovitch seated, with concertina. Right photo: Pazemetsky with concertina.

The Mantowich oral history, in three volumes constituting almost 400 pages, was taken by Sangamon State University back in the 1970s. (See his Lithuanian wedding and wake memories on pages 124-129 at this link: http://www.uis.edu/archives/memoirs/MANTOWICHvII.pdf . In other parts of the oral history, you can read about the making of home sausage and blood soup, moon-shining, and other topics.)

After his 1927 wedding, Vic Alane, Sr. delivered ice and worked as an electrician for Allis Chalmers. He also was very handy and helped many neighbors with little fix-up jobs around their homes. Vic, Jr., went to Saint Peter & Paul grade school and Cathedral Boys High School (later Griffin High School). He worked in the Pillsbury Mills traffic department for four years, then served in the Illinois National Guard for six years, the last two in Europe.

Clarice & Vic Alane, Jr. wedding, 1950

In 1954, he was hired by the transportation department of Allis Chalmers. The company transferred him to West Allis, Wis., then Milwaukee, and let him go in 1970. Before moving to Wisconsin, Vic, Jr. led the local Springfield band, Vic Alane & the Keynotes, playing trumpet and vibra-harp. He and his quartet played at many of Springfield’s premier venues, including the Island Bay Yacht Club and the Illini Country Club.

Another business that Vic, Jr. conceived in his parents’ basement, Jet Permit Ltd., which helps long-haul truckers obtain state highway permits, provided a living after his departure from Allis-Chalmers. Vic also owns campground Nature’s Villa in Helenville, Wis.

Brother Dick worked with Vic at Jet Permit for 40 years, first taking permits and later as comptroller. Dick was a talented athlete in football, baseball and basketball at Griffin High School and served in the Navy.
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