(bright music) - Will you Consider This?

You know, life goes through phases, and you see all those inspirational things, well, this phase and this phase.

These people are in your life and all that stuff.

This guy's been around a lot.

This is Lowell Bud Grieves.

He was the mayor of Peoria, for?

- Four years.

- Four years.

But you've done a lot of other things.

So, Bud, tell me about Bud Grieves.

Where were you born and raised?

- Okay, I was born and raised in Lacon, Illinois, which is up the river, about 30 miles from here.

And as a young man, very young, before I had my driver's license, I was fascinated with the river.

- Okay.

Well, you grew up there.

- I grew up there.

- You fishing.

- I had a boat and a small motor when I was 13 years old, I think.

- [Christine] Okay.

- And that love of the river led me on quite a exciting trip.

Just after I turned 17 years old another boy and I took a small boat from Lacon to New Orleans.

- Which is just crazy.

So, that's one of the reasons why I asked you to be my guest.

But you have a lot of other things I wanna talk to you about, but he wrote this memory, "Down River," for his grandchildren so that they could hear his adventures.

So what year did you... Was it a 16-foot jon boat?

- 16-foot jon boat with a 10-horse Mercury engine, which was totally underpowered for the mighty Mississippi.

You know, Illinois is a relatively calm river.

But when it goes into the Mississippi, then the Mississippi into the Ohio, there's some dangerous whip currents and whatnot, so.

But we managed through.

But we had some harrowing experiences.

- Yeah, so tell me about, 'cause I read this.

It's very interesting.

I mean, we didn't have any kind of freezing like back then.

What year was this?

1960 what?

- 1961.

A long time ago.

- Woo, and you had maybe a little cooler, not like they have today, YETI or anything like that.

- No, no YETIs, but a cooler.

And our intent was to start off, was to camp out along the way, all the way down.

- And that lasted about a week because we found that the mosquitoes along the river some nights were intolerable.

And we graduated to staying, when we could find it, in a town in a local almost like a flophouse hotel.

Three bucks, five bucks a night.

- Which was a lot of money in 1961.

- Yeah, it was reasonable.

But we had a bathroom at the end of the hall shared with three other, four other rooms.

And we had that.

And then we stayed in some YMCAs in some of the larger towns.

But yeah, it was quite a trip.

It lasted almost two months.

- What did your mother, well, you said in there she didn't really know.

I mean, she sort of approved, and how did you get around that?

- Well, she was very, very much.

I started with her (chuckles) in late April or mid-April, and she said, "Absolutely no.

Absolutely not. "

And frankly, I'd say the same thing to my kid today.

You know, to do that.

But I kept working on her.

And I usually could persuade my mother.

And when I told her I'd go with another boy, and he was the son of the state's attorney up in Lacon.

So that gained some credibility and she finally acquiesced.

And we shoved off.

We had about 100 people in Lacon at the shove off, at the launching, I should say, and proceeded on our way.

And went through locks.

That's the first time I'd really been through a lock.

And I don't know whether you've ever been in one, but there are huge chambers with steel walls that go up.

And the first lock we went through was down here in Peoria and- - And you were sandwiched between?

- We were sandwiched between a big barge and the steel wall.

We had about eight inches on each side, and it was frightening.

Because if that would have listed it all, we'd have been crushed.

- [Christine] Right.

- But we made it through.

And oftentimes we'd have to wait until a larger vessel came through.

They weren't going to lock us through- - For your little boat.

- For our little boat.

No.

The biggest problems we had on the trip was running out of gas.

- [Christine] Oh, I guessed.

- We had two five gallon tanks with us plus a tank for the motor.

But when you get down into the lower Mississippi, the levees are quite high.

And I told my grandkids, in fact, they kidded me.

They said, "Why did you send back a log of your trip every week?

Why did you mail it back so it got into the Lacon paper and the 'General Star'?"

The "General Star" every Sunday afternoon.

And they said, "Why didn't you just call?"

I said, "Let me tell you something.

In 1961, there was no GPS."

- No, there was no GPS.

- There was no cell phone.

- Right.

No internet.

- No internet.

- Heck, you'd be lucky to find a payphone.

- That's right.

And that's what I would do.

And if I would write the summary of our week, we'd find a town and I would mail it back, so.

- That was part of the reason your mom also let you go is 'cause you would be reporting in weekly.

- Exactly.

- All right.

- Exactly.

But I couldn't pick up a cell phone and call her.

- [Christine] No.

- And it'd be a totally different trip today because you'd be on the phone the whole time.

- [Christine] Right.

Texting.

- Yeah.

My my partner was very much in love with a girl from Washburn, and he would've been calling her every five minutes.

- [Christine] Yeah, that would've been, it would've really slowed you down.

- Yeah, it would've.

But yeah, we went on our way, but like I said, the biggest problem we had, it was towards the middle or the end of the trip when we go down the Mississippi and these huge levees would hide the town.

We'd look on our map and there was supposed to be a town there.

And we'd find ourselves going by it and next thing you knew, we were out of gas.

And one of our adventures was I'm driving the boat and his name was Spike.

Steven, but they called him Spike, was in the front of the boat and he yelled at me to turn and by the time I started to turn, I hit the side of something and I though, "What in the world did I hit?"

I thought I hit a barge coming right at us.

It was raining so hard I could barely see him in the front of the boat.

So we followed that boat in and it landed on dry land and we pulled the boat off to the side.

We weren't quite sure what was going on.

And all of a sudden the gangway came down and all these men got off with prison uniforms on.

(Christine laughing) And we were hiding in the weeds and trucks pulled in and these were prisoners at Angola State Prison, who had worked over across the river picking cotton as part of the deal.

And of course we're sitting there watching all this with our mouth open and all of a sudden the guard saw us.

- [Christine] Had guns pointed at you.

- And guns pointed at us, and "Get out of that boat."

They though we were escape.

- Right.

- And it was really quite scary.

And Spike started to talk and one of them hit him as hard as he could in his stomach.

- [Christine] Oh gosh.

- And bent him over, knocked the wind out of him.

And we pleaded and whatnot just to talk to some authority, you know, other than just the guards.

And finally we got to the right person and told them our story and verified ourselves and they let us go.

But it would've been something else to be in there and, you know, who knows what would've happened.

- Right.

Well, I mean, they should have put two and two together, your clothing, your hair, your suntan.

- [Bud] Exactly.

Although we looked pretty rough.

- I bet.

- We had beards and very tan and whatnot.

And of course our clothes were ragged by then too.

- Well, you met up with some other people who were, were they Carneys or something like that, who, they wanted to, they were gambling and they wanted to do something.

They wanted you to- - Oh yeah.

- Help them rip off somebody else or something.

- That was in Carothersville, Missouri.

And we pulled in hot, wet and hungry.

Went to a bar and above the bar was rooms.

We rented a room there, but we were hungry.

And we went downstairs and this bar is kind of raucous and we sat in a booth and ordered a hamburger.

And two men were sitting across from us and they're looking at us and they came over.

They said "What are you guys doing?"

They didn't recognize us.

And we told them and they sat down.

"Could we join you?"

And we said, "Fine."

So they sat with us.

And then up at the bar, there was a tall man with a glass eye.

And they said, "You know, that guy's a captain of the boat, the river boat.

And he comes in here every night or every week, once a week when the boat's through here.

And he gets drunk.

But he's just been paid.

So we're gonna roll him tonight.

And would you like to help us?

Because he's got a couple partners with him."

I said, "No thanks."

- Wow.

- "No thanks."

And we didn't, and I'll never forget this.

And, you know, we're petrified of course, and Spike said, "Would you like to come down and see our boat?"

And we had it in the weeds.

And that was everything we owned.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- Oh no.

- I told Spike afterwards, I said, "We knew what they were."

- [Christine] (laughs) Why would you do that?

- Yeah, so we took off that night.

We didn't even stay.

- [Christine] I don't believe.

Exactly.

- I wasn't gonna sleep in that place and- - You wouldn't have been able to, right?

- No, I wouldn't have been able to.

Another memorable experience, and again, we ran out of gas.

This was down above Vicksburg.

And we climbed up the levee.

We each had a five gallon gas can and I looked the most barren, bleak landscape I've ever seen in my life.

The sun was coming up and steam and what was just coming out of the ground.

It was the lower Delta, okay?

- Okay.

- The Delta Valley.

And we didn't know which way to go, you know?

But we knew the river was here and there must be a town if we walked in this case east.

We walked about two hours and all of a sudden in the horizon we saw a cloud of dust and it came closer to us.

And it was full of black kits.

One driver, six or eight in the back of the truck.

And they pulled up, "What are y'all doing?"

Well, we told them.

- We need gas.

- "We could help you out.

The nearest town's 35 miles, but we can help you out."

And I said a dumb thing.

It was in the spring and the chutes coming out of the ground were cotton.

- [Christine] All right.

- And I said, "What is that stuff?"

- [Christine] You thought they're beans or corn.

- And they said, "Are you kidding me?

You don't know what cotton is, buddy?"

I said, "Well, we got corn and beans here."

- [Christine] Exactly.

- But we piled on the truck and off we went into, I guess what I remember is almost a shanty town.

Unpainted buildings circling around a large church in the middle of the town.

And we got there, of course the crowd came up around us.

We were a novelty.

- [Christine] I guess.

- And then this man came out, very dignified looking.

He had a black suit on high, and it's about 95 degrees.

And I'm thinking, how could he be wearing a suit in this deal?

So he said, "Well, we're glad to help you out and then take you back to your boat, boys, but we want you to go to church with us."

It happened to be Sunday.

And after church, we have a potluck meal in the basement.

I was used to that somewhat, but I never was used to a two and a half hour service.

- [Christine] No, I guess.

- Which is what they had with tambourines and the whole nine yards.

And then we were dying of... We were always hungry, it seemed like.

We went down the stairs and here's our plate, you know, table after table full of delicious food.

- [Christine] Really good.

Yeah.

- Delicious food.

- Soul food, yeah.

- Yeah.

Soul food, fried chicken, everything.

And we got done with that, and here comes two of the boys the gas tanks were full of gas.

Both of them.

And they took us back to the river.

- [Christine] 35 miles away, whatever.

- Yeah, 35.

And I though, I've never forgotten that.

Who knows whether that town is even there anymore?

- [Christine] Exactly.

- But they couldn't have been more hospitable to us.

- [Christine] Isn't that something?

- The opposite of what I saw on the way home.

- [Christine] Okay.

So tell me about that.

- Well, we got to New Orleans and sold our boat to a fisherman on Lake Pontchartrain.

He turned out to be a character too.

But a lot of characters on the river.

- I guess.

- Yeah.

But we ran out of money because we went to Bourbon Street, which I'm not gonna go into detail on.

Two kids, you know, been on a river for three, four weeks and- - Yeah, exactly.

- Anyway, we- - [Christine] From a little town in Illinois.

- Yeah.

We found ourselves with about a buck and a quarter between the two of us.

- Oh gosh.

- And we didn't have enough for bus fare.

So I wired my dad and he sent down some money, just enough for us to catch the bus to Peoria from New Orleans.

And it was late afternoon when we took off and we came into Jackson, Mississippi.

And as we got close to the bus station, I saw a red glow.

Couldn't figure out what it was.

I came in and two buses were on fire.

One was turned over.

And there was a crowd of 150, 200, 300 men with axes, crowbars, instruments that they pulled out of their garage.

And they were pulling on these buses and turning them over and everything else.

And I couldn't... What the heck is going on?

- [Christine] Right.

It's 1961.

- 1961, and that was right in the middle of the Freedom Riders.

And we've all heard about guys from New York that went down there and some were killed.

Well, what happened is the bus driver, who knows what would've happened to us, 'cause by that time we were about the only white kids on the bus.

And they looked at us and I remember one person came right up to the glass and and hit it with a crowbar and smashed it.

And there was just hate in his eyes.

Just hate.

And I though, this guy's probably a dentist or something, but they just, it was just awful.

- Right.

- The bus driver slowed down, almost stopped and then didn't let anybody off or on, didn't open the door, just took off again.

- Sped it off.

Yeah.

- And who knows what would've happened if they pulled us out of there?

- Mm-hm.

Yeah.

- You know?

But, I compare that to the experience we had before- - With churchgoers.

- With the churchgoers.

And it's amazing deal that's never left me.

The kindness and the hate, you know?

- [Christine] And you saw it, you experienced it.

- Yeah, and honestly, we didn't know what Freedom Drivers were.

- No.

- We didn't.

- We're in the North.

- We're in the North.

And I read those stories now and I, you know, you see something like a show "Mississippi Burning"- - And you understand.

- And we understand.

I understand exactly.

And it's still a latent hatred down there.

It's never left.

Totally.

- It's very sad.

- Changed a lot, but still there.

- So that was one of your phases.

Your next phase was business.

- Next phase I went to school out east became a textile engineer because my family was in the Woolen business up in Lacon.

And took a job for, I guess we lived out there two and a half years or three years.

Married the girl of my dreams.

- Alice that you met dancing one night.

- Well, we actually knew each other because I played basketball for Lacon.

And she grew up on a farm outside of Sparland.

- [Christine] All right.

- And she was a cheerleader, a year older than me.

And she was going with a guy that, you know, had the DA haircut with 58 Chevy and, you know, the whole nine yards.

I looked at her and, yeah, I don't have a chance, you know?

But we knew each other that way.

And then came back from college.

She went to Southern and back then they had ice skating parties.

Out on ponds and lakes.

- At Club Lacon?

- At Lake and Country Club.

- Okay.

All right.

So we go out there and I had sort of a blind date and she was with another guy and it turned out neither one of them could skate.

- [Christine] There you go.

- So Alice and I began to skate.

And as we joke, we've been skating sometimes on thin ice ever since that time.

- I got it.

Yeah.

- But we have been blessed beyond belief with our family.

We have three wonderful children, and they all chose to live in Peoria, to stay in Peoria.

- Which is a real gift.

- Which is unusual.

- Yes, it is.

- Which is unusual.

And they gave us 11 grandchildren.

And after my brokerage career, which lasted about 30 years, I'll back up just a bit, the kids began having their own kids.

And somewhere in there, I don't know why but in '96 and '97, I decided I wanna run for mayor.

Just out of nowhere.

I wasn't on the city council.

And we had a real tough, you might remember it, with Dave Ransburg.

- [Christine] Right.

- Very expensive, very hard-fought campaign.

Nothing like today.

Yeah, we respected each other.

And I turned out to win.

And spent four years on the council.

The other thing I forgot to mention is after my brokerage career, I went into a development career.

And I became quite active in the community.

I started with the Mark Twain Hotel.

- And that Mark Twain again, with your love of the river and all that stuff.

- It all came back.

The second hotel I bought was in East Peoria which was the old Holiday Inn.

And we called that the Mark Twain East.

So we had the Mark Twain, the Mark Twain East.

And then we went through the riverboat saga where, you know, the- - [Christine] You had the Spirit of Peoria.

- Yeah, the gambling license, which was thought to be here in Peoria.

They thought he would win on that bid because we had the boat works here.

- Right.

- He didn't win.

The group from East Peoria bought it and won it.

But they didn't have a boat.

So they had to come over and use the Spirit of Peoria, which was purchased by the City.

And that was an arrangement for about two years.

And then they had their own boat.

Well, here's a city left with a boat.

- Right.

- Spirit.

And they tried to run it for six months or so.

I think the park district may have run it for a while, but they could never make it go.

So I stepped in and bought it and ran it for three years, two or three years.

- [Christine] And your son then?

- And then Alex got his pilot's license and he took it over and has run it very successfully, you know, ever since.

We had a trolley that would- - [Christine] Right.

I missed the trolley.

- That would go between the hotels and the riverboat.

And really it was a nostalgic for the river that I grew up on.

I've always been, Christine, I was thinking about this coming down here today.

Lacon, I spent some time in the Twin Towers living there when I was mayor.

And then down in Banner.

I've always been in the Illinois River Valley, my whole life.

- There you go.

- And tied to that river.

So it was that in mind as some of my development.

And it worked.

It worked very well.

I bought the Packard building, which was next to the Mark Twain.

And we used that for private gatherings and whatnot.

And then also in East Peoria across from the Mark Twain East was a shoddy hotel.

I bought it, only ran it for a year and it was called the Budget Host.

Long story short, I ended up selling all those properties to what's now Coles.

Bob Evans.

- [Christine] Oh, right in that area.

- Yeah, that whole area, that whole corner there, so.

- And you had something to do with where WTVP is now?

- Yeah, when I was mayor, one of my, what I ran on was Peoria had to take care of its heart.

And the heart is the river in the downtown.

This westward expansion is fine, but it costs money and infrastructure.

And we got the Gateway building built.

I wasn't mayor when the museum was built, but we bought the land to get it ready to go.

- [Christine] Right.

That was the Sears property.

- It was Sears property.

I worked with Chet Tomczyk.

- Oh yeah.

- Okay.

When this was built.

- WTVP.

- We encouraged them to come downtown.

And there was some concern about the railroad tracks being close by, but you've been able to live with that successfully.

- [Christine] And it's been working fine, mm-hm.

- Yeah.

So I think during my time the riverfront was a priority.

And it is better now than it was back in the mid '90s.

You could hardly walk down here.

There were rats and riprap and everything around.

We just ignore the river, as many communities have done.

- And the Warehouse.

- And the Warehouse.

- District.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

The Warehouse District.

And it pleases me.

The other big thing was the, well, two big things.

One was the RiverPlex.

And people said, "Well, that'll never go," you know?

- [Christine] And look at it.

- And look at it now.

And then the baseball stadium.

They wanted to put that out at North Peoria.

I said, "No, let's get all this stuff together.

You know, where people could enjoy it and walk and whatnot."

And I predicted back then that the stadium would be a catalyst for private developers to come in and start buying up these old warehouses.

- [Christine] Right.

- Well, it took 20 years.

But it's happening right now.

- [Christine] Right.

It is.

- And you're seeing restaurants pop up.

You're seeing these buildings rehabbed and becoming condominiums now.

Which is a neat thing for kids today to do.

So yeah, I look back on my four years as productive.

But I just didn't really like it, you know?

- [Christine] Didn't want politics anymore.

- I'm not a politician.

There's so many long, boring meetings on zoning and whatnot.

And it was about that time I guess into my second year at mayorship that I was able to buy a wonderful piece of property in Fulton County, again, close to the river, actually Rice Lake, which is a part of the river.

And it was 130 some acres of woodlands and hills and whatnot.

And had a beautiful spot for a home.

And never even though of building the big home.

So I put a mobile home down there.

- All right.

- And logged it, put a big deck on it, had a hot tub.

In the mobile home was a nice double bedroom, fireplace.

It was everything I needed.

- A nice rural escape.

- Everything I wanted.

Yeah, and I'd go down there on weekends to get out of Peoria and the hassles of the council.

And I bought a bulldozer and a backhoe and I started doing work on the property.

And came back one day and I said to Alice, I said, "You know, we come down here about every weekend.

Why don't we just- - Live here.

- Why don't we just live here?

And the grandkids are five to seven years old, age six, and why don't we.... She said, "Well, if that's the case, the mobile home's going.

You're gonna build me a proper home."

- There you go.

All right.

- Which we did.

- All right.

In Banner.

- We're just south of Banner on Route 24.

But we put in a swimming pool and we just had a wonderful time out there.

And actually had a second family because there's 11 grandkids and they were all between the ages of four and nine.

- [Christine] Uh-huh.

And that was fun.

- That a lot of fun.

We'd have what we call grandkids camp.

- [Christine] I like that.

- Well, I'll tell you who really liked it was my kids and their spouses because they'd leave the kids off on Thursday, pick them up Sunday.

So it gave them a little vacation.

- It did.

- And we had the kids and we would camp and we'd hike and we'd swim and we'd fish and do all that sort of thing.

While I was there I was able to buy the 260 acres on the other side of Route 24, which was a large cornfield.

Well, I didn't wanna farm it.

I'm sort of an environmentalist and I wanted to do something different, so- - [Christine] We're almost out of time.

You're gonna have to come back and tell me that story.

- (laughs) Okay.

- All right.

- I wasn't sure how much we had.

- (laughs) This has been fascinating.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Thank you.

So you'll come back?

- I will.

Anytime you want.

- Okay.

We'll hear the rest of the story.

- Been nice.

Yeah.

- It's like, you know, okay.

Well, thanks so much.

It's like Paul Harvey.

- Huh?

- It's like Paul Harvey.

Then we'll get the rest of the story.

- Rest of the story.

Yeah.

Will be happy to.

- Okay.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about Bud Grieves and his very colorful adventures.

Until next time, be well.

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