Columnist Mike Berry shares his memories of the joint at 206 N. Chestnut
Star Courier
The news this week included the revelation that there’s to be another operator for the tavern at 206 N. Chestnut St.
Most recently called the Boiler Room, the building at that address had been a tavern for many years. But the Boiler Room was closed some time back, and the building has been vacant ever since.
When I started at the Star Courier in the early 1970s, legendary sports editor Bob Westlund made it his mission to introduce me to every tavern owner in the Tri-Counties (and, occasionally, beyond).
Dean Karau
For the Star Courier
This brief paragraph was buried on page 8 of the Dec. 22, 1903, Kewanee Daily Star Courier: “The United States government wants the flying machine invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright, the Dayton, O., brothers who made a successful test of their invention at Kitty Hawk, N.C.”
That was our hometown’s inauspicious introduction to the age of flight, which had begun a mere five days earlier.
A young Annawan boy was only five years-old at the time, so he surely didn’t read that article. But by 1910, Frederick Eugene Machesney had fallen in love with “aeroplanes,” and within a decade and a half, had become Kewanee’s flying “ace.”