Detailed Depot/Cafe Memories? We've Got Them

     Remember when we, the Korner, were struggling back and forth as to whether there was actually a Northwestern Hotel as part of the old Chicago and Northwestern depot? Pshaw.......the very idea.........to even question whether there was a question.
     Well, your faithful editor, via lots of help,  has discovered that not only was there a hotel there, it was a 33-roomer.
     Courtesy of some "old hands," we have the very latest and detailed info on this depot/cafe story. Anthony Crandell, BHS-59, and Jerry Manriquez, BSH-57, are "on deck" this time with more Boone news you won't find anywhere else, and then, in our next edition, Vern Modeland, BHS-50,  will provide some neat information, a walking tour, of the entire depot complex.
     Tony told us, "my grandmother and my dad's aunt ran a railroader's rooming house that took up the entire second floor at 809 Keeler street (Editor's note: now occupied by Ron Do Styling Salon.). There were 12 regular rooms and one common bath. Since she lived just a half-block away, she also made the beds at the depot hotel. When I was five or six, I loved to go with her and pull the wagon, loaded with sheets and pillow cases, up and down the hall. The bed linens would come from Hawkeye Laundry in big cloth hampers on wheels. There were 33 rooms that ran the length of the whole second floor. There was one very large, common bath. I loved to go with her as each dresser drawer was a treasure trove of half-used lantern batteries, the big square ones, and generally, a fuzee or two, the ones with the spike in the end......and, once in a while, a railroad torpedo......little squares of dynamite that clipped onto the rail and would go off and, thus, alert a train of a stopped train ahead. As Boone was a division point, train crews were always coming and going. Sometimes, my grandmother had to go there three times in 24 hours to remake beds. That depot hotel and the 24-hour restaurant on the main floor were operated by the Union News company. In the 1945-50 era, she was paid the grand sum of 10-cents per bed. She was not required to clean the room, just change the bed linens. The room was cleaned during the day, weekly. The room fee for an eight-hour stay was $1. The rooms were never locked so the "caller" could open the door and wake the crew member without knocking, thus, disturbing the other occupants of the whole floor."
     Jerry wrote, "I remember the Northwestern Hotel very well. In 1955, when I was a high school sophomore, I worked at the Northwestern Cafe and Hotel from 4 p.m. to 12 p.m., five days a week. I think I made 35 cents an hour. Russell Jennings and his wife, Mabel (?), ran the cafe and hotel. Russell worked on the railroad so he was not there very much. The cafe was on the first floor and had about 14 stools. I washed dishes, cleaned and mopped the floors, and even did a little short order cooking. The lounge area was for the railroad workers who stayed in the hotel, which was on the second floor. I think the lounge was for passengers in earlier years when there were passenger trains coming through Boone. The lounge had couches, big chairs, newspaper and magazine racks and was connected to  the depot waiting room and the cafe. There was a stairway in the lounge leading up to the rooms on the second floor. The hotel rooms were on both sides of a long hallway and they started above the depot ticket area on the East and ran to the West end of the building. A large restroom, with showers, was located at the far West end. My duties were to make the beds and clean the hallway, rooms and the restroom. At the time I was working at the hotel, the only people who stayed there were railroad employees who had a layover in Boone, since it was a division point. But, there were a few retired railroaders who made the hotel their permanent home."
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     BOONE CONNECTED DEATHS: None to report.
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