For more than seventy years, Riley's Trick Shop has been a source of fun for generations of families who live on the south side of Chicago. Founded in 1937 by Jim and Eleanor Riley, the shop stocks joy buzzers, whoopee cushions, and fake vomit; they greet their customers like old friends. In Oh Really, Riley?, the owners' son, Jim Riley, details the true story of his family's long-time business.
In 1937, the Riley's dream was simple-to eke out a living during the Great Depression. From before World War II to the dawning of the new millennium, Riley shares how the business managed to survive through dedication, perseverance, pranks, and laughs amid the cornucopia of gags, party items, and costumes. Riley narrates the fascinating story of how one kernel of popcorn somehow expanded into a trick shop that would become the center of a community, serving as a gathering place for amateur magicians and jokesters alike.
In the spirit of the continued success of every small family businesses, Oh Really, Riley? spans seven decades as it shares the compelling story of one man's dream and how he made it come true.
OH REALLY, RILEY?
The Story of Riley's Trick Shop and the Family Behind ItBy JIM RILEYiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Jim Riley
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4502-6547-8 Chapter One
IN THE BEGINNING
James Joseph Robert Riley was born on Chicago's East Side on September 16, 1908, and grew up in the area near 92nd and Commercial, a gritty neighborhood of steel mills, docks, and taverns. His parents, James Riley and Anna Malloy, arrived from County Mayo, Ireland, sometime in the 1890's. He was the youngest of three children. His brother, Martin, would go on to work at the water filtration plant near Rainbow Beach on Lake Michigan. His sister, Mary, taught in the Chicago Public Schools for 42 years. Jim started working at an early age, selling The Industrialist, the organ of the International Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. It seems strange that this future entrepreneur would hawk a paper that espoused the overthrow of capitalism but, hey, a buck's a buck.
He didn't talk much about his early years except that he was an altar boy at St. Patrick's Church on Ewing Avenue and graduated from St. Pat's school in 1925. That's what it said on the roadmap-sized diploma we found among his things. Not everyone graduates grammar school at the age of seventeen but he never liked school anyway. After a semester at Mt. Carmel High School he was expelled for shooting dice in the hallway. From then on it was work, work, work. His mother once told him he'd never die in bed.
It was around this time that his father died in an accident involving a Chicago Transportation Authority street car. Depending on which relative you ask, he either walked in front of the car where the motorman didn't see him and ran him over or he slipped going out the door and had a fatal head injury. For that, the CTA paid Anna the princely sum of $600. Anna passed away in 1944.
Jim made friends wherever he went but his life-long pals were from the South Chicago neighborhood. In most cities they're called gangs but in Chicago they're referred to as "social clubs." His was called "The Chevaliers." As adults, they dispersed around the country but always kept in touch. On our summer road trips, we made stops in places like Albuquerque, San Francisco, Seattle, and Ft. Lauderdale to stop by and say hello. Sometimes that hello would result in being put up for three days or more.
Jim Riley, seated at left with The Chevaliers, late 20's. Jim knocked around a series of jobs in the 20's and early 30's eventually winding up in the grocery business at the Piggly-Wiggly. Their stores had a unique setup: once the customer entered, she had to traverse a serpentine path to the checkout which required her to pass every item on the shelves. This clever piece of marketing probably led to more things in her grocery basket than were on the original list. These were not the warehouse-sized super megamarkets we frequent today. Grocery stores occupied one or two storefronts on a busy street. There were no parking lots. If you were lucky enough to own a car, you parked on the street. Most people walked, carrying their purchases in a grocery bag or dragging folding two-wheeled carts behind them for larger orders. A shopping cart never left the store. Jim worked himself up to manager of a National Tea store and that's where he met his future wife.
Eleanor Virginia Borgeson, the only child of Nathaniel (Nate) Borgeson and Ellen Ahlin, was born in Chicago on March 3, 1915. Nate emigrated here from Goteborg, Sweden, in 1905. Total cost for the ship to New York and train to Chicago was $48. You can bet it wasn't first class. Eleanor was an avid historian and the original documents were in the papers she left. Nate and Ellen married in 1913.
The family moved to Lockport, Illinois, where Eleanor grew up. Like Jim she was a hard worker who got up at 4 a.m. to walk from her house at Jefferson and Division down the hill to a bakery on State Street to help start the baking for the day. From there she went to school.
The same year that Jim's father died, Eleanor's mother succumbed to food poisoning after eating an apple from a tree that had been sprayed with insecticide. Nate died in 1948 while my mother was carrying me. I never got to meet any of my grandparents.
Eleanor graduated from Lockport High School in 1932 and moved back to Chicago with her father. She eventually went to work in the grocery business. It was at the National Tea where she met Jim.
Being Irish, Jim was always quick with a story but it was hard to tell if he was telling the truth or just making it up for effect. The story of how he and Eleanor got engaged is typical. One evening, so the story goes, he was having dinner with Eleanor and Nate at their place. Nate asked Jim if he wanted another pork chop. At the same time Eleanor asked him if he wanted to marry her. When he said "yes" he got a pork chop and a fiancee.
Jim's sister had purchased a piece of property west of Twin Lakes near Dowagiac, Michigan, in 1929. She originally wanted to build a cottage near the lake but her mother suggested she build on a hill to get the breeze. The summer humidity could be stifling. The cottage had two bedrooms with two beds each in back and a combination living room, dining room and kitchen in front. It had indoor plumbing but water had to be pumped from a well by hand. The dining/living room had sofas and chairs but the centerpiece was a huge, round wooden table, the kind supported in the center by a heavy pedestal with ornate carved feet. It was the gathering place where many a poker hand was played, story swapped, meal enjoyed, and beer consumed. Mary covered the outside of the cottage with a unique shape of shingle in shamrock green. They named the place WeLikeIt.
Like it they did. Jim and Eleanor would close the National at 8 p.m. Saturday night and pile whoever could fit in his Oldsmobile to head up there to enjoy a summer Sunday. Some even made the four-hour trip standing on the running boards when the seats were full. It's a good bet that not much sleeping went on but everyone was back at work Monday morning.
RHODES AVENUE
A Store Is Born
Chicago is based, thanks to Daniel Burnham's master plan, on a grid of major streets a mile apart. East and west there are 16 streets to a mile, north and south, eight. Store fronts and offices are at ground level on the major streets with apartments or more offices above. On side streets there were sometimes stores between the main street and a parallel alley. It was next to the alley on the east side of one of those side streets in the Chatham neighborhood (or St. Dorothy's parish if you were Catholic) between Cottage Grove and South Park, south of 79th Street, that Jim Riley and Eleanor Borgeson opened their store on Sunday, March 21, 1937. The address was 7909 Rhodes. Their first customer was Irene Keller, the wife of Joe Keller who owned Keller's Tap around the corner on 79th Street.
By today's standards it wasn't much of a store. It seemed big to me when I was a kid but I was only eight when we left. By looking at some old pictures and making some very uneducated guesses I estimate it couldn't have been more than 20 feet wide and 30 to 40 feet deep. The front was two display windows flush with the sidewalk. Two more windows angled toward a door in the middle. Inside the door to the right were glass and wood showcases. That was the counter where business was transacted. Behind them against the wall were shelves. The lower half was filled with drawers originally used as storage for 5x8 index cards. The upper half was where larger items were kept. To the left of the door were taller glass showcases that angled back from the floor. They may have come from a bakery or candy store. None of it was new. All the cases were originally filled with stationery, greeting cards, board games, and notions. Notions are defined as "small, useful items or sundries." Since Eleanor was a seamstress, there were lots of sewing items like packages of needles, thread and thimbles. Basically, it was a general store. They even took in laundry and shipped packages.
In a throwback to his gambling days that got him kicked out of high school, Jim somehow got the phone number Stewart 7411, as in "seven for eleven." He kept that number until 1965. The phone company inserted a 3 before the 7 when phone numbers went from six to seven digits.
The small back room became their home after they were married. There was no living together ahead of time in those days. Their view, through iron security bars, was the single-car garages allotted to each tenant and the underside of the wooden staircase leading to the back porch of the second floor apartments. In later years Jim would proudly say that he never parked a car in a garage. His garage was for storing merchandise or "stock" as he called it. There was no bathtub or shower. They had to bathe in a metal tub filled with water dragged by the bucketful from the bathroom sink. For their bedroom Jim brought home a bed, dresser, and vanity he found in the alley. We still have them. Their first purchase was a small Frigidaire refrigerator for $99.00. In later years it became Jim's beer refrigerator. It was still in use when they had their 50th anniversary party.
Three weeks after the store opened, they were married on Sunday, April 11, 1937, at Our Lady of Peace Church at 79th and Jeffrey. It wasn't much of a wedding. Since Eleanor wasn't Catholic they couldn't be married in the sanctuary. Instead they had a small ceremony in the rectory with Jim's cousin Dan Malloy and his sister Mary as best man and maid of honor. A small reception netted them a whopping $15.00 in gifts. And so they embarked on a journey that lasted almost 65 years.
How's Tricks?
Riley's didn't start off as a trick shop but it wasn't long before its destiny was set. Jim had a popcorn machine like the ones in the theater, with a glass front where you could watch the popcorn pop. Where he kept it in that tiny store is a mystery. People would stop by to pick up a bag or box before heading to the Rhodes Theater across 79th Street between Rhodes and St. Lawrence. When the theater manager found out why his popcorn sales were so low he came into Riley's and offered Jim $75 for the wagon. Jim took that windfall and invested it in a line of tricks, jokes, and magic from the S.S. Adams Company of Neptune, New Jersey. And so a kernel of popcorn expanded into Riley's Trick Shop.
The Rhodes Theater is long gone. Riley's still carries the Adams line but the one hundred year old company was recently purchased by Magic Makers who moved it to their headquarters in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
When that first box of tricks from Adams arrived, Jim was like a kid on Christmas morning. He opened every item and played with it until he knew what it did and how it worked. He was especially intrigued by the magic tricks. The stationery and other items of the original stock were pushed into smaller spaces and replaced by items from Adams and other novelty companies. It wasn't long before everyone on the South Side knew that Riley's Trick Shop was the place for jokes and magic.
The Early Years
Even though the Depression had eased somewhat, the country didn't fully recover until the wartime economy brought about by World War II. The late thirties were not the best time to start a business but the store did well. The ledger from 1937 showed that they took in a whopping $1800 for the month of October, their first Halloween. In later Halloweens we'd do that much in an hour. The ledger also showed their monthly bills: telephone $2.62, electricity $3.28, rent $45.00.
In front of the store there was a parkway between the sidewalk and Rhodes Avenue. Nate built a couple of benches and set them facing each other in the parkway. Nate worked at the store, too. Many a slow hour was spent on those benches in warmer weather. It wouldn't surprise anyone if more than one beer was consumed during those hours, too. They could keep an eye on the entrance to the store and listen for the phone while swapping stories and visiting with neighbors passing by.
There was no air conditioning so a screen door provided what breeze there might be to cool the store. Screen doors in those days were basically a wood frame of one by threes with mesh attached to it. A long spring was the closer and it would slam the door multiple times if you didn't hold it on its return. The sound was a resounding WHAP followed by several quieter and more closely-spaced whaps. Every kid must have heard at least a thousand times growing up, "Don't slam the (WHAP) door."
Always one to take advantage of an opportunity to play a joke, Jim put a second handle on the other side of the screen door. The unwary customer had a 50-50 chance of getting the right one. If he grabbed the wrong one he'd look like a fool when the door didn't open.
Another door joke was a fake doorbell. It looked just like any other doorbell that was common in those days, round with a button in the middle. Just about every home had one so no one would question one on Riley's door frame. Jim's button had one big difference: there was a pin in the middle. When the button was pushed, the visitor got his finger pricked and it usually drew blood. Imagine trying to get away with that these days.
We don't sell that any more but we still sell the auto bomb, a cardboard cylinder with a wire running through it. One end of the wire is attached to a spark plug and the other to any metal ground on the car. When that plug fires, the wire heats up and ignites the charge inside. It whistles like one of those World War II bombs coming down, then smoke pours out from under the hood. In those days it exploded, too.
Jim had a setup with Nick Manola who owned the barber shop next door that one of them would distract a customer while the other put one of these bombs on his car. Cars back then had no hood locks and the motors were simple affairs where everything was out in the open. An auto bomb could be installed in under 30 seconds, even on a bad day. When the customer started his car and the bomb went off, Jim and Nick ran out of their stores and doused the victim's car with buckets of water they kept near their front doors.
Another running gag he had with Nick was to pretend he was waiting for a hair cut and get into an argument with him while the victim was being shaved. As the argument got more heated, Nick would wave his just-stropped straight razor around the victim's face in mock anger. At the climax Jim would get up and push Nick as he dragged the razor across the victim's throat. Of course, he would have secretly secured the blade in the razor's handle. The victim would jump out the chair screaming as Nick and Jim rolled howling on the floor. This continued until the inevitable happened. Nick didn't get the razor fully-secured in time and sliced the victim's ear. Today this would have resulted in a lawsuit, but the victim became a good customer of both businesses—once the bleeding stopped.
The late thirties were a heady time for Jim and Eleanor. The business was growing and they were having a blast. There were the weekend trips to the WeLikeIt cottage and long vacations on the road.
In 1938 they packed up their '36 Olds and headed west. Road trips in those days were not the luxurious affairs they are today. Cars had no air conditioning and were notoriously unreliable. Radios were an expensive option. Interstates highways had yet to be thought of and most roads were two-lane highways that passed through every little town on the way. In other words, a road trip was an adventure.
It was probably because car travel was such an adventure that Jim and Eleanor made friends everywhere they went. If an upcoming section of highway was especially difficult or desolate, caravans would sometimes form at the "last chance" service station. If a car broke down or had a flat tire on the way, there would be someone to help. Over a meal or drink at a diner at the other end they would exchange addresses and promise to write. Eleanor kept that promise and spent her Sunday mornings writing to these folks for the rest of her life.
Motels were few and far between in those days. One night they had to share a room in some town in the middle of nowhere. It was getting dark and the road ahead was treacherous even in the daytime. Since it was the last room for miles in any direction they decided to share it with another couple, a cab driver and his wife, who were also looking at a night sleeping in their car. For a little privacy they found a way to hang a sheet between the two beds. There was no TV. Small town radio stations usually shut down after dark so the only entertainment was talking. The cabbie, who was used to chatting up his fares, talked all night. Every time he wanted to make a point he'd poke his head around the sheet. It's a good bet that nobody got much sleep that night. If they exchanged addresses in the morning it's a better bet that couple didn't make Eleanor's short list for writing back.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from OH REALLY, RILEY?by JIM RILEY Copyright © 2010 by Jim Riley. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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