Anne Crabbe  0:00  
Okay, so this is Gerald and Elsie Crabbe's youngest daughter Annie Crabbe, and I grew up in Wilmette and, but I want to tell the things that the stories that my father related to us. Like kind of our classic things that we learned from our dad about his time in Wilmette. So he grew up in Southern Illinois, he was just a country boy. He got assigned to Wilmette as a State Farm agent, and when he was assigned as a State Farm agent in Wilmette, he was the 13th agent that State Farm had sent to this community. But all the other ones had failed. And my father who learned how to sell by going door to door said he was gonna go door to door.

Unknown  0:53  
We went door to door. 

Anne Crabbe  0:54  
And my my mom said, you can't go door to door and Wilmette nobody will. Nobody goes door to door in Wilmette, but my dad said I'm gonna do it anyways. And we think he was of course amazing, awesome person. And I think his clients did too, because he went door to door selling State Farm Insurance and had a thriving business. The very first people that bought insurance from him, you know, by having it written at their kitchen table, were still his clients when he retired 40 years later, so he began in 1959. And 2001, about I guess, was when he retired as a State Farm agent in Wilmette. And anybody who was around for those 40 years, from the 60s through through the through the end of the 90s knew who Jerry Crabbe was because Jerry Crabbe was part of downtown Wilmette. 

His first office was across from Ridge Pharmacy and little itty bitty office that got absorbed by Parker's which is now Ridgeview restaurant when they expanded. And then a second office was just this little narrow office that was right next to Kelly's appliances. And Kelly was a good friend of my dad's, you know, just fellow businessmen. We used to go in there and pay our electric bill at Kelly's. And I remember that in those days, you got light bulbs, in exchange for when you paid your electric bill. And the more the higher your bill was the more light bulbs you got. 

Another thing that I really remember my dad, like just life with him was that the Chamber of Commerce was so important to him. And he always he was a member. And he went to all of the meetings. And I think he was even like the president of it because it was a role that just someone had to take on. So he was always promoting business in Wilmette. And he would be the president when it was his turn to do it. And he would go to all of these chamber meetings come home late that night, which was unusual, because he'd been in a meeting, he'd stink like cigarettes, and he didn't smoke, but I think every other person in that room did at the time, this was the 70s and 80s. And he always won some sort of raffle prize and I think the biggest one that we loved was when he won a small TV. And so then we had a TV in our kitchen, which was unheard of at the time. And we used to stand there in the kitchen and watch MTV on that television. 

We lived another story that I really that I think is quintessential of how we'll met was back in the 80s I guess is our house was at Central and Sheridan Road in Wilmette, not Evanston. We got a lot of people knocking on our door, thinking wondering if they were in Evanston or Wilmette. This is way before any kind of GPS. But we lived at Central and Sheridan road and there's a bit of green space right in front of our house, our old house and the city planted a flowerbed there, but they needed water, a water source. And so they, we let them use our water, they were just to hook up their really long hose to our, our water outside of our, you know, at our house. And so then in exchange for that they made an arrangement with my dad that every year we got like five or six passes to the beach and pool. It was an all inclusive pass, but it was those ones that you sewed onto your towel back in the 80s. So it was just a casual kind of arrangement that my dad had with the city. He knew all of them, they all knew him. And everyone just you know got along with everything. So that was the arrangement. 

I remember back in the day and I don't know if it happens anymore, but I remember back then. Every week there or every summer there would be a week when the smelt were running. And this was kind of a big deal. And so people would set up these nets on the pier and Wilmette and Gilson beach. And we would go down there and chit chat with everybody down there and stuff. And people would just be doing it for fun. And then there'd be some people who are doing it, catching these smelt because it was gonna give him a meal that night. And I remember my dad, always making sure that we understood what the difference was and that there was people out there that needed things. Well, there was other people that could just be enjoying that life. He worked hard every single day. As an insurance agent. He embraced what Wilmette was about which was a bunch of people just wanting to raise their family and give them a good life that was safe. And it was easy to do it in Wilmette everybody knew each other back then. And that's all I have to say.

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