Article_4-6-07

This article is an edited excerpt from an interview with the late Elmer “Sparky” Steinberg done by Virginia Less, historian of the First Congregational Church in Feb-ruary, 1984 when Mr. Steinberg was 78 years old. This story has been corroborated by a number of sources. One theory for how the cow got up to the roof is based on the observation that cows usually are willing to climb up steps, but can’t be coaxed into going down.

Halloween in those days was a disorganized sort of thing in which boys went out to do their tom-foolery on their own. Several of these boys were well known to me. By this time [approximately 1920] we lived on the north side of town about a block from the Baethke house, which is one of the historic houses in town. [This probably refers to the Philo Stacy mansion which William Baethke purchased in 1919.] The Baethkes owned the lumber yard back then. Their son [Jerome] was about two or three years older than I was, so naturally I didn’t play with him. In those days, with that age difference, the younger boys wouldn’t play with the older ones, but we watched them.

The Baethke boy and two or three other boys got together on Halloween night and the next morning there was a cow on the roof of the church [the First Congregational Church], right on the peak and looking very forlorn. It couldn’t move because they tied it with a hawser to the steeple

Some time around 1920, the citizens of Glen Ellyn awoke the morning after Halloween night to find a cow tethered to the steeple of the First Congregational Church. The building wasn’t the current church, but this earlier one at the southwest corner of Forest and Pennsylvania Avenues. This view from 1893 is looking west on Pennsylvania to-ward Main Street. (Photo: Glen Ellyn Historical Society archives)

. Nobody yet has been told how the boys got it up there. And no-body would say where the cow came from, but of course it was from the Rathbun farm.

This same group of boys were responsible for going out to these farm houses and the next morning the outhouses would be found in front of some local dignitary’s home. And a lot of furniture from one house, porch furniture, would be put on the porch of another house. By the next morning you’d find that you had your neighbor’s furniture all over your front yard.

Coming back to the cow, the fire department had to build a derrick and use a sling to lower the cow down. I think it took them two days to do it. Somebody must have been milking the cow while it was up there because cows need to be milked twice a day. But the cow wasn’t hurt in any way and lived to do its normal life after that I guess. It was quite the talk of the town for some time. -- Sparky Steinberg