The neighborhood on Springfield’s northeast side, just north of the one where African Americans lived before it was destroyed in the infamous Race Riot of 1908, was at its peak during the 1950s and early 1960s.
It consisted mostly of Italian-Americans who owned businesses there, such as Coco Randazzo’s tavern, Coco’s Inn. When he wasn’t tending bar with his son, Frank, or putting a new roof on someone’s house – his other business – he could be seen driving around in his trusty old pickup truck with his trusty old dog sitting on the passenger side.
When it came time to get my monthly haircut, I went to Pug Randazzo’s barbershop and got a sporty-looking flat top. It was all the rage for boys my age if we wanted to look athletic in the eyes of the girls who were attracted to the jocks who could be seen playing sandlot football in an open field on the Concordia Lutheran Seminary’s campus at 12th Street and Enos Avenue.
After the game we hastened to the nearby Reinhardt-Millard Drug Store and soda fountain to quench our thirst. If I had been old enough, I would have gotten a beer, like the ones being sold by Jerry Stasukinas at his father’s business, the nearby Alby’s Tavern. Even though I wasn’t of age, I had acquired a taste for it when I tasted an ample sample of my Dad’s Falstaff – on the sly – and got a bit of a buzz.
While walking back home through the neighborhood, I noticed a number of the iconic blue and white statues of the Virgin Mary in backyard grottos. I passed a house where a rotund man sat on the porch in a rocking chair. I could see his smiling face in the shade of the sweat-stained straw hat he wore. Suddenly he leaned forward and hollered in broken English, “Hey bambino, wanna tomato to take home to mama to cook some sauce for spaghetti tonight?”
He picked out two or three that were ripening in the sun on a table, put them in a paper sack and handed them to me. Little did he know that the night before while coming home from the late show at the Pantheon Theater on North Grand Avenue, I plucked a plump one from a vine under the cover of darkness, a sneaky act of thievery that I excused because I rationalized that it was overly ripe anyway and was in need of picking before it fell to the ground and rotted there.
When he handed me the sack of tomatoes, a fleeting feeling of guilt came over me, which dissipated when I got home and gave them to Mom to cook some sauce for spaghetti that night. But she informed that she had other plans. She and Dad were taking the family out to eat at Stevie’s Latin Village for my sister’s birthday.
A big, brightly lit sign, consisting of a larger-than-life mustached caricature of Stevie Crifasi’s stereotypical Sicilian nose hung above the entrance on Ninth Street. The interior resembled one of the old country’s plazas with its ornate, wrought iron balcony surrounding a sunken floor that was covered with a colorful mosaic of tiles. A gently bubbling fountain was located there, too.
A recording of “Three Coins in a Fountain” by Frank Sinatra could be heard in the background, adding to the romantic ambiance. In the middle of the restaurant there was a piano bar where people sat listening to mostly Sinatra songs sung live by a man who had an uncanny resemblance to the legendary crooner.
Hungry for some of Stevie’s signature spaghetti and meatballs, we sat at a table and my parents got a bottle of wine to drink with dinner. I got a Coke and my little sister, whose eighth birthday we were celebrating, asked the waitress for a kiddie cocktail. Stevie took it upon himself to bring it to the table and told her that when she got older, he’d serve her the real thing, like mom was drinking along with her wine. Good thing Dad stopped drinking after he ate, because he stayed sober enough to drive us home safely. I had gotten my fill of spaghetti and Sinatra and was anxious to get home in time to see Elvis on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”
While going to Stevie’s Latin Village was a special treat, so was going to Wally Kerchowski’s neighborhood tavern at 11th and Enos, even though my family lived above it. On Friday nights, the smell of frying fish drifted upstairs into our apartment, and we couldn’t resist going downstairs to sample the delicious fare along with the Catholics who came from all over town in order to abide by their no-meat-on-Fridays religious tradition.
And on any given day, the delectable smell of chilli simmering in the vats of two separate factories, Chilli Man’s and Ray’s, gave credence to Springfield’s self-proclaimed designation as the Chilli Capital of the World (spelled with two ls). After all, Springfield’s very own Joe DeFrates won the World Chili Cook Off Championship a few times. Residents were privy to the delightful potpourri of aromas wafting through the neighborhood, stimulating the taste buds of those who chose to make their own chilli at home, using the ingredients that could be found at Sgro’s neighborhood grocery store, across the street from Wally’s Tavern.
Business was brisk in our little enclave of mixed cultures, but then, when its residents became fed up with increasing crime in the area, they moved their businesses and homes elsewhere, and the once-thriving little neighborhood gradually became abandoned. Parts of it were torn down, including St. Vincent de Paul’s Lithuanian Catholic church, where I used to attend occasionally. Sgro’s grocery store no longer exists, nor does Wally’s Tavern. Stevie’s Latin Village is a surface parking lot now. The International Shoe Company factory at 10th Street and Enos Avenue stopped making shoes long ago and has since burned down. And the aforementioned chilli factories have moved away.
Granted, enclaves such as this one can still be found in larger cities like Chicago, but sadly, not so much in Springfield anymore, due in part to the lackadaisical attitude that some of our citizenry has when it comes to preserving older neighborhoods. However, a few have enthusiastically undertaken the revitalization of the Enos Park neighborhood, for example, by refurbishing many of the old houses and turning them into beautiful, virtually new homes that the owners are choosing to live in themselves.
Mike Shepherd is a freelance writer who resides in the country near Springfield. He recently had a book published, Vietnam War Stories, based on his experiences as a U.S. Air Force radio correspondent there from 1967-1968.
This article appears in October 1-7, 2026.
