Remeber when the Pure Oil Company closed the building which later became the junior college? A bunch of our classmates moved to California; Dick Walker, Rick Walker, Pat Percy, Janet Wright.

 That  closing caused the exodus of some of our own???!! Oh nooo.

I was one too Bob but I didn't wait around until it closed! My memory of MCC though is sitting around in that vending machine area playing cards! Anyone else remember that?

No, but I'm glad to see that Nick's sense of humor has remained intact over the years. I do remember a couple of fun nights on the back of Pure Oil's property, though. I slept on the grass out there under the stars on a couple of occasions. 

 I worked for Union Oil Co. in Schaumburg in the 80's . They continued to store valuable computer backup tapes in a dilapidated underground facility on Pure Oil's site, beyond the M.C.C. era, even after the main building had been demolished.  Picture a rusted storm cellar like entrance in the field behind the ruins, that contained their life's blood in the event of a disaster.  

Hi Steve,

I was unaware of the undergroung storage. I remember the fenced in chemical pit that they had for years way in the back. I could see the fence from my back yard along with a big bean field.

I lived up the street from Bob, adjacent to pure oil. We used to check out those buildings all the time, not the front building, but the back ones that seemed to have something going on. We'd look in the windows at night to see what was going on, until security would shoo us away. Bob, tic, I , tic remember ,tic the tic, fenced in area, tic, that was closer to your house, tic, don't know why I'm ticcing, but we used to climb the fences and run around in ther, discovered some things, tic.  We always thought that there was a tunnel from the main buildings to that pit, that they disposed of all their bad chemicals. there were lift stations along the way, maybe we weren't wrong. Who knows, the area has been developed.

Thru Jr and high school my father worked for Pure oil up to the time they shut down. One of the back building had a testing center for cars, the complete dyno setup, was way cool to see them bring it in strap it down and run up the rpms looking for failure. I had been through out the buildings , if there was a tunnel dad would never tell and i also wondered about the pond!!Perhaps Hook Man's brother Swamp Thing lived there!

Hi Bob,

 Pretty area up there in Murrayville. N. Ga. would not be a bad place to retire. This facility was just a room big enough to stack boxes of tapes with the external stairwell which looked as though it had been in an enclosed building at one time. Weatherproof and only secure in the fact that no one could have imagined that it existed there. Amazing how a large corporation will try to save a dime and end up spending a dollar.

Lost my first high school puppy love to that closing....Deb Martin....

Lots of classmates have recently joined the site so we just want everyone to know that there are three blog Forums currently with 14 topics having been discussed. Bob Allyn got us to talking about the old Pure Oil Building and the "secrets" that lurked within. Maybe you have memories of attending McHenry County College there that you'd like to share? Or maybe the current CL locals can describe for us what's there now. I'm told there is a preciously  good Italian Beef restaurant there as well! Look out Mr. A's! 

Check out all the topics and post a comment if you have something to add! If you click on the Forum List at the top of the page, you can view the Forum titles. Click a title and you will see the the individual topics listed in that Forum. If you'd like to start your own topic to be discussed, click "Post New Topic" at the top of the page, name your topic and post away! Happy Blogging!

My dad worked for Pure also and we were supposed to move to Fullerton, Ca after freshman year, but dad died of a heart attack in March of '66, just before we were going to move, so obviously we stayed. Weird how things turn out. He used to take me there as a kid once in a while, but some other kid got hurt goofing around and they didn't allow kids there after that. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade when that happened.  

The things we didn't know were going on in each others lives back then Walt! How sad to lose a parent at that age but I know others experienced that as well - Tom Butcher being the most recent one I learned that from.

Thanks though Walt - this prompts yet another thred - Take Your Kid to Work Days! They weren't formalized back in those days with activities and all like today, or when our kids were growing up - our parents just did it - or some did anyway - I guess mostly because they needed to do something with us on the few "in-service days" they used to have at school back then.

My Dad worked in downtown Chicago in a high rise office building. He was an insurance agent and he'd take me into the city on the train - that alone was a fun ordeal! But when we got there it was pretty boring except for one thing - playing on his "calculator". This thing was amazing. It was powered by electricity and looked kind of like a typewriter. It was about a 15-20 inch cube in dimension. As I recall, it had about ten rows of numbered buttons both horizontally and vertically with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division function buttons to the right and little windows at the top where the answer numbers would pop up on little metal plates. The operator punched out a problem, like one would with todays calculator, and then the machine would start doing its work - all mechanically! It would crank and turn and vibrate and Voila! - an answer would pop up in the little windows each number separately! Amazing! I remember uncovering that 10-15 years ago and we were all amazed at it!

But the best part of the day was lunch at the little coffee shop across the alley from his building  - and the blueberry pie that I was always able to order! Watching him play poker (when I was really young. I think my Mom put the kibosh on that in later years!) on the train on the way home was also pretty interesting!

My dad worked in Chicago also, for a printing company south of the loop in what is now the trendy "Printer's Row" neighborhood.  Those buildings are quiet because of the reinforced floors--the presses were HUGE heavy metal things, your dad's adding machine on steroids, Paul.  I remember my dad taking us when he had to go in on Saturday.  We too loved riding the train and watching the women (always women) inputting text on the lino-type machines (also huge and metal).  That was when I was in grade school, by the time we got to high school my dad and others had started Black Dot, a computer typesetting company in Crystal Lake.  His commute became much shorter, that's for sure!  Those trains were really something, poker, the bar car, and remember the smoking cars?  You could barely see in them the smoke was so dense.  ICK.  Except for the bar and smoking cars the trains are much the same as they were, they still have the upper level single seats and you can flip the seat backs on the lower level so 4 of you can sit facing each other. 

Even tho the bar car is officially gone I will say that when I take the train back to Chicago and there's a Cub game later that day there are LOTS of kids with plenty of coolers with beers in them.  Party down on the train on the way to the ballpark!

Yes Lynne, I forgot about the bar car. I think they went there after they lost all their money in the poker games! And I think the Poker Cars WERE the Smoking Cars as it sure was think in there too! It's amazing that we're not all dying of second hand smoke exposure from living in homes with parents who chain smoked!

This reminds me of another huge change since we were kids - milk production. I grew up on a dairy farm (but we didn't farm it, another family did!) and I remember the cumbersome process of milking cows. We didn't milk by hand by that time but did have to strap milking machines on each cow and haul the milk back to a refrigeration room to store it until it was picked up the next day.

Then in college, I visited a friends dairy farm along the southern Oregon coast. Oh my gosh was that place automated! But nothing like today. Now the cows come in by themselves when they know "they're full". They walk into a "barn" (not like the barns of our day - more just like a covered pole building), into a stall and the milkers automatically attach to their teets and milk them! Then Betsy just walks herself back out into the fields to eat more for tomorrows production! Amazing!

Each cow is coded so they immediately analyze the milk content and cows health to determine whether she needs to be treated for anything. Just amazing to watch if you ever experienced this as a child! (Sorry, that had NOTHING to do with Take Your Kid to Work Day! Just a memory from long long ago and far far away!)