Step back to July 1907 in Elgin

"The vulgar language by boys during baseball games has got to stop."

"Did you hear about the woman race car driver from Elgin?"

Can you believe how they're cleaning the lagoons at Lords Park?

These are just some of the questions probably uttered by residents reading the Elgin news of a century ago.

Here's a look at those stories and others as recorded in the newspapers of July 1907.

•Playing baseball in the city's vacant lots is one thing, said a number of residents, but the "vulgar language" accompanying the games must stop. Complaints came in daily from around the city, said the chief of police, particularly from women. One way to address the problem would be to build a large playground with baseball and tennis facilities, said some. An officer stationed at such a recreational facility could then help monitor the young people's behavior.

•Increasing talk about pollution of the Fox River didn't stop organizers of Elgin's first-ever "water carnival." The event was dubbed a huge success as hundreds of people lined the shores of the Fox River north of Kimball Street to watch various events. The day kicked off with dozens of brightly decorated boats followed by various sporting events. Among them was a greased pole which extended out over the river and proved a daunting challenge to those who tried to walk on it. There was also a baseball game in which the players competed while standing in the river - an event that was called off because the first inning took two hours to complete.

•Let's have the fish do the work, city employees thought. Following the lead of Chicago park officials, Elgin parks department representatives said they had a new way to clean out the weeds in the popular Lords Park lagoons. Instead of paying personnel to do the job -- an effort that cost $200 annually -- they planned to introduce carp in the waters to do the job.

"The carp will clean out the grass and weeds in short order," said one park official. After a few weeks, the fish would be removed, he added.

• Things got a bit lively at an Elgin city council meeting after a representative of a company seeking a city bid found out the business was going to a competing firm instead. After ignoring the mayor's repeated requests to sit down and end his comments, the chief executive called upon the chief of police to remove the persistent orator from the chambers. The incident, which was said to be the first of its kind, was properly handled by the mayor, said other city council men.

• History stories made the news a century ago too. "The soil when plowed up and wet is so black that it would be difficult to distinguish between a pile of charcoal and the earth," wrote James Hanks, who was one of the first to arrive in the area in the early 1830s. "For beauty, convenience, and goodness, take the three together, I think my choice surpasses any land I have ever saw," added Hanks who settled along Poplar Creek near the current Elgin High School building. Hank's letters would be seen by members of the Gifford family in upstate New York, who would be credited with founding Elgin a few years later.

•Teachers and hundreds of former students from the former Wing School, now Illinois Park School, gathered for the school's first ever reunion. The get-together included the reading of papers, vocal performances, and plenty of reminiscing about the facility which dated from 1854. Some first-year students even talked about coming to the school each evening while under construction and arguing about where they would sit in the new facility. The school was named for the Wing property on which it was situated, adjacent to the current Wing Park.

Abby Saunders Wing, who later had an Elgin school named in her honor, was the facility's first teacher followed by numerous successors who remained only a year or two.

•No serious incidents in the good old days? Think again. A local grocer was shot in the leg while attempting to make a delivery at a local liquor establishment. More than one man in the business had a revolver on his body complicating an investigation by police. And, just who was the boy's mother is what Larkin Home officials were trying to determine after two unknown women claiming to be a young man's parent arrived at the school. Officials worked slowly worked through the mystery for fear the child was being kidnapped by one of the parties.

• Finally, who said automobiles were just for men? Alice Potter Tetzner proved otherwise when she agreed to race three other female contestants in a road race in Chicago. The event followed a "24 Hour Race" after which the track condition was so poor the other women withdrew from the event. Potter instead drove her 50 horsepower Hayes automobile in an exhibition run completing the 3 mile track in just over six minutes, all to the applause of the audience. Not alone in car ownership at the time, Potter was one of several Elgin women who drove and maintained their own vehicles.