On April 27, 2017 a few of Positive Impact Fox Valley members volunteered at Open Elgin, a city wide event to showcase Elgin’s amazing architecture and history.The event gave everyone a chance to walk inside some of Elgin’s historical buildings which may not normally be open to the public.
Positive Impact Fox Valley was lucky enough to be assigned to Al’s Café and Creamery. The building they are in is a Victorian style building built in 1892 and known for their malts and milk shakes.
We were provided with a fact sheet on the building but the stories that most people were very interested in were the memories that one of our member shared about growing up in Elgin “back in the day”.
One memory that she shared with everyone was back in the 1960’s, Elgin HS students hung out at Burns Drug Store (which was off of Bluff City Blvd. in the southern part of Elgin) to flirt and eat ice cream. Burns had a special Malt recipe that was copyrighted and they never shared the Malt recipe with anyone.
Maroon field was just around the block where the team practiced and where football games were played. After practice they would meet at Burns. It was a custom at some point during the year for the football team to have a contest to see who could drink the most malts. The record as far as we know is one person having 8 malts.
Eventually, the Burns brothers retired and sold Burns Drug Store and sold the special Malt recipe to Al’s Café.
If you have never had a malt or milk shake from Al’s Café, we strongly encourage you to stop in and have one, you’ll be hooked!
New Event for Elgin; Glad we got to help them kick it off!