After 87 years in Loves Park, Blume’s Garage closed its doors

Blume’s Garage interior circa 1930.

By Margaret Downing
REPORTER
The oldest and longest lasting business in the City of Loves Park recently closed down after 87 years!
The doors to Blume’s Garage were shut at the beginning of this year and many area customers, as they drive by the location at 5614 N. Second St. might notice the outside sign that hung in front of the business since the 1940s is now gone.
Bea Blume, who will be 90 years old this year, and son James, now run the “Model A Gaming Parlor,” which is a small establish-ment doing business where Blume’s front office was previously located.
Bea, a native of Iron Mountain, Mich., graduated from nursing school at the old St. Anthony’s Hospital on E. State St. in 1948, which is where she worked as a nurse until the late 1950s, remembers the blind date she had shortly after graduating with WWII Army vet, Mervin Blume.
The couple married in 1950, moved to the young city of Loves Park, and became parents to three children: Paul, Beverly and James.
Bea recalls the area in the early fifties when she would push a baby buggy over to the garage where Mervin worked for his parents, Homer and Marie Blume, and would visit. She also remembers the police chief at that time kindly stopping (the sparce) traffic on N. Second Street so she could safely cross while pushing the buggy.
She remembers the

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