Almeda Schulz has many memories of Crystal Lake – 100 years’ worth, to be exact.

Schulz has called Crystal Lake home her entire life, and it also is the place she recently celebrated her 100th birthday on Thursday.

“For my age, I guess I’m doing pretty good,” Schulz said.

Some of Schulz’s memories are sad, such as the tornado she witnessed in the city in 1965. Schulz said all of the houses in the Colby subdivision went down, with only one still standing in the aftermath.

“We could see stuff flying up in the air ... as we looked out the window,” she recalled early last week.

Schulz also has memories of tough times during her childhood, as she grew up during the Great Depression.

“Things were hard,” she said. “There was no work way back then.”

This led the men of Crystal Lake, including Schulz’s father, to cut ice into sets of 25 and 50 chunks to ship off to Chicago for money. Some of the ice they would keep for their family’s ice boxes. To provide for his family, Schulz’s father also was a ditch digger.

Some of the younger men would climb onto the trains and go out to California looking for jobs, Schulz recalled.

Some of those who couldn’t find work would come to Schulz’s and her neighbors’ houses and ask for something to eat.

“My mother would give [them] some bread,” she said. “My mother and father were compassionate. ... People did that way back then, when there was no work, and everybody tried to help him out.”

It was because of the Depression that Schulz did not go to high school, although she attended Union Grade School, which was around the area where Husmann Elementary School is now.

Schulz still can remember the names of many of her teachers, as well as the school’s janitor.

Instead of continuing her education after grade school, Schulz, like other girls she knew, did housework for wealthy families to help raise money for her own.

“We went out – we had to go out, work and help make money to help our families,” Schulz said.

Schulz had five other siblings: Carl, Vera, Agda, Violet and Walter.

Despite memories of hard times, Schulz also has happier ones, such as going to the lake with her sister back when admission was free.

“My sister and I, when we were growing up, we loved the lake,” she said. “We went down swimming almost every day.”

Schulz still remembers the name of a lifeguard she was particularly fond of who would greet them as they went to the lake.

Other memories of Schulz’s childhood include seeing her neighbor, who owned two large vats of pickles, at the corner of Crystal Lake and Dole avenues.

“They called him Pickle Nelson,” Schulz said. “He grew them. ... They were huge.”

Schulz, then Almeda Nelson, grew up on Crystal Lake Avenue.

“Our home, it’s still there,” she said. “I grew up by there, and there wasn’t many homes around back then, but now it’s all built up.”

On Schulz’s block, there were a number of people who came from Sweden, including her parents, who were Swedish immigrants. Germans lived on the other block.

Schulz attended the Swedish Mission church in that “Swedenburg” part of the city on the corner of Crystal Lake Avenue and Lincoln Parkway, which is now a Salvation Army site.

Schulz married her husband, Albert “Butch” Schulz, in 1939. After living on Routes 176 and 14, across from Flowerwood, the couple rented a place on Pomeroy Avenue.

But when the landlord wanted to raise the rent from $30 a month to $35, they decided to build a house on View Street, where Almeda Schulz still lives today.

Back then, there were no other houses around, she said – a stark contrast to the number of residences that have popped up in later decades. The owner of the land where the house was built, Ted Sterne, wanted to develop it, so Sterne and Albert Schulz planted trees.

The city ended up buying Sterne’s Woods and creating Veteran Acres Park.

“All these trees – tall trees – my husband and another man ... they planted all those trees there,” Almeda Schulz said.

Almeda and Albert Schulz had a son, Dennis, in 1943.

Almeda Schulz has seen Crystal Lake go through a lot of changes. Back then, the Raue Center for the Arts was called the El Tovar, and a lot of people, including Almeda and her husband, worked at the Oak Manufacturing plant, one of the area’s largest employers.

One of the biggest differences in the city between when Almeda was growing up and now is its size, she said.

During Almeda Schulz’s childhood, the population of Crystal Lake was about 3,000, compared with about 40,000 now.

When asked whether she ever thought Crystal Lake would grow to the size it is now, Almeda Schulz chuckled.

“I thought it was big when I was growing up,” she said.

When she was a girl, Almeda Schulz said, Crystal Lake was peaceful.

“You never heard of [any] crime. There was [no] killings and everything like you’re hearing today,” she said. “You liked your neighbor. ... The neighbors could get along together.”

For Almeda Schulz, the reason she’s stayed in the city for so long is simple.

“Oh, I love Crystal Lake,” she said. “I grew up here, and I love it.”