During the nineteenth century, music was a favorite pastime. People joined singing groups, enjoyed band concerts in the parks, went to the theater to hear orchestras and played the piano at home.

Carl Sandburg was interested in music too. He tried many kinds of musical instruments as well as singing four-part songs with his friends in the Dirty Dozen gang. He cut his own willow whistle and tapped out rhythm with a pencil held between his teeth. A ten-cent kazoo allowed him to imitate other sounds. He enjoyed making music on an ocarina he had purchased for fifteen cents at Gumbiner's Pawn Shop. The banjo he constructed from a cigar box and wire was never able to hold a tune. He tried his father's accordion, but it wheezed because of old age.

He also bought a two-dollar banjo from Gumbiner's Pawn Shop. Willis Calkins, a member of the Dirty Dozen, taught him chords. Three lessons on the banjo at a quarter each were all he could manage with his slender means.

The Gumbiner pawnshop was the only one in Galesburg. It was located on Main Street between Kellogg and Seminary. The array of watches for sale was something to behold. There were guns of all kinds, hunting knives, brass knuckles and slung shots. Clothing and household items were also for sale. Many kinds of musical instruments were on display as well. The ocarina was Carl's favorite musical instrument until he bought the banjo.

It was said a railroad engineer would never pawn his Waltham watch unless he was drunk and wanted to get more drunk. It was suspected the Waltham watches in Gumbiner's display case came from a pickpocket who had practiced his craft far from Galesburg.

Pawn lending has been a business for at least 3000 years. It is a way for people of limited means to borrow money for a short length of time, usually a month, on items they own. During the hard times of the 1890s, many of the poorly paid residents of Galesburg had to make use of Gumbiner's services. A dollar loan on a coat, an umbrella, a saw or a couple of books may have been the bridge that kept a family together. Thus, the pawn shop, or loan office, as it was sometimes called, provided a necessary service, although not one that was held in esteem. Still, Charles Gumbiner was regarded as an honest man.

He was born in Poland on March 30, 1857, and came to America as a teenager. He first settled in Utica, New York, then at Elmwood and later moved to Galesburg in 1893. In the late 1890s the Gumbiner family lived at 89 Blaine Avenue.

When the elder Gumbiner died on August 10, 1925, the newspaper was very discreet in describing the pawn shop as a general merchandise store. Mr. Gumbiner was a member of the Son of Judah synagogue, the Modern Woodmen of America and the Knights of Pythias. He was buried in Brookside Cemetery. The services were conducted by Rabbi Bottingheimer of Peoria.

His oldest son, Herbert, was a clerk in the Chicago Bargain Store as it was identified in the 1898 Galesburg City Directory. He may have been the clerk of whom Sandburg wrote “He seemed to wind himself up and then let go on his spiel and he didn't have to oil himself.”