Bicycle Ads – Sept. 1966

Before we were old enough to drive, bicycles were how we got around. They were our ticket to freedom, enabling us to go anywhere we wanted to go (locally, that is). Even when we did get our driving temps, there wasn't always a spare car available to borrow on the Brady Used Car Lot (consisting of our garage and driveway). So we rode our bikes.

My friends and I rode our bikes all over Lorain and beyond. I've written before how we went to Mill Hollow a few times. My first visit to Dog N Suds was on my bike. I even remember going over the High Level Bridge on my bike (along with my girl friend at the time) to go to James Day Park in Sheffield for a picnic.

We rode our bikes past the houses where the girls that we 'liked' lived. Once in a while we even ran into them on their bikes. It was a real heyday for bikes.

I rode my bike to the library a few times on a Saturday afternoon. One bike was stolen right from the rack outside (the thief cut the chain). On another trip, I was going down Oberlin Avenue and some big kid on a bike (from Lorain High) came up behind me and grabbed my bicycle chain (which was hanging around my neck) and towed me for a while. I didn't wear my chain around my neck after that.

One good friend – Scott Welko – loved to tinker with bikes. We seemed to always be taking ours apart, painting them, etc. That meant lots of trips to see Bicycle Bill at the Lorain Schwinn Cyclery on Oberlin Avenue in the same shopping strip as Willow Hardware and Whalen Drugs.

Times have changed. I rarely see kids – or anyone – on a bike. When I do see one, it's been modified with a motor so no pedaling is needed!

I have to chuckle whenever I go into Lorain these days. West Erie Avenue (US 6) was modified a few years ago, adding a bike lane, a center turning lane, and making the highway two lanes with no passing (even though it was a big deal when it was widened to four lanes in the 1950s). I have yet to ever see anyone riding a bike in the bike lane.

Anyway, bikes were part of everyday life in 1966. Remember that I mentioned "Bicycle Bill" Schetter? He didn't have his Schwinn store on Oberlin Avenue yet; he was still managing Atlas Cycle on 28th Street. Here's an ad that ran on the Journal business page on September 12, 1966.

Bikes were even promoted as a way to get to school back then. Here's a Sears ad from September 14, 1966.

The ad is downright quaint with its depiction of a suburban utopia. But it's not really that unrealistic.

I tried riding my bike to school a few times. All I remember was that I got grease from the chain on my pants, and I was always worried about the bike getting stolen.

Lorain Drive-in Dusk to Dawn Show – Sept.1956

The Lorain Drive-in movie theater has been the subject of many posts on this blog. It's become kind of a symbol to me of Lorain in the 1960s. My family only went there a few times (we saw most of our movies at Amherst Theater) but it still looms large in my memory. 

I remember that whenever we came home late at night from Cedar Point on the old 6&2, we always went by the drive-in. My siblings and I would be watching to see if we could get a glimpse of what was showing on the big screen.

Anyway, seventy years ago this month, Lorain Drive-in had a great promotion: a Dusk to Dawn program with five features, followed by coffee and donuts for all who stayed until the end. Here's the ad that ran in the Lorain Journal on September 1, 1956.

The films are a real grab bag. The night started off with a Western, Apache Ambush, at 8:50. 

I'd never heard of Bill Williams. But Richard Jaeckel –who was in The Dirty Dozen as Sgt. Bowren, one of the three soldiers who survived the mission (along with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson) is always great.

Hit No. 2 (as the ad says) was a war film, Three Stripes in the Sun, at 10:30. Hey, Dick York – the original Darrin on Bewitched – is in the cast.

The third film that night (which started at midnight) was a film noir crime film, Over-Exposed with Cleo Moore. 

I just remembered the lovely Cleo Moore because of a role she had in a Joe McDoakes comedy, So You're Having In-Law Trouble. She played a "kissin' cousin" of Joe's who did a little too much kissing, much to his wife Alice's annoyance.

Hit No. 4 at 1:30 was The Long Gray Line with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara and directed by John Ford. 

Somehow it just doesn't seem right to see Maureen O'Hara with anyone other than John Wayne in a John Ford film.

The last movie shown that night as part of the package was Count Three and Pray, a Western with Van Heflin and Joanne Woodward.

I was never a big Van Heflin fan (although he was great in the original 3:10 to Yuma). Oddly enough, over the weekend I happened to fall asleep early on Saturday night, and woke up around 1:00 a.m. After brushing my teeth, I turned on the TV and guess what was on? You guessed it: Count Three and Pray! What I saw of it was really good, it even had Nancy Kulp (Miss Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies) in it.

Unfortunately, I eventually had to go to bed and miss the ending. So no coffee and donuts for me.

25th Anniversary of 9/11/01

Photo courtesy Robert Clark and Time Magazine

Well, it’s been 25 years. It's hard to believe.

On one hand, seeing the horrific images on TV that day, and watching the news coverage of the aftermath of the attacks doesn’t seem like it’s been that long. But it has. And since then, a lot has happened in this country. 

But the biggest thing that's happened since 9/11 is that hate has become the new national pastime. We seem to be swimming in hate. 

Hate for certain politicians, their political parties, and the people who voted for them. 

Hate for people with a different opinion.

Hate for whole classes of people that some want to blame for all our problems. 

Hate for the laws that govern us.

Hate for some of our most cherished institutions. 

Hate for some of our most basic traditions and principles. 

Hate for some of the very rights that define our republic.

It’s getting scary. Very scary. It’s scarier than 9/11 was, if you ask me.

I wish we could go back to how united we were – briefly (before the finger pointing and criticism began) – right after 9/11. We all stood together as a country.

I’m not sure if we will ever be that united again. But I can hope. And I hope it doesn't take another national tragedy to accomplish it.

And I hope we never forget the people who lost their lives on 9/11, and the people whose lives were changed forever as a result of the attacks. 

****

I posted some front pages from the day following the 9/11 attacks, and offered my own reminisces back here.

Big Cartoon Show at the Palace Ad – Sept. 9, 1946

Those of us that were born in the 1950s or early 1960s grew up during a virtual cartoon paradise, when Saturday morning TV programming consisting of wall-to-wall cartoons from dawn (or whenever the stations signed on) until lunchtime. We were glued to the TV screen, watching animated shorts that were originally shown in theaters, and brand new cartoons made specifically for television.

And my siblings and I watched them all, from Bugs Bunny to Milton the Monster. We did not discriminate.

But what about the unfortunate, deprived generations of children who had to grow up in an era before TV? How did they get their cartoon fix?

The answer: all day cartoon festivals in movie theaters. The ad below, which ran in the Lorain Journal back on Sept. 9, 1946, promoted just such an event coming up at the Palace Theater in Lorain on the 14th of that month.

(September 14, 1936 was a Saturday, in case you were wondering if the theater was encouraging skipping school.)

It's an odd lineup of cartoon stars for 1946, and the art in the ad doesn't help. We see 1930s versions of Popeye and Betty Boop (who was 'retired' by then) right alongside similarly outdated illustrations of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The roll call of cartoon stars listed in the ad include Warner Brothers' biggest cartoon star Bugs Bunny, as well as two dogs from the Disney menagerie (one that talks and one that doesn't): Goofy and Pluto. Lastly, there's Little Lulu (whose cartoons were made by Paramount, the same company where Popeye was toiling in those monotonous 1940s color cartoons where he and Bluto fought over the fickle, unappetizing Olive Oyl.

I'm not sure whether the show was a big success, but the Palace put on a much better package about ten years later in July 1957. This time, the lineup featured Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals, with the carrot-munching wascally wabbit in the spotlight.

Not surprisingly, the various elements of the 1957 Palace show ended up on television eventually. 

As for Abbott & Costello, I remember when their short-lived 1950s TV show turned up on Channel 43 in the late 1960s. I tape recorded the theme song on my reel to reel, and have had it in my head for more than 50 years. Here it is, so you can enjoy it too.

Lorain Journal Front Page – Sept. 9, 1936

Ninety years ago today, the front page of the Lorain Journal of September 9, 1936 was reporting on the latest presidential polling (it favored Alf Landon) and a growing number of traffic deaths. 

But setting aside those news items, what interested me were the photos of Quintupletland (later shortened to just Quintland) – where the Canadian government basically turned the Dionne Quintuplets into the country's biggest tourist attraction. It's a sad tale of how the girls were taken from their parents and exploited, changing their lives forever. They were put on display like a circus act.

According to a Wiki entry, "The Dionne quintuplets spent much of their childhood at the centre of Quintland, a government-operated tourist attraction built around the Dafoe Nursery. Constructed through a Canadian Red Cross fundraising campaign, the nursery became the centerpiece of one of Canada's largest tourist attractions during the Great Depression. 

"From 1935 until the sisters returned to their family in 1943, millions of people travelled to Northern Ontario to observe them. When public visits first began, tourists viewed the quintuplets through a window of the Dafoe Nursery. Their caregivers soon concluded that this arrangement upset the girls, who became excited when visitors arrived and distressed when they left. Asking visitors to remain quiet proved ineffective, and the sisters were initially exhibited four times each day. 

"The public observatory opened on Canada Day in 1936, when the sisters were two years old. Visitors passed through a covered arcade surrounding the nursery's outdoor playground, where the girls were brought outside for scheduled public viewings. The playground formed part of the nursery compound, which was enclosed by a seven-foot (7 feet (2.1 m)) barbed-wire fence. 

"Visitors were instructed to remain silent, not speak to the girls, continue moving to avoid congestion, and refrain from taking photographs. The sisters were not exhibited during poor weather. Although one-way screens were intended to prevent noise and distraction, they functioned more like frosted glass. 

"The girls knew they were being watched because they could hear the screams and laughter of the crowds, even if they could not clearly see them. Only five people were permitted in a room with the quintuplets at one time, and anyone admitted was sprayed with disinfectant. 

"Approximately 3,000 people visited Quintland each day, and almost three million passed through the observation gallery between 1936 and 1943. Hundreds of automobiles arrived daily, and ample parking was provided for visitors. At its height, Quintland surpassed the Canadian side of Niagara Falls to become Ontario's largest tourist attraction." 

Why am I interested in their story? Because during my married years, most of our annual vacations were spent in North Bay, Ontario, Canada (which is about four hours north of Toronto) visiting my wife's grandmother. North Bay is right next door to Callander, where the quintuplets were born. In fact, the cabin that they were born in was eventually moved to North Bay as a tourist attraction/museum. I went through it many times over the years.

To make it even more interesting, my wife's grandmother even did some sewing for the Dionne family. 

So I spent a lot of time in North Bay over the years, and came away with real affection for the place, and Canada in general.

The Swamp Lily

The above photo of the intersection of Broadway and West Erie Avenue in Lorain – looking east, with the Broadway Building on the right and the old swing bridge (that preceded the present Bascule Bridge) off in the distance – probably looks odd to anyone familiar with this location today. 

We're not used to seeing anything on that northeast corner or on the viaduct leading to the bridge. Yet the photo shows a Gulf service station and, just east of it, a hotel that local historians fondly know as the Swamp Lily.

The Swamp Lily had been built (according to at least one source) in 1894. Here's an early, undated photo looking east towards the Swing Bridge that shows the Swamp Lily on the left side of the photo. As you can see, the Broadway Building hasn't been built yet.

The Swamp Lily made it onto this 1924 Lorain Tornado souvenir postcard, which looks west from the tornado-damaged viaduct. That's it on the right.

Here's a vintage photo, courtesy of the Lorain County Memory website, circa 1930s. There's some kind of carnival or exhibition at the north end of Broadway, but you can see the Swamp Lily off in the distance on the left side of the photo.

And here are two more vintage photos of it, circa mid-to-late 1930s, from different angles, probably taken at the same time. The first one shows how I assume you would enter the building from the viaduct. The second photo shows it at ground level. 

While the name Swamp Lily is used regularly to refer to the hotel on the viaduct, it actually had several names during its existence, including the Eagle Hotel and the Checker Inn.

The Swamp Lily made it into the news frequently in the early 1930s. The first event that triggered several news accounts in the Lorain Journal was the city's desire to widen E. Erie Avenue at the western end of the viaduct. August Baldwin, one of the city's last living Civil War veterans and the owner of the Swamp Lily at the time, blocked the widening via an old injunction. Apparently the city retaliated by declaring the hotel a fire trap. The issue was finally resolved.

Sept. 4, 1930

Sept. 12, 1930

Oct. 23, 1930

Oct. 27, 1930

Dec. 2, 1930

The second big event that put the Swamp Lily in the news was the fire that almost destroyed it on September 2, 1932.

The Swamp Lily made it into the news for the last time when it became necessary to remove it to make way for the new Bascule Bridge.

Nov. 10, 1939

Nov. 30, 1939

Dec. 5, 1939

Dec. 6, 1939

Dec. 27, 1939

Feb. 23, 1940

May 22, 1940

July 17, 1944

Dec. 5, 1949

Full Speed Ahead with Labor – Labor Day 1956

Here's hoping all of my readers enjoy a safe and happy Labor Day.

The Lorain Journal observed the holiday with this full-page ad back on Aug. 31, 1956. As usual, it's interesting seeing what companies that sponsored the ad are still around, at least in some form.

Wondering about the history of Labor Day? Rather than belabor it, let's turn to the website of the U.S. Dept. of Labor for the answer.

It notes, "Observed the first Monday in September, Labor Day is an annual celebration of the social and economic achievements of American workers. The holiday is rooted in the late nineteenth century, when labor activists pushed for a federal holiday to recognize the many contributions workers have made to America’s strength, prosperity, and well-being. 

"Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on February 21, 1887. 

"During 1887, four more states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York – passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania had followed suit. 

"By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday. 

"Who first proposed the holiday for workers? 

"It’s not entirely clear, but two workers can make a solid claim to the Founder of Labor Day title. Some records show that in 1882, Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, suggested setting aside a day for a "general holiday for the laboring classes" to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold." 

"But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that machinist Matthew Maguire, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, New Jersey, proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. 

"According to the New Jersey Historical Society, after President Cleveland signed the law creating a national Labor Day, the Paterson Morning Call published an opinion piece stating that "the souvenir pen should go to Alderman Matthew Maguire of this city, who is the undisputed author of Labor Day as a holiday." Both Maguire and McGuire attended the country’s first Labor Day parade in New York City that year. 

"The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883. 

"By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday. Many Americans celebrate Labor Day with parades and parties – festivities very similar to those outlined by the first proposal for a holiday, which suggested that the day should be observed with – a street parade to exhibit "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day."