Pete & Millie's

I recently ran across a couple of vintage newspaper ad’s for Pete & Millie’s, a Lorain restaurant that I’d never heard of before. It was located on the southeast corner of West 21st Street and Leavitt Road.

The first ad (above) ran in the Lorain Journal on January 31, 1952. It mentions that Pete & Millie had “enjoyed a nice rest" but were now back to serve “those delicious meals and short orders.”

Two days later, on February 2, 1952 this ad (below) ran in the paper.

Intrigued about a restaurant that I knew nothing about, I did a little research.

Pete & Millie were Peter and Mildred Flontek. Pete was a machinist at National Tube before opening the restaurant with his wife. The earliest listing in the Lorain phone book was in the October 1949 edition (below).

Aside from a few houses, there wasn’t much near that intersection in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Brady’s Restaurant was just a little bit to the south on the opposite side of Leavitt. Here’s a 1952 aerial view, courtesy of HistoricAerials.com.

I guess there weren’t many phone numbers either for that part of town. Pete & Millie’s 62-072 phone number had previously belonged to Brady’s Restaurant a few years earlier.

Anyway, there’s a reason that I’d never heard of Pete & Millie’s before. By the time of the 1954 Lorain City Directory, the restaurant’s listing had disappeared and the southeast corner of W. 21st Street was listed as being “under construction.”

The building under construction was Vic’s Sohio Service Station, operated by Vic E. Kolar.

And what happened to Pete & Millie?

Apparently still infused with the entrepreneurial spirit, they moved to Florida and opened the Trail Drive-in Theater in Naples Park in the summer of 1954.