In honor of St. Patrick's Day on Friday, here's a full page of ads from the Journal of March 15, 1963 with that theme, promoting Downtown Lorain stores. Participating stores included the Style Center, Ted Jacobs, Penney's, Kline's, Ohio Edison, Smith & Gerhart, Jupiter Discount Store, Harry's Men's Wear, Lee Furniture, Sears, Lorain Hardware, Bear's, Allen's Shoes, Sylvester Drugs, Bazley's, McKee's Shoes, Skylite Bar, and Jax.
It's odd realizing that every single one of the local stores is long gone.
Even the national stores that once had a presence in Downtown Lorain are in sad shape, with Sears having dwindled down to about forty stores in the whole country. JCPenney is trying to make a comeback, and still has 670 stores. (And to think that we used to order a lot of things out of both companies' catalogs.)
The ads are a grab bag of generic sales items, with few illustrations to show what's exactly being promoted. The Jupiter Discount ad, however, includes a photo of the Hy-Fry Cooker Fryer. (You can pick one up on eBay fairly easily for about thirty bucks.
The one thing that caught my eye was the small logo for Red Goose Shoes.
It's interesting remembering how shoes used to be marketed to kids, with brands like Red Goose as well as Buster Brown and his dog Tige.
I remember seeing this kind of sign in shoes stores when I was a kid and thinking that Buster looked strange, with his hat and bangs. Buster's dog was kind of bizarre too, with his toothy grin.
