Lawson's Comes to Vermilion – August 1963

Lawson's opened its first store in Lorain (in the Westgate Shopping Center) back in June 1959, but it took another four years before it made it out to my current city, Vermilion. Above is the ad announcing the Grand Opening of the store on W. Liberty St. (the old 6 & 2) that ran in the Journal back on August 21, 1963.

The ad is kind of hilarious, with the boisterous crowd celebrating by tossing hats in the air.

It's pretty amazing just how ubiquitous Lawson's was at that time in Lorain and the surrounding areas. There were stores on Grove Avenue, W. 21st Street, E. Lake Road in Sheffield Lake, Oberlin Avenue, Vine Avenue, two on North Ridge Road, Pearl Avenue, Cleveland Avenue in Amherst, G Street and Kansas Avenue.

Since it was so easy and reasonably cheap to pick up a gallon of milk from Lawson's, it's not that surprising that the local dairies – seeing their home delivery dollars go down the drain – would eventually close or sell out. 

Home Dairy lasted longer than I expected. While cleaning out my mother's house late last year, the estate sale company discovered a collection of Brady checkbook registers from the early 1970s. Mom was still writing checks to Home Dairy in the spring of 1972, about $10 every week or two. I guess my siblings and I went through a lot of milk, between guzzling it and pouring it on cereal.

Anyway, it's a source of amusement in Northeast Ohio just how many former Lawson's store buildings survived and are repurposed. They seem to be everywhere. Some have had drastic makeovers that hide their convenient store roots, like this one at the end of Oberlin Avenue at Cooper Foster Park.

Others (like this one in Vermilion) still look like it wasn't that long ago that you could go in there and get some chipped chopped ham and "Big O" Orange Juice.

And this one (located on Cooper Foster Park in Amherst) seems to have grown organically.