It's a Candy Cane World at Victory Park – 1966 & 1968

A 2011 view

One of the Holy Grails (or white whales, if you prefer) that I've been on the hunt for on this blog is any information about the Big V sculpture in the park at West Erie Avenue and Fifth Street in Lorain. Who put it there and when? Nobody knows.

The last time I put out the word for help was back in 2018 on this post. And back on this 2011 post, I compared my hunt for the Big V to the treasure-seekers' quest to find the Big W in the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Anyway, when old issues of the Lorain Journal finally became available online, with a search capability, I thought for sure that I could solve my mystery. But although I've spent hours plugging an endless variety of words to describe the Big V into the 'Search' box, I've still come up short.

However, I did manage to find a few mentions of the Big V and even a few photos – strangely enough, with a Christmas angle. At some point in the mid-1960s, it became an annual ritual to decorate the Big V so that it resembled two candy canes.

Here's an article from the Thursday, December 15, 1966 Journal explaining how a few women's groups decorated several Lorain city parks – including the one at West Erie and Fifth. (It's not really Victory Park, since there was already one with that name in Lorain, but in recent years it's been called that anyway.)

And here's a photo from the December 23, 1968 Journal.

It's interesting how the Big V in the two photos is quite different from the one that is there today. It's a much more condensed typeface. I know that it was clobbered by a car at some point (maybe even twice) but I can't find any mention of that either in the old issues.

Since I watch a lot of GRIT TV and Westerns on MeTV, I've seen lots of shows with bounty hunters, like Josh Randall (played by Steve McQueen) on Wanted: Dead or Alive. Hmmmm.... is anyone interested in collecting a bounty to help me solve my mystery?