Kmart's Raccoon Mascot - Sept. 1975

Did you know that Kmart once had a cartoon raccoon mascot for their 'Building Materials' advertisements?

I didn't either. But there he was, wearing a painters cap emblazoned with a large 'K,' in several Kmart ads during the summer of 1975. 

July 10, 1975

August 7, 1975

Sept. 4, 1975

Why a raccoon and not a beaver – nature's bucktoothed construction expert? I have no idea.

Nevertheless, I was curious how long this ring-tailed varmint was used by Kmart in its ads. So I did a Google search – only to be told by Google's AI Overview that I was apparently cracking up. Read what it said for yourself.

"The raccoon mascot and connection to Kmart is a widespread misconception, and the two are not related," it says. Widespread indeed.

"The idea of a Kmart raccoon mascot is an example of a '"mandela effect," where a large number of people collectively misremember the same fact," it says.

A large number of people? I'm probably the only person on Planet Earth thinking about this.

Harrumph.

9/11 Anniversary

For today, the 24th anniversary of September 11th, I decided to post some front pages from the day after the horrific event.

It's a sad reminder of the terror we all felt that day, and the days that followed.

A few of us at work were looking back on the day it happened, and where we were and what we were doing.

I remember listening to the Cleveland big band radio station at work, and the announcer cutting in to say that a plane had struck one of the Twin Towers. That's about all he said, and it was stated so matter-of-factly that I thought that it had been just someone in a Cessna or something. An accident.

When the second plane struck, and the announcement (without details) came over the radio, then we knew something was going on – and proceeded to the company's hospitality room, where there was a working TV. Everyone was in shock at what they saw.

After a little while, I decided to call my parents, just to check on them. When Mom answered, I remarked as to how it was all so unbelievable what was happening, and asked her what she thought was going on.

Mom answered, "What are you talking about?" Mom and Dad didn't have their TV on. They had no idea what was unfolding in New York, Washington D. C. or Pennsylvania. I told her to turn on her TV, and to be ready for a shock.

My employer at that time let all the employees out early that day, and I remember driving home nervously. It was a very unsettling feeling for a few days until it was apparent that the attacks had concluded.

Since it was more than 20 years ago, 9/11 often seems to have lost its significance to many. It seems so long ago; a whole generation has grown up that weren't even born yet when it happened. 

It's probably like my hearing about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when I was a kid. It seemed like ancient history; after all, Pearl Harbor happened 18 years before I was born.

Now I know otherwise. 

I hope we never forget the people who lost their lives on 9/11, and how – for a little while at least – we were united as a country.

On Area Movie Screens – Sept. 7, 1955

Seventy years ago this was the movie and entertainment page of the Lorain Journal on September 7, 1955. It's an odd assortment, that's for sure. 

Of course, the movie that leaps out at you is No Greater Sin (1941), showing at the Tower Drive-In on Lake Avenue. While the ad layout reminds me of one of those Dr. Silkini horror shows, the movie was apparently a drama about the dangers of venereal disease – hardly the kind of jolly drive-in movie fare that I'd like to see. 

No Greater Sin was coupled with a film showing triplets being born, so I probably would have put down my box of Sno-Caps and reached for a barf bag.

Another disappointment on the movie page: no Bowery Boys! Instead, we get Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in You're Never Too Young. 

I was born too late to see Martin & Lewis as a team, but I remember that Jerry Lewis epitomized comedy to many of us growing up in the 1960s. But one of the few Jerry Lewis flicks I remember seeing at the movies was The Nutty Professor (at the Lorain Drive-in).

There's not too many Westerns on the page. One good one is James Stewart in Bend of the River at the Grove Theater. 

It's one of Stewart's collaborations with director Anthony Mann, so you know it's good. But poor Arthur Kennedy once again has to play a wretched, weaselly jerk – his trademark role. (Watch for a young Harry Morgan – Dragnet's Officer Bill Gannon – in the trailer, playing a roughneck, about 56 seconds in.

Another good Western playing on the screen at that time was Randolph Scott in Ten Wanted Men. 

I've come to appreciate Randolph Scott as a Western star, since his movies seem to play all the time on GRIT and OUTLAW. He's kind of funny in that his cowboy hat always has that little chin strap. But he's in one of my favorite movies, Ride the High Country with Joel McCrea.

Elsewhere on that Journal page, we get ads for Musicarnival, Tedders Grill, Ben Hart's Show Bar and the Fifth Annual Lorain Home and Better Living Show at the Lorain Arena.

We also get a little cheesecake photo. I remember a Mad Magazine reprint paperback from the 1950s, in which they did a parody of a typical newspaper. Their parody page included a photo of a gal in a swimsuit sitting by a dock (very much like the one shown here), with the photo caption acknowledging that she really wasn't doing anything newsworthy but the newspaper included it anyway.

Reddy's "Growing With Lorain" Ads – 1945

Back in the summer of 1945 – with the war winding down – the Ohio Public Service Company launched an interesting little series of ads. Entitled "Growing With Lorain," the ads provided a historical perspective of how the electric utility was there to share in Lorain's growth and progress.

The campaign apparently ran from July to September and shined the spotlight specifically on Broadway lighting, the YMCA, Lorain's bridges and streetcars & buses. The last ad notes, "By looking ahead and anticipating the needs of the community, The Ohio Public Service Co. is ready today to meet a steadily increasing use of electric power and light in the post war era into which we are now entering.”

I've done a few posts about Lorain's YMCA – the one that opened in 1925 and the one that replaced it on Tower Boulevard.

Gray Drug Ad – Sept. 1955

Although Top Value Stamps haven't existed since the company went out of business in the early 1980s, there are plenty of Baby Boomers who remember them. Krogers seems to have been the store that many of us remember as giving them out with purchase. 

Well, Gray Drug Stores did too. The nearly full page above from the Lorain Journal of Sept. 15, 1955 makes the announcement. At that time, there was just the Gray Drug store at the relatively new O'Neil - Sheffield Shopping Center.

Here's a copy of the 1955 catalog shown in the ad (poached from eBay).

What's interesting to me (since I'm a big fan of classic ad mascots) is the image of Toppie the Elephant in the ad. He seemed to debut in the local ads in 1955, so this is an early version of him. He's kind of bulky.

Within a year or so, Toppie would get re-designed to be a little cuter, with a more clearly defined head. Here's a detail from a 1956 ad.

And here's a magazine ad from 1960 with the Toppie design we all remember.

I'll never forget that elephant (so to speak). We had a Top Values Stamp lunch box and thermos with Toppie on it. A few years ago, a set just like ours was selling on an online auction website for $6,000.

Anyway, the page from the Lorain Journal includes an article about a neat arrangement in which students from the M. B Johnson School of Nursing (where a girl I dated in high school got her nursing degree) attended some classes at Oberlin College.

With its closing in 1987, M. B. Johnson School of Nursing joins Gray Drug Stores and Top Value Stamps as local institutions shown on this page of the Journal that aren't around any more.

Protect the School Children – 1946

School's back in session so it's a good time to post a few vintage safety ads. 

Below is one of those full-page ads with sponsors that the Lorain Journal used to run around holidays. This one appeared on August 31, 1946. 

It's pretty quaint, with well-dressed children walking to school and being protected by a friendly policeman. It reminds me of my old schoolbook On Cherry Street (which I wrote about here and here).

What's odd is that the ad only has four sponsors: three of them public utilities (gas, electric and telephone) and the other one Lake Erie Oil.

But while the ad is focused on keeping kids safe while they walk to school, another ad using the same illustration has a different message: keep the kids safe by making them ride the bus! Here's the ad for Employee Transit Lines that ran in the same edition of the Journal as the other ad.

Today, most kids ride the bus (assuming their school district has enough drivers). But I'm glad I lived in the era where, at least in Lorain, we could walk with our siblings and/or friends to a school that was strategically located only a few blocks away.

Never did see a policeman, though – just ornery patrol boys that were drunk (so to speak) with power and ready to run us in for jaywalking! Yes, it did happen.

Hills Bros. Coffee Ad – Sept. 4, 1945

Back when everybody read a newspaper every day, advertisers had to come up with a way to cut through the clutter to grab the reader. After all, we've all seen how every page of the Lorain Journal from the 1920s up until about the 1970s was packed with news items and ads. So the ad agencies had to be creative – and sometimes came up with ideas that seem a little odd or quaint today. 

A good example is the ad above for Hills Bros. Coffee, which ran in the Lorain Journal back on September 4, 1945. The ad compares how pearls are the only thing that oysters produce, and coffee is the only product of Hills Bros. Coffee Inc. It's a little goofy, but the cute illustration accomplishes its goal of "making you look."

And by George, a glass jar just like the one shown in the ad is on eBay right now, with the Hills Bros. coffee still in it – about eighty years later!

Hills Bros. Coffee (of course) is a favorite topic on this blog, as it was my parents' favorite coffee for years. Although these days I'm a big Tim Hortons fan, I bought a can of Hills Bros. a couple months ago for old time's sake and just finished it. I enjoyed it very much. And it was like being back on Skyline Drive again, although I don't make it as strong as Mom did.

Going back to the 1945 ad, I like the way that Hills Bros. is marketed as "good coffee." That's not unlike Old Dutch Beer, whose longtime tagline was: The Good Beer. Maybe that's what attracted my parents to both of them: no gimmicks, no pretentious branding, just a claim to be good.

Spitzer Motors Ad – Sept. 1, 1955

Car advertisements in the Lorain Journal in the 1950s seemed to consist of two types: ads prepared by the automobile manufacturers that only needed the local dealership's name added, and ads put together by the newspaper's art department.

Above is one of the latter; it ran in the paper on September 1, 1955.

That's some pretty nice clip art of old-fashioned clowns that you might see in a circus. There's a nice variety of them, and they all look friendly and happy. It's a shame that the only place kids seem to see clowns these days are in a horror environment.

Spitzer noted in the ad, they had sold 117 new Dodges the previous week. I guess that's not too surprising, seeing as their ads boasted that Spitzer was the "World's largest Dodge-Plymouth Dealer."

Anyway, here are some advertising agency-prepared ads from that era to which the Spitzer dealer branding was added.

July 12, 1955

August 17, 1955

Sept. 21, 1955

I wasn't aware that Dodge spun off the Ram Truck end of the business back in 2010 – thus bringing to a end any Dodge connection with trucks. They sure were pushing Dodge Trucks back in the summer of 1955, as they were featured in most of the corporate ads.

Dodge is one of those car brands that I was never too familiar with. As I've mentioned many times, we were an Olds family, and several of my best friends' fathers worked at Ford, and bought only Fords. 

But the funny thing is, when I see a Dodge on the road these days, I really like the way they're designed.

Nickel Hot Dogs at Hills – Labor Day 1965

I don't know if it had the same disastrous result as the infamous 10-Cent Beer Night at Cleveland Stadium, but 5-Cent Hot Dogs at Hills on Labor Day 1965 was probably a pretty popular promotion. Families were going to be out shopping, getting ready for school anyway. I'll have to check the Journal from the next day to see if the riot squad had to be called in.

The ad above ran in the Journal on Labor Day, September 6, 1965.

I like the look of unbridled glee on the kid about to devour his hot dog.

Hot dogs are a funny thing. Everybody seems to have their own preference as to how they prepare them. Mom always boiled them. As for me, if I can't grill them, then I fry them up in a pan.

Then there's the various ways to consume them. I'll have Stadium Mustard if you don't mind. But never (yecch) catsup (or ketchup if you prefer).

When I worked in Downtown Cleveland, it wasn't hard to find a guy selling them out of his cart right on the sidewalk. I don't remember ever getting sick from eating one.

And when the company I was working for moved to the near West Side, I would go up to Lorain Road sometimes during lunch and get a few coney dogs from Steve's Lunch. The hotdogs were grilled on a rotating griddle that was pretty much right in the window. They were fantastic. 

It was sad when Steve's Lunch suffered a fire in 2015 – that was the end of it.

Some Clevelanders love the Hot Dog Inn, which was further east down Lorain Road, close to Fulton. I might have tried it once, but I preferred Steve's because it was so close to where I worked.

These days, rather than buy a pack of hot dogs, cook them all, and then eat them until they're gone, I restrict my consumption of them to eating coney dogs at Dog N Suds (which just closed for the season on Sunday). 

Enjoying one hotdog a week (which is about how often I ate at Dog N Suds this summer) is better than eating eight in a week, considering how they are supposed to cost you some of your lifespan. 

With my luck it'll turn out that they're worse for you than cigarettes.

Labor Day 1955

Here's wishing all of you a safe and happy Labor Day!

Above you see the full-page sponsored ad celebrating the holiday on Monday, Sept. 5, 1955. Of the more than 60 organizations listed, there are actually a few that are still around, including First Federal Savings and Luxury Heating. Not bad to still be in business seventy years later.

A small item on the front page of the Lorain Journal two days earlier sounded downright wistful about the holiday.

Sept. 3, 1955

It noted, "Fair skies and comfortably warm temperatures were promised Lorainites today for the Labor Day weekend marking the end of the summer season in the vacation area along Lake Erie's shores.

"The 1955 season will officially end at Cedar Point, largest resort in the area, shortly before midnight Monday.

"All parks and picnic areas are expected to be crowded as residents plan final outings before the parks close for the season."

The end of summer was playing out in the ads that ran in the paper about that time. With the Lorain County Fair over, Steve Polansky Markets was advertising "Blue Ribbon" Prize Steer that was purchased at the fair.

Sept. 1, 1955

With school starting in a few day, Cane's was advertising Back to School Buys.

Sept. 1, 1955

And despite the nice weather, Kresge's couldn't resist reminding Journal readers that it was time to put winter coats in layaway.

There weren't widespread Labor Day Sales at that time like we have now. Central Furniture was one of the few stores that did.

The traditional end to summer meant that Crystal Beach in Vermilion was winding down as well. The ad below advertising Buddy Morrow and His Orchestra in the dance hall, and special Labor Day prices for rides ran in the Journal on September 2, 1955.

St. John Catholic School in South Lorain Opens – Fall 1954

A familiar sight to those making a trip out to South Lorain to shop at Hills Dept. Store (like us) was St. John Catholic School, located at Grove Avenue and 36th Street. It was another one of those Lorain landmarks that a kid riding in a back seat of the family car would notice in that area, along with the Ohio National Guard Armory, the train and the 'other' Easter Basket in Oakwood Park.

Above is the front page of the Lorain Journal from August 18, 1954 with the story of the school's impending opening that fall.

The article notes, "Under construction the past year, St. John Catholic School at Grove and 36th, will be opened this fall. It is the first school to be operated by St. John Catholic Church and brings to 10 the Toal number of Catholic schools in Lorain."

I'm not even Catholic and I feel bad that Lorain and the surrounding communities simply can't support very many Catholic schools these days. A quick look at the Google AI Overview (and we know it can't be wrong) reveals that Lorain only has two Catholic Schools: St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School and St. Peter Catholic School.

Anyway, today the former St. John Catholic School is now Horizon Science Academy – Lorain South. It looks pretty modern to me.

A 2021 view, courtesy of Google Maps

Note the page also has an ad for the Ohio State Fair, which ran from late August right into September back then.

Formal Opening of Oberlin Inn – August 1955

Seventy years ago this month the new Oberlin Inn (shown above) held its formal opening. Below you see the coverage of the story by the Lorain Journal on August 1, 1955.

According to the article, the new Oberlin Inn replaced an older version built in 1867.

(In 2016, I did a three-part series on the demolition of the Oberlin Inn that was 'new' in 1955.) 

It's interesting just how much real estate the 1955 Oberlin Inn took up on that corner, for what was basically just a motel and parking lot.

Of course, The Hotel at Oberlin (which replaced the 1955 Oberlin Inn) is just one component of the Peter B. Lewis Gateway Center on that corner. It also comprises the 1833 Restaurant, StudiOC, Oberlin College Admissions and The Birebaum.

Just for fun, here's a "Then & Now" of the two hotels that sat on that corner of Route 58 and E. College Street.

While I hate to see old buildings (such as motels) torn down, I really like The Hotel at Oberlin. I pass it twice a day on the way to work, and I enjoy the creative lighting in play in the upper level, which changes color and mood from time to time, and is a warm and welcoming sight during my drive in.