They seem to sense when we're in a hurry, such as being late for work or picking up someone up at a prearranged time. Then you can count on being stopped by more red lights than you can count.
And they're timed differently depending on what city or township you're in. Sometimes they're yellow for what seems like eons, and other times it's only for a split second.
At least in Cleveland over the years, a form of unofficial speeders' etiquette evolved. Lead-footed drivers running a red light at a major intersection often provide a courteous warning "beep" to alert the other drivers. Now that's considerate.
Anyway, one aspect of driving – being able to make a right turn on red unless a sign tells you otherwise – has been generally a good development. And it's only been around in Ohio since July 1, 1975 – 50 years ago.
Below is the article announcing the impending legality of turning right on red in Ohio. It ran in the Journal on June 19, 1975.
I remember how odd it felt when it was first rolled out. I had only turned 16, in 1975 and was thus eligible for my temps. I seem to recall being hesitant to turn right, worrying about getting run in by Lorain's Finest.
Anyway, decades later, I once absent-mindedly made a left turn on red. The spouse asked me, "Do you realize what you just did?"
I guess I was reliving the freewheeling days of getting around Lorain on my bike.
The Fourth of July is coming up fast –can you believe it?
For many of us, that means a cookout or perhaps even a picnic (or pic-a-nic, if you're a Yogi Bear fan). If you're in the latter camp, then the ad below for Fisher Foods might be of interest. It's from the June 28, 1945 Lorain Journal and it offers suggestions regarding what foods you might need for your outing.
I'm happy to see that the list of foods includes South Shore Pepper-stuffed Olives, fresh from Vermilion, Ohio. But the ad also has some curious items, like a one-pound jar of Derby Hot Tamales. Here's a 1946 magazine ad for Derby Tamales.
I had to chuckle a bit when I saw this, because tamales in a jar were a staple in the Brady household in the 1960s and beyond. If you think about it, there really weren't a lot of nationally distributed Mexican food items that would find their way onto the shelves of a west side Lorain grocer back then. You didn't have a Goya food aisle like you have now.
The funny thing is, I still buy canned tamales. They're like a nostalgic treat.
As for Derby, I remember that they also produced Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Mom never bought it (she was a choosy mother that chose Jif). But somehow – probably through magazine ads – I was aware of the Peter Pan brand, and the fact that the ad mascot was a woman dressed in a Peter Pan outfit. Here are a few vintage ads featuring the unusual mascot.
Maybe it's not so unusual when you consider that for years, a woman traditionally portrayed Peter Pan in those stage musicals that were sometimes seen on TV. Of course, sooner or later the Disney suits would get involved, and today the Disney version is on the label in silhouette. But I've got to say that the Honey Roast (below) is the peanut butter I buy today.
Mom and pop motels are still an area of interest for me, especially when they show up on a vintage postcard like Myers Motel above. The motel was located on U. S. 20 (Center Ridge Road), three miles east of Elyria, almost in North Ridgeville. The back of the postcard noted that it was open year round.
According to some online records, it had been there since 1950.
Over the years the motel added another wing of similar construction, and the large white house at the rear of the property apparently had rooms for overnight stay as well. By the time of the postcard below, the motel was now known as Myers Colonial Motel. (The photo is by Frank Leslie.)
The back of the postcard noted, "Across from the new Ridgeview Shopping Center, 24 miles west of downtown Cleveland, between Ohio Turnpike Interchanges #8 and #9 on U. S. Route 20.
"25 Units – Air Conditioning and Television. Restaurant nearby."
Today, the property no longer is a motel and has been listed for sale. As I have been unable to drive out there and get a 'now' photo, here is a Google Maps view. As you can see, there has been some remodeling in the front of the building.
A tanning salon had operated out of the remodeled portion in recent years.
Although the motel is now a thing of the past, it is easy to see that for many years, its proximity to the Ohio Turnpike made it a successful enterprise.
Canada has been a regular topic on this blog since I launched it back in 2009.
Why? Because I have a strong affection for the Great White North. I spent a lot of time in Canada over a twenty year period beginning in the late 1980s, with regular trips to Toronto, Niagara Falls and North Bay – sometimes several times a year.
I still make it up to Windsor every few years, but I miss driving Canada's great highways, such as the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way) and Highway 11. The roads were always in great shape and the scenery was always interesting, especially once you got a few hours north of Toronto. I really miss it, and plan to hit the road again, eh, once I finally retire.
Anyway, one of the landmark highways is the Trans-Canada highway. And as the article below from the June 22, 1963 Lorain Journal explains, the summer of 1963 was the first time that the highway was open for the entire length, "a ribbon of asphalt running nearly 5,000 miles spanning the entire length of Canada."
There was a strong marketing push to promote the Trans-Canada Highway. Consequently there were many maps and brochures distributed to literally 'increase traffic' as an ad man might say. Looking at these vintage printed publications makes me feel wistful and nostalgic for the days when we navigated using maps.
1958
1964
1970s
Lake Superior Route via Highway 17
Trans-Canada Highway Memorial – Rogers Pass, B.C.
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I did drive a portion of the Trans-Canada Highway back in 1997, the section from North Bay to Sault St. Marie. It was very scenic, but much of the area around Sudbury looked like a lunar landscape thanks to its mining heritage.
I'll keep the suds flowing one more day with a selection of clippings about Dog N Suds that I've accumulated over the past few years.
As I've noted many times, the official Grand Opening of Ilene's Dog N Suds was back on July 1, 1966. That means that next year it celebrate its 60th Anniversary with Ilene as the owner.
But the history of the Dog N Suds on North Ridge Road actually starts a few years before, which has muddled the waters a bit as to how long it has actually been open. As the article below from the September 28, 1963 Lorain Journal notes, former Cleveland Indian pitcher Dick Tomanek was the original manager when it opened in 1963.
Here are a few Journal clippings from that first year.
Oct. 18, 1963
Oct. 19, 1963
A fire struck the Dog N Suds in Sept. 1964. It wouldn't be the only one.
Sept. 29, 1964
I'm not sure of the details as to why, but Dog N Suds closed under its original ownership and its N. Ridge Road address was listed as vacant in the 1965 county directory. But the following year, a classified ad ran in the Journal promoting owning your own Dog N Suds.
Feb. 7, 1966
Later that year, Ilene and her husband re-opened Dog N Suds. But less than two years later another fire struck the drive-in. This time, according the article below from the January 31, 1968 Journal, 80% of it was destroyed.
But by the beginning of March 1968, Dog N Suds was open again. Here's Ilene in front of the iconic sign.
For more Dog N Suds fun, revisit some of my old posts.
If you're a fan of Ilene'sDog N Suds, then you won't want to miss this month's Leisure Living magazine. The beloved coney dog and root beer drive-in is the subject of a feature article in the magazine written by yours truly.
For the article, I had the pleasure of interviewing Heather Grosswiler, the current manager of Dog N Suds. Heather is very close to her good friend Ilene, the longtime owner, and is carrying on her legacy.
"I have worked at Dog N Suds since 2011," Heather said. "It was my very first job. I've been managing since 2022. I've worked other jobs throughout the years and always worked at Dog N Suds in some aspect around my other jobs. I was working full time in Sales when Ilene's husband, Tom, died in 2020. Ilene asked me if I could manage and I was making great money at my full time job, so I declined at the time.
"In 2021, Ilene hired a manager to try to help her but it just did not work out. Ilene had to close after just 5 weeks open. In 2022, she asked me again if I would help her keep the business going. She had limited options and was facing a few health issues and recognized that I was one of few that knew the business well enough to run it, so I agreed to leave my job and manage Dog N Suds.
"It’s been one of the best decisions I've made this far," she smiled.
Heather has certainly been doing a fantastic job and making Ilene proud. The food and service are truly great and the prices are more than reasonable. And true to Heather's considerable experience in sales and marketing, she utilizes social media well, with daily Dog N Suds posts on both Facebook and Instagram.
Her efforts are paying off. The drive-in is busy each time I visit, and Kasey (my favorite car hop) tells me that there are new first-time customers each week.
Anyway, be sure to stop in at Dog N Suds this summer. You'll agree that the food is – what else? –doggone good.
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Unable to get your hands on a current issue of Leisure Living? Don't worry. You can read the current issue onlinehere.
Cartoonist Al Capp's popular Li'l Abner comic strip has been the subject of numerous posts on my blog over the years. It was my favorite comic in the Lorain Journal, and for years I looked forward to reading it when the paper came late in the afternoon, especially when the continuity involved Li'l Abner's 'ideel,' Fearless Fosdick.
Since I spend a lot of time reading old Journals while prepping material for this blog, I've noticed that Li'l Abner wasn't in the paper all during the 1930s and 40s. So when did it finally show up?
The small ad above in the June 1, 1953 edition of the Journal provided the answer. It had been mixed in with a bunch of other ads on the movie page and I almost missed it.
Of course, I had to go back and review previous editions to see if there was a full-fledged teaser campaign. There wasn't (unlike what had been done for Dennis the Menace). I only found one front page ad from May 29, 1953, featuring Old Man Mose. He was the bearded, ill-tempered fortune teller who lived in a Dogpatch cave that Li'l Abner went to for advice. His predictions were always somewhat cryptic and told in rhyme, but they always came true.
The Journal did make one small mention of the addition of Li'l Abner (and Abbie an' Slats, another Capp creation) on May 26th.
Li'l Abner was still at the height of its popularity in 1953, so it was probably a pretty big deal that the Journal was going to run it. And it very likely wasn't cheap either.
As for me, I became aware of Li'l Abner in the mid to late 1960s. Dad had an old 78 of Li'l Abner, Don't Marry that Girl in his record collection.
We had an old newspaper comic section from 1952 with Li'l Abner in it, down in our basement, lining a Christmas decoration box, I think. There was a one-shot TV show that appeared around 1967, and we were getting the Plain Dealer on Sundays, which included Li'l Abner, (but only on that day, not weekdays). So I was well aware of the strip.
I loved the humor of it, especially the hilariously violent "Fearless Fosdick" strip-within-a-strip. I eventually clipped it every day for several years, beginning with the adventure that started with this strip that ran on May 15, 1970.
Regular readers of this blog know that from time to time, I like to do posts showing what movies were being shown locally (especially when I don't have any other topic prepared).
Above you see the movie page from the Journal of June 19, 1975 – fifty years ago today.
There's not a whole lot to be nostalgic about. No Bowery Boys, no cartoons, no classic Westerns. After all, this is the mid-1970s.
Instead we get a real mixed bag. The biggest movie on the page is Jaws, which was about to start its original run at Midway Mall Cinema. I never saw it in the theater; it was decades later that I saw it on TV, and decades after that when I saw the uncut version with bloody, chomped-off limbs sinking into the briny deep. It's a great film, one of those that I watch wherever it pops up on TV.
Walt Disney Productions was still cranking out live-action comedies, in this case it's The Strongest Man in the World with Kurt Russell. By that time, my siblings and I were too old for typical Disney fare.
I do remember that the whole Brady Bunch went to see The Return of the Pink Panther at the Midway Mall Cinema. Dad was a fan of Peter Sellers, and my siblings and I liked the Pink Panther cartoons so it's not too surprising that we saw it as a family.
Sixty years ago today, Sandy's Hamburgers celebrated the Grand Opening of the Meister Road restaurant that was part of the Lorain Plaza shopping center. Above is the large ad that ran in the Journal on June 17, 1965.
I've written about 20 posts devoted to Sandy's.
The problem is, these days, it seems that very few people remember Sandy's. That's because it wasn't around very long in our area. By May of 1973, it had been taken over by Hardee's and the restaurants were going through a makeover.
Hardee's isn't all that well remembered either, even though it is still around (and the subject of two blog posts of its own).
Anyway, a few weeks after the Grand Opening, this short article appeared in the Journal on July 2, 1965.
Sandy's kept the excitement going the following month when it celebrated the 7th anniversary of the burger chain's opening with a special promotion. Below is the ad that ran in the Journal on August 26, 1965.
I really miss those early days of fast food in the 1960s. The unique architecture of the restaurants, the memorable mascots (like Miss Sandy) and the regular scheduling of special events made fast food fun. Today there is much more variety and heathier choices across the fast food spectrum, but the food is not cheap. The restaurant buildings are designed to be generic as well (and easily re-purposed), and there is no longer any fun in the restaurant experience. But fast food chains like McDonald's are doing better than ever, even without balloons and visible mascots.
