1960's Memories of Skyline Drive Part 3

One of the things I associate with those early years on E. Skyline Drive is something that many Lorainites will also remember: the airport at the northwest corner of Meister Road and Leavitt Road.

City directories at that time list it as being called the Lorain City Airport and it was also known as Long's Airport.

The reason that this airport is so much a part of my memories is because our house on E. Skyline Drive was directly in the line of approach for the landing strip. (If you look at the map at left, the runway points downward to the 'S' in SKYLINE which is where our house was.)

Consequently, my family would constantly see small planes coming in diagonally across the sky, coming in for a landing. It was a sight that we would get very used to. My brother Ken humorously compared it to watching a bunch of 5 O'Clock Charlie's (from the well-known M*A*S*H episode).

At least once, our proximity to the airport resulted in some excitement. A plane unexpectedly (and loudly) landed in the field a few hundred feet from our house. I still remember running over to the plane along with everyone else to see what happened. I can't remember why the pilot was forced to land there, but my family still talks about 'when the plane crashed by our house'.

The airport closed in the early 1970's, bringing to a close Lorain's long era of municipal and private airports. It was replaced by a Clarkins department store at the site around 1973 or so.

It was rather comical that a few years after the airport closed, we continued to see airplanes making the familiar approach for the runway that was no longer there!

The Clarkins store eventually closed as well. Today the airport site is the P.C. Campana Industrial Park, home for a variety of companies and organizations, including Fastenal Co., Skylift and the Lorain Preparatory Academy.

The former Clarkins store

Looking at the site today, a newer Lorain resident might find it hard to believe that an airport was there for so many years and that Lorain actually had a need for one.


Next: The Farmer

1960's Memories of Skyline Drive Part 2

When I turn onto E. Skyline Drive off of Leavitt Road these days, I sometimes have a hard time remembering the way it all used to be back in the mid-1960's, when my parents moved our family there.

Back then, the area around our new home was right in the middle of transforming from farmland to suburban neighborhoods, just like some of Lorain's west side had already gone through a decade earlier. But the difference is, this time we had a ringside seat to watch it all.

As the last house on the block, we had a unique perspective, because our yard was adjacent to the undeveloped land to the west and to the south. The road sort of ended in front of our house, and trailed off towards Leavitt Road as a dirt path.

To the west of us was a field, which was sometimes swampy and sometimes dry. The field extended north to Martin Run (the creek that ran roughly parallel to Skyline and Meister) and south all the way to W. 40th Street and beyond.

It is my understanding that this huge parcel of land had been owned by a gentleman who we had always referred to as "The Farmer". We could see his house if we looked out our west window across the field. (More on the farmer in a future part of this series!)

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To kids used to a sterile post-war neighborhood of streets laid out in a perpendicular pattern, living next door to an undeveloped field was a veritable wonderland. The field was full of frogs and toads, which my brothers and I would eagerly catch and bring home as unfortunate pets.

Pheasants could be seen occasionally meandering through the field, and killdeer were a common sight. Their distinctive cry still makes me nostalgic for those days.

My brothers and I were always playing in the field, and we used a huge rock next to our yard as a sort of base of operations. We would set up our elaborate G.I. Joe camp around it, and use it as a mountain from which our G.I. Joe's could rappel down. My younger brother Ed remembers that the rock was covered with all kinds of unusual fossils. (I wonder what ever happened to that rock?)

Rabbits seemed to be everywhere. Strangely, I don't remember ever seeing any other kind of wildlife around there – no deer, raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs, etc. – just rabbits.

I remember several times trying to catch a rabbit with a homemade trap set up out in the field. Unfortunately, my research on constructing a trap was limited to watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. I tried both propping up a box with a stick (with a carrot tied to it) and digging a hole and camouflaging it with sticks and brush – with no success!

Exploring by the creek 'across the street' (there was no street yet) was even more exciting, because at the time, it had not been paved over and 'improved' for use as a storm sewer as it is today. Back then, it was still in its original form, and you had to slide down a rocky cliff to get to it. Once a kid got there, he could catch all sorts of things, including crayfish, turtles, minnows, tadpoles and small fish.

We were always going over there with our boots on, and coming home with something else as a pet. We would even have crayfish races in our driveway. (I've often wondered if my brothers and I wiped out that whole wetland ecosystem.)

We didn't go too far into the woods by the creek, because often there were 'big kids' in there smoking.

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A house was built directly across the street from us a few years after we moved in. Later on in the early 1970's, homes were built to the west of us, and E. Skyline Drive was finally extended west from in front of our house to Leavitt Road.

Like all kids, we had to investigate these new homes as they were being built. There's something very interesting about tromping around inside a home under construction. But as interesting as that was, we hated to see the field disappear.

The eventual owner of the house next to us turned out to be a great guy and became a good friend to my father, truly the best neighbor we could ever ask for.

Today the area that comprised the field is a neighborhood that looks, well, kind of like what we left over on W. 30th Street!

Today the whole area by the creek that we used to explore (behind the Jehovahs Witnesses Kingdom Hall at 2330 E. Skyline Drive) is nicely graded, landscaped and is unrecognizable to me. But at one time, it was an exciting place for a kid to poke around.

Looking east from Leavitt Road towards Martin Run today

Next: The Airport

1960's Memories of Skyline Drive Part 1

Real estate ad from the Lorain Journal of May 15, 1954

Skyline Drive. 

The name still sounds vaguely chic to my ear. Maybe it's because the name suggests a trendy neighborhood on the western edge of a community, silhouetted against the horizon.

Before I get carried away here, however, I've got a confession to make. My family didn't really live on Skyline Drive. We lived on East Skyline Drive.

It makes a difference, which I'll explain. But first, a short history lesson of the area.

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Skyline Drive first appeared officially in the Lorain City Directory in 1958, but the street and many of the homes listed had already been there for many years. A quick check of some of the homes on the Lorain County Auditor's website shows that the earliest ones were built in 1951. A few more were built each year until 28 homes were listed in 1958.

As you can see from the 1959 map (below), only the portion of the street west of Leavitt Road (Route 58) existed at that time. The eastern portion where we moved to in 1965 would follow later. (Click on the map for a closer look.)

The whole area east of Leavitt from the creek south to W. 40th and east to Edgewood Drive hadn't been developed yet.

Anyway, Skyline Drive in the 1950's must have been a fairly elite address. It was part of a brand new development with bigger lots and consequently, bigger homes. (It was still part of Black River Township in the 1950's.) Plus, it didn't conform to Lorain's standard street naming system of numbering the roads from north to south. That made the name a little bit special.

Thus when it was time to develop the portion of Skyline Drive on the east side of Leavitt, it was my parents' recollection that the residents on the west side objected to the use of the Skyline Drive name.

Whether that's 100% true or not, I'm not sure. All I know is that our street sign read E SKYLINE DRIVE and the sign on the other side of Leavitt Road read just SKYLINE DRIVE. Which makes East Skyline Drive the only 'east' address on the west side of Lorain.

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Here's another map of the area a few years later – some time in the early 1960's. A lot of change occurred in a few years!

The map includes several iconic Lorain landmarks, such as the Westgate Shopping Center, the Lorain Plaza Shopping Center and the airport. 

Although the map shows E. Skyline Drive reaching Leavitt Road, it didn't happen until later.

For several years, Skyline Drive ended in front of our house, which in 1965 was the last one on the block. The street then trailed off towards Leavitt as a dirt road before disappearing in the field.

Temple Avenue didn't exist in 1965 either, only on paper.

Also note that Skyline Drive's eastern terminus was Palm Springs Drive. Since there was no access from Leavitt Road, we were kind of landlocked. To get to our house, we had to come in on either Palm Springs Drive or Marshall Avenue.

This map of the Amelia Meadows allotment from the same time period will give you a better idea of what it was like at the time we moved in. Notice that the streets are mapped out but in reality weren't built yet. And that was one big piece of property waiting to be developed.

We lived where the red 'X' was, and as you can see, we were indeed the last house on the block on the south side of the street. In 1965 there were no homes behind our house all the way to W. 40th and beyond. 

Well, I showed you all the maps. So what was it like for a kid living in that part of Lorain at that time? Stop back here next time and find out!

Next up: Skyline Drive Memories

Back here, I wrote about what it was like to attend Charleston Elementary School in Lorain during the early 1960's.

But shortly after I started first grade, my parents moved the family from the 1950's ranch they built on W. 30th Street to a brand new house on Skyline Drive, a few streets away to the south.

The new house was only a few minutes from our old house on W. 30th Street, but it might as well have been a hundred miles away. Because not only was our house in a different school district, it was in a unique part of Lorain that was right in the middle of transitioning from farmland to neighborhoods. Which made it a whole new world of fun and wonder for kids that were used to monotonous, numbered streets laid out at perfect right angles to each other.

So please stop by here next time for Part 1 of my look back at 1960's Memories of Skyline Drive. I think you'll find that many of the memories discussed are your Lorain memories too.

1958 Lorain School Levy Ad

From the 'some things never change department'!

Just as it is right now, Lorain was trying to pass a school levy back in the fall of 1958. Here's a newspaper ad that ran in the Lorain Journal back in late October of that year. (Click on it for a closer look.)

Advertising approaches certainly have changed over the years. The ad grabbed my attention because of its use of illustration. I love the bold silhouette graphic used to represent teachers (although it seems to imply that teachers were all women back then.)

I'm not sure why the desk is lurching to one side. Maybe the ad has a subliminal 'sinking ship' message?

What's hilarious (to me at least) are the clip art illustrations used to represent the children. The freckle-faced little boy is wearing a Jughead-style 'crown' hat. Here's what a wiki entry for Archie's pal Jughead says about the hat:

This type of crown-shaped cap often puzzles modern readers, but caps like this were popular among boys in the 1930s and 1940s. It was made from a man's felt fedora hat with the brim trimmed in a zig-zag and turned up. In the 1920s and 1930s, such caps usually indicated the wearer was a mechanic.

All I know is that the boy looks like a bully or junior thug! And the little girl's face is filled with apprehension – maybe at the thought of the levy failing.

I didn't load the next microfilm reel to find out if the school levy passed back then, as I ran out of time. I wonder if it will pass this year? We'll know soon.

1958 T.N. Molas Furniture Store Ad

In honor of Tuesday's election, here's part of an ad that T.N. Molas Furniture Store ran in the Lorain Journal in late October 1958, right before the election that year. (Click on it for a closer look.)

I thought its donkey and elephant political theme was kind of cute and clever. (I can't help but think of Eddie Murphy's Shrek character when I look at that donkey, though!)

According to a Lorain history compiled by the Lorain Public Library, T.N. Molas Furniture Store opened for business in 1934.

Ohio Edison Demolition Update

I was away for the weekend, but managed to swing by the old Ohio Edison plant this afternoon to see how the demolition was coming along. The lake view is really opening up for the residents on W. 2nd Street!

It's still sad to see the facility being gutted, though. It's really kind of a work of art, the way the smokestacks, water tower and parts of the building all reach for the sky in an almost organic fashion.

It took a while, but I finally found an appropriate demolition reaction shot of our pal Reddy Kilowatt!

I'm curious to see how the tallest portions of the plant will come down. Hopefully the Morning Journal or Chronicle-Telegram will post some video of it when the time comes.