Paul Attie, R.I.P.

Lorain has lost another local icon. Paul Attie, owner of the well-known Paul's Auto Body in Lorain passed away early Sunday morning. It's especially sad to me, because he was my father-in-law for the last 21 years.

Some people dread going to their in-laws. Not me – I was fortunate enough to have great in-laws who are are fun to be around. Even just sitting around watching Cops or golf on TV with Paul was enjoyable.

Paul's upbeat and easygoing demeanor made him one of those people that everybody liked. He seemed to know just about everyone in Lorain.

Years ago, I was surprised to find out that he knew Alex Visci, my old trumpet teacher. Every so often, Paul would ask me, "Hey, have you seen Bigack lately?" ('Bigack' was Mr. Visci's all-purpose nickname for everyone, and apparently it was used for him as well.) It turns out that over the years, Paul had fixed up or replated many of Mr. Visci's students' tarnished trumpets and mouthpieces – including those of my brothers and me.

Paul was truly a man's man: fun to drink with, a terrific golfer and a guy who liked any kind of cool gadget. He enjoyed yard work, and was very proud of his well-maintained property. He loved to take visitors for a ride in his golf cart for a tour of his yard and garden.

In the last few years, Paul had been sick, but he only complained about it a little when we got together. He handled it so well that you forgot about the severity of his illness. That's why it's so strange to know that he's gone.

Paul was a good guy, and I'll miss him.

1968 Emergency Handbook

Here's another booklet from my collection, this time from March 1968.

It's called IN TIME OF EMERGENCY: A Citizen's Handbook on NUCLEAR ATTACKS – NATURAL DISASTERS. Like the booklet yesterday, it was published by the Department of Defense - Office of Civil Defense.

There's a couple of things that surprised me about this booklet. First of all, the date. Since the 1950's are routinely lampooned as being the era in which everyone was waiting for 'the big one' to drop, 1968 seems a little late in the game for this sort of thing. I guess our government wasn't taking any chances, which is fine with me.

The big difference between this booklet and the one on Fallout Protection from yesterday (besides the battered, faded look of the publication itself) is the look and tone of the illustrations inside. Gone are the happy drawings of the family snug as a bug in a rug in their prefab bomb shelter.

This book is a lot grimmer.

For example, here's a couple pages about what to do if there is a nuclear flash. (Click on the pages so you can read them.)

That's a pretty big difference in art direction from the other booklet, if you ask me. The guy looking for a place to take cover (below) looks like he's already mutated into a lumbering sewer beast.

Here's some useful information in the booklet about tornadoes (which should be of interest to Lorainites). I can't help but chuckle at the illustration of the guy on the phone peering out his doorway as a cyclone approaches. "Uh, hold the phone a minute. Can I call you right back?"

As a graphic designer myself, I like the booklet's use of simple graphics to explain rather complicated topics.

But some parts of the book are still a little curious, such as this page stating, "If anyone has been outside and fallout particles have collected on his shoes or clothing, they should be brushed off before he enters the shelter area again." The man in the tattered raincoat and fedora looks like he is removing the fallout particles like they were just so much pesky dandruff or cat hair!

1961 Fallout Protection Book

The recent earthquake in Japan and resulting damage to their nuclear plants created some concern of a radiation cloud drifting over to the United States. That reminded me of some old booklets that I have on file.

The one shown at left, FALLOUT PROTECTION – WHAT TO KNOW AND DO ABOUT NUCLEAR ATTACK dates from December 1961. It was issued by the Department of Defense - Office of Civil Defense, and is a pretty handy reference guide for survival.

It covers everything from what happens when a five-megaton nuclear burst occurs, what the effects of radiation are (guess I'd better read up on that), and also how to get rid of fallout during the aftermath of the catastrophe.

The booklet also covers how to prepare for a nuclear attack, and that's the part of the book that is the most interesting to me. Part of my family's lore is that for a little while during the late 1950's, my parents seriously considered building a bomb shelter. It was to be a joint effort with some good friends of theirs, who were also the neighbors living right behind us. Logistically, it would have worked out great, since our yards butted up against each other in the back.

Which leads me to the booklet. Here's a few spreads showing how to build a bomb shelter. (Click on each so you can read it; you never know, it might come in handy some day!)

I just love the two-color inked illustrations. There is a sense of simple optimism that pervades them; maybe it's the cheery yellowish color?

Here's an illustration from the booklet showing the cleanup during the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It looks like fire hoses are going to play a big part.

Anyway, the bomb shelter plans ultimately fell through for a variety of reasons. When my mother explained why, her reasons sounded a lot like that classic Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter". In it, a well-prepared family in their bomb shelter is attacked by neighbors desperately trying to get in, during a perceived nuclear attack. In the story, the neighbors on the outside practically become animals, willing to do anything to survive, even using a battering ram to break down the door to the shelter.

I guess the concerns about what to do about other neighbors, relatives in town, etc. created too many questions for my parents and their friends that were impossible to answer. Thus, it was decided to skip the shelter and cast our fate to the wind (even if it if carried a little radiation).

The prefab shelter in the booklet looks pretty cozy, though. I hope they've got a can opener!

End of Winter Swift Mansion Shots

Since it was kind of sunny this past Saturday, and I've been itching to go out and take some pictures, I headed out to Brownhelm Township over the weekend to drive down Gore Orphanage Road and tromp around the Swift Mansion ruins a bit (even though it's not Halloween). Surprisingly, there were parked cars all over the place from the 'haunted' bridge all the way to the ruins.

I've been trying to get a then-and-now shot of the Swift Mansion location for a while, showing the remaining gate post (or whatever it is) in both shots. (I'm assuming that it hasn't been moved.) I admittedly don't know enough about the position of the house on the property to know if it can even be done.

This end-of-winter/early spring period is perfect, because there aren't any leaves or brush to hide the post. So this is the shot I came up with, assuming that the post is the same as in the vintage photo.

If you click on the photo, you can see the gate post clearly; it has a greenish cast to it.

I also saw something that I've never noticed before: part of the ruins fairly close to the road. It was a square chunk, perhaps the base of something.

You can see the gate post in the background.

If any of you out there are familiar with these ruins and can shed some light on this for me, be sure to leave a comment.

Meyer Goldberg Memories

One of the businesses that will probably forever remain synonymous with Lorain is the fondly-remembered Meyer Goldberg chain of grocery stores.

Unlike its competition such as A&P, Meyer Goldberg was just a local chain – but I never noticed the difference when I was a kid. In fact, the store on Oberlin Avenue that we went to was impressive to me, because it was a large standalone store with its own parking lot (which is definitely the preferred trend nowadays for supermarkets).

Meyer Goldberg himself only passed away back on February 1, 2005 at the age of 93. A feature article about his passing on the front page of the Morning Journal written by Scott Patsko had a nice summary of the chain's history, from which I distilled the information that follows.

Meyer Goldberg's parents had already been in the grocery business with their Goldberg Food Stores. He opened his own store back in 1951 on Broadway, and added a second one in 1962 at Oakwood Shopping Center. Later the chain expanded to include more locations, including Oberlin Avenue in Lorain (the one we went to), as well as Elyria, North Ridgeville and Sheffield Township.

Here's a newspaper ad from April 9, 1958 – back when there was just one store in the chain.

Unfortunately, by the end of the 1970's, Goldberg was forced to file for bankruptcy. He ended up filing lawsuits against Pick-N-Pay and Fisher Foods, as he believed they had conspired to put him out of business. (You can read some of the legal documents here and here.) Both companies, along with Stop-N-Shop, were eventually charged with price fixing and forced to make restitution to area customers.

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I just remember the Meyer Goldberg store on Oberlin Avenue store as being very spacious, clean and easy to navigate – perfect for grabbing what you need quickly. (Nowadays, some grocery stores are so huge that you can get despondent just trying to find what you're looking for.)

I also remember the red tinted light bulbs that lit up the meat department displays (they certainly made the hamburger look even better), and the great submarine sandwiches that they sold there, with lots of hard salami in them.

Here's what the Oberlin Avenue store looks like now. Remember the old US Postal sub-station on the side?

And here's the South Broadway store. Until recent years, it had been an ALDI store.

It's strange that the two remaining Meyer Goldberg buildings in Lorain both house dollar stores!

Although Meyer Goldberg supermarkets are long gone, Fligner's Market on Broadway continues the legacy of a locally owned and operated grocery store in Lorain.

Supermarket Memories

Every Lorain County Baby Boomer remembers being dragged around supermarkets by their mother when they were a kid.

It's funny to think about it now. Back then, it would have been unthinkable for my father to do the grocery shopping. Now, it seems that modern man has regained his role from prehistoric times as the food gatherer, and he does most of the shopping. (I know I do.)

But while growing up, I remember it strictly being Mom's job, and we kids often came along for the ride. Of course, kids need to be bribed to be good, and I remember that we looked forward to the various gumball machines at the store's exit. 

The cereal aisle used to be pretty exciting too. We were a real cereal-eating family, and my mother used to buy at least three or four boxes a week just for us kids. Best of all, she had no problem with buying us the sugary cereals we craved: Cap'n Crunch, Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, etc. Of course she also bought those most boring (to kids, at least) of cereals: Kellogg's Rice Krispies and Nabisco Spoon-sized Shredded Wheat (which ironically is now my favorite cereal.)

As the years went by, Mom began working full-time, and she couldn't shop for food during the day. Friday night (right after dinner) was when she went, and one of my siblings or I would be enlisted to go with her. Our job was to bring returnable pop bottles back to the store, help with the coupons, pick out some cereal, and unload the groceries from the trunk. As each of us hit high school, however, we would balk at going along (because we'd miss our TV shows) until eventually my younger brother inherited the job for good.

Over the years, there were many grocery stores that Mom patronized, including A&P, Sparkle, Edwards Food Warehouse and one that I never realized was a strictly local chain: Meyer Goldberg.

Stop back here next time for a look at this well-remembered, iconic supermarket that lives on in our Lorain memories. 

Behind the Scenes at the Blog No. 1: Retouching

(First in a series explaining some of the various aspects of doing this blog.)

With every post I do, I like to have some photo or image that is interesting or unique. Since I don't own any sort of archival photo collection, I have to get my images from somewhere.

Rather than poach images from other websites on the internet, I try my best to come up with things on my own. (Once in a while I do use images from other websites, and 99% of the time I either give them credit and/or a link back to that site so the image can be seen in its original context.)

Books are a good source, and I'm sure the gang down at the Black River Historical Society are used to seeing images from their great Arcadia Publishing Images of America Lorain book on many of my earliest posts. (By the way, if you don't own a copy of this or any of the other books featuring local cities in that series, they do sell them down at the BRHS, including the newest one on Sheffield Village by Charles E. Herdendorf.)

The best source for unique images for me, however, is the newspaper microfilm collection at the Lorain Public Library. Most of the time, the sheer inaccessibility of these images makes them rare and special, and thus desirable for use on this blog.

Images from microfilm, however, tend to look rather poor. They have all sorts of scratches, specks, dark edges and fuzzy blobs on them. Photos usually look atrocious, and ads are only a little better.

Here's a good example of what I mean. Below is an unretouched ad from microfilm.

And here is the same ad after I've cleaned it up in Photoshop on my Mac.

So if you ever wonder about those days when I don't post anything, it's probably a sure bet that I'm busy either looking for, retrieving or cleaning up images. (And that's even before I've written a word!)