Vintage Horse Trough on US 6?

It sits by US 6 in Sheffield Lake, just east of Root Road and the historic Root homestead, and just a few hundred feet from my house across the highway.

When I first noticed it a few years ago, I though it was some kind of planter, a decorative piece on a well-maintained property. Then I got a closer look (I think traffic had backed up at the light and had put me right next to it) and I wondered if it was a relic of a bygone era.

Clear out of the blue, fellow Sheffield Laker Gretchen emailed me a few months ago and asked if I had ever noticed the "old horse watering trough along the road."

A quick search on the internet reveals that it sure looks like an old limestone horse trough. Here are three from the South of France, listed on an antique salvage website called www.salvoweb.com.

Our friends Lynne and Lenny, who live out in Wakeman on a century farm have something very similar on their property (below). Lenny says it's hand-carved; once someone offered him a bunch of money for it on the spot.

Obviously, I don't know if the item by US 6 in Sheffield Lake has been there for decades, or if it was purchased and deliberately placed there by the road. But the unique nature of the piece and its deteriorating condition makes me think it's been there a while.

Arby's June 16, 1970 Ad

June 16, 1970 Lorain Journal ad

Although many of the old ads I feature on this blog are for long-gone restaurants, here's one that's still around (in a slightly newer version, that is, since the restaurant was rebuilt years ago).

The ad is for the Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich restaurant on Griswold Road near Midway Mall, and is from the pages of the June 16, 1970 Lorain Journal.

I have mixed feelings about Arby's, which I've mentioned before in this blog. Here's my er, uh beef.

When Arby's first opened in the 1960's, each store used to have a big cut of beef hanging from a chain, roasting, visible to all who entered the store. When it was ready to be sliced, it was taken down and another one was hung in its place.

The roast beef was sliced super-thin, and was nice and pink. When you added the Arby's barbecue sauce, there was no better sandwich around.

Classic Griswold Road store sign

Today, Arby's sells processed roast beef that's basically lunch meat. All the Arby's sauce in the world won't make it taste like those sandwiches of the 1960's, and more's the pity.

A look at Arby's menu today, with several chicken sandwiches, gives the impression that their roast beef sandwiches alone aren't causing customers to stampede to their stores. (Maybe beef isn't 'what's for dinner' any more!)

Incidentally, I always thought that the 'Arby' name was a play on 'RB' as in Roast Beef. But the company's wiki page indicates that it stands for the name of the founders, the Raffel Brothers.

****

By the way, in preparation for this posting, I had an Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich for dinner last night (we were a little burned out on our usual Friday pizza). Since it had been about ten years since I had one, I felt that to maintain my journalistic integrity (what little I have as a blogger) I needed to sample one.

I'm sad to say it isn't any better than the last one I had. I loaded on the Arby's sauce (which was nice and tangy) but the roast beef was still flavorless and grey. The toasted bun was top-notch, but the sandwich as a whole was disappointing.

Oh well, I'll have another one in ten years. 

Casey's Drive In Ad Featuring 1969 Cleveland Indians

Here's kind of a neat Lorain Journal newspaper ad for local hamburger chain Casey's Drive In, one of the topics (here) from the first year of this blog.

The ad dates from late June 1969 and features upcoming in-store appearances from some of the Cleveland Indians that year. (Give it a click so you can read it.) Looks like Luis Tiant was at the Casey's by me on 21st Street.

We were big into the Indians about that time, thanks to the free tickets we used to get from the Cleveland Press for getting straight A's on our report cards. It was a nice deal. We saw a lot of free games that way.

Back here I explained how I got Dave Nelson's autograph in 1968.

The Casey's deal shown above sure was a nice promotion for the kids. I highly doubt that any Major League ballplayers would be doing that sort of thing today on their day off – which helps explain why some kids, while growing up, never bond with the local team and root for other teams (like the Yankees) instead.

Yeager's Acres May 10 1951 Ad

I've posted a few ads and articles about Yeager's Acres, the long-gone restaurant that used to be at the corner of Kolbe Road and Cooper Foster Park Road that my grandparents used to frequent. The ads seemed to generate some nice memories for those who remember the place fondly, so here is another one I found. It announces the Grand Opening of the new Knotty Pine Dining Room and ran in the Lorain Journal on May 1, 1958.

The food items listed are kind of interesting. I don't think you see Chicken-In-The-Basket as a menu item these days anywhere (at least it's not on Midway Oh Boy's or Mutt & Jeff's menu). The stewed chicken initially didn't sound too appetizing to me, but an online recipe on cooks.com indicates that it's served with dumplings, which makes it sound like a tasty dish indeed.

Looking South From Fourth Street 1985

Here's another one of those Lorain photos that was on Ebay for a while, listed by Andy from Lorain. It's the view from Fourth Street, looking south on Broadway on September 15, 1985.

Andy told me via email a few months ago that he acquired a lot of these photos that were taken by a local gentleman who was a historian of sorts, who documented much of Lorain with his camera. Andy has listed a lot of great postcards and other items over the years on Ebay under the moniker sonnylake. Take a look on Ebay sometime and buy something from a fellow Lorainite!

But let's get back to the photo. On the left, you can see Lorain Marine Sales in the Duane Building. The rest of that side of the street, according to the 1985 Lorain City Directory, was a vacant building at 409 Broadway, apartments at 425 Broadway, Lee Furniture & Waterbeds at 437 Broadway, Driscol Music Company at 445 Broadway,  the various Lorain National Bank buildings, Citizens Home Savings at 559 Broadway, Cane's Surplus Stores at 573 Broadway, Hart Jewelry at 575 Broadway, Ricci Tailors & Masters Tuxedo at 601, followed by the Lorain Palace Civic Center Theatre.

Here's my 'now' shot from last weekend. The Duane Building looks better than ever, but that's quite a chunk of buildings that are gone, replaced by a parking lot. The loss of other businesses in still-surviving buildings, such as Ricci Tailors (where I had two suits custom made) and Cane's Surplus sure hurts as well.

The Tivoli Then and Now

Although I found this too late for my Summer Movie Theater posting, here's a great undated photo of the Tivoli Theater from the photo files of the Black River Historical Society.

It's funny that I had a hard time remembering this theater, but when I saw this photo, the memories came flooding back, along with that of the Jupiter store and Kline's next to it. (Ah, Saturday mornings in the mid-1960s... getting dragged around downtown by Mom as she shopped!)

I'm guessing by the looks of the car (along with the re-release dates of Gone With The Wind in 1961, 1967 and 1971) that this photo is from the 1960's or early 1970's. Anyone know for sure?

Here's my 'now' shot of the theater. No wonder this view of the rehabilitated building didn't trigger any memories; it sure is different.

Mari-Dor Beach Cottages

Here's a postcard of the Mari-Dor Beach lakefront cottages out on West Lake Road (US 6) in Vermilion Township. The Morning Journal ran a really nice story on Sunday (here) of the 150th anniversary of the place.

According to the fourth-generation family operator, the rental cottage community was named by his grandfather  for his daughters, Marion and Doris. Mari-Dor Beach has been run by the same family since 1861.

The business has a Facebook page (with plenty of photos), as well as a nice website.

The cottages are rented by the week and have no cable TV, no telephones and no internet! (It sounds to me like a great place for a vacation, but I'm not sure if my wife would agree!)

(By the way, I tried to get a 'then and now' photo of the place a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the view above is not from US 6; I'm pretty sure it is looking west, with Lake Erie to the right of the picture.)

So congratulations to Mari-Dor, and I hope the family continues to hang in there for their customers for many more years. It sure is nice to see that sort of commitment by both the business and their cottage renters in this day and age.