Remember Those Milk Cartons From School Days?

Milk has been part of a federally subsidized school lunch program since the 1940s.

We used to drink a lot of it in elementary school in Lorain while I was growing up. The packaging – namely, those uniquely square cartons with the lid that you had to bend back to get a straw into – left quite an impression on me. Why? Because some of them had cartoons on them.

The photo above (courtesy of Todd Franklin’s fantastic neatocoolville flickr collection) shows one of those boxes.

Although this carton has Steve Canyon on it, the one I remember the most was the one with my favorite comic strip character: Al Capp's Lil’ Abner.

Decades after I last saw one of the boxes, I still remembered the panel with Li’l Abner. He was shown on one side of the panel, happily heading off to work carrying a lunch box. On the other side of the panel was a drawing of Joe Btfsplk, the unlucky Dogpatch character with the perpetual dark cloud over him. The headline was something like: "Which Will Be You? The guy with the high school diploma and a job? Or Joe Btfsplk?”

For years, I have been trying to find a picture of the Li’l Abner carton online. I was unsuccessful in my quest, until I located the whole series of cartoon panels on the timepassagesnostalgia website.

Here is the Li’l Abner panel. I was pretty darn close to remembering it word for word.

The website identifies them as Clovervale Dairy Milk Carton Comic Strip Character Trading Cards. Here are the other two: Steve Canyon and Joe Palooka.

It’s a little ironic that Joe Palooka the prizefighter was included in this series. Why? Because Al Capp used to help Ham Fisher with the Joe Palooka strip as a ghost artist. When Capp left the strip to start Li’l Abner and enjoyed widespread success and popularity, a bitter and nasty feud was the result.)

Special thanks to Ron Toth and his Time Passages Nostalgia Company for use of these images. Check out his website (here) featuring these and other series of milk carton graphics, including U. S. Presidents, States, Dates in Space and Great Moments in American History. Some of these vintage carton panels are still for sale, and who knows? – they may be the only remaining sample of these still in existence!

Oak Point/Route 2 Interchange – Then & Now

Drew Penfield sent me the above photo (courtesy of the Amherst Historic Research Group Facebook page) showing how it used to look where Oak Point Road intersects with Ohio State Route 2. He thought it would make a great “then and now” blog entry and I agreed.

Dale Rosenkranz shot the vintage photo in August 1976. Its caption on the Amherst Historic Research Group Facebook identified the photo as showing “the construction on the bridge over Route 2 on North Lake, looking south.” It also noted that the George Small farm barn could be seen off in the distance.

I remember riding my bike across the highway here with my high school buddies in the early 1970s. There was nothing out there but farms.

Today, the same area is virtually unrecognizable with the highway overpass and all of the nearby commercial development, including the Cleveland Clinic and the Deerfield Crossing shopping center.

While I couldn’t duplicate the view exactly, here’s my “now” shot.

Sweeney Buick Ad – September 7, 1954

When Joe Firment Chevolet and Joyce Buick left town for the greener pastures of Avon a few years ago, buying a brand new car in Lorain from a dealer became a thing of the past. But in the old days, new car dealers were located on most of the major routes through town.

One of the dealers on Broadway was Joyce Buick’s predecessor: Sweeney Buick, Inc. And here’s an ad dating back to when it first opened that ran in the Lorain Journal on September 7, 1954 – 61 years ago today.

The actual Grand Opening was held on September 10-11.

I think my grandparents bought their white 1963 Buick LeSabre at Sweeney. That car ended up in our family when Grandma passed away, and it became the car that my older brother drove, shuttling us to and from Admiral King High School band practice in it during the mid-1970s.

We also took our driving test in it. After you’ve parallel parked a 1963 Buick, anything else is easy.

Anyway, Sweeney Buick was in business until around 1966, when it was replaced in the City Directory listings by Joyce Buick. Joyce Buick called the address home until around 1984.

Today it’s hard to imagine a Buick dealer at that 1797 Broadway location (below).

Live Like Leiter at Thorn Beach

I've done several posts about Willis Leiter, the Lorain photographer who documented so much of the goings-on in the city during the early 1900s through his work (featured in the book Lorain: The Real Photo Postcards of Willis Leiter).

One of the photos in the book is of Leiter's own residence (shown above), often referred to – and labeled on his postcards – as Thorn Beach.

Well, now's your chance to own a piece of history and adopt Thorn Beach as your address. The former Leiter homestead at 2447 East Erie Avenue is currently for sale. (It went on the market around the end of June.)

Here's the link to its Russell Realty listing on Zillow.com. Joe Lacinak is the listing agent.

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Paula Shorf, one of the authors of Lorain: The Real Photo Postcards of Willis Leiter recently sent me this charming postcard image of the property, depicting a July outing of the University Club a long time ago.

Willis Leiter himself is identified as standing in the back row on the left.

Note that Claremont Doane – secretary and treasurer of the Leiter Studio and uncle of Albert Doane, one of the authors of Lorain: The Real Photo Postcards of Willis Leiter – and his wife and children are listed as being in the photo as well.

And here’s my shot from late June, showing the setting of that club outing that took place approximately a hundred years earlier.

Lorain High School Class of 1898 Graduate Looks Back

Last week I posted an article about the Lorain High School Class of 1957B. Well, here's one about a graduate of an earlier class – namely, the Lorain High School Class of 1898. His name is J. Bert Nichols and besides enjoying a fine career as a civil engineer and surveyor, he was also a historian.

In the article, written by Bill Wilgren, Mr. Nichols shares a few reminisces about what Lorain was like at the turn of the century. It appeared in the Lorain Journal on September 23, 1964.

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Lorain Hi Grad Of 1898 Recalls Pioneer Youth
By BILL WILGREN

A Lorain man, who graduated from Lorain High School in 1898, is compiling a series of stories about pioneer life here, which will be published soon.

John B. (Bert) Nichols, 336 Oberlin Ave., was in the 10th class to be graduated from LHS. There were two boys and six girls in the class.

His stories, which will probably be compiled into book form, deals with incidents in the lives of the pioneers. Some stories will deal with the present.

"I tell folks I'm 19, you turn it around and that's it, 91 years old." This is the way he answers when he is questioned about his age. Nichols will be 92 years old in January.

1874 Map of Black River Township showing location
of Nichols farm, just east of the present day railroad
undercut where W. 21st Street meets Route 6

Nichols lived and worked on the family farm, which is now the site of the Country Club Estates until his mother died in 1899.

He moved to town. "I thought I'd like to be an attorney, but I knew I had to earn a living," Nichols said.

His math background in high school qualified him for a job with Lester Fauver, Lorain's first city engineer.

After spending two years with Fauver, he set up a private engineering and surveying practice.

Then he was asked to become city engineer and after several years on that post, he returned to private practice.

Nichols, who practiced civil engineering for 61 years, has lived in his Oberlin Ave. home since 1900.

Discussing civil engineering, he said, "There wasn't much accuracy in the old days. Temperature was not taken into account as it is today."

He noted that every 16 percent of temperature makes a difference of one-eighth of an inch in constructing a building or a bridge.

His children included the late Sterling R. Nichols, who was also a civil engineer; the late Harold Nichols, who was a physician; the late Harvey Nichols, who was a physician, and a daughter, Mrs. Edith Daniels of Sandusky.

Recalling his boyhood days in Lorain, he said he remembered the old Brownell House on Fifth and Brownell.

Leavitt Rd. was then the western boundary of Lorain, he said.

Driving into town with a horse and buggy, he said he could recall the major business section on W. Erie Ave. and Broadway.

There was Farrels Saloon on the east side of Broadway; the Kennard House (similar to a hotel); the Farrel Hotel; Noxon Bakery; Jewett & Clark, a combination drug and jewelry store; Shumaker & Carney Shoe Store; Davis' Red Front Drug Store and the George Chandler Barber Shop.

Asked whether he thought that man has progressed a great deal since the pioneer days, he said:

The FBI issued a report recently that the cost of crime in the U. S. was about 22 billion dollars annually.

"I tried to find out how much money that is. I went to the bank and got some silver dollars and found that setting them on edge, you can get nine silver dollars to an inch.

"This means that 22 billion is enough to circle the earth and have 7 billion left over," he calculated.

Calculating the 22 billion dollars another way, he said that he estimated that if you put that much money into 10 ton trucks, based on the average of $17 silver dollars per pound, it would take 64,705 trucks to hold the money and the trucks would take up 612 miles.

He thought, after finding out how much money 22 billion was that pioneer days were better. Then, he said, neighbors would walk 10 miles to help each other build homes. "There was love all the way through," he said.

Several publishers are negotiating with Nichols for the publication of his stories on Lorain history. No definite date has been set yet for publication.

He is a member of the Senior Fellowship Club, the Lorain Methodist Church and the Masons.

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Mr. Nichols passed away on December 24, 1965 at the age of 92. Although I’m not sure if he was able to publish his book before he passed away, he did write A History of Lorain (1924) which used to be available on the Black River Historical Society website. I posted an excerpt from it back here on this post.

You can also find a generous sampling of it here on the AvonHistory.org website, where it is referred to as The History of Northern Lorain County.

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Mr. Nichols’ longtime former house at 336 Oberlin Avenue is well-known to lovers of ice cream in Lorain. That's because the house is part of the K-Cream Korner property.

Here's how it looked back when the ice cream store was located in the old gas station building just north of the house. (Note the Ohio Edison plant in the background.)

Courtesy Lorain County Auditor website

And here are a few more recent shots of the remodeled house, which is now connected to the store.

Courtesy Lorain County Auditor website

Courtesy Lorain County Auditor website

Grandview Motel Matchbook Cover

Time may be running out for Lorain's Parkview Motel, but its original incarnation as Grandview Motel will live on in memory through various postcards and collectibles found on Ebay. The matchbook cover (above) with a charming hunting scene is one such item.

Apparently the Superior Match Company produced a whole “Americana” series of matchbooks (also known as “Scenic America”) with similar scenes. You can read about it here.

Although only a few letters of the artist’s name were legible on the painting, by trial and error I managed to come up his full name – J.F. Kernan – and eventually the name of the hunting painting: It’s A Bargain.

Here’s a nice print of the whole scene.

One website selling a print of the painting offered this description of the scene: A beautiful autumn bird hunting scene, the hunter with his English Setter dog, offers a cigar in trade for a day of hunting.

It must have been a popular painting, with prints of it all over the internet, as well as a puzzle.

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UPDATE (September 2, 2015)

I noticed another Grandview Motel matchbook cover (below) from the J.F. Kernan series on Ebay today. This painting has its actual name – "When Seconds Count" – printed on the matchbook cover.

It too received the puzzle treatment.

Chris Cafe Grand Opening – September 20, 1946

To kick off September, here’s an ad for the Grand Opening of Chris Cafe at 3680 Pearl Avenue in Lorain. The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on September 20, 1946.

I mentioned Chris Cafe back here on this post, as one of a trio of restaurants in Lorain with ‘Chris’ in the name.

I see that a group called the Top Hatters was performing there that weekend. I did find another mention of them online in a 1939 newspaper, performing for a chapter of the Slovenian Union of American.

Anyway, the building is still there on Pearl Avenue at West 37th Street. It’s changed hands a few times in the last few years, and is currently home to Dale’s Sports Bar.

Getting my “now” shot was a challenge, and I ended up feeling kind of guilty. Let me explain.

I took one shot early Sunday when it was cloudy and gloomy, and the perfectionist in me (at least when it comes to my blog) caused me to go back a few hours later to get this sunny shot. Right after I shot it, though, a gentleman exited a car that was parked on the side of the building. I could see him standing by the side entrance to the building, staring at me, and wondering why I was taking a photo from across the street.

I could see he was visibly concerned, so I pulled my car across the road and stopped a few yards away from him. I explained what I was doing, and showed him the vintage flyer. “I thought I had done something wrong,” he said.

He probably wondered if one of Lorain’s demolition crews would soon be chugging down Pearl to take aim at his business! My apologies to the business owner.