Madge's Grand Opening – December 10, 1963

The view on Sunday

Remember when I wrote about the one-story brick building located on the southeast corner of Colorado Avenue (State Route 611) and Abbe Road in Sheffield? Although the building is empty now, a variety of businesses were located there at 5316 Colorado Avenue beginning in the 1950s and into the 1990s.

One of the businesses that called that address home was Madge’s Coffee Shop. Above is its Grand Opening ad that appeared in the Lorain Journal on December 10, 1963, just in time for the holiday season.

“Madge” was Mrs. Magdeline Delgado. As you can see from the ad, Spanish foods were the specialties of the house. I’m sure the food was great (and much better than the canned tamales I buy at the grocery store).

Madge's Coffee Shop’s only listing in Lorain city directories was in the 1964 edition. By the time of the next directory, Chris’ Sub Shop had taken over the space.

Perhaps Madge was just a little ahead of her time, offering authentic Spanish foods to a general public that wasn’t familiar with that type of food – yet.

Pre-Civil War Avon Lake House Vandalized - Dec. 8, 1965

Here’s a sad story from the pages of the December 8, 1965 issue of the Lorain Journal. It’s about an Avon Lake farmhouse that predated the Civil War that was senselessly vandalized a few weeks earlier. As stated in the article above, “A onetime farm house, lived-in before there was an Avon Lake or even a Civil War, is now under the legal axe of quick repair or demolition, courtesy of Thanksgiving week vandals.

“The house, said to have been part of a family history for the past 143 years by owner Mrs. Ruth Bramen, No. 2 Putnam Hill, Greenwich, Conn., is the first house in Avon Lake west of Bay Village on the south side of Walker Road. It is part of a 93 acre estate on the verge of being sold for “around $93,000.” Value of the house itself was never set and may be considered a small fraction of the final price.”

The damage was considerable. According to the article, “Every window was smashed; screens and doors were splintered; mattress springs, mattress and bedding were hurled through upper floor windows; a bag of cement was bashed open and the fine powder combed by breezes through the house; lamps, fixtures and non-bearing walls were broken, ripped or kicked.”

The sad thing is that until the end of the first week of that November, the house had been occupied by tenants, and appeared to be in order. So the vandals worked pretty quickly.

The photos by Bob Cotleur accompanying the full-page article are disturbing, even if it was unlikely that the house would be restored or saved after the sale of the land.

I’m not too familiar with Avon Lake history, but it appears that today the property is part of Walker Road Park, which is co-owned and managed by both Avon Lake and Bay Village. Judging by the views on the Historic Aerial website, the farm house was indeed gone by 1970.

Fireball! December 9, 1965

I often wonder if a meteor is going to clobber the Earth in my lifetime. I don't worry about it too much, but it crosses my mind from time to time.

Anyway, back on December 9, 1965 – 52 years ago this week – something fiery did indeed fall out of the sky and hit some Lorain County terra firma. It was said to be a fireball, part of a meteorite that apparently was seen over a seven-state area and possibly California. But even now, there is some debate as to what it was that everyone saw, both in the sky and on the ground.

Here's the original story as reported, written by Charles Gray, as it appeared on the front page of the Lorain Journal the next day.

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So what was it? According to this report in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, it was – as originally thought – a meteorite.

Or was it possibly some kind of spy craft, as described in this account published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the 50th anniversary of the event?

Lorain Country Club Clubhouse Burns – Dec. 6, 1954

On this day back in 1954, fire swept through the Lorain Country Club building on W. Lake Road (U. S. Route 6). It was located on the north side of the highway, just east of the undercut and opposite the Pueblo.

According to the article below, which ran on the front page of the Lorain Journal on December 7, 1954, the building had been used as the clubhouse until the golf course was abandoned in the early 1940s. Prior to the fire, the former clubhouse had been used as a tavern and residence.

Here's a closeup view of the photo.

On page 13 of the same edition of the Journal was this photo and caption (below). Sorry it’s so dark.

I have more material about the early days of the Lorain Country Club that I will have to organize and post one of these days (years).

Grand Opening of Faroh’s Candy Center – Dec. 5, 1952

Back on December 5, 1952 – 65 years ago today – Faroh’s Candies was celebrating the Grand Opening of its new facility on Henderson Drive in Lorain.

The full-page ad above ran on that day in the Lorain Journal.

I’ve featured Faroh’s ads on this blog many times: Valentine’s Day ads; a 1962 Easter ad; a 1963 Christmas ad; a 1964 Father’s Day ad; a 1970s Easter ad.

Faroh’s enjoyed many decades at the Henderson Drive location, along with several satellite stores.

The Henderson Drive facility eventually closed (after the Henderson Bridge was closed for months while it was being repaired). The distinctive building has housed various companies since then, including a nightclub and, currently, an auto dealership. Here’s a view of the building this past weekend.

Back in late 2009, Faroh’s returned to Downtown Lorain with a new store at 657 Broadway.

Today, Faroh’s retail store has a new home at 300 Broadway in the City Center Building where the old driver’s license bureau was located. As the company explained to me in an email, "Spectrum Consulting Services and Spectrum Resource Center & School are opening a new manufacturing plant to produce the Faroh's Candy line which will be located on 5th Street in Lorain.

"Tom Faroh is Spectrum's consultant to ensure that the integrity of the chocolate making stays true to the original recipes. With the new collaboration between Faroh and Spectrum, it is expected that the Faroh's brand will not only remain available, it will be relaunched for nationwide sales.”

Lorain Telephone Company Exchange Names

Back on November 13, I posted a Lorain Telephone Company ad from November 1956 (shown at left).

The ad presented a suggestion for remembering the new phone numbers made up of two letters and five numbers. The suggestion was to add a mental pause before the last four numbers.

The example used in the ad was WOodland 1 - 9120.

I remarked that our two-letter prefix was AVenue.

My old Masson School classmate Mike Kozlowski remembered seeing ATlantic on his phone, which brought up a good question as to how the Lorain Telephone Company assigned these word prefixes.

So I went back to the Lorain Public Library to review some telephone books for the answer.

It appears that those little phone company buildings that are still seen around Lorain and the surrounding communities were associated with a specific telephone exchange.

Here’s the map that appeared on the front of the 1956 phone book, showing all of the various exchanges.

I think it would have been cool to have ‘Yukon’ as an exchange – as opposed to the more humdrum ‘Avenue.’

The 1956 book included a smaller map inside explaining how exchange areas could have five different exchanges (like Lorain) or just one (like Vermilion). I guess it was a geographic thing.

A post I did on a November 1963 Lorain Telephone Company ad included a map showing the various exchanges and their buildings.

By 1968, the various exchange names were dropped and replaced by their corresponding numbers. Here’s the map from that 1968 edition.

Looking back, I think those old exchange names had a quaint charm to them. Sometimes one could be dramatic as well, (such as the use of one in the title of the 1948 movie, Call Northside 777).

The passing of those telephone exchange names is one of those cultural changes, along with the elimination of home milk delivery, that helped signal the beginning of the modern era.

Hart’s Jewelry Christmas Layaway Ad – Nov. 22, 1957

Yesterday I posted an ad for Smith & Gerhart showing a selection of toys that could be purchased using the store’s layaway plan. Well, here’s another ad with a layaway theme, this time for Hart’s Jewelry.

The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on November 22, 1957.

Hart’s Jewelry was located at 575 Broadway. I posted a 1954 Father’s Day ad for the store here.

Hugh O’Brian, star of the
Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

But getting back to the Christmas ad shown above. Strangely enough, none of the gift ideas involve jewelry.

Electrical gifts are well-represented (Reddy Kilowatt would be proud), with several General Electric products, including a toaster oven, coffee maker and fry pan. There’s also a 9-piece Bell & Howell movie outfit, consisting of a camera, projector, movie screen, carrying case, filter and a year’s supply of color film. That $139.95 price tag would be the equivalent of about 1200 clams today. (Of course, we wouldn’t put it on layaway today; we’d just charge it!)

Most interesting to me of course is the Wyatt Earp 17-piece Frontier Marshall Set, comprising two official repeater cap pistols, jeweled double holster set, spurs, leather matching cuffs, deputy badge, bullets and bandana. The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp had already been on TV since September 1955 and was a Top Ten show.

By the way, I did try to find a two-foot-tall “panda” on Ebay resembling the one in the ad, but I was unsuccessful.

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This summer I went on a real Western biography kick, reading multiple biographies of some of our greatest heroes of the Old West.

I’m happy to highly recommend Casey Tefertiller’s Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. It’s most likely the best-researched book about Wyatt Earp ever written, as well as the most enjoyable. Most fascinating is how Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, and that his friend, movie cowboy William S. Hart, was one of his pallbearers.

If you happen to be a Bat Masterson fan, Robert K. DeArment wrote two great biographies of the well-known Western peace officer, Bat Masterson: The Man and the Legend, and Gunfighter in Gotham: Bat Masterson’s New York City Years. Both were well-written, with the later book about Masterson’s later years as a New York City sportswriter especially hard to put down.

I also read Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend by Gary L. Roberts. It was pretty good, but Doc had figured so prominently in the other two books I read that I was already familiar with his story.

(In case you’re wondering, despite the links to Amazon, I don’t get any kickback if someone happens to click through and buy any of the books indicated. In fact, I borrowed them all from the Lorain Public Library, cheapskate that I am.)