Vermilion Marina Ad – May 15, 1965

With the arrival of the warm weather comes the urge for boaters to get their crafts into the water in preparation for summer fun.

Fifty-seven years ago, area boaters had a great choice of where to dock their boat: Vermilion Marina, located south of Routes 6&2, off West River Road.

If the marina sounds familiar, that's because it was part of the Key Harbor Lagoons development (which I wrote about here).

The above ad ran in the Lorain Journal back on May 15, 1965. An Owens boat display and style show was also planned

Looking at the ad, I noticed that there was a 20-piece set of Owens Yacht Originals for "your 1st Mate" with the purchase of a new 26, 28 or 30 foot Owens. Naturally, I thought that it was a set of glasses or tumblers, like the type given away at gas stations.

I was thinking too small – it was a free wardrobe of "lovely yachting clothes." This 1965 ad from the July 1965 issue of Popular Boating tells the story.

Harbour Town Inn – May 1972

Fifty years ago, Vermilion was still in the planning stage of its Harbour Town – 1837 downtown district renewal project.

One of the first businesses to embrace the concept was the Harbour Town Inn, located at Exchange and Liberty Streets. Above is an article from the May 21, 1972 Journal that tells the story.

"The original building was constructed in the 1860's," the article by Staff Writer Bob Cotleur notes. "The dining room had been closed the past 40 years. And it seems entirely possible there might be a ghost around, though it won't be on the wide, white front veranda."

Although it may seem hard to believe, here is how the building looked when it was Hotel Maudelton. 

Historian Rich Tarrant's excellent "Vermilion Views" website includes a well-researched history of the building here, including the story of how the building was moved to that location.

And courtesy of Google, here's a look at the building today, which is the home of Step by Step Employment and Training.

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I almost forgot to mention that we also get on that same page a nice article about Lorain's Pete Delis, who along with his wife Olga owned and operated the well-remembered Delis Furniture Store at 1224 Broadway at that time.

Ponderosa Pines Park Article – May 1972

Ponderosa Pines Park Ranch House was one of the restaurants I wrote about back on St. Patrick's Day. Despite its colorful and Western-sounding name, however, I'd never heard of it. I only knew from its ad that it was located on Diagonal Road, south of Route 303.

Thus I was happy to see this "Golden Crescent Guide to Dining and Dancing" from the May 26, 1972 Journal devoted to the place. It turns out that the restaurant was part of Ponderosa Pines Park, a camping resort with a 9 home golf course, swimming, and horseback riding, not to mention 400 campsites.

Ernie Nichols and the Nightbeats were the featured performers on Friday and Saturday nights back in May 1972.

Courtesy UMKC Digital Special Collections

Today, Ponderosa Pines Park is no more. The golf course is now Pheasant Run Golf Course. Its website notes, "Pheasant Run Golf Course was originally built in the mid-1060s as a nine-hole public golf course. The course expanded to an 18-hole course in the mid-1980s, and further expanded when we added our clubhouse and pavilion in 1995."

The campground appears to be the location of a housing development. 

But the large lake nearby – Ponderosa Pines Lake – keeps the memories alive.

The original Ponderosa Pines Park Ranch House building appears to be still standing, although it is unclear if it is being used for anything.

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The Golden Crescent Guide to Dining and Dancing features many restaurants that have appeared on this blog through the years, including Amber Oaks, Elberta Inn, Sherwood Inn, and Presti's of Oberlin.

Millbrook Bread Ad Featuring Snoopy – May 17, 1972

Yesterday's post featured popular comic strip character Li'l Abner being used in a 1962 newspaper ad to sell Frankies wieners.

Ten years after that ad appeared in the Journal, Peanuts was now the most popular comic strip in the country. And just as Al Capp allowed his characters to be used in ads, cartoonist Charles Schulz had no problem using Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang to sell, sell, sell.

By 1972, the Peanuts specials had been on TV for seven years. Many of us that watched these original specials remember the Coca-Cola sponsorship that was worked into the opening and closing credits, as well as the animated commercials for Dolly Madison snack cakes and fruit pies.

Millbrook Bread was another longtime advertiser connected with the specials. Below is a Millbrook Bread ad featuring Snoopy that ran in the Journal back on May 17, 1972.

It's kind of funny that the ad just reproduced one of the bread wrappers as its main graphic.

Looking at the bread wrapper, I was fairly surprised to see that by 1972 Snoopy's design had already evolved into the short, squat version. I liked the mid-60s version much better (see below).

Courtesy Schulz Museum

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Charles Schulz and his popular creation have been the subject of many posts on this blog.

Frankies Ad Featuring Li'l Abner – May 23, 1962

Cartoonist Al Capp was the master when it came to merchandising his beloved comic strip Li'l Abner. 

Capp allowed his popular hillbilly characters to be used to sell everything from Cream of Wheat to laundry detergent. (Fearless Fosdick, Capp's parody of Dick Tracy and Li'l Abner's "ideel," also was featured in a series of ads for Wildroot Cream-Oil Hair Tonic.)

And here's yet another advertising campaign using the denizens of Dogpartch – this time for Superior's Frankies, the "Keener Wiener." The ad above appeared in the Lorain Journal back on May 23, 1962 – sixty years ago this month.

The ad campaign was fairly late in the strip's life, past its prime of the 40s and 50s. But apparently the folks at Superior's Frankies were still confident that Li'l Abner and his family could dee-liver the goods.

It's an entertaining ad, with Li'l Abner lying in a hammock, squirting a condiment on his Frankie using one of the very dispensers being promoted in the ad. Li'l Abner's son, "Honest Abe" Yokum is handling one as well, while curvaceous wife Daisy Mae holds a whole tray of dee-licious Frankies. 

Here are a couple of the Frankies mustard and ketchup dispensers (which I mentioned back here on this post).

Li'l Abner (my favorite comic strip) has popped up on this blog several times. Tomorrow, we'll look at another ad that appeared in the Journal in the early 1970s, using a lovable, well-known beagle to sell bread.

Superhighway's A-Coming – May 1965

Just like yesterday's post was about the coming of the new Lorain Plaza Shopping Center, today's post deals with the coming of the new "superhighway" south of Lorain. 

The above article, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on May 13, 1965 provides a very accurate description of the new limited access highway. As the article notes, "the highway, none of which is yet completed, is now known as relocated SR 254 and as SR 2. Only the section from Baumhart Rd to SR 57 is now under construction." (The SR 254 designation for the highway was apparently abandoned.)

The article very accurately describes the numbering of the new highway, something that many people are still confused about today. The article points out, "IR 90 will lead from Cleveland to the Ohio Turnpike, while SR 2 will continue on to the west. The two routes will divide south of Lorain.

"The section west from Baumhart Rd. to the now-completed Sandusky by-pass will not be finished until the early 1970's."

The building of I-90 and the relocated State Route 2 have been regular topics on this blog, with posts on "I-90 Public Hearing" (August 1964); "When I-90 Was Being Built" (August 1966); the elimination of the 'Vermilion Gap' (Jan. 1967); Amherst's "Bridge to Nowhere" over Route 2 (July 1967); the Lake Erie Expressway update (Sept. 1968); the Middle Ridge Road Exit (Feb. 1969); "Misleading SR 2 Markers (March 1969); the opening of I-90 from SR 611 to SR 83 (Nov. 1970); extending State Route 2 West From Baumhart Road (June 1971); the opening of SR 2 from Baumhart to SR 61 (August 1975).

New Lorain Plaza Shopping Center Map – May 10, 1956

Most of us that grew up on the west side of Lorain in the 1960s and 70s spent a lot of time at the Lorain Plaza Shopping Center. 

It was where our mothers bought the weekly groceries at A&P or Kroger; where she picked up the dry cleaning; where some of us banked (at the Lorain National Branch); where we first encountered a large drug store chain (Revco); where we looked at the pet turtles for sale at W. T. Grant; and even where some of us first went to the Lorain Public Library (at its branch there). 

I'm sure you have your own pleasant memories of shopping there through the years.

Anyway, back in May of 1956, the shopping center was not yet under construction. But its location was featured on a map included down at the bottom of the front page of the Lorain Journal of May 10th.

The map (created with type from a typewriter) is pretty interesting. It shows how the shopping center was perfectly located for the numbered streets off Oberlin Avenue that were there at that time, as well as the many more to come in the next few years as farmland turned into developments.

Note that the football stadium (not yet renamed George Daniel Field) was still called Recreation Field. 

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Above the map is a story of the continuation of the Beaver Creek legal fracas.