Dayton Stories Project
Story Circle Session #120695
Dayton Jewish Center
Dayton, Ohio
December 6, 1995
Entertainment: How We Spent Our Time
Interviewer: Marilyn Klaben Recorder: Marilyn Shannon Transcriber: Holly Bergman Transcriber Typist: Sue Broadstock
Participants: Annalee Bender, Stanley Blum, Maryan Caplan, Hyman Carne, Art Dicken, Chuck Dorfman, Jule Garlikov, Sarah Itzkowitz, Harriet Moscowitz
This session lasts approximately 56 minutes.
Due to its length the interview has been split into two parts.
PART ONE
PART TWO
The following transcription of the session has been edited, with repeated phrases or interruptions deleted to make the text flow more smoothly. It is suggested that visitors who find the text interesting take the time to listen to the audio portion of this session. A more detailed text will eventually be added.
Marilyn Klaben opened the story circle. The group spent a few minutes discussing other activities that could be done with the stories to act them out or summarize them. Marilyn Shannon gave everyone a brief overview of future stages of the Dayton Stories Project. Marilyn Klaben then introduced the pre-arranged topic of entertainment: how we spent our time. Participants introduced themselves.
Stanley Blue
When we were kids, like all kids we played the games that were available. We spent a lot of time making things because, in those days, on Rogge Street particularly, money was particularly scarce. And so it was making the skate scooter, and making everything out of raw materials that you could find. A lot of time was spent, when we were very young, playing games like Red Rover, Red Rover, and Steal the Bacon, and so forth. And it was great on Rogge Street because Rogge Street was only one block long. It was also a god mixer, because all the kids on the street participated, and all the parents came to watch. This was one of the ways of entertainment. The other big area that I think everybody would look forward to; at Patterson School, that they had what they call the Patriotic Pageant every year. The principal, Mrs. Hammond, this was her great thing. So everybody wanted to see their son or daughter in the Patriotic Pageant, which was really some big thing.
The other thing that I remember when I was very young, is that in the Jewish community, that all the kids would go to Green Street in the summer, whatever designated day it was. They had buses and you would sing songs, and they would take us out to Eastwood Park. We would spend the whole day, and this would take place maybe four or five times during the summer. At the synagogues, that there was Lotto playing. Today it’s Bingo, then it was Lotto. And that that was one of the ways of entertainment. At the synagogues, of course, every once in a while there would be a visiting chasan that would come in from some place, and this was a big occasion.
But then there was also, I think, a large contingent within the Jewish community that looked sort of outward. And I remember my cousins, particularly, tried to help me get into the idea of looking more outward and going to theater. And what they called theater happened to be Mayfair. That was burlesque theater. But in the particular area where I lived, the Sigma Theater was every Saturday afternoon. Everybody went to the Sigma Theater. Particularly kids, they had the serials; I don’t remember how long they lasted, but if parents have difficulty getting their children away from television, in those days, that was the babysitter, really, on Saturday afternoon.
Also, we did an awful lot of walking and hiking together, as family. I used to tell my children stories about how I used to go for walks with my parents, and they go very upset because they wanted to know why they couldn’t do the same thing with me. And I said well, of course they could do the same thing. But it was always different things that were drawing them in different directions, then it was very limited. Also a big ting in my family was the Sunday drive. On Sunday, to drive down to Cincinnati, or to Xenia, or to Springfield. And it was an exploration, and you would hope that the car was going to make it back.
Getting back to when we would go to Eagle’s Park, this was about once a year that they would have this, and that there was a big dance hall at Eagle’s Park, we would have these dances. I don’t remember how, exactly, they operated, but I remember that the kids, that every time between the dances we’d run out onto the dance floor and slide because they had waxed the floors, and so on. There also was a lot of gambling that went on there. They had both the slot machines, and they had lots and lots of tables where they were usually play pinochle, I think was the game I remember most that was being played.
You, from an orthodox background are not that kosher, but we didn’t go out to eat. We went to each other’s homes to eat. It was a matter that the family would come from the Rogge Street area, and that they had moved into Dayton View. But because they still belonged to Beth Jacob, which was just around the corner, they would descend on us on the holidays. So we were the place, in our little four-room house, where a LOT of people slept and ate during the holidays. It was a great time, because it was wonderful for all the cousins to get together and to exchange all kinds of ideas and just really get to be with each other. It seemed like sports was also a very big thing in the Jewish community, as I recall. On the high school teams, there was a lot of Jewish presence. These were followed, I think, very carefully, and there was a lot of pride that was taken in the Jewish community, because of the kids that were involved in that.
Jule Garlikov
The reason there was so much interest in sports, is because the newspapers here in town, the Dayton Journal and the Dayton Daily News, the sports editors and the people who wrote sports were all Jewish. Sy Burick, Jack Fruge, and my brother, Ben Garlikov, they covered everything. So that’s the reason it had a lot of play.
Covering some of the stuff that you said, to make some entertainment for ourselves, we couldn’t afford anything, so we had to make it ourselves. We were living on Jones Street at the time; this goes back into the early ‘20's. We used to take string, and make a ball out of it, an d then put tape, black tape on it, and that use d to be our ball and we used to play out in the streets. There was no parks or anything like that where you could go play. So we would have fun that way, but we’d have to stop every once in a while, because horse would come through. And they after they came through, we still couldn’t play because somebody had to clean up the place. That was fun.
We had our fun when the snow was heavy, we’d slide off the McLean Street hill. Theater, we had a theater right across the street from the synagogue, the Wayne Avenue Theater, and we used to go once a week. It would sot us a nickel to get in, and we’d watch “Perils of Pauline” and cowboy shows and things like that. One of the things that happened in the city that struck me, was we used to go to the Green Street Jewish Community Center, but once a month, it seemed like ti anyhow, down at the end of Green Street, which ran into Jefferson Street, there’s a church. And there’s a big street, big, wide open street. And every so often, the Ku Klux Klan would march there with horses, they were on horse. And they would march all around the street: they drew attention, but that’s about it.
Sarah Itzkowitz
Like I said before, our entertainment with my brother an m y sister, because there was no Jewish people; well there were, but nothing on our age group. And we more or less had to entertain ourselves. And we used to go to the theater-by Roosevelt High School, which is named People’s-we used to go there all the time for the movies. Five cents and you spend all day watching the movies. Then when my father and mother on Sunday, we closed the store, and we used to take up our lunch. My dad used to get nice lunch meat from the butcher shop, and we used to pack our lunch and we used to go for a ride, and we used to go to the farmer’s to pick up chickens. And we took ‘em home, kill the chickens; that was our entertainment! And then, once in a while during other times, I used to take the streetcar, and we used to go to Green Street for our entertainment, because that was where I used to get my Jewish community with Jewish people, because there was no people around us to entertainment. So we used to go to Eastwood, and swimming, and so forth like that. So most of my childhood days, and my sister’s and brother’s, was a group of entertainment between ourselves.
Harriet Moscowitz
I can remember-not girls doing this, boys doing it-at the old Market House on Wayne Avenue, on the upper level, two floors, and on Sunday afternoon, that’s where all the basketball games. I mean, the market wasn’t going on there, and I can remember going up there and watching the boys play basketball. We used to do down to 25 south Main, I still can’t remember the name of that building, but there was a ping-pong table there, there was records there, books, and we could spend the afternoon. It wasn’t a card playing type of thing, it was just...you saw people your age, and it was conversation, more friendship than anything else. We too did the ride bit, and there was a little confectionery shop in Xenia, Ohio, that had tables made for children. And it had black and white tiles on the floor. It had the little ice cream parlor chairs that were child’s size. And we used to go there often. It was basically, unless there was a party or something, or an affair.....Strangely enough, do any of you remember the kermises, at the synagogue she used to give? And they were HUGE affairs. All in the ballroom of the Miami Hotel. They served food, they had games, it was all under the auspices of the synagogue. I don’t know where the name kermis came from, but that’s what my folks always called i, so I did too. It was a huge carnival-type thing, and I mean, you could spend hours there. It was generally on a Sunday afternoon. I don’t know whether Beth Abraham had those or not, but we had the Salem. And we used to walk down there on Saturday afternoons, and see the movies and you used.....until you got your own driver’s license, and access to a car. I also remember when all the swing era bands played at Lakeside. And I mean, it was wonderful. They had a MARVELOUS ballroom there my senior prom was held there. Tommy Dorsey and Harry James and all, used to come out and play Lakeside.
Hyman Carne
I was in Hebrew school, we had what’s called they Way End Gang and the Dayton View Gang. Well, I lived in Dayton View but I belonged to the Wayand Gang. And the Wayand Gang consisted of my cousin Mal Dromwitz, Sylvan Kahn, anyhow; and the Dayton View Gang was Manual Garlikov, Marvin Brown deceased, Marvin Eurick deceased, and a few more. So we used to sneak out of Hebrew school, and we’d go down to Horn’s who had a barn; he was in the wholesale fruit business. We used to borrow this onions, and we’d wait for these guys to come out, and pepper ‘em. Pepper ‘em, oh we’d work ‘em over! That wasn’t very nice, but that’s what we used to do. As we got older, we’d bomb the ACA, and the ACA was very, very popular in those days. In fact, we didn’t have any money, we used to go play baseball at Columbus, Cincinnata [sic]. For five dollars, four of us get in the car, that’s gas, we always stayed at some girls’ house or some boy’s house, and we spent a whole weekend playing basketball, baseball. And Jule’ll remember we went to South Bend one year for 39 dollars, took the bus and all. And those were the things we did. We didn’t have any money, but if we did have money, we all shared it. It was a sharing deal. I can remember high holy days, when we went down to the synagogue, and the World Series’d be on. And you’d go downtown, at the Dayton Daily News, on top of the building, they showed it. Everybody’d line up across the street and watch the ballgame. Not watch it, you’d see the scores. But we did a lot of things, with no money.
Art Dicken
I was sitting at home one night and decided to make a list of all the restaurants downtown. And I think I ate in every one of them, because I worked downtown, from the time I was going to high school until the time I retired from the City of Dayton. But I’m going to quickly read off some of these, but first I want to tell, and see if I can shake your memory, the Victor Hugo Restaurant. Who remembers? It was in the Talbot Building when the first opened up. It was very posh, very ritzy, very expensive, but it was very modern also. Everything was in silver and blue of various shades. It was downstairs, took up practically the entire basement floor of the Talbot Building. I just remembered how many would remember that; I was there at the opening. I’m going to read of fa list of these, and I’ll do it rapidly. The Rhino, the Arcade, Neil’s Gbbon’s Hotel, Rain Grill, Blue Moon, colonial Sweet Shop, Coor’s 29, Royal Pony House, Virginia Cafeteria, Wympee’s, Van Cleve and the Mayfair Room, the Hitching Post-that was the bar adjacent to it-the Century Bar, Miama [sic] Hotel, the Purple Cow, the Flag Ship, and the Seville Tavern. Gold Coin, King Cole, East More, Simple Simon, the Biltmore Hotel with the Kitty Hawk room-they also had the ballroom, which they had banquets there-the college Inn, Esquire, Gallagher’s, Rike’s Dining room, Monmuller Sweet Shop, Riviera, Green Mill, Golden Pheasant, Stone’s Grill, and Reese’s, Elder and Johnson’s dining room. Nearly all five and dime stores had a little service bar. Service and Duell, the Antioch Shrine Temple, Dayton Women’s Club, Greyhound Bus Station, YMCA, Porky’s, Ella’s Sandwich Shop and the Union Station. Can you remember all of those restaurants down there? Maybe I mentioned some that had dual names.
I thought I’d hit on the theaters, and some of these have been mentioned. Keyes, Colonial, State, Strand, Lowes, Victory, the Little Theater, Columbia, Ohio, Rialto, Lyric, Federation, Ideal, Park, Salem, Riverdale, Sigma, People’s, and the Mayfair.
Others contribute the Palace, the Wayne Avenue, the Grand.
Art Dicken
There were other attractions, and I think I covered all of these, ‘cause I was on a bicycle, most of the time. At that time you didn’t have to lock up your bicycle. Let me touch on some of these parks, quickly. Lakeside, Forest, Triangle Park where they used to have a big dance hall, Island Park had another big dance hall, Eastwood Park, the Eagle’s Park. Remember all the side shows and the minstrels that used to come to Dayton, plus the circus? There were a lot of things happening.
Mary Dicken
I remember a lot of sundays too. My mother just decided she wasn’t going to cook on Sunday,, and we would always go for a ride, but we would dine out. And it was always every Sunday at Kuntz’s Café on Troy Street. And they were known for their devil’s food cake with caramel icing. [END OF SIDE A] ....go for a ride, and my dad would take me to the Art Institute to see the musicales, which still go on, as far as I know. I was about eight years old when I first went to the musicales, the classical type ventures ......of good music and performances. And they still are bing presented, because we go to them too, still, as much as we can.
On Thanksgiving, we always went to the Steele-Stivers game, the football game. That was a big thing, whether you-I was a Steele graduate, I attended there-and the time, it snowed, actually, Thanksgiving, we still enjoyed it.
When I was real young, some of the kids, we entertained ourselves, especially girls, we had a hobby of collecting movie star pictures out of Photoplay and Silverscreen magazine. Cutting them out, and making these gigantic, big scrapbooks of our favorite stars. We’d each pick a couple stars that were our favorites, and that’s what we’d do. Then we’d get together once or twice a week, and show off our pictures, and we’d trade duplicates. If someone else collected Norma Shear, and I collected Joan Crawford, and they had duplicates, we would trade, and that was one of the things we amused ourselves with. I was starstruck, I wrote away for movie stars pictures; which they did send, in those days, I have quite a few at home. To me they look like they’re their genuine autograph, I’m sure they couldn’t write all those, but I still have some of those. Ginger Rogers, and a lot of those, still, names that you’d remember.
Of course, entertainment was my field, I entertained others, I was an entertainer. We had our play, the Turkey Strut, that went on every year at Steele. I took dancing all my life, from the time I was four, but when I was a freshman, I had a severe case of Scarlet Fever. After that, the doctor forbid me to even take gym; he wrote a note. So I didn’t care that much about gym; I loved my dancing! And so when I went to Steele, I gave them the note and did not go to the gym classes. Well, when you tried out for the Turkey Strut, which I tried out with a fast tap solo-cause I took five lessons a week; even though I didn’t take gym, the doctor didn’t really know that-but I did do that, and I tried out. And it was the gym teacher for whom you had to audition. And she looked at me and she said, “Well that was great, Mary, but I don’t believe I know you.” And I said, “Well, I guess I’m not in your class.” She said, “Yes, why aren’t you in my class?” In order to be in the Turkey Strut, I resumed taking gym again.
At Temple Israel, we had big programs annually, and I participated, and Jean Betty Rosenberg Weiner, and a lot of us. At that time, we did minstrel shows annually. And of course, that’s out now. But we had a lot of fun. We had an inner ...and then we showed off the talent. And Jean Betty’s mother was on; she was the big hit of those shows, if anybody remembers any of those people. I even did the hula there, they requested that to Blue Hawaii. And even after we were married, we both performed as a dance team there. I don’t remember when that stopped, but it was a nice form of entertainment.
Mary Caplan
I’m surprised that we’ve gone around this circle and nobody’s mentioned Goody, Goody. Goody, Goody was a place on Third Street, it was a restaurant, and a hang-out. It started out on Third Street, and then it moved to Salem Avenue. And that was the place everyone went after parties, after you went to the movies, after anything you did, you ended up at Goody, Goody. And that was one of the fun things we had. We lived on Hudson Avenue, and we were born and raised in North Riverdale, which is one reason that Chuck mentioned Forest Park, ‘cause that was a big part of our life. And the Dale Theater, where the three of use used to distribute the little programs for each week, and for that we got a free pass to go to as many shows as we wanted to. But when we were younger, we walked from our house on West Hudson, down Main Street, down Ridge Avenue, and over to Triangle Park, where they had a swimming pool that was this deep. And this was the way we spent a lot of our summer afternoons, remember? Nobody thought too much about the walk that it took us, y’know. And we spent this time on warm summer days.
I used to want elocution lessons, which is what we called them in those days. I was always a talked I guess. And my mother insisted upon giving me ballet lessons; I think they were a quarter a lesson, and they were out at 59 Green Street. , where Jane Fisher reigned. And she was the social worker, director, she was everything to everybody in the community, Jane Fisher. And after my mother seeing me act like a little elephant in ballet shoes, she finally gave me elocution lessons.
Talking about walking, as somebody said, we spent the night-if you were very religious-on the holidays, you didn’t travel on the holidays. So, for instance when my grandfather would come to town, he would stay overnight with the Buricks, or the Sokolss, or the Kravitzes. But we would walk from our homes, by that time it was Dayton View, and we’d all walk down to the Wayne Avenue schull, or the Wyoming Street schull, we’d walk back and forth. Nobody complained about it. It really wasn’t a big deal. And there was a Gallagher’s on the corner there, and especially on Yom Kippur, we’d meet at Gallagher’s. And people used to make fun of me, because while my family belonged to Wayne Avenue, and later to Beth Abraham, I was always a member,. Course in those days, all the girls and all the boys in the city, all the Jewish children who weren’t going to get bar mitzvah, attended Temple. And you can see that in the pictures that are up there,. People who belonged at that time to Wyoming Street or Wayne Avenue, came to the Temple so at least they could be confirmed, so at least there was that religious experience. In the meantime, I also attended Hebrew School on Cambridge Avenue. I got so embarrassed when I was about 14, and they started talking about Esau in the womb, and that word embarrassed me so much, that I couldn’t even leave for school. It couldn’t embarrass a 14-year old these days, that word.
It was just a “grow your own fun.” There wasn’t nearly so much dating. The only people I knew who really dated were Jimmy Illison and Reva. And they got married; I don’t know, it
was in high school or right after high school. But everyone else, it was a group of people who went out, and they had fun. I guess there were some [that dated], but I didn’t go in a group like that. We were in a group and sometimes there were six boys and four girls, and sometimes there were seven girls and three boys. Just went out and had a good time, and went to the baseball games, and we’d drive to Cincinnati in our old Patterson touring sedan. It has seats on the back of the front seats that leaned forward, and we each one scrambled for that, until we got our Essex, and then we didn’t have to have that problem. There are two things I remember about the trip to Cincinnati. Our father would tell us, every time we would go down, “This is the place where there are five different kinds of transportation. You can see where the canal was, you can see where the railroad tracks ware, you can see where there’s walking, where there’s horses riding, and cars. Five different kinds of transportation.” And because the canal did run-it was empty at that time-but it did run across that side of the road, and the railroad also ran by the side of the road. And going up 25, there was a big hill, I think it was near Lebanon. And when we would get behind a slow-moving vehicle, it took us forever to get up that hill. But those were the fun days.
Jule Garlikov
We lived on Grand Avenue, and Leon Unger, Gil Unger’s brother, lived down the street. And Dad had a 1929- had to be old that-well anyhow, it was a Chevy. And what the boys would do, his dad was a window washer, and he’d go to bed about six o’clock. So after he went to bed, they pushed the car out, check the mileage, check the gas, go to Cincinnata [sic]. Then they’d wash the car, roll back up-in those days you could turn it back-Chuck, Rich, oh, a bunch of these guys. And what happened, they all got tickets. Got tickets every time they went to Cincinnata. They got picked up, they were all put in jail. So the police called Leon Unger’s father, and he said, “Hey, no, my car’s in the garage!” They did this for months, rolled back, turn the speedometer back, these little tricks of the trade.
Marilyn Shannon
I just wanted to share a few things about growing up in New Mexico. I maybe a little bit younger than some of you, and the way I can tell that is that movies were 10 cents when I went , instead of five cents. So you know that I was out of that era a little bit. We also made our own things. I remember making stilts, and not the little stilts but the great big ones. You didn’t go swimming when I was growing up, because of the polio scare. There weren’t any pools anyway, but nobody would go because of polio. Sunday afternoon we went for drives; my father was in business for himself, and he spent a lot of time going to the post office to get the mail, so that’s what we always did Sunday afternoon, was ended up at the post office so we could check the mail. I also had a movie start collection, where you sent away for ‘em. And I remember some of them did sign their names and I would always do this, you know, and rub it on the signature to see whether it was stamped on or a real signature. And some of them were real signatures.
Annalee Bender
I originally lived on the east side, and of course, I knew that whole thing about Wayne Avenue and all the stores there. The big thing in the week was after shabbos, we used to go to the market on Wayne Avenue. That was part of our recreation. And I remember that the first Piggly Wiggly that was ever in this area of the country, opened up there on the corner. It was the first self-serve store. The whole thing was covered, the walls were covered with tile. And they had a turnstile you went in. And we were appalled; you had to wait on yourself, who ever heard of such a thing? Anyway, it was there many, may years, and the thing that I always remember is there were some Amish people came into the market with their produce in a horse and wagon; it wasn’t like a wagon, it was like a carriage. And they used to park, always by the side of the Piggly Wiggly. They used to play basketball in the thing up above the market. And across the street, there was a little confectionery store where you really had to have lots of money to go get something there. And of course Gallagher’s, that’s where you got a hot fudge sundae with peanuts on top, they called it the Tin Roof.
And of course the synagogue, I belonged to the house of Abraham, and there too they used to have activities for the children. But the thing I used to remember a lot is the holidays, the men went down to see what the bowl score was, and the kids used to hang out in front of the synagogue, and then about the middle of the afternoon they’d walk over to Beth Jacob, and the kids from Beth Jacob would come too.
Also the movies you were talking about, my grandfather has been a public relations man for the Barnum and Bailey Circus, before I ever knew him. And he loved movies, so on Sunday afternoon he’d take us; first he’d buy us a penny ice cream cone, then we’d go to the Wayne and see one of the shows. Then one Sunday he said to us, “Oh, there’s another good show down at the Grand.” And that was a Fifth and Wayne. “You want to go?” So we went. I still remember the name of the show, it was called “The Man Upstairs”, and it was a such a comedy. But he was really into entertainment and all that sort of thing. We moved later on to the west side, and there was an interesting movie theater on Third Street, it was called the Mecca. Which is interesting because the people who owned it came from Lebanon. I’m talking about he Near East, not Lebanon, Ohio. And we knew them quite well. Anyway, we used to go there a couple times a week, and we always walked. Of course, my father had a business, and he always didn’t get away on time, so they’d call ‘em up and say, “We’re going to be a little late.” “That’s fine. We’ll wait for you.” So they didn’t start the movie till we go there.
We also made things to play with. One thing we really played a lot of was marbles, including me. Until one day, my mother said, “No more marbles.” You know, at that time, girls didn’t war slacks and pants, they wore skirts and knee socks. I used to get down and play marbles with my three brothers, and when I got in, you couldn’t get the dirt off my knee. So she says, “No more marbles, you can’t play marbles.” But our neighbor down the street-who’s also related to me indirectly, Jack Matthews-used to come down, and we used to collect bottle caps. It’s a big thing now, they sell them with the funny name. We used to collect bottle caps, and we had a back porch, and we get the kids in the neighborhood and we’d shoot the bottle caps from the steps to the doorway, and whoever got the closest, got everybody’s bottlecaps. And that was a big deal. So there was always a race on to see who could collect the most bottle caps. We also used to play a game called Cheeses and Hide and See. We had a great big oak tree outside of the house. It was so big that when you played hide and see, you could hide on the other side of the tree, and the person on this side of the tree couldn’t see you and we used to do a lot of that. And hopscotch, right, lots of hopscotch. Also, my older brother was very good with his hands, and he used to carve a lot of things. He made a winder for the kite, you know the string, we had a great big ball of string and used to fly the kites a lot. There were a lot of things we used to make up that were in the house, of course. We had one of the very VERY early camp radios, when they first came out. It sat on a big table, almost as big as one of these tables here, with a cabinet. It was all filled up with C cells and B cells, and it was all a whole bunch of mechanics in it to make the radio work. The radio was only this big. And we used to sit there at night, trying to get the station. So my brothers got inspired, they were gonna make their won radio. And they did, they made a crystal set, and one day they got WLW, you know, and the whole neighborhood was in excitement because they got it the crystal set. We did a lot of things for ourselves; we didn’t have money to buy toys.
My mother was very young-she was only 18 years old when she had my older brother-so when we were growing up, she was still half of a kid. And she was very young at heart. And she used to take us to the circus, and down to Keyes theater-they had the vaudeville-and we used to go there almost every week. We couldn’t afford it, but she used to save up the money, and she’d take us. And of course, my father had his business, and the circus used to come every year, and we’d go to the parade downtown; they used to have a big parade downtown. My grandfather had been with the circus for many years, and when they’d come to town-we were little kids-and he’d say, “You wanna go down and see them come in?” And there used to be a freight station right off of Wayne Avenue, and we’d get up at three o’clock in the morning, and we’d go down with him, and we’d see all the circus people, and the animals coming in. It was an exiting time for us.
Chuck Dorfman
My parents sent me out to work at a very early age, like five years old. I went over to Triangle Park, where they played baseball. And I’d take a little bucket, go all the way out to center field, and carry about three bottles of pop-that’s all I could carry, Coca Cola-all the way back to the stands, and sell my three bottles, and run all the way back out to center field again to get three more bottles of pop and bring them in. But then, I also was selling magazines. I used to go down to the corner of Santa Clara and Main-there was a Gallagher’s store there-and up on the pole in front of the store, there was a wooden box that they used to put the Journal-it was just the Journal at that time-the newspapers in. And every day, I was selling my magazines, a fellow would come along, and he’d reach his hand down in there, and take the coins out and leave. And I thought, “Gee, that’s a pretty good deal, you know.” So, every day I would go-it wasn’t high and there was no lock on it aor anything-and I’d pick the pennies out of there, and I’d go into Gallagher’s and buy my candy, and I’d get home, and mother would say, you know, “Where did you get th money to do it?” I says, “Out of that box on the pole.” So, that was my first experience at stealing. She stopped me real quick, there. We used to go to Forest Park, to the Circle Ballroom, Johnny Walker, ten cents a dance. Everyone went stag, at the time. Mitzie was talking about the Dayton View boys against the East End. From Dayton View, we used to beat ‘em all the time, but we put rags in our shoulders of our shirts, and we went over there and we used to beat ‘em. I forget who all played there.
One of the cheapest dates I remember; we went downtown, it cost me three cents on the streetcar, so that was 12 cents, and it cost me a dime to go to Lowes Theater, so that was 32 cents, and I bought two Hershey Almond Bars for a quarter, so that’s 57 cents. The two of use went to the theater, and had something to eat, and everything. 57 cents.
Stanley Blum
You know, one of the buildings that none of use mentioned that I think played a role for all of us, was the railroad station. Meeting people coming in the railroad station and going out, or just the experience of taking the train to cincinnati or to Indianapolis or what have you. Or just coming to watch the people come and go. And they had, I remember, a big display of trains there, and that schoolteachers used to bring their classes to come. I don’t remember who it was that did the demonstrations, bu they would demonstrate the trains. And every kid, you know, was imagining themselves being the engineer, or imagining how they were going to travel.
Mary Dicken
You sparked a memory when you mentioned Piggle Wiggly. I don’t know if any of you remember this or not, ‘cause I lived in Dayton View. We had a Piggly Wiggly on Salem Avenue between North and Grand, and I was just a little girl then. I don’t remember it, especially, as being a grocery, I remember it because every halloween, they had the biggest halloween block party, sponsored by Piggly Wiggly. And, of course I know it’s a pagan holiday, but still, we came out in halloween costumes, and they gave away all kinds of candy to the kids
