BuckSkin
Do you have any idea why they would have needed to take off the top trim around the top of the building?
You seem to know about such things.....
Thank you!
When I saw the side-by-side, I had already starting speculating on it.
Here are two possibles:
The trim most likely was made of wood, but it could also have been mortar or plaster; in any case, it may have began deteriorating to the point that chunks were falling to the street and they decided to remove it before someone got klonked in the head (or maybe someone did get klonked in the head, making them decide to remove it).
Another possible is that the roof developed some leaks; and, for whatever reason, the roof people deemed it necessary to remove the trim to fix the roof and just didn't put it back on.
You guys need to buy that store and bring it back to it's original glory.
This old store brings back memories of our little town and the many old double- and triple-decker stores on Main Street.
The town I was born in, grew up in, and still live in (well, I never did actually live "in town"; always out in the bushes) is considered a small town.
Back in the 1960s/1970s, on Main Street, we had no less than six "department" stores that had clothing for everyone, including boots, shoes, and hats; one of the stores was even a certified John B. Stetson dealer.
All of these stores had a staff seamstress on hand at all times and a fully equipped sewing machine room; if something needed "letting out" or "taking in", unless it was an unusually busy time, these ladies could do whatever and have it ready in an hour or so while you shopped or had lunch.
Even though all of the clothing stores carried shoes and boots, we had one huge shoe store that only sold shoes.
We had two well-stocked "variety" stores, including a wonderful Ben Franklin Store, either one having more to choose from than Super Walmart.
We had three well-stocked hardware and appliance stores; I cannot imagine anything one might need in the hardware line that you couldn't come up with in at least one of these places; one was a Western Auto that carried many car parts as well, but they sold ten or more times as much hardware as auto parts.
We had two doctors, two dentists, and two huge drugstores complete with soda fountains and lunch counters; no eye doctor, though; if you needed glasses, you had to go two counties and thirty-five miles over to Doctor Wells at Greensburg to get your eyes checked.
There were three grocery stores on Main Street, one of them as big as any grocery store anywhere; big enough that the stores owners are the only people I ever knew to go to the World's Fair in Chicago sometime around 1968-1972; I am dating their trip due to the fact that they bought a brand-new 1968-1972 3/4-ton Chevrolet Camper Special (9-inches longer than a standard pickup bed and with a toolbox door in one side of the bed and a spare-tire door in the other); they bought a brand-new slide-in camper to match.
When I was a kid and for several years thereafter, my uncle was "the meat man" at this biggest grocery store; almost daily, big refrigerated tractor-trailers would back to the dock and he would go inside and choose from the swinging carcasses of beef and pork, hanging on big meat-hooks "on the rail"; none of these water-filled flash-frozen plastic hampers of meat that must first be thawed before it can be sold.
We had four excellent restaurants on Main Street, plus over a dozen more in close proximity; my grandmother was the cook at one of them; you could go in, find a table, and sit down like a human and enjoy a real meal on real plates with real forks and glasses and without bumping elbows with the neighboring tables, nor constantly having your back jostled by those sitting behind you; if the kid or clumsy woman two tables over spilled their drink, you didn't have to jump clear to keep from getting it all over you; the table wasn't crowded with silly unnecessary little billboards and such either.
Along with the four restaurants, we had four pool-rooms, dark smoke-filled places with the constant "Crack" of pool balls striking each other and sometimes bouncing across the floor; each one had at least half-a-dozen genuine pin-ball machines and they were never silent, probably making more money than the tables.
Each of these pool-rooms had a long "bar" with a grille and deep-fryer; you could get a wonderful "pool-room hamburger", piping hot French-fried taters, and a big orange dope cold enough to bust your teeth, all for a quarter; many is the time I have kept my school lunch-money (a quarter) in my pocket and snuck off to the pool-room for a real meal; those secret recipe pool-room hamburgers, swimming in lard, and with a handful of Marijuana and a sprinkle of Cocaine were excellent --- way better than excellent.
It was 1976 when the powers that be declared it no longer legal to spike foods, soft-drinks, and tobacco and over-the-counter medicines with so-called narcotics; nothing has tasted as good since.
Before 1976, soft-drinks were loaded with Cocaine and other opiates; where do you think the "Coca" in Coca Cola came from ?
Little old church-going ladies were absolutely addicted to Levi Garret dipping snuff; it was half dust swept from the tobacco warehouse floor and half pure Cocaine; if you made the mistake of sticking your nose in a can and taking a whiff, it would absolutely strangle you.
Most would "dip" it, putting a big spoonful in their lower lip and then have to spit every few minutes; others would pack their nostrils with it - these were easy to spot after a few months as their noses would get huge and bulbous from the blood vessels enlarging to absorb the goodies, just like coke and meth users today.
It came twelve cans to the carton and I have known little old ladies that would go through a carton a day; one of those cans would fill four of today's Skoal or Copenhagen tins.
Half the little old church ladies in the community wound up in the crazy house and the other half on the waiting list after the 1976 ban.
Then, they built a new road, making it much easier to access the big box stores thirty miles away; then, S-mart and then K-mart came to town and McDonalds and Arbys; my dogs used to eat better; and now, Super Walmart 20-miles away in the next town over.
Union Underwear (Fruit of the Loom) came to town and all the farmers quit farming to get a town job; and then, Union Underwear, having accomplished it's task of putting everybody in the soup line, left for Mexico.
Three or four years ago, after putting everything on Main Street out of business, the huge K-mart shut it's doors and now stands vacant, with weeds belt-buckle high growing through the cracks in the parking lot and against the walls.
I cannot name a place on Main Street where one can buy a brand-new product; any building that is open for business is in the used junk business.
We do have at least eight Dollar General Stores in the county and they have probably added a couple that I don't know about.
In conversation with some auctioneers from several counties away, who were there to sell out yet another big farm, in answer to their question about how the local economy was, I heard a good friend of mine answer "if a man needed a new pair of pants, there is nowhere in the county that sells them"
Albion 15 Scan 032-b by inspeqtor, on Flickr
Albion 16 Scan 032-d by inspeqtor, on Flickr
Albion 17 Scan 033-b by inspeqtor, on Flickr
Albion 18 Scan 007-a by inspeqtor, on Flickr
