Thanks for sending me the back
issues. They are great and filled with little things that bring back
memories. Which of the "notorious" places have not been
mentioned? Tabo? Mittieville? Mittieville was strictly
"off-limits" to me as a teenager but Tabo was a great place.
Five of us would each put in 25 cents to pay a taxi fare to Tabo which was
a total of $1.25! We could always manage to get a ride home! We
could go spend the evening dancing and having a good time and spend very little
money. I don't remember how much cokes were but they couldn't have been
much. Tabo was the only place to dance except for the times when there was
a dance at the "Teen Town" that was at the Municipal
Auditorium.
Ed. - Okay, Shirley: Who were the other
four?
Lucia Cope '58
Hulston:
One of my fondest (reunion) memories was of driving up
and down the alleys at 3 something in the morning listening to Charlotte Skelton
tell stories from her younger years. Few trips to Lexington are complete
now without alley driving, and I'd love to hear alley memories. Charlotte
even remembered ( and demonstrated ) how to make hollyhock ballerinas!
What a talent!!
Ed. - Oh, was that you? Guess I shouldn't have called
the police.
"The Most Famous Location from
Our Youth"--I'll take a guess: Youth Center, basement of Municipal
Auditorium, where I learned to square dance.
On North Tenth Street:
I think that grand old street, so
famous in Lexington's history in the 19th century (because it led up the hill
from the river boat landing), is getting a bum rap in these pages. There
was another side of the street! At 117 N. 10th, Aunt Bessie and Uncle
Willy McIntyre were in the process of phasing out the family "boarding
house"--it was really an Inn, in the best of traditions before B &
B--which had begun not long after the Civil War. How many travelers must
have tasted that wonderful Irish hospitality and humor over many decades!
When we knew the house in the '40s and '50s, it was only a shell of its former
self, but the old furniture and wonderful patterned copper ceilings still told
something of its glory days. And it still provided shelter for several
unbelievably quaint old people who now-a-days would probably be sleeping on the
street.
My family lived there for a brief
time in 1945 when we returned to Lex. from our wartime ramblings up and down the
river with the Corps of Engineers, and before our house on N. 16th St. was ready
for us to move back into. Even as a little kid I recall how noisy it was
at night on the other side of the street, where we were told there was "a
cat house" causing all the disturbance. When it got really bad, Uncle
Willy would "call the Law" to intervene. But my most awesome
memories of that big, dingy old house (which was torn down for parking in the
'60s after the old-timers had passed on), were the spectacular lightning
displays visible through the huge windows.
That there could have been such
contrasts on one street is something notable about Lexington's long
history. It was a kind of microcosm of life's different sides and the
world's different peoples.
How about starting something about
another street--N. 16th. Already you have heard from several of its
residents. Others were Holmans, Hackleys, Fioras, and beloved John
Marchetti, our LHS custodian.
Mike '51
McDonald:
The most notorious location
that I knew of in Lexington was not on Block 42. My paper route for the
Advertiser-News included the area from Main St. to the river from 12th St.
west. This included the red light district. This "house"
was far up a hill off 10th St. and I will never forget the first time I had to
climb the steps, knock on the door and collect for the paper. I was only
12 and was quaking in my shoes. It did not help a bit when the lady that
answered the door invited me in------.
Jim '49 O'Malley:
More about Block 42: When I
think of Block 42 I remember it as a
transportation center, for its many
barbershops, and for its ethnic
diversity. The largest presence on
Block 42 was the Bus Station, based in the Palace of Sweets restaurant &
confectionery. It was located in the middle of Block 42, on the north
side. In '48 or '49 the Bus Station moved to Franklin St., across from the
City Hall & Fire Station. The Palace of Sweets was owned by two Greek
brothers. Their names escape me. They had delicious food and ice
cream and made their own candies, which they displayed in glass cases.
Everything they sold was exceptional! The Bus Station was served by
Greyhound, Missouri Pacific Trailways, and a local bus company that was owned by
Joe Delapp. It ran between Excelsior Springs
&
Springfield.
There were many taxi cab companies on Block 42.
After WWII they were even equipped with two way radios to speed their
operations. Prior to WWII, calls would come in for a ride and their
dispatchers (located in second loor offices above their parking spaces on Main
Street) would stick their heads out of the second story windows and shout orders
to their drivers below....something like "Pick up a passenger at the
Gueguen residence on 16th St."
The fare to anyplace in Lexington was
25 cents. Before WWII it was 10 cents. The cab companies were
Billy's Cab (owned by Billy Kukendayhl (sp?) and the first to use radios), Red's
Cab (owned by Billy's brother, Red Kukendayhl (sp ?), Turk's Cab (owned by my
uncle, Vincent "Big Turk" Terrell), Joe's Cab (owned by Joe Bookasta),
George's Cab (owned by George Lorantos), and Sam's Cab (owned by Sm
Lorantos. Also, there was Dan's Taxi (owned by Dan Ginow (sp
?)
There were more barber shops on
the "Block" than any one place in America, I'm sure. Just
imagine, four barber shops in one block! Where did all that hair come
from? The Palace Hotel Barber Shop's barber was named Joe. I can't
remember his last name. Lucien Vocate had one next to the "Irish
Pub," Lucien had a card game in his back room and sometimes you had to wait
a short while while Lucien finished his hand. At other times your
haircut was accompanied by the sounds of cards shuffling and chips
clicking.
Virgil Landucci and his father
had a shop next to Mr. Kehrees' Cafe,
Around the corner, across from the
Court House, was the famous Gem Barber Shop, owned by Floyd Boldridge. It
was opened in 1910. Working there with Floyd were Buzz Boldridge and Slick
Boldridge.
Now for the diversity part:
Have you noticed the names of the wonderful people mentioned above? I've
listed them, plus a few others.What a wonderful mix of ethnic groups who lived
in Lexington and who worked on Block 42. Not your typical Anglo-Saxon
names. Lorantos & Kehrees (Greek), Bookasta, Stomboly
(Lebanese), Landucci, Malo, Salerno, Savio (Italian), Gueguen, Vocate,
Ginow(French), Boldridge (African American), Libo, Entine (Jewish).
Now you understand why a guy named O'Malley was so comfortable with the people
who lived or worked on Block 42. There were certainly places that
ladies wouldn't have felt comfortable in, but most of
the area was safe and
fun to visit.
And from our newest subscriber Fred '58
Sellers:
Susan--TLC is great. I've read
all 18 installments. Here is my own contribution to this collective trip
down memory lane.
Reading Barbara Tabb's recollection
of how imposing LHS seemed to newly arrived 7th graders brought back a flood of
memories about my own first semester there.
It was the fall of 1952, and I was
just three months out of Miss Margaret Smith's sixth grade class at Arnold
School.
[Quiz: How many employees
did Arnold School have back there in 1952? You'll find the answer at the
end of this e-mail]
Because of heightened interest in the
federal election between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson after the
introduction of televised party conventions, LHS decided to have an all-day
convention in the gym, patterned after the Republican and Democratic versions,
to nominate and elect student council and other campus leaders. My home
room was Miss Owens's geography class, and we were told that each home room was
to vote on student council president and report the results to the
convention. The candidates were Leamon Johnson and John Stompoly. We
voted, and Stompoly won, though I didn't have the slightest idea who he was, and
I don't think most of my classmates did either. But then the trouble for
me started because, Miss Owens said, we had to choose someone to announce our
home room choice at the convention, and I was voted in to do the
honors.
Well, I wasn't sure I liked having
that task--in fact I was scared out of my mind about it--but there was nothing I
could do except wait for the big day, which was a couple of weeks off, and try
to figure out what to say. When the day of the convention came around I
was seated with the rest of Miss Owens's home room class near the top of the
basketball bleachers on the north side of the gym. As speeches started to
be made, it became clear that all the upperclass students knew who the
candidates were and had lots to say about them. There were lively
speeches, processions with drums and bugles, balloons and crepe paper, and all
sorts of other excitement. Not only that, but the speeches covered all the
student council offices, not just president. I looked at my notes, with
their miserable little announcement of how our class had voted for president,
and wished I were dead. The morning dragged on and my turn still hadn't
come
when it was time to break for
lunch.
Lunch for me every day was in the
Wentworth mess hall, before the cadets ate, with a group of other WMA faculty
and staff kids, all much older and, of course, much more sophisticated than
I--Howard Johnson, Marlene Yowell, Jim Garner, Terry Buck, Dee Park, Ann Beretta
and Phil Bullock. Phil was the only one my age. During lunch my
imminent speaking obligation became the topic of conversation, and when the
others heard what I had to do, they asked who our home room was
supporting. Well, apparently they were all Leamon Johnson supporters,
because when I told them I would be speaking for Stompoly, they all said, as if
in unison: "JOHN STOMPOLY!!?? YOU'RE SPEAKING FOR JOHN
STOMPOLY??!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!"
Well, this wasn't really what I
needed to hear, given the highly nervous state I was already in. However,
I dutifully returned to school after lunch and--the rest of this story is pretty
anticlimactic--when Miss Owens's home room and my name were called I made my way
down the bleachers, up to the stage, and to the podium, sweating and shaking all
over. I mumbled something to the effect that I had lost my script, which
elicited a bit of laughter, and blurted out, "Vote for John
Stompoly!" Then I hurried back off the stage, through the
crowd, up the bleachers and back to my seat, relieved to have it over
with.
Postscript: John Stompoly won
the election, with Miss Owens's home room no doubt providing the margin of
victory.
Second postscript: A few weeks
later, after Eisenhower had won the U.S. presidency, Lee Roy Ashinhurst and I
were discussing the election as we walked up out of the Goose Pond and back to
the school after gym class with Coach Herb (Hamann). Lee Roy informed me
matter-of-factly that "when the Republicans are in, you only get a dollar a
day."
Answer to quiz: Arnold
School had seven employees: Miss Sisk (first grade teacher), Mrs. Young
(2d grade), Mrs. Stewart (3d grade), Mrs. Branstetter (4th grade), Miss Taubman
(5th grade), Miss Margaret (Smith) (6th grade, doubling as principal) and George
(the janitor).
Ed. - I was a year ahead of Fred, but had Miss Ann
Caldwell for 3rd, Claudia Dell Young for 4th grade, Miss (Mrs.?) Taubman 5th and
Miss Margaret 6th. How about the rest of you? A-R-N O-L-D! Arnold! Arnold!
Yessiree! (We hated those Central School kids.) Now, back to Fred:
Third postscript: Interesting
that so many TLCers have become Texans. I'm living now in
Georgetown, Texas, just north of Austin, with Kathy, my wife of 32 years, a
native of Parsons, Kansas. I teach accounting and chair the department of
economics and business at Southwestern University, a Methodist-related liberal
arts college. (I probably shouldn't reveal this, but I got my Ph.D. at a
certain educational institution you may have heard of in the city of Lawrence,
west of Kansas City.) My son Mark graduated in 1991 from Wentworth and in
1995 from Rice and lives in Houston where he works in information technology at
M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital and plays bass in a band, the Tequila
Cowboys. My daughter Becky has just graduated from Southwestern and is
looking for work!
Mary Pat Gueguen '58
Miller:
For TLC: Another
"funny" from "The Lexington News" in the 1941 column:
"Ann Beretta, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Beretta, celebrated her
fourth birthday at her home. Her guests were Janice Beretta, Tommie
Mallot, and Billy Temple." Coed birthday parties at FOUR!? What
were we thinking?!
Ed. - Well, she is related to most
of them.
ALSO from Mary
Pat:
Thank you, John Cross!! Sorry to wake
you! Yes, I DO remember all those details about the Oriental Garden
Prom. Why do you think it was so special that you (or somebody) finally
asked me?????????? I thought after all that work, I was going to have to
miss it. Didn't we have fun though!!
And so we come to a close of TLC #19. When I ran my
spell check, it nearly blew a fuse trying to change "Tabo" into
"Taboo." Maybe it knows something I didn't know.
Several gauntlets have been thrown down. Send your
memories soon!
Your faithful scribe,
Susan
TLC #19: July 1, 2001