May 1942. 76 years ago.
BOB NANCE, Champion Eater! Bob Nance, who has a reputation as a champion eater, defended his title successfully at Richmond recently at a dinner given for the employees of The City Shoe Repair shop (105 West Franklin) by the owners, Lowell Roesner and Cecil Miller.
At one sitting, Nance ate the following:
Three glasses of tomato juice, one double thick mated milk, two bottles of Seven Up, two hamburger steaks, five orders of French fried potatoes, two orders of sliced tomatoes, four slices of bread, two cubes of butter, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream, one dish of relishes, one dish of celery and one glass of milk.
Bill Davis came in second but left off the malted milk and tomato juice, although he did consume two cups of coffee.
February 1940. 79 years ago.
NEW OWNERS. Change of ownership of the Uptown Café recently took place and after redecorating we are offering the following menus for our opening Saturday evening;
Baked chicken pie or pork chops, mashed potatoes, cold slaw, with choice of one side dish, bread, butter and drink.....25 Cents.
Sunday Noon Dinner. Roast pork or meat loaf with potatoes, vegetable and choice of salad and desert, bread, butter and drink.....25 Cents.
Special Chicken Dinner. Country fried chicken, mashed potatoes, 2 vegetables, salad and choice of fruit or tomato cocktail.....50 Cents.
Roses For All Lady Customers--Cigars For All Men During Sunday Dinner.
Mr. and Mrs. Charles "Chuck" Reeves, Jr. (Former owners of the "Fruit Market" on the west side of the sq.)
112 East Washington Street, Back of Homer Waltz "Main" Drug Store.
(Chuck sold this restaurant in 1947 and moved to 220 North Main where he opened Reeves Café. The Uptown Café would eventually become the Rainbow Restaurant.) mh
May 1899. 120 years ago.
CHINESE LAUNDRY. adv.- I have opened a new laundry on South Main St. and guarantee all work. SHIRTS 10 Cents Each...COLLARS 2 Cents Each...CUFFS 4 Cents Per Pair. And other work in proportion. Give Me a Call. WAH LEE
(This was the first and I think the last Chinese laundry in Winchester. Wah Lee was from Muncie and had rented the back room of the Payne Hardware store at 123 South Main Street. I don't know how long he was in business but this ad is the only mention of him that I've seen.) mh
June 1947. 72 years ago.
ART'S PLACE. Art's Place, cigar store and pool hall at 110 North Main street, was established in Winchester over twenty-four years ago by the late Arthur N. Ackman. The business, now owned and operated by Roger Capron and Robert Walters, who bought it from Mr. Ackman approximately two and one-half years ago, still carries the name of it's founder who operated it for twenty two years.
The business is open daily except Sunday from 8 am to 11 pm selling sandwiches and soups, draft and bottle beer and soft drinks.
Mr. Capron has been in the business for a number of years. His wife, Mary, and their two children, Patty and Terry, live on West South street.
Mr. Walters is a veteran of four and one-half years service in World War II in the European theatre, and lives at 438 North Meridian street with his wife Dorothy and their two children, Barbara Sue and Eddie.
(In the early 1900's Bud Irvin's Saloon was located here. The whole second floor was Irvin's Opera House. There were three Opera Houses in Winchester from the 1870's until around 1915 when moving pictures put them out of business. The three were Snedekers, Magee's and Irvin's and they seated between 400 and 500 people each. There was also the Smith Block, a three story building that had traveling shows, boxing matches, basketball games and the militia also trained there. The Lyric theatre was originally built for vaudeville shows. I'll have more on these later.) mh
May 1942. 77 Years ago.
3 HORN BROTHERS. Few Randolph county parents can point to a record such as that of Mr. and Mrs. Evan Horn of near Winchester who have three sons serving Uncle Sam in the army and army air corps.
Evan Junior, a private, is stationed at an undisclosed point with the army and Robert is a corporal in the air corps stationed at Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio. Pvt. Donald Horn is the latest of the trio to join the service and he is at the 46th air depot at the state fairgrounds at Indianapolis.
Mr. Horn Sr. is an employee of the Winchester postoffice.
August 1973. 45 years ago.
SHEPHERD'S CLOTHING STORE CLOSES. A men's clothing store which has been in the same location on the east side of the public square (103 S. Main) since 1932 is going out of business. Now Shepherd's Clothing store, the business was established at its present location by Vernon Blakely and Roe Duvall who moved from an earlier location on the west side of the one hundred block of North Main street (111 N. Main.) The clothing cabinets and other wooden fixtures in the store were purchased by Blakely and Duvall from Wolf's Department Store in Union City when that store went out of business in 1932.
Actually the men's clothing store is thought to be only the second operation to have been established at the present location. The first business was that of L.S. Kinkead who operated a drygoods store there for many years, according to Medford Stults, who is a former clothing store employee at Blakely's.
In 1938 a fire on the third floor of the building did considerable water damage to the stock in the clothing store. Following the fire, Blakely and Duvall broke up partnership and Duvall continued to operate the store until 1945.
Two young men, Bernard Shepherd and John "Bud" Perkins, who had worked for Duvall then took over the business and Shepherd purchased it from Duvall's estate after the latter's death in 1957.
Perkins left the business in 1968 and Shepherd has operated the store since then.
Shepherd came to Winchester from Madison, Ind. in 1939 and has always taken an active part in public affairs here. He has served as a city councilman, a Republican precinct committeeman, has been president of the Jaycees, of the Chamber of Commerce, of the United Fund and of the Kiwanis club and adjutant of Post 39, American Legion.
Shepherd is married to the former Madonna Losh and the couple have three daughters, 8, 12 and 16. He reports that he is closing out his clothing business because of the general economic climate at present which indicates to him there is no growth potential. He said however, that he is working on plans for another enterprise in Winchester.
BRICK STREETS IN WINCHESTER by Bob Pugh and Art Catey @ 1975.
Each year at this time the paved streets of Winchester, Randolph County and the rest of the state begin blossoming with pot-holes. As the asphalt begins to deteriorate under the affects of four months of winter and 12 months of traffic there can be seen, peeking out at the bottom of the city pot-holes, the paving bricks that were laid in place 70 years ago.
According to Bob Pugh, of Eastern Indiana Asphalt, it has only been in about the last 25 years that most of the streets of Winchester began to be paved over with the modern, economical asphalt. Immigrants who arrived in this country at the turn of the century came in the belief that the streets of America were paved with gold. But those who came to Winchester found instead sturdy bricks under their feet.
Art Catey, the son of a contractor and one time street commissioner of Winchester and himself a contractor and street worker, recalls that brick pavement began going down on streets in this area around 1906, and that by 1918 most of the work was done. One contractor who did a lot of this work was Allen J. Shapier, of Peru. When Shapier would come into town he would stay at the Randolph Hotel on the corner of Meridian and Franklin Streets and Catey's father, Stacy Catey would call on him there. Stacy Catey was a teamster and contractor, and ended up doing quite a bit of subcontracting for Shapier while he was working on the streets, supplying and hauling materials.
When Washington Street was paved, Catey recalls, the interurban line was already running, with tracks down the center of the street. The wagons full of brick would come down the street and their loads would be stacked along the curbs, which had already been installed. Often the curbs were poured concrete, but there are still places in town where original curbs made of limestone can still be seen along streets, although they are now almost completely covered by years of paving on top of paving.
Pugh says that Winchester's streets were provided with a good base when the paving bricks were originally laid down and that base still holds up today. The original surface of the streets was dirt, and this would be graded off to the surveyor's specifications, Catey recalls. A base of concrete of from four to six inches would then be poured, and over this a layer of fine sand was placed in which the paving bricks would be embedded.
The bricks were large, Catey says, and weighed about eight pounds apiece. These were laid in place by hand, and Catey recalls that many of the workers who performed this back-breaking work were blacks. There were undoubtedly also good numbers of the workers who were made up of Irish and Italian immigrants newly arrived in this country.
The work was probably considered unskilled, but the bricklayers quickly developed a talent for placing the paving bricks quickly and precisely. Those who kept their jobs developed large, strong hands from handling thousands of the eight-pound bricks day after day.
Although brick streets are a standard symbol of town and city life in the early part of the century, brick was used as a common paving material in this area for a period of only about 12 years, Catey says. Most of the brick paving in Winchester was done between 1906 and 1918. "I would imagine that there weren't many brick streets built after 1920." One exception to this, his wife says, was U.S. 27, from Winchester to Lynn, which was bricked in 1923.
By the 1920's streets were being paved with concrete, and now asphalt has been laid over most of the concrete.
What happened? Did the bricks wear out? Were they unsuitable as a paving material?
"They never wore out," Catey says with certainty. "They were hard brick." But over the years they would settle some and get out of line, despite the sound base beneath them. Another problem was that when utilities would have to make cuts in the streets and bricks would be taken up it was nearly impossible to replace them evenly. As the street surfaces gradually became more and more uneven they were covered over with materials that were easier to smooth and repair, such as asphalt.
Despite its durability, the expense of paving with brick on a large scale today is prohibitive. Decorative work, on sidewalks and occasionally driveways is still done, but the cost of labor makes it unlikely that the picturesque brick streets of yesterday will make a reappearance, even if they are not as susceptible to potholes. A worker who laid brick in the first decade of this century would probably make a dollar a day or less. Compared to these wages, a construction worker today would make well over a week's salary with each hour.
Although many things have remained the same in Winchester over the years, and a visitor from the last century would still recognize many of the sites familiar today, the brick streets have gone the way of the hitching racks around the courthouse square, which were replaced with parking spaces by 1925. But for those who may become too nostalgic over the passing of these relics of the past, Catey recalls a weekly chore to which he and a few friends had to attend in the days of the hitching racks, while his father was street commissioner.
Early each Sunday morning, before worshipers began streaming to the churches, Catey and his helpers would be out on the square, cleaning up the "street pollution" left behind by the horses which had been left parked in town on Saturday night.
(I think that the only area left in Winchester that resembles a brick street is on the north side of the R. R. depot that runs from N. East street east to the Ohio Valley Gas Co. meter shop.) mh
