108. Winchester Area People And Places.

' Band-Aid' Bandit Arrested- Using adhesive tape on his face, the "band-aid" bandit robbed at gunpoint at least three stores and possibly four. He has admitted to robbing the Haloed Kow I. G. A. market east of Winchester, of the Bartonia grocery and a pool room at Glen Karn, Ohio. However he has not admitted the holdup at Fountain Park service station. He has a long criminal record in the Winchester area and had recently returned here on parole from San Quentin penitentiary in California. 1962

Duane Wickersham opens his new pie baking factory in the Kelly building at the corner of North East St. and Rail Road Avenue. 1957.

The Governor Goodrich home will be torn down- The Winchester Foundation announced that it had decided to demolish the former Governor's home on East South Street and the contract was awarded to Jim Grove to take down the house and level the site. A "Save The Goodrich Mansion" organization had been formed earlier and had received a letter from the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana in support of stopping the homes destruction, but it was to late.
  I talked to Jim before he began about the contents of the house and he said that it had been stripped of anything of value. One of the few things saved were the cherry bookcases from the library. The Peoples Loan & Trust Bank hired Jim Benson to take out the bookcases and install them in the presidents office. Jim asked me to refinish them which I did after he had completed their installation. November, 1976.

The Winchester Alumni Association faces disbandment. The Alumni Association of Winchester, Driver and Winchester Community High Schools is experiencing financial difficulty and may be forced to disband after this year's banquet. The major problem is being able to have any kind of operating balance at the end of one year that will allow for the planning of the next year's banquet.
  Association President Mrs. Anne Riddle, Winchester, stated that it has gotten to the point where pre-banquet expense-such as mailing notices to Alumni advising them of the banquet-must be borne by officers and committee members until dues and banquet reservation money becomes available for the current year.
  Mrs. Dallas Cheesman, Association Secretary-Treasurer, Winchester, stated that the cost of conducting an Alumni Banquet averages between $750-$800. The postage fee for mailing notices is in the vicinity of $160 per year.
  When asked if any suggestions had been received by the Association concerning making the event more successful financially, both women said that they have received some. One is to change the date from Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend.
  However, Mrs. Moorman states, this has been the traditional date for the banquet for years and many people from out-of-town plan for it from year-to-year. She adds that, unfortunatey, the change of date suggestions usually come from people in Winchester or Randolph County who wouldn't attend the banquet anyway due to weekend commitments elsewhere during the spring and summer. April, 1978.

Not Winchester, but this story reminded me of Ed Best's grocery store on the north side of the square in the 1950's-  Joe Hamilton from his column "This Is My Own..." in the 7-8-1959 Winchester Journal:  One day last week while I was driving down a sort of by-road in our neighboring state of Ohio, I saw a small boy trudging down the road toward me with a sack of groceries in one arm and a gallon can of coal oil in the other hand. There really wasn't anything so unusual about seeing the boy bringing home provisions from the cross roads store, one is apt to see that any day, anywhere. But the thing that struck my nostalgic fancy was the fact that the gallon coal oil can had a potato stuck on the spout to take the place of the long lost stopper.
  Now that is something I haven't seen in years, and yet it was a common practice in the days in my youth to close the spout of a kerosene can with a potato, and to stick a corn cob down in the mouth of the vinegar jug. (Who could ever find a cork large enough to fit the opening in a jug?) But a corn cob was just the right size, and a small square of muslin placed across the opening forced in with the cob, sealed the jug in a very satisfactory manner.
  A little farther down the road I came across the store itself. The press of business hindered me from stopping in and shaking hands with the good and humble soul who put the potato on the oil can's spout and thereby carried out a time-honored American tradition. I wanted to stop and chat with him about many such things potatoes, corn cobs and crackers in barrels and dill pickles in big glass jars on the counter. I wanted to recall with him how raisins used to come in wooden boxes and get webs and worms in 'em, and how pickled pig's feet used to come in kegs of brine and schmierkaise was always sold in bulk and weiner-worst came in bundles of a hundred from the Cincinnati butcher shops.
  I wanted to talk about how folks used to get a big sack of "Boston baked beans" for a penny, and how a loaf of "bakers bread" would have been as out of place in a grocery store as it would have been in a blacksmith shop. I wanted to find out if he had any "soft A" sugar, and get him to mix me a half pound of tea.
  I wanted to do all these things, but I couldn't. I had other things I had to do and my time was running out. But as I drove along toward my distant destination my thoughts lingered a while in the old-time grocery store where we bought our food in the days of my boyhood.
  How unfortunate, I thought, that the youth of today and forever to come shall be denied the wholesome smell of the back room of an old fashioned grocery store.
  Take a hundred gallon tank of coal oil, and a fifty gallon barrel of vinegar, add a barrel of rancid butter and the rinds of strong smoked-meat: have a box of over ripe apples and some rotten potatoes and get somebody busy grinding fresh roasted coffee, and the effluvia from all of these blended together would approximate the odor which arose from the back room of an old country store!
  But it was not an objectionable odor. It was an odor that spoke of good things to come when all the family gathered around the table to enjoy the luxury of "boughten" foods which were a supplement to the home canned stuff and garden sass which otherwise composed the meal. For it was only the well-to-do who could afford to "live out of sacks and cans" and the poor were forced to subsist on such humble, homemade fare as buckwheat cakes, smoked ham, chicken and dumplings, apple pies and common old home baked bread, cornbread and sweet cream butter.

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