The Best Time in Anderson or In Your Life

[Gardengirl]

Across Fairview from the Fairview Park was a little shopping area that included Miller's Grocery. I think there was a driveway onto Fairview where if you had some from Miller's Grocery and turned right, you would have gone to the Giant Store. This shopping area had a building that backed to Fairview, but when you pulled in that same driveway off Fairview, Miller's was across this gravel parking area and also fronted onto the other street that ran perpendicular to Fairview at the crossing. Was it 29th St.?

[Gardengirl]

Okay, I went to Google maps, streetview for 29th St. and Fairview in Anderson, Indiana, and there is where Miller's was. It is now a laundromat. There is still the old building sitting on Fairview, backing to it, and across the parking lot is the laundromat, which was the grocery store.

[Anne]

I remember the skating rink on Moss Island as the Green Lantern back around 1960. The floors were really uneven. We usually went to Alex to skate, too. I don't remember when the Giant Store opened but you are right it was there before K-Mart. My mother's sorority wrapped Christmas gifts there one or two years as a money making project.

[Gardengirl]

I skated at both rinks, and loved both for different reasons. I loved the Alex one because it had small rooms for the little kids to learn how to skate before they got out on the big floor with the big people. I loved the hokey-pokey there every night we went. It was big and it was fun.

The Moss Island one was great just because of its wood, uneven floors, fun to skate. I loved the posts in the middle of the floor because you could skate fast and grab one to spin around. When everyone did the "whip" in a line, it would be around those posts and over that uneven floor and it was great fun!!!

[Ma and Pa]

Great memories of a simpler time. All we had to worry about was a Russian nuclear attack!   

[Mr442]

The school bus drivers used to take their riders to Alex for a skating party every year or so.  It was a big deal for us rural Pendleton kids.  Unfortunately, that particular skating rink set the standard (in my mind anyway) for all skating rinks.  I have yet to see another that measured up to that one.  Large open wood floor, big Wurlitzer for music, a snack bar, and a beginner's rink for those of us who were less than adept on wheeled shoes.

[Gardengirl]

Is either skating rink open still?

Memories of the Paramount Theatre-standing room only for Jerry Lewis movies.

[me]

Is either skating rink open still?

Memories of the Paramount Theatre-standing room only for Jerry Lewis movies.

The one in Alex is now the Eagles and the one on Moss Island Rd. closed a long time ago.

[Ma and Pa]

Mr. 442 (school buses) and Gardengirl (the Paramount) have reminded me of another treasured Anderson memory: the annual Safety Patrol Picnic! Assemble at the Paramount for a free movie, and afterwards, march off to Shadyside Park for all the hot dogs, drinks, and other goodies you could eat! It made it all worth while, standing out in rain and snow in that white Sam Browne belt, holding the red flag on a pole!   

[Gardengirl]

I don't remember the safety fair, but I remember each October, I believe, when the fire trucks would be at Delco or Guide Lamp for the fire safety fair, and we'd hear the firetruck sirens all day long as kids got rides on the trucks. Was there the Delco or Guide up on 109 past Linder's Point? I think that's where it was.

[Ma and Pa]

GG: Yes, that was Guide Lamp on the former Pendleton Avenue  (not 109) from 25th St. south to the RR tracks.

The Patrol Picnic was a "thank you" event for the kids who served on the Safety Patrol in city elementary schools. I expect you went to what was then a township elementary (Roosevelt, maybe?). Don't believe they had the Patrol. City kids walked to school; the Patrol helped them cross at intersections. We worked cheap!

[Gardengirl]

I did go to Roosevelt, and no, no safety patrols there. So, kids helped other kids cross intersections? They wouldn't allow that out here, and nowadays. Maybe kids were more responsible back then. They have old ladies crossing kids here, and one I know used her stop sign to beat the hood of a car when the driver didn't follow her orders. 

[Mr442]

Pendleton had safety patrol kids, but you had to live in town to be one of them.  Pretty much the same deal for paper carriers.  If you lived out of town like I did, you missed out on a few things.  But then again, there was so many more good things about being a country kid that made up for it.  Even now, I can tell the difference between cow, pig and horse manure, just by the smell.

[Ma and Pa]

Who knows, 442; in today's economic situation, that could be a valuable skill to possess. Especially if you could refine your olfactory sense to sniff out bull-dookey and warn us when you detect the same. Drug-sniffing and bomb-sniffing dogs are scarce and valuable; maybe there's a demand for bull-detectors, too!
Just a thought.   Pa (sniffing myself)

[Mr442]

My BS detector has been off the chart the past few years.