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Philip Spiess
Wow! Suddenly a lot to respond to here!
First off, of course, is Thomas Lounds, who raises the only truly serious issue here. Mr. Lounds, please keep telling us these historically factual truths, because we, the white "intelligentsia" of our generation (so we like to think of ourselves, but I speak only for myself) have known nothing about most of this. When you mentioned the story of the swimming pools at WHHS being drained for Friday swim classes for the African-American students, I was stunned (although it was sort of confirmed by my mother -- Class of 1939 -- when I questioned her), but I was not surprised. (In my years at WHHS, my sister, a year older, and I were somewhat baffled by our parents telling us, "Oh, you don't date black people!" As Christians in church, we were taught that all people were equal, and relevant and good, under God, but somehow this didn't always play out in real life.) These were also the years (early 1960s) when black "block-busting" -- selling houses to African-Americans on "white" streets, thus supposedly significantly reducing the real estate values of houses, and destroying the neighborhood -- was a prevalent issue in Clifton (as was, at the time, I might add, keeping blacks out of Clifton Meadows Swim Club). And Ann, as well as Tom, I never knew about the fast food restaurant issues; it seems bizarre, as much of the food could have been take-out (but, as you say, you couldn't eat inside, which sounds so very Southern segregation in the North!). I was also shocked when my family went to a movie theater in Lewisburg, West Virginia, circa 1961, and my father and I sat in the balcony as a good place to view the film ("South Pacific"?), when my mother called us back down to the first floor, saying to my father, "Phil, you know the balcony's for blacks!" -- referring to the World War II time they had spent in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. (But West Virginia was theoretically in the North?) [The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History's had an exhibit on the northern migration of blacks in the 1910s-1920s, which included -- an actual object -- the front of a railway station with separate entrances marked for "Blacks" or Whites" -- you could not continue through the exhibit until you had decided whch entrance you were going to go through (I went through the "Blacks," just to say).]
I have no memory of Sixty Second Shops (if I ever did, they were only in my memory for about sixty seconds), but the earliest Frisch's Big Boy drive-in and restaurant I remember was on Central Parkway next to the building (a very white building with rounded corners, suggesting it was Art Moderne in style) that was first an ice cream factory and later became a casket showroom (go figure! chill out?). Within a few years, however, Frisch's had moved south [?] around the curve in Central Parkway to the larger restaurant location where it may still be. That was the one we usually went to from Clifton.
Paul: My note may have been comic relief, but it was true enough -- my son has a slide of the Burger King sign. (And much earlier, in Washington, D. C.'s Georgetown district, a 1970s shopping block development called "Canal Square" because it was adjacent to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, grew decrepit and the "C" dropped from its sign, leaving its entrance on M Street reading "Anal Square.")
Dale: Do you, or anybody else, remember "Father Guido Sarducci"'s schtick on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, where he was talking about "Bob's Big Boy" getting rid of the "Big Boy" symbol? It was: "Big Boy -- will he stay or go?" (It was fairly funny.) And yes, the first McDonald's I remember was that one on North Bend Road, just west of the intersection with Winton Road.
I've mentioned once or twice in these pages the B/G restaurants in downtown Cincinnati ("The home of the bottomless cup" -- meaning coffee); their mayonnaise was the most exquisite in the city, regardless of whether it was on the "B/G" sandwich or "The Wiz"! And then there was the Temple Delicatessen across from Shillito's; its egg salad, or tongue, or pastrami sandwiches were superb, as was its Kreplatz soup. And the Colony Restaurant, on Walnut, I believe, just south of Fountain Square, was our family's favorite as I was growing up -- not to mention (as I think I have before) the Central Oyster House (with its sawdust floors and stamped-tin ceiling) on Fifth Street, east of Fountain Square.
Bruce: I just checked out Meier's Wine Cellars, Silverton. Ohio, on the Internet and well! they now make a lot of different wines than they did thirty years ago. I well remember Cold Duck; it was easy to get drunk on that stuff in college, that and Port or Ginger Wine Toddies -- if you drank water with headache pills the next morning for your hangover, the water remixed with the Port in your body and you became drunk all over again!
And now I want to remind the administrators of this Forum -- Gail Weintraub Stern or Dick Winter or Ira Goldberg, or whoever, that there is a goldmine of our generation's contemporary history and reminiscences being recorded on this site -- and that it should be preserved, not only for Walnut Hills High School archives of its students, but also for Cincinnati, Ohio, and national history archives as well.
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Sorry, couldn't help myself...
