Old Madisonians
Several years ago I got what I thought was a good idea: Form a local club or organization to be called The Old Madisonians. I don’t know just what we would have done, had it actually been formed, but I knew why I wanted to form it: It would be an exclusive club open only to those who had grown up in Madison, and who had stayed here their entire adult lives, like George Bailey stayed in Bedford Falls in “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
You may ask: Why didn’t you want to make it even more exclusive, open only to those BORN in Madison? Well, the answer is easy: Because I wasn’t born in Madison. I’m originally from Connersville, but I’ve lived here since I was four years old. So I had to envision a rule that while you didn’t have to have been BORN here, you had to have attended all of your public (or parochial) school here.
I remember talking to a few people about my idea, and getting mostly favorable reactions, although it never went any further than that. Two ladies I know, sisters, who were in school with me, and who ARE native Madisonians, looked at me funny when I confessed to not having drawn my first breaths here. I felt like I had let them down. Oh, well …
Anyway, my idea for The Old Madisonians got me to thinking about some of the things those of us who would qualify share, that are not available to those who moved here in adulthood, or were born in recent years.
Like U.S. 421, where it travels up Jefferson Street, then climbs gently up the hillside to the intersection near Wal-Mart. For us Old Madisonians, it will always be “The New Hill Road.” I know, I know; it was built over 40 years ago. But there’s a church in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, still called The New Church, even though it was built in the 17th Century.
You youngsters, or people who moved here from elsewhere, know the state institution at the top of the Hanging Rock Hill as the Madison State Hospital, or just “the state hospital.” But there was a time when all and sundry in Madison referred to it as simply “Cragmont.” And even if you hear an outlander pronounce that name, you can tell he’s not from Madison, because he’ll pronounce the first syllable just like it’s written: “Crag,” like a cliff. Madisonians always say “Craigmont,” adding an “i” that’s not there. Why? I have no idea. It’s just always been that way for as long as I can remember — and that’s a long time. I remember when I was in grade school, we would tease each other as being stupid or weird by saying, “I’m gonna put you in Cra(i)gmont!”
Old-time Madison business people often referred to the former Madison Bank & Trust Co. as “the upper bank.” The First National Bank, located at the present site of City Hall, was “the lower bank.” In a river town, upstream and downstream are often direction markers.
Just down Main Street from “the lower bank” was the Madison Theater, once the Grand Opera House where John Wilkes Booth is believed to have acted near the start of the Civil War. Aging Madisonians will remember watching cowboy movies and “serials” at the old Madison before it was closed, then torn down to help make room for the Main Street parking lot, in the mid-1950s.
About three doors west of the Madison was Samples’ Confectionery, which had the best root beer I’ve ever tasted. Five cents for a small mug; a dime for a big one. Wonderful ice cream, too. It was an after-school hangout for the kids.
Then there was Ferdinand the Bull. No, Ferdinand didn’t graze on the courthouse lawn, or smell the flowers around town. “He” — actually, “it” — was the city’s fire alarm, an air horn mounted on the top of the belltower at Fair Play Fire Co. No. 1. When someone “pulled a box” — that is, activated one of the city’s red fire-alarm boxes mounted on utility poles around town — it set off Ferdinand, who would bellow in stentorian tones, and in a pattern of blasts that notified volunteer firefighters which box had been pulled. Ferdinand also blew one blast at noon each day, and one at 9:45 p.m., which was the curfew for those under 18. Ferdinand’s voice could be heard bellowing as far as three miles away, at the intersection of Michigan Road and Clifty Drive, because that’s where I lived in those days and I heard it many times. After North Madison Fire Co. No. 5 was established in 1953, an additional air horn — Ferdinand Jr. — was mounted on its roof.
If you were walking along East Main Street when Ferdinand went off, he could scare you out of your shoes. Firefighters had to train their ears not only to hear Ferdinand during the day when they were working, but also at night when they were in bed asleep.
And then there were the smells no longer with us: The glue factory, whose effluvium penetrated every nostril in the Walnut Street-East Street area. But those who lived there grew accustomed to the odor and when it was commented on by outsiders would say, “What smell?” Pearl Packing Co., at the foot of the Michigan Hill, where some days they would be baking hams, and the aroma was heavenly. Other days, they would be boiling hides, and the stink rivaled that of the glue factory a few blocks away.
Bakeries were the other giver of wonderful scents, and there were plenty of them in those days. Clem Schoenstein’s on Walnut Street spread its aromas far and wide in that thickly-settled neighborhood. Clem was an uncle of current city councilman Bob Schoenstein. Smith’s Bakery on Jefferson Street got plenty of trade from the courthouse employees. Hentz’s Bakery in the 300 block of Mulberry Street featured a colorful owner, Charlie Hentz, with Hentz, his wife and eight children living upstairs over the bakery until they built a house out in the country.
Well, if we HAD actually formed The Old Madisonians, maybe we could have sat around reminiscing about the good old days in our river town — like I just did.
Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>
The Old Madisonians, – Friday, November 14, 2008 at 22:34:43 (EST)
