This is the time of the year that wonderful memories come back to assist me in enjoying the middle of November until the middle of January. Sometimes it is like I am on a rocket ship traveling back through my life at an extremely high speed.
I drove past my grandparents’ home last week. My cousin, Jim Jones told me that the house was under new ownership, and it was being renovated. I drove past and it looked beautiful. I will go back with a camera to get a few pictures to share with cousins living out of state now.
Quite often, I travel north on Madison Avenue. I really miss seeing my family’s “old house” that was located just north of Thompson Road. In its later years, it was known as The Longacre Bar and Grill.
Last weekend, I was reading the morning newspaper and had the television on. Suddenly, I noticed that The Jack Benny Show was on. That quickly took me back to an incredibly early age. My parents had an exceptionally large radio that stood by itself in our living room. Many times, we gathered around that big radio to listen to The Jack Benny Show.
It was incredibly special when we got our first television and I got to put faces to Jack Benny, Mary Livingston, and Rochester. I still remember that Jack was very frugal. He also claimed to be 39 years old for about 44 years. I have used that idea several times through the last few years myself.
I loved going into The Longacre Bar and Grill and seeing the fireplace that was the exact fireplace that my sister, Kathy and I hung our Christmas stockings for Santa. Not many folks have enjoyed the opportunity to visit their former home and enjoy those memories.
I remember going down into our basement a couple of days before Christmas and discovering a brand-new boy’s bicycle. It was well hidden and covered up with blankets. I looked at the bike and started thinking. I learned something then and I thought I understood that Santa must make a couple of stops at houses sometimes. There was no way he could transport big presents like bicycles on Christmas Eve. He had to have dropped off my new bicycle a couple of days earlier.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed some new signs connected to the business that is in the building that our family had, the Sunoco service station on Madison Avenue. I stopped a few days later and found out that the gentleman that is leasing the building is still providing services that had been provided for years but he was also adding more auto repair and tire sales to the location.
We had a chance to visit for awhile and I provided him with some of the history that relates to the building and the former businesses. I have a couple more photos that I am going to take of him.
In my younger years, I had a couple of different newspaper routes. During Christmas time on both routes, customers would give me a Christmas present. On occasion, I would receive a card with a couple of dollars. The most received present was a box of chocolate covered cherries. I enjoyed chocolate covered cherries but thirty-six boxes of them was too many. I passed lots of them off to my adult family and neighbors.
For the last few years, I have been purchasing Chocolate Covered Cherries and giving them out as presents. I give them to friends, neighbors, and folks that I have worked with in the past.
It has been a very nice holiday season and I’m looking forward to the new year.
Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools. He can be reached through email at [email protected].