Here's a Smeet Frog's-eye view of Depot Town on this undated photo (click for larger image). Who among us can:1. pinpoint the date
2. find something different from the modern streetscape?
Dusty Diary will post a modern-day comparison photo if I can sweet-talk the YHS into renting a hot-air-balloon.
With my luck, the rope would break--but then I'd be able to get some amazing, if progressively smaller, aerial shots of town! I might end up posting them from Newfoundland though. Or the Outer Hebrides. At any rate, see what you can find!
Awnings on the Thomson building and grain elevators (or something similar) behind Sidetrack. The building that is now Cafe Luwak seems to have an extension on the back. The coin and gold place looks like a gas station (I think I see pumps in front) and the north side of Cross is unbroken, without the alley by the clock, which isn't there yet either.
ReplyDeleteYep, six good ones.
ReplyDelete1. Awning on Thompson Bldg.
2. Extension on Cafe Luwak
3. Coin and Gold shop is a gas station
4. No N. side alley by clock (I missed this one, good catch)
5. No clock
6. No silos of...coal, it turns out. I also thought these were grain elevators, but was told they were for coal storage and distribution. And indeed, the ground around them does look darker and sooty. I peg this photo as WWII era, so I was surprised to see coal being used nearly into the 50s!
The small light colored building facing River Street with the big silo looking things next to it, was Marsh & Son Coal company. My parents helped out when the owner's husband died. My father Elzie Patterson would go out to collect money from people who ordered coal but had not paid. I often rode along with him as I had not started school yet. This would have been in the late 1950's. I can remember driving out to farm house's located on Ellsworth Road west of Hewitt, it seemed like we drove forever. Everything was so spread out back then. My mom stayed in the office at the coal company answering the phone, taking orders, & keeping the books. On the day's I did not ride with my dad I would stay with her in the very small office. I can remember passing the time coloring, doing puzzles & sorting buttons. My mom saved them from old worn out clothes which she would cut off and save. My job was to sort them by color into small jars, which later mom would re-use on some homemade item. I think my dad had hopes of somehow buying the business to run as our own family thing but of course that did not happened. Natural gas was the new thing. Susan (Patterson) Metler
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