KANE LETTER: We shared on Saturday part of a letter from Kane resident Sharon Avenali Moore, who was inspired to write after reading a column with information from Kane resident Leroy Hartzell.
Sharon lived on Bayard Street as a young girl, and our previous column shared some of the local stores she remembers. Here is the rest of her recollections:
“I should mention that Chuck Russo operated his barber shop on Bayard Street, too, in the front of his house. The huge windows allowed us to watch him snip away or shave someone right there. We’d sit on the curb and watch. (Hey — this was the 50s!)
“I need also to mention that a whole block away and across the street was Leroy’s favorite — Thrush’s. Leroy described it to a T, and I can so understand his feeling of nostalgia about Mrs. Thrush. There were always visitors who sat and discussed the day, the news, the weather, etc. Mrs. Thrush’s store was like the neighborhood Coffee Klatch.
“When I was 10 or 11 we left our “homeland” and moved way over to Chase Street. It didn’t take my sister and I long to find that there were several stores there, too!! We may survive the trauma of moving after all! Half block from our new house and around the corner to Sedgwick Street and Faul’s store was there on the left side of the street across from CW. It’s a parking lot now. And perhaps ‘the store of stores’ — the corner of Chase and Haines was Ferraro’s Grocery, another fine neighborhood meeting place. Flo, the clerk, would save the big boxes that merchandise came in and laid them on top of the front radiators to keep it toasty and warm in there. We could sit and visit and eat our 1 cent pretzel logs before making the last homeward trek down over the hill to home which passed the Kane Dairy. Mmm ice cream cones in summer.
“Isn’t memory grand? We can make it anything we want, but with that kind of commerce handy, why would we? Thanks Leroy.”
Thank you, Sharon.
FREE SPEECH: Being a newspaper, we felt this deserved a mention in our pages: Starting today is the celebration of Free Speech Week in the United States.
Visitors to www.freespeechweek.org/celebration-ideas/ will find ideas on how to exercise one’s right of free speech. There are ideas geared toward parents, educators, community members and anyone.
