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Downtown Hammond
Date: 06-02-2010
By: Terry
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My name is Terry Farrell. I was born in Hammond in 1941. My family lived on Douglas Street, just across from the Erie Railroad yards. My folks owned Farrell's Erie Lunch, located on the corner of Douglas and Oakley.
Borden Dairy was just down the street. I remember when I was a very young boy, the milkmen would give the local kids small chunks of ice and now and then chocolate milk. Borden's bought a coal yard on Clinton that bordered the railroad tracks; it was used primarily to park trucks and to store milk crates......there were more crates stored there than I have ever seen in one place. My friends and I would climb over a concret wall that ran along the tracks and head right for the crate storage area, where we had built a fort (think "building blocks").
My Mom and I would walk down Oakley, over the Nickel Plate railroad tracks (I can still remember that gigantic steam engin coming around the bend and railway express carts), across Sibley to the Minas Department Store. I remember our Sheptalk moderator's father; he ran the parking lot and parking garage. Mr. Campbell was the shoe saleman that we always dealt with; Mom bought me Buster Brown shoes and with each purchase a customer would receive Superman money to be used to "buy" one the prizes (you had to save up for the good stuff).
I remember the Orphum Theater (not the gravey bowls) and the Hohman Theater (12 cents to get in; could barely see walking out after an afternoon of movies on a Saturday). The Parthenon and Paramount were 20 cents for a kid before 5:00 or 6:00.
Someone mentioned the Hammond Times; I often helped my older brother deliver newspapers and on Sunday mornings we sometimes walked through a tunnel that started in the Jack Fox building (on Hohman Avenue) and went under the alley into the Hammond Times building, where the presses would be running (I do not have a clue as to why we would access through the Jack Fox building on Sundays).
When they were dating, my Mom worked for the telephone company in the Calumet Bank building. My Dad worked in the NIPSCO building (sometimes they would waive to each other during lunch; the buildings were about a block apart). As a child of four, five or six, I would go to the Calumet National Bank with Mom and I can still recall looking up through the glass countertops of the tables where people wrote out their deposit slips. Later, I worked at the bank and I always admired the lobby, with its high, ornate, celings (one time, during remodeling, before my time, those ceilings were almost painted over; the years had covered up the beautiful artwork; it was during preparation to paint when the art was discovered and cleaned).
So, what do I know about Jean Shepherd? I was introduced to Jean Shepherd's writings by Jim Gasvoda (Hammond High and Purdue athlete and a very nice human being). I have never been to either Flick's Place, but I know where they are and when I was in high school, I am sure that I went to the same place Shep did for my tux (probably the very same guys!). I remember Goldblatt's with its decorated store windows at Christmastime. The buses downtown. The trains.
Hessville is not unknown to me. As a kid in high school, working with my brother, I scrubbed the floors at Cande's in the middle of the night and took dates there for pizza or beef sandwhiches. Hills News Agency was another customer; it was bit more difficult to clean, given all of the merchandise. When I was older, the Kennedy Theater was one of my favorite shows.
By way of general background, I spent all of my childhood in Hammond, attending St. Joseph's grade school and Noll. Upon returning from the service, I attended and graduated from Calumet College. I worked at Stanray, Union Tank, 1st Fed of E.C. in Munster and retired from Bank Calumet. Not unlike most of you who have contributed to this forum, I have always considered myself blessed to have been raised in Hammond during the forties and fifties. I did not understand my good fortune at the time, but I do now. My wife and I live in California, but I have not forgotten my roots, the places, the people.
If you found the above interesting, I will dig a little deeper and come up with more memories of Hammond; there's still the Civic Center, Harrison Park, the fire escape at the old Hammond Tech, State Street in Calumet City, the Calumet Theater, Carroll's Ice Cream sales (selling ice cream from the three-wheeler bikes), etc.
Thank you for this opportunity to reflect a bit.
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