Friday, May 31, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Electric City Trolley
Nickel Plate 514
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Erie Railroad: Cleveland
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Roaring Brook
Monday, May 13, 2013
Erie Railroad: Wyoming Division
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
Steamtown
Electric City Trolley
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Scranton; VE Day May 8, 1945
How Scranton celebrated VE Day, 68 years ago today.
(above, from the Scranton Times, May 8, 1945)
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Playhouse Square: The Summer of '72
By the beginning of the summer of 1972 things weren't looking all that bright for the future of the Playhouse Square area. The
announcement that the Loew Building, along with the State and Ohio would be
razed sent the remaining tenants looking for new spaces. Cleveland Recording
went to 1900 Euclid; David Lee Modeling went elsewhere as did the Kuban Art
Studio and a Great Lakes seafaring organization. The only tenant that stayed
until the end of the year was the Arthur Murray dance studio on the second
floor.
Sometime in late May 1972 there was a nationalities
festival at the Allen, don’t really remember much about it but it was on a
Saturday. A few weeks later, Sunday, June 4, there was a gospel music show produced by James
Bullard. I remember James was a pretty
good guy, one Saturday afternoon Smitty’s car stalled out in the middle of
Euclid Avenue, almost in front of the Allen. James was there finalizing details
of his show, but came out to help. Smitty had an old Pontiac convertible, and
the brakes locked up on it. We pushed the car down Euclid, 13th and
down Dodge Court to behind the Allen. Tough work since the wheels wouldn’t turn,
they just skidded along the street.
On the morning of the gospel show, James came by early with
an electric piano he wanted to drop off. Union regulations prohibit anyone
other than a stagehand from placing anything on the stage. I called Ray on the
phone, and he told me, “what the hell, let him put it on the front of the
stage.” About an hour later Tom Yanhert,
stage manager of IATSE Local 27, and Phil Phusal, business agent of Teamsters
Local 406 came storming into the office. Tommy face always had a bit of a
reddish complexion, but this morning it was like an over ripe tomato, and they
were both spewing a lot of profanities at me. I was 15 and wasn’t going to take
any crap from them, so I yelled right back at them. Eventually Ray showed up and defused the
situation, and the show went off without a hitch. After the show when it was
getting time to lock up, I went to start locking the front doors, a girl was
waiting for a ride and I was starting to tell her I would leave a set of doors
open for her but she whipped out a knife and said “get the fuck away from me.” And I was like “OK” and walked back towards
the lobby, when I turned around she was gone, so I went back and locked up.
During this time we were also doing some work in the State,
primarily removing leaded glass exit signs for safe keeping. We had something
of a contentious relationship with the Milcap people in the Bulkley Building,
and suspected they were removing items of value to sell to local antique shops.
One Sunday morning I was returning from Royal Castle and spotted an exit door open
on 17th Street, and went to investigate. Inside there was a lot of
copper wire bundled up inside the door. I called up Ray and we ended up loading
it into his trunk. Later we found this was pulled from the electric feed into
the Cinerama booth in the State. Exit signs were also disappearing at this
time, so we removed all of them from the State and Ohio towards the end of
June.
Sometime early that summer we had a problem with unauthorized parking behind the Allen. Smitty put a no parking note on the offending car. Later that evening Ray walked in with the note, the back of which said "The Allen sucks and so do you." Smitty's next move was to chain the car to the wall with a note telling the owner how to get his car freed. That was the end of that problem.
Sometime early that summer we had a problem with unauthorized parking behind the Allen. Smitty put a no parking note on the offending car. Later that evening Ray walked in with the note, the back of which said "The Allen sucks and so do you." Smitty's next move was to chain the car to the wall with a note telling the owner how to get his car freed. That was the end of that problem.
By early July we were starting to do some roof work on the
State and Ohio, primarily just to keep things from getting worse. We’d have to
go to the Bulkley Building every morning and get the keys from Helen. That was always a dreadful experience; Helen
would mock us and tell us the theatres would be torn down. Even years later she was often rude, but not above asking for a
couple of comps for a show. Eventually Ray had copies of the keys made and we
didn’t deal much with Helen afterwards. I would often see her on Monday
mornings when I get my copy of Variety at the Bulkley Building newsstand.
We spent a couple weeks working to box in the large hole on
the roof of the Ohio, it was on the house left side, right near the stagehouse,
near a drain. Smitty and I were a bit leery of getting too close to the
opening, but Ray went right to the edge and jumped up and down on it. We boxed it in with 2x4’s and sheets of
plywood and covered it with roofing material, coating everything liberally with
roofing tar. It wasn’t perfect and it still leaked, but at least water wasn’t
pouring though it anymore. We also did some patching on other parts of the
roofs on both the State and Ohio. This was around the time in which I’ll always
remember Ray and Ceil playing badminton on the Allen stage. During this time I
had an office on the mezzanine of the Allen, on the house right side. By late
mornings the vents from the Colonnade Cafeteria in the Bulkley Building would
spew their exhaust into the alleyway next to the Allen, making it unpleasant to
be in the office with the window open.
In the midst of all of this was the Uriah Heep concert on Friday
July 28, 1972 at the Allen. White Trash (the Apple Records group) was
supposed to open. People were calling and asking “is that Edgar Winter’s White
Trash?” “No it’s not.” White Trash were in some sort of barroom brawl in Chicago ,
and drummer Bobby Ramirez was killed, less than a week before the show so they
were unable to appear. Damnation, the local group also appeared. For some
reason the usual group we used as ushers were unavailable, so we scrounged up
some people, I went and bought two dozen flashlights at the Playhouse Square Woolworth
store. That bunch of ushers were the worst, most of them quickly vanished into
the crowd once the doors opened. At the end of the night only about 2-3 of the
flashlights were returned. The Allen had no working air conditioning, and it
was hotter than hell in there. It was a rowdy night, one of the torchlights on
the east mezzanine was smashed by some bozo. Smitty and I tackled some guy who
was about to toss one of those big brass poles over the side of the
mezzanine. The show was briefly stopped when a bunch of people climbed
into one of the false boxes on the house right side. One of the more amusing
incidents was a group of people climbing a vertical ladder alongside the stage
that lead to the roof, when the top guy peeked over the top and saw a policeman
there, he jumped down a rung causing a chain reaction, along with a few bruised
fingers. We had to make a beer run to the Convenient Food Mart on 13th.
Smitty had to pay a $10 deposit to use one of their little shopping carts,
which I quickly returned. The stagehands were all drinking pretty heavily that
night, although it was against their regulations.
Not long after this the stagehands used the Allen for a
Sunday morning union meeting. They broke into our ice cream freezer and stole
all our ice cream. They eventually paid for it. We also had what amounted to a company picnic
with Ray, Ceil, Smitty, Veralynn, and myself. Burt LeGrande was lagging in
signing up new members and wasn’t invited.
Following the Uriah Heep concert the next major event was a
tennis party for the Junior League, which was in conjunction with the Cleveland
Classic tennis match in August. For about two weeks we worked full tilt on this
event. We used the stage as a dance floor, much to the consternation of Local
27. Smitty and I boxed in part of the alleyway between the Allen and the
Stoufer Building with 2x4’s and heavy plastic. This was used as a cooking area
for Paul Hom whom Smitty knew. Two bands were hired, Woodsmoke with M. Melinda
Myer and Trevor Guys and Doll, a famous local society group. The event was held
on Saturday, August 12 and was a rousing success; this was a pivotal moment in
which the Junior League started to lobby on our behalf. The fruits of this
event would be apparent in the months and years ahead.
A few days after this, Tuesday, August 15, was a benefit for
the NAACP in which a film, Melinda was shown to the upper class of Cleveland’s
black society. A few days later this
film would open at the Hippodrome down the street.
Around this time the contents of the International Trade and
Fair Company were liquidated in the Palace. Their entire stock was auctioned off;
Smitty and I were paid to help remove it from the Palace. This is what opened
the door for us to start using the Palace lobby for private parties.
Right after this was the Chi-Lites concert. It was a WABQ show, Sam Knight was usually behind these WABQ shows, if I remember correctly. We handled ticket sales
and distribution, traveling around town dropping off blocks of tickets to
various record stores, and later picked them up. This was somewhat of an
infamous show when we found the ticket seller, in the box office, and the
ticket taker, both union people, were palming tickets and reselling them. I
learned how to do a house count that night, and found there were over 2,000
people there, but only about 600 tickets were actually sold.
One of the more unusual shows came the weekend of Friday,
August 25, through Sunday August 27, 1972; The Beatles Away With Words was a
multi-media extravaganza. A few weeks before this a man named Howard Ragland
came into the Allen, asking about rental availability. We were sort of
skeptical of this guy in a cowboy hat with the southwestern accent as he
boasted of sellouts across the country. But when showtime rolled around, mobs swarmed
the box office. There were three shows a day, at 8, 10 and midnight on Friday
and Saturday, and at 4, 8 and 10 PM on Sunday, all nine were sold out. The show
itself consisted of a 360 degree sound system, with the sound set at the
maximum level. 26 film projectors and a wall of slide projectors bombarded the
film screen with 6,000 slides. The show opened with a brief montage of rock and
roll before the Beatles, then a quick Beatlemania segment, before heading into
the much longer later Beatle era. Dick Wooten in the Cleveland Press didn’t
care much for it, but the crowd did seem to enjoy it. A couple days before the
show, when it was time to put the show up on the marquee, Ray was insistent
that the Beatles, should be spelled Beetles, and it stayed that way all
weekend, I seem to recall Jane Scott poking fun at us in her column. Ragland
and his associate, whose name I can’t recall, were sort of shady individuals.
On Saturday night they got a few counterfeit $20 dollar bills, which they
passed at a local restaurant. That Sunday night after the last show I went with
Ray and Ceil to the Roost and Ranch at 9th and Carnegie for a late
night feast after a hectic weekend. By Monday morning, the promoters had left
town and the phone was ringing off the hook as hotels and other suppliers tried
to collect on their bills. We took cash up front, so we did OK.
One afternoon in mid August a section of the Ohio marquee
soffit had collapsed into the street. Luckily
no one was hurt. I remember looking up at the Ohio marquee and one of the big
neon transformers was hnging by a wire, fortunately we were able to cut it
loose before it fell onto the sidewalk. Once this hit the news, Herb Brown, Loew’s
Theatre district manager called up Millcap and demanded their name be removed
from the marquees. Mike Miller called Ray and we did them a favor. Smitty and I
built scaffold on Euclid on the east side of the Ohio marquee and started to
pry the word “Loew’s” from the side. Smitty went back to the Allen and a minute
or two later a policeman came up and asked if I had an obstruction permit, I
did not. This meant I ended up doing the work after 6 PM so it wouldn’t
interfere with pedestrian traffic. The Loew’s on the State marquee was pop riveted
in, so it popped off pretty quickly, on the Ohio it was welded on and took
considerable effort to remove. The offending word was then covered with the cheapest
green paint that could be obtained. At one point Smitty wheeled me from the
State to the Ohio on the scaffold. Not many people can say they rode a scaffold
down Euclid Avenue.
This a period that was kind of grim, two of the theatres
were under threat of imminent demolition, several longtime businesses in the
area, Bonwit Teller and the Stouffer Restaurant, along with the Black Angus all
closed their doors within weeks of each other. Our favorite restaurant Boukair’s
would close by the end of the year.
Labor Day weekend kicked off with a Free Clinic benefit on Friday,
Septembet 1st with Mr.Stress, John Garratte, Bishop Road Gang, Dirty
Eddie, Greenbriar, the Lower Garbage Trio, John Bassette, Skeezix, and Wonderlee.
I think there was about 5-600 people in attendance. The weekend ended on a sour
note when the Spinners show scheduled for Labor Day, September 4, was cancelled
at the last minute. The promoter of this event had no advance sales and had
hoped to sell tickets at the door only, which didn't work out too good for him.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Dunder Mifflin/Penn Paper Building
The Penn Paper building, on Saturday morning. This was the former home of the Dickson Iron works.
Illegal Dumping
We've been seeing a lot of illegal dumping this year.
Above, these piles are just east of West Junction along the Erie Railroad's Wyoming Division. There are a number of other piles of refuse dumped further west along the right-of-way as well.
Not even Nay Aug Park is off limits.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Nay Aug Park
Friday, May 3, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Playhouse Square: A Few Days in May 1972
The first weekend in May, 1972 was another big weekend. On Saturday May 6 was a double feature benefit for the Next Generation group. The Next generation were a group of high school seniors from Garfield Heights who would often help out at the shows in early ’72. They got to use the Allen for a fundraiser. Two films were shown that afternoon,. “Dracula Prince of Darkness” and “The Devil’s Bride.” for a dollar admission, I sold tickets out in the boxoffice, it was a windy day. Some kid’s dollar blew away, but I gave him a ticket anyway. Ray said that was OK to do, Ceil chided me for being a softy. There were a lot of small children there that afternoon. Following the films, we did a quick clean up to prepare for the Jeff Beck Group concert that night. A little before 6 PM, as I was walking back into the Allen, with my favorite meal, a Royal Castle Royal Trio, I noticed an altercation, just inside the lobby doors. One of the Next Generation kids, mouthed of to one of the off duty policemen who questioned him when he walked in. The kid said “Fuck you Pig,” and was getting the crap beat out of him as a result. I went and got Ray to intervene.
Glass Harp, from Akron was the last minute opening act that night, followed by the main attraction, Jeff Beck. This was a pretty wild night. One of the concert goers ripped a railing from the stairway going to the top balcony from the east side of the mezzanine. I chased after the guy; luckily I didn’t catch him, anyone who could snap one of those railings in half could have easily killed me. A few members of an Akron motorcycle gang tried to crash the show at the stage entrance, injuring a policeman in the process. Stagehands waged battle with the bikers, leaving a pool of blood in the alley as evidence. Those guys were beaten with belaying pins from the pinrail on stage. Back up police came in through the front doors, and raced backstage, startling a number of concert goers.
The following day, Sunday, May 7th was one of
great anticipation. For the previous few weeks Ray kept saying "and that's the truth," ticket sales had been fairly
brisk, and Lily even blurbed the appearance on Laugh In, we had tons of flyers
and posters for the event. I remember cutting off the Allen Theatre part of the
flyers and gluing them to the posters from Polydor records. I remember someone
cursing me out about a week before the show when I couldn’t sell him front row
seats. Smitty scrounged up some mirrors from one of the Ohio Theatre restrooms
and installed them in a newly painted dressing room. The massive clean-up
effort from the Beck show was well underway when I got there that Sunday
morning. The set for the show was pretty basic, a large piece of carpet, a
stool and a mike stand. When Lily arrived she had much fun getting the stage
hands to move the carpet repeatedly, much to their annoyance. Not long after 7 PM, singer Ellen McIlwaine
opened the sold out show. Things ran rather smoothly that night, quite
different then the night before.
Things started to slow down a bit after that, about a week
after the Lily Tomlin show Ray and I went over to the Ohio and poked around for
a while. I think this was the second time in was in the Loew’s theatres. We
climbed the vertical ladder up the back wall of the stage. Ray noticed an unusual
amount of light coming from the organ loft on the stage right side. Upon closer
inspection the roof had caved in on the room, letting abundant amounts of
sunlight and rain into that part of the theatre. We continued the climb until we reached the
room at the top, under the water tank on the roof of the stage. There was quite the spectacular view of the
lake from up there. We climbed down onto
the roof of the auditorium and inspected the large hole in the roof. A few
months after this Smitty and I would spend a week or two up there boxing it in
with plywood and 2X4’s. We never stopped that leak, but at least we slowed it
down considerably. We went over to the State
for a while, the State was in much better shape, but still had some problems. A
big leak in the back house right side had water running down the stairs to the balcony.
The water caused a short in the mezzanine cove lighting, which was a red neon
color. Sometime when you’d flip those lights on there would be a wicked
crackling sound, and you’d shut that circuit off pretty quickly. The State was
pretty well stripped of its main lighting fixtures. The lobby was primarily lit
by three strings of floodlights strung across it’s width. A year later Brel
would be in there, but at that point, only the echoes of footsteps could be
heard.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Stafford Meadow Brook
