Growing Up In Downtown Corydon

When I was a kid, I pretty much grew up in downtown Corydon, IN. And since my dad and grand-dad ran a business in town, I knew most of the businessmen [and women] as well. So anyone who grew up in Corydon during our era might well remember:

*when the Krause Hotel at South Capitol and Poplar Streets burned down;
*the Corydon Jaycees' annual Pancake Festival, which used to close off all of Elm and Beaver streets for carnival rides every May;
*the old Blaine Hays law office on the southeast corner of Chestnut Street and Capitol Avenue;
*the Eureka Telephone Company's green-glazed building;
*the Elm Restaurant [bonus points for having come and gone through the side door];
*Foley's Barber Shop, on the south side of East Chestnut street;
*Dwight Harper's barber shop, when it was between Berlin's and Davidson's Pool Room;
*Ledford's Grocery...as well as Johnny Frederick's;
*Rick Warrick's Buick dealership, on the "Mauckport Hill", across from Claude Windell's Shell station;
*Corydon Auto Supply, across Capitol Avenue from the courthouse;
*Hobie Poellein's Western Auto store, where we got most of our bicycle accessories;
*Nelson's Firestone, on Chestnut Street, where we got the rest of our bike stuff;
*Ordner's Variety Store...bonus if you remember when they were over by the Corydon State Bank;
*North Side Garage, operated by Kelly Hardin;
* West Side Garage, operated by Tom and Doug Robson;
*the original Hamburger Castle, and the pinball machines in the back that cost a nickel a game, 6 for a quarter;
*Roy LaHue and Sons mens clothing store;
*the A & P grocery [and the smell of freshly-ground coffee when you walked in the door];
*the Marathon station just before Parks Chevrolet;
*the Mobil gas station on the West Hill;
*Sherrill's Roller Rinks...the one on the hill AND the one at the fairgrounds;
*the rampside Corvair appliance delivery truck from Hurst-Miles Hardware store;
*home milk delivery by both Sealtest and by Kannapel's Dairy.

These are but a few of my childhood memories of growing up in Corydon. I'm sure you have your own, and some will be different from mine. But these were a part of growing up in an isolated small town, and with the interstate highway system, the kind of childhood we had can never happen again.

Organizing the Garage: An Exercise In Futility

Ever since the days of the caveman, the "man-cave," also known in modern vernacular as a "garage," has been disorganized. Man has, through the centuries, invented many storage devices to help organize this "man-cave," and yet nearly all have utterly failed in this purpose. Man has even used "wo-man" to help organize the "man-cave," but this arrangement has proven unsatisfactory because "wo-man" has different ideas on what is important and what is junk than does Man...and once "wo-man" organizes the "man-cave," Man can never again find what once was close at hand and extremely necessary. So the failure is one of the "cave-man" who utilizes his "man-cave," rather than the reverse. And it has been so since the time of the Neanderthals...and will most likely continue throughout the time of the George Jetsons and beyond. It is our nature, written in our DNA, it seems.