In other articles in the MomandPop blog, we've seen that there are three cities of importance to the Dixon family over the past 170 years. Leeds in England was a relatively small town in a rural atmosphere that exploded during the rise of the industrial age. Skilled labor was replaced by machines, and the population of Leeds quadrupled in 40 years in the early 1800's. When John Dixon and his small family came to America, Albion in Illinois was an even smaller town... although it was one of the most advanced in the state of Illinois. It had the first public library in the state, for example. Still, it never grew from it's initial population of a couple of thousand people.
And then there was Anderson. When George Dixon came to Anderson to seek work in the growing auto industry during the depression, it was a booming town. It wasn't the first boom in Anderson... that was during a natural gas fed boom that went bust years prior to the auto boom. Anderson seems to be a place that is characterized by a boom and bust economy for some reason. When you are in the midst of a boom.... or the midst of a bust... you don't see the bigger picture of how different things used to be or how different they could become in the future.
Jay's wife Lynnette sent me an email recently with some pictures from the 1950's era in Anderson. That was when most of the Baby Boomer Dixons were born and enjoyed a carefree childhood despite the cold war. These pictures illustrate how Anderson was a vibrant town back in the day. I can only insert three pictures per article, so I'll do this in sections.
First, downtown Anderson was the center of shopping in the 1950's. Mounds Mall was essentially a wasteland located next to the town dump (the dump was located between Mounds Mall and the White River.... smart, huh?). Not only was there no mall, but there were no strip shopping centers.... no Applewood, no restaurants near the interstate.... oh, that's right, there wa no interstate! There was no Wal-Mart. In fact, there was no K-Mart... which was the first big discount store and was located on 53rd street. People had to "go to town", meaning downtown, for everything they bought. Even groceries at first, although suburban grocery stores were starting to pop up when we were very young. In fact, the Thackers lived just a few houses down and across the street from one of the newest, the Marsh store on 10th street. There was a Mace's store at the corner of the By-Pass and East 8th street. But if you wanted to buy anything but groceries, you had to take the car, or maybe the bus, to town! Of course, my Mammaw Dixon shopped at Eavey's, about 5 or 6 blocks away, and she usually just walked to the store or to town. After all, why waste a nickel on a bus ride when the walk was good for you?
One of the most popular stores was the Banner Store. To be honest, I remember that we shopped a lot for clothes at the Banner Store, but I don't remember the looks of the store frontage in the picture above. Maybe one of my cousins will. Another store we spent a lot of time in was the Fair Store, which was later remodelled by one of my high school classmates, Jeff Hollin. The building is still there, and it's a beautiful structure. Oddly enough, the Fair store was on the ground level, but there were lots of offices on the upper levels, and our doctor had on office up there.
You can see the Paramount Theatre today, since it has also been remodelled. The effort to remodel the Paramount was led by one of our high school teachers, Jim Abraham. He was a friend of the Hollin family, and was a political player in the 70's and 80's. Across the street was the Riveria, and south of the Riveria was the State Theatre. All of these were originally used for both stage performances and then for showing movies. The Paramount was the grandest by far, but all three had unique and cool architectual features. Nothing so plain as the cineplexes we have today. And they were air-conditioned, which was a relatively recent development in the 1950's. So new that it was still the main focus of their street banner advertisements. It was still a time where our parents could actually leave us as young kids to watch a Disney flick or James Bond while they shopped elsewhere in the downtown area. The picture also reminds me of the wonderful street decorations done at Christmas in the downtown area. The garland was stretched across the intersections and a large decoration was hung where the street light might be hung today. The intersection also shows the painted lines that were used as crosswalks. Every so often, the traffic light would turn red and a bell would sound... and then everyone would cross the street at one time.... in both directions and "catty-corner", meaning diagonally across the intersection, if that was where you were heading!
Maybe some folks in the family can recall shopping at the Banner Store or a particular movie they saw at the Paramount or State.
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