Michael McLeod
Ok I have to weigh in on Dave Mitchell's recollections about a place called Hawleys -- yes, that is the correct spelling -- on Indianola. It was not at the corner of East North Broadway and indianola, but rather at the corner of Oakland Park, one block down.
That corner remains vivid in my memory because I lived on East North Broadway between Indianola and the railroad tracks (meaning east of Indianola, and six houses down) and spent my summers walking from there to Olympic Swim Club.
We were so close to Olympic that I could hear the chatter of kids in the pool from my bedroom window and the hourly admonition over the loudspeaker: "It is now time for the ... o'clock break. Let's have everyone out of the water. The break will not begin until everyone is out of the water. Parents and adults are invited to swim during the break." I can't remember how long the break was, but as children, bursting with energy, it seemed an eternity before we could jump back into the pool.
I could go on indefinitely about Olympic, which of course is gone now, replaced by an apartment complex, a massive one that I drove by with a pang -- one more charming, communal landmark lost to what passes for progress -- when I was up for the reunion. One crazy thing Olympic did in our day was to put a fish in the swimming pool once a year and award a prize to the person who could catch it barehanded. Big fish. I caught it one year. As I climbed out of the pool with it, hoards of kids behind me in the water were still surging too and fro on wild goose chases, thinking the prey was still out there in the water. Kind of a cruel thing to do to a poor creature, looking back.
But to the point of that intersection: There was a row of businesses there. A barbershop, with an italian barber we tormented on our way to the pool - the "we" being my two sisters and I, Ellen and Katie. Then Hawley's. Then Brody's Drug Store. It was run by Steve Brody, who was -- and here again the memory makes me flinch a little - a JEW. Which was a whispered, alien novelty to us in those cloistered-Catholics days. We also passed a produce story owned by Gus Dinova's family and a green stamp store -- which was, I guess, a place where you could go in and swap your green stamps for stuff? Not altogether sure about that....it was right next to Olympic. Further down Oakland Park, behind Dinova's, was an Omar bakery warehouse and an A&P grocery story.
During the school year, my sisters and I could walk west down East North Broadway to Immaculate Conception, passing by a row of homes inhabited by Catholic couples whose output of offspring was proof positive of either their dedication to cranking out Catholic kids or the loopholes inherent in the rhythm method of birth control. The O'Neils. The McCarthy's. The Johnsons. Their capacity for reproduction put my parents to shame. Thanks in part to my father spending several years away from my mother during World War II, when he went to the Pacific and served at Okinawa, we were a small brood by comparison -- just four children in my family: Katie, Ellen, myself, and an older sister I have not mentioned before: Mary Ann, sweet and scholarly Mary Ann, gone now these past, I think it's four years now.
So there you go, Dave. That's what happens when a journalist catches an error. And may I say: over the course of my writing career I've made many, many more than you ever will. Go Bucks and love you guys.
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