A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Chapter 36 College Hill RememberedBy Chilton ThomsonThe College Hill that I remembered from the mid-20’s to the late thirties was largely within the loopof the #17 street car. The Episcopal church was at the southern end, across the street from Mr. Bolam’smeat shop, where the best franks and pickle olive loaf in the city was made. Our family doctor, ‘Shorty’Howard, lived on the dead-end road opposite that and my uncle, Logan Thomson’s family, were downHamilton Avenue. The Larmons lived further north on Hamilton, not far from the Presbyterian churchwhere I was baptized by Dr. Austin. They owned an enormous touring car, either Packard or Franklin,driven sedately by their jack-of-all-work, Jim (known as Larmon) or madly by their oldest son or by myoldest brother, Alex. Dr. Loucks had his dentistry and home almost opposite them, before he moved‘uptown’ to the business district which grew north and south from the Hamilton-Cedar corner. There werea few businesses further south: C. D. Peters’ ice and coal yard on Llanfair (he, personally, delivered ourice from a dirty white wagon pulled by an equally dirty white horse until we got a Frigidare, about 1926);and the two delights of my young life, the little soda fountain shop just north of the church and the BettySweet Shop, next to Kohnop’s shoe repair and shine shop near the end of Llanfair. The lady there used asmall metal mallet to break chunks off of a giant chocolate bar that was the glory of her candycounter....one got a bag reasonably full for a nickel. It was hard! Hard enough to suck all the way home tothe corner of Belmont and Glenview.There were fascinating places in that part of town. Dr. P. V. N. Myers lived in a cut-brick house notfar from the church. He had worked on the uncovering of Troy and had corresponded with Ledyard, theEnglish discoverer of Nineveh. He taught my father at the O. M. I. (Ohio Military Institute) in the early90’s and, in his nineties, was warmly appreciative of visits by small boys who’d sit gapemouthed to hearhis stories of the long past and gaze reverently at the bits of ancient cities set into his front wall. Leaving,I’d walk toward home past the Frank Simpson’s cow pasture on Llanfair, then past Tyrone Power’smother’s house and cross to Bolam’s grocery, where my friend Darryl lived and his family worked tosupply our food. The first sign that I recall being able to read was on the side of the store, it asked,‘Eventually, Why Not Now?’ about some make of flour. Inside, there were rows of tin boxes with glassfronts and lovely cookies and cakes inside. The candy counter was in front, featuring root-beer barrels andcinnamon red hots. (Businesses that sold anything to eat were as well-known and rated for their featureitems as gourmet restaurants are today. Miller’s Drug Store, on the west side of Hamilton near theHollywood Theater was known for its chicken salad sandwiches, ‘Doc’ Schneider’s pharmacy at thecorner of Marlowe had the hottest candy cigarettes and Fortmeyer’s Drugs at the corner of North BendRoad had the best nectar sodas. The Americus theater in Northside had the best pop-corn, best becauseyou got a bag about the size of a quart for a dime!)The ‘dummy’ line, the freight branch of the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Interurban, cut across BelmontAvenue next to Bolam’s. Mr. Harry Pounsford had the great sloping lawn opposite but we couldn’t sledthere. Mrs. Pounsford sang in the Presbyterian choir but he never came to hear her or the organ that mygrandfather gave in memory of my grandmother, Laura Gamble Thomson, at whom I had to gazethroughout Dr. Austin’s rather pedantic sermons. (Things improved later when the Rev. R. Dale LeCourttook the pulpit; the old moldering manse on Groesbeck Road was replaced by an attractive modern houseand Mrs. LeCourt was good looking!) Mr. Pounsford’s daughter built a house catty-cornered from thegrocery just above the culvert that drained into the stream that ran down behind the O. M. I. The builderscut down a marvelous grapevine on which all the boys used to swing from the dummy embankment to thehill opposite. I was jealous of the older guys who dared: it would’ve been a twenty foot drop to the streambed if you let go.It always seemed shorter to walk the ‘dummy’ tracks to the bridge which crossed them, just beforeMeryton Place and Kirby Road, than to go straight up Belmont to home. In good weather, we kids wouldexplore the new houses being built on Meryton beyond the Simpson’s two houses, in bad, there werebarns with real cows....probably the last ones in College Hill. The McCaslins bought the white house at218