Others will surely want to add to it by writing down the history of their trucking firm, milk delivery, hair salon. whatever, to summarize the background of our town’s vague journal of the recent past.

Reason number two is to make correction and addition to your column of March 23, 2011, “Heart of the Matter” that had a glaring omission which, of course, you wouldn’t have known because you are such a young pup in contrast to yours truly who is a senior citizen with definite aging issues!

The Advertiser, begun by my parents, Don and Lucille Brown, did begin in our living room at 328 West Locust Street (as we called it, “down in the holler”) with a mimeograph which I do have a copy from 1937. Reduced here. After a job press was purchased I’d fall asleep many a night to its thump in the living room as I lay on a studio couch in the darkened dining room. That thump ruled our lives for many years.

Don’t know the date but probably within a year or two, the press and wooden type case were moved to the rear room in the Shumway building. The steep steps still there were killers when carrying heavy objects. But it wasn’t Gamble Skogmo who occupied the front Broad Street rooms at that early time ... No, it was probably the long time grocery, the Red and White Store. Art and Lesetta Robbe, Mt. Carroll, were likely the managers. Bob Poffenberger worked there, too. lt was in front of the store one Wednesday night at band concert that I heard the unniest joke I’d ever heard. With the store lights silhouetting passers-by, the scene is still vivid.

The days in the west room of the Shumway were short-lived but after that the front rooms housed various mercantile “. Jack and Evelyn Kloepping had a cafe and pool hall to which the high school kids gravitated. There may have been a few more until that fine fellow, “Bib” Flickinger added a “branch” to the Gamble Store midblock where attorney Ed Mitchell is today. By having another store in the Shumway there then was the Gamble/Skogmo with clothing, hardware, appliances and variety. Jim Callaway managed the corner building and Mary Ewing, that wonderful gal who worked on main street for over 50 years reigned. “Bib” and wife, Beulah, were examples of the great small town merchants who kept the town running with dedication, sacrifice and good will unequalled. After the Flickinger’s passed, Bill Stees’ carpet/flooring held sway for a long time at Shumways, then Randy Welp’s food expertise was responsible for opening a cafe. Now it’s Platinum Performance, a “modern-day” business anchoring the block of bricks.

Meanwhile, maybe around 1940 the Advertiser moved directly south across the street to the “Sites” building, Bill Stees being a long time and ever-changing landlord. It was a three tenant building and had “Sites” in granite above the middle door. The eastern most room was occupied by the Illinois Northern Utilities Co., the electric company, with AI Warfel in charge, Neil Atherton (Mrs. John) bookkeeper and Kenny Hoak. the utility guy. In perhaps 1951-52 that office moved around the corner to a new building now Hygienic Fabrics: but then with INU, south side and the Post Office in the north side, this next to the Masonic Temple. The Post Office quarters were a brand new idea, they having been on the National Bank corner from day one, Lanark. That bank, now long ago in its demise, is the northeast corner of B road and Locust but the rooms which held the post office have been razed. (There was a bakery there at one time, too.

We all adapted well to having a new building with old-timey facilities in different digs. At that Advertiser move, the middle rooms were occupied as an apartment by Beth Atherton who’d lived there for some years. She was a good memory for me because she was always so professionally dressed; then, of course, in career-type dresses and SPIKE heels. She was very thin and had circles of rouge on her cheeks, the style. She “kept company” if 1 remember, with Mr. Hogan whose family had long had the drug store before the Hoaks took charge. When she moved she told my folks to lake whatever was left in the apartment because she didn’t want them ... So we have a multi-drawer spool cabinet that was from the dry goods store, Landt’s probably, and several heavy mortar and pestles. They are a part of old time Lanark and ·are treasured for that reason.

The Advertiser took over in the west rooms of the Sites’ building. There was a bigger press along with the small job machine and many of the stacked wooden type cases and other implements necessary to the print works. There was a “stone” perhaps 4-5 inches thick and at least a yard square. an impressive piece of work, and I do so wish we’d have kept it There were hollowed out places here and there due to its being pounded for years and years ... Maybe it had come from the Gazette which was dwindling in subscriptions by that time. The “stone” was used to put those metal frames called “chases” on and when filled with the set type and lead cast illustrations for the ads, the key and mallet tightened them and closed them tight with pounding and hammering. (I could identify the molten lead odor yet today if blindfolded.)

Otherwise, the teeny pieces of type and blocks of ads would fall out if not tight, that before the linotype. Those rooms were home to the Advertiser for probably fifteen years; the Advertiser didn’t go from the Shumway to the cement block on Burns. It lingered at the Sites building and eventually had all three rooms at the site.

For quite awhile the east rooms were sub-let for a few days a month by optometrist, Dr. Oscar Hart, from DeKalb. It was a well-accepted service. It was about then that Grace Burmeister was taking accordion lessons, I believe and/or piano lessons. The east rooms were where she gave some lessons, too, and we enjoyed so much hearing her and her students progress. How much pleasure Grace gave over the years for her widespread audiences tapping their toes as the organ playing jived into the prairie air. Thanks, Grace.

PDQ continues next week!