Small Town Main Street

The view is looking westward on the main street in downtown Porter, Indiana. It is early on a Sunday afternoon and not much is happening. A few restaurants and bars are open and serving their loyal patrons but otherwise not many people are around.

Lined up to See Santa Claus

It is a Saturday morning in Solsberry, Indiana, a small town in Greene County that is off, to use the cliche, well off the beaten path. Santa Claus is in town and the townspeople are lined up in the street to see him.

Santa arrived on an Indiana Rail Road train that is partly visible in the background. The parents and children will see Santa inside a passenger car of the train. The Santa Train is a tradition of the railroad and brings him to 12 small towns and villages in Illinois and Indiana through which the railroad passes.

The building to the left is the Yoho General Store, one of the town’s best known landmarks and a tourist attraction.

I didn’t actually see Santa on this day. But some of his helpers were mingling with the crowd to keep them entertaining as they waited in line.

Inspired by Edward Hopper

It was probably in high school when I saw the 1930 Edward Hopper painting Early Sunday Morning reproduced in a textbook. At the time I thought it was a depiction of a Main Street in a small town.

It reminded me of the years when I was a child and my family would leave early on a Sunday morning in August on a two-week family vacation. Before the interstate highway system was developed we’d head east on U.S. Route 36 or maybe U.S. Route 40. I have fond though vague memories of seeing street scenes in small towns in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio that reminded me of the Hopper painting.

In particular I remembered how, like in the painting, the streets seemed deserted and the early morning light illuminated the storefronts in a certain manner, which created a distinct mood. The fact that it was Sunday morning and few people were up and about contributed to a feeling that I imagined only existed on an early Sunday morning in late summer.

I would later learn that Hopper actually was depicting a street in New York City, although he did so in a way that, as the Whitney Museum of Modern Art related on its website, ” . . . it could be any Main Street, in any small town in the United States, during the middle decades of the twentieth century.”

Those trips we made occurred in the early 1960s, so those small towns were about to reach the end of the era portrayed in the Hopper painting.

Also noteworthy is that Early Sunday Morning doesn’t show any people or other living creatures. I didn’t remember seeing anyone on the streets during those trips. But more than likely there were people there but I just don’t remember them.

Fast forward to July 3, 2022, in a time and place far removed from early 1930s New York City. By happenstance I was driving on the main street of the small business district of Thomasboro, Illinois.

It was early on a Sunday morning and there wasn’t anyone on the street except me.

The morning light combined with the desolate feeling reminded me of the Hopper painting.

Like so many Midwest small towns, downtown Thomasboro has seen better days. The Old Bank Cafe shown at left is closed permanently and the Central Tavern next door won’t open until noon.

I parked and got my camera out to make this image. In the Hopper painting the sunlight was coming from the right, but in this image it is coming from the left. Even the blue sky above the building is similar to that of the Hopper painting.

The Whitney Museum description of Early Sunday Morning notes that the painting suggests empty buildings on an unpopulated street although the varying details of the windows above the storefronts suggest that people live up there.

A website devoted to Hopper’s work points out that the barber pole and the white curtains in the second floor apartments connote small town lifestyles of small time business people throughout the United States. Thus my association of the scene in the Hopper painting as small town America was authentic in a sense.

In the case of downtown Thomasboro, the feeling of empty buildings and lack of population is not far off the mark. People may have once lived upstairs in these buildings, but that no longer appears to be the case.

Yet there are reminders that people do live here and commerce is conducted. Note the American flag on a utility pole and the banners paying tribute to military veterans.

The analysis on the Hopper website explained that the artist may have been suggesting an ominous foreshadowing of change.

“On the upper-right corner of the picture, the dark brown passage of paint suggests the side of a large building and indicates the possible encroachment of the corporate world on this sunny block. Other shadows that are also cast from the right subtly imply that the small-time shopkeeper, the Progressives’ symbol of the individual and the early nineteenth-century American ideal, is in conflict with larger, less clearly defined forces,” the analysis said.

Early Sunday Morning, during the early days of the Great Depression but decades before the coming of big box stores such as Walmart, which has widely been blamed for the business failures of many small time businesses such as those depicted in Early Sunday morning.

In the Thomasboro scene the concrete grain silos in the background hint as the dominate business venture that keeps the town alive.

My stay in Thomasboro was relatively brief, but meaningful. I’m always looking for scenes such as this as I travel through small Midwest cities and towns.

From Bank to Post Office

Built in 1923 as the Farmers State Bank, this attractive brick building is now the U.S. Post Office in Wawaka, Indiana. I ran across this building while traveling through town. I don’t know when the bank closed but it could have been during the Depression when thousands of banks failed. Whatever the case, it probably was a matter of the town being too small to support a bank or many other local businesses for that matter.

Appropriately, the bank was located down the street from a grain elevator located next to the former New York Central Railroad. The rail line is still there and is a busy route of current owner Norfolk Southern.

Nod to History in Gilman

This mural on U.S. 24 in Gilman, Illinois, contains scenes depicting the history of town. But then again, maybe it is only appropriate that an antique store would want to recall history.

Nice Porch

I’ve admired this craftsman style house before. It first caught my eye when I was traveling on Amtrak through Pesotum, Illinois, en route to visiting my Dad or when returning home.

Amtrak has never stopped in Pesotum but despite the train blowing through town without slowing I saw this house many times.

I was in Pesotum recently although not aboard a train and was able to get another look at this house.

It’s all decked out for summer and I thought about how I could see myself sitting on that porch with a cool drink in hand and watching Amtrak and other trains roll past on the Canadian National tracks across the street.

Mixed Messages

The side of this building is located on Western Avenue in downtown Mattoon, Illinois.

It appears that at one time this wall was used to advertise Coca Cola and then an advertisement for coffee was painted over it.

Or was it the other way around?

Whatever the case, one advertisement is bleeding through over the other.

At one time this was an interior wall of a building that has since been razed.

Memorial Day 2020

Let us not forget on this Memorial Day those we have lost.

Hitting the Spot

I have a fondness for small town burger joints, the kind that everyone patronized and where folks went after a high school football or basketball game to get a late night bite to eat.

There aren’t many of those left that are locally owned. Instead, the local burger joint is likely to be a chain operation that might have a few photographs in the dining room of local points of interests but otherwise looks like every other member of the chain.

So I was delighted to discover The Spot restaurant in Sidney, Ohio, located on the southwest corner of the courthouse square.

A friend I was traveling with suggested we go there to grab some lunch.

For health reasons I seldom eat burgers these days but I made an exception here because I expected my sandwich to remind me of those I’ve eaten at local places in other towns.

I was not disappointed even if the name of the sandwich on the menu reminded me of a signature item sold at a well-known national restaurant chain featuring the color gold.

But otherwise there was no comparison. The burger at The Spot was far better.

The website of The Spot has a page about the history of the establishment, which was founded in 1907 by Spot Miller.

It has had several owners over the years and at one time was itself a chain of five restaurants in Ohio.

Only the Sidney location of that chain survives. It was once known as Cook’s Spot after a former owner, Joe Cook.

The building housing The Spot was last remodeled in 1976. The exterior features a streamlined Art Modern look of white porcelain tile that has changed little since it was installed in 1941 following a fire on Dec. 31, 1940.

We had places to go so my friend and I placed an order to go. You can eat in the dining room or eat in your car at an adjacent car port with car hops.

I don’t know when I’ll be back to Sidney but if I get there around lunch time you’ll know where to find me.

Showing Their Pride

Residents and visitors to Whitestown, Indiana, are encouraged to tell what they think about the community located north of Indianapolis on this board along a hike and bike trail. The trail is built on a former New York Central railroad right of way between Indianapolis and Lafayette, Indiana.