by Rose Lucas November 2012
Many Northside
residents today are probably unaware that we had local grocery stores on
many of our corners: Fourth and Broadway, Fifth and Broadway, Seventh
and Broadway, Fifth and Lime, Sixth and Lime – actually the original
Progress Market took up the whole building at Sixth and Lime, and Mr. A.
L. Larimore was one of the owners. He and his family lived on Elsmere
Park. After Progress Market, Mr. Larimore opened Boss Food Store,
located just north of Loudon Avenue on the west side of Lime – the
building is still there. People who lived in the neighborhood often
went to the grocery every day for fresh meat and vegetables. While
some in the neighborhood had refrigerators, others still used ice boxes
and had a yellow ice sign in their windows. The signs had numbers from
25 to 100, in increments of 25, and the home owner was to put the number
of pounds of ice desired at the top of the sign. Most of the ice was
delivered from the Southern Ice Company – the building is still on
Loudon Avenue and has the company sign on it. The lot where the Rite
Aid stands was the recirculating pond for the ice company, and metal
pipes stood out of the water and aerated the water to keep it fresh –
also notable, the area around the pond was the source of the garter
snake population on Elsmere Park and its environs. Two teenage boys,
and many know one of those was my late brother, Richard Moloney, brought
two gallon jars of snakes from the pond area and turned them loose in
the street to see which way they would run. Until power mowers appeared
we were inundated with snakes. Today our rather large cat population
and some of the neighborhood dogs help keep the snakes to a manageable
number.
