Hey, remember when... @Liz Flaherty

Last Friday I posted a blog about Macy, the little town across the fields and through the woods from where I live. The response was unprecedented here at the Window, and I can't thank you enough. I promised I'd share the comments that showed up both here and on Facebook. They brought back some memories for me--I hope you enjoy them, too. If you have anything to add, please do.

Shannon Conley Smith Even though I'm not as old as you and Uncle Bill, (I think this was mean of Shannon, but I didn't edit it out. - Liz) I still have very fond memories of Macy, Indiana. I also remember those free movies except for by the time I was old enough to watch them they were Christian movies. And I remember the hardware store and a little restaurant that had video games in it and the two churches, but the thing I wanted to be most in Macy, Indiana was a Macy firefighter auxiliary member. They would have meetings I believe once a month, they would exchange gifts, have snacks, and talk about the coming up chicken noodle dinner to help raise money for new equipment, but what made me want to be one of them most of all was when the men would be sent out on a fire the ladies would run up to the fire house and get the coffee or the hot chocolate and the donuts ready for the men when they got back from fighting a fire. Or if it was going to be a long night, we would bring the coffee and donuts out to the scene of the fire for the men to have a break and go back to doing what they volunteered to do and that was to help the people of Macy, Indiana. That is one of my Fondest Memories and that is what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Art Shafer Fulton had the Free Movies too and the Westerns were great. Cokes for a nickel weren't bad either. I guess living in the country and small towns never gets totally out of your system. Fulton had a population just over 300 and we always played Macy in Basketball.

Shelly Eisaman I don't suppose that anything I share can be as way back as the movies. They were long gone by the time i came along but I do have many wonderful memories of growing up in Macy. My sister and I were raised in the same house as my mom and her siblings. The house on Sycamore that my parents still call home. 
When I was little I was sure I was related to the entire town. I had so many Aunts and Uncles. Everyone knew everybody else and word traveled faster than I could. As I got older I realized that though not exactly aunts and uncles, I was in fact related to good portion of the town through either mom or dad. It was great for a kid as social as I was. There was always someone to visit.
I would torment George, the boy next door. Aunt Norm was the next house down and always had goodies for us. She baby sat me and little David and had no problem laying into our rotten butts when we needed. She was the only person that no matter how many times we asked would explain exactly how we were all related. 
Way at the other end of town I could visit with Miss Rosie. She had the best stories! She could tell stories on everyone! I have pictures from one year during Macy days I did a bed race with her. It was so much fun. My kids loved visiting Rosie on Halloween. We would take her flowers and she would tell them stories. 
About two blocks up from Rosie was the green and white house on the corner. I never knew the lady that lived there but she had the only yard that had as many sweet smelling flowers as Mom's. 
If Aunt Norm didn't watch me then Aunt Sue would. Aunt Sue was so kind. Every trip with her was an adventure. 
Christmas Eve was a big to-do at our house with Slishers from everywhere coming to town. When it was finally my turn to be an elf with Uncle Kenny that meant getting to play Santa at Clair and Hazel's after Mom and Dad's and then there was always Christmas Eve service at the church. Everyone got an orange, a candy bar, and a candy cane.
I remember when Macy Days was a big thing. The parades and bands at the fire house. Carnival rides and games. Somewhere I have a lot of pictures. 
The grocery store was great. The ladies that worked there. I remember going up there and getting so much penny candy in my fancy play dresses that my mom would get for me at the Nearly New Shop in Rochester. They never batted an eye at the silly little girl in her princess ball gowns. 
I was an 80s kid in Macy but I have so many wonderful memories. Visiting Aunt Jean and swimming at Bill and Shirley's. Annoying my sister and Angela every chance I got. Babysitting for both churches. Waiting for Clair to pick us up at the post office for school. Trying to walk the tracks to Rochester. 
Our little town is full of so many stories and so much history. I look forward to reading others' memories.

Bob Pontius Kissed a girl for the first time at the free show in Macy, summer of 57 or 58. (There was more to this conversation, by the way...)

Judith Post  I really enjoyed this. It brought back so many memories. I grew up (and still live) in Fort Wayne. No free movies, but my parents gave me and my sister 50 cents every Saturday to walk to the Rialto Theater with our friends. It cost 25 cents to watch the double features, and then we had a quarter to buy candy at the dime store and an ice cream cone on the way home.

Sheila Fitzpatrick It was said that there was an underground passage under 19 between the old Ballee house and the Waite sisters' house in Gilead. That house still stands on the corner.

June Zinn Love this new venture, since we are on here every day. If you are old enough to remember movies for 10 cents or better yet, free, these bring back memories. I grew up in Knox, Ind, in the fifties, a good time to grow up! Thank you for this chance to look back.

Marsha Adams Moved to Macy in 1957, entered 3rd grade and my family was forever labeled as newcomers. At one time my dad was the town sherif, which was a bit of a joke, no police car, no stop signs in town but he did occasionally get called out for a stray dog, lol. That being funny because there were stray dogs everywhere. 

I remember when the King and his Court (men's fast pitch softball team) put on an exhibition. We had a horseshoe pitch where teams competed. We would ride our bikes everywhere and the most fun was riding from our house on McKee street and trying to coast all the way down to the railroad tracks without going over the fence and into the cornfield at the end of the street. I remember my mom (Iris Delawder) working at the grocery store and knowing everything about everyone in town. We lovingly called her the town newspaper. There are so many memories I could share with my best friend Shirley Connor Greenwald--we probably would reminisce for hours.

...when life was slow and oh, so mellow...

Macy was laid out in 1860 at the time the railroad arrived in the neighborhood. The community was originally known as Lincoln, but when it was discovered that there was already another Lincoln in Cass County, the name was changed in order to prevent confusion in the mail system. The namesake of Macy is David Macy, president of the Indianapolis, Peru and Chicago Railway. The post office at Macy has been in operation since 1880. - Wikipedia

              I was working, although not very hard, and Bill was standing across the counter, thinking about going home and getting something done. “Do you remember the free shows?” I asked. “Were they over here in this vacant lot?”

          There are many vacant lots in Macy; nevertheless, he knew which one I meant.

          “That’s where they were.” he said, “I remember one movie, is all. My sister and I didn’t get to go to it, so we crawled out her bedroom window and laid on the porch roof and watched it from home. Do you remember them?”

          “I remember one, a western, but they were all westerns, weren’t they?”

          “And they all had John Wayne in them.”

          I nodded agreement. “You could walk across the street to the drugstore and buy a Coke for a nickel. If you had an extra penny, you could get it in a Dixie cup and carry it back to the movie. The popcorn stand was right there at the corner of the store, wasn’t it?”

          “Yeah,” he said, “and the popcorn maker’s still over at the firehouse. Still works.”

Macy Christian Church Fellowship Hall - Used to be Karn Grocery

          Wow. I’m 57 and I still work, too, but barely. I can’t believe the popcorn machine does. I close my eyes and I remember how the popcorn smelled. Hot and buttery and—can you smell salt? In my memory, I can.

          My age was still single digits when we used to go to Macy to

watch the free shows. It seems to me as though they ran them two nights a week, though we probably didn’t go that often. In retrospect, I don’t know who “they” were, either. But I remember that Macy bustled. It had two churches right downtown, the drugstore, a hardware store where Mr. Case sold a wagon to my brothers and me. The wagon cost $9.00, but he gave it to us for a dollar less.

          There was a place across the street that sold and repaired televisions and maybe other appliances; I’m not sure. On the corner was Karn’s Grocery, where you got foodstuffs on one side and dry goods on the other and Mrs. Karn always smiled at you and called you by name. There was an elevator in town with piles of corncobs just begging to be played in. Someone threw one just right once and I got my first black eye. (It may have been my last, too—I’m a big coward.)

Macy Christian Church

          Doc Sennett had his practice back there on Sycamore Street. He’d give you shots and tell you to “look toward Akron” so you wouldn’t see the needle and kick up a fuss. I don’t remember them, but I heard from people who’ve lived here a long time that there was a bowling alley and a hotel. You could get your hair done at Loretta’s or Markie’s and stop by the café for lunch. You could get gas at the station on the corner or you could sit up on the cement wall there and horse around with your friends.

          Out at the edge of town there was an old building—I think it was a pickle-canning factory once—where kids ran wild and made a racket and had a good time. The railroad tracks ran behind it and there was a depot out there somewhere.

***

            I wrote the first part of this ten years ago, while I was working at the Macy post office for a while. I got to talk to people every day when they came and got their mail. I learned a lot about Macy and I wish I’d been there long enough to have learned more, because so many of those memories get lost in the shuffle of living and working and dying. I never finished it, and I wish I had, but maybe that's where you come in.

            Share your memories here, if you have the time or the inclination. Or if you know some “way back when” stories about any of the other little towns around here, write them up and we’ll share them here. Things like Deedsville’s free shows and what was that business in Tin Cup? The house in Gilead that used to be a hotel and why that stretch of houses over there is called Woolly Town.

            In the mean time, thanks to Bill Coahran for the conversation, and thanks to you all for visiting the Window. See you next week.