A couple of days ago Susie and I went on a cross town trip to a used furniture store looking for a bargain. Any bargain. We are in need of tables; end tables, coffee table, bed side tables and a dining room table for our new home. We have all of those but we brought them from the barn apartment last winter and they are not really suitable for formal living, which we do a lot of when we’re not attending the WWF events.
Also, the weather is beginning to get nice so we are thinking about spending a lot of time in Mooresville this summer and we could use those tables out there.
The furniture store was on Tenth street on Indy’s east side where I began my quest to be an avant-garde, suave and debonair big city feller. It was sort of wasted trip because there was not much in the way of tables at the store.
“Come back tomorrow.” The tobacco chewing owner told me, letting fly with a big wad toward the wastebasket next to his desk. He got real close, the wad sliding slowly down the outside of the pale gray container. “We get new stock everyday.”
On our way to tenth street, I had driven by the old RCA television plant at the corner of Michigan and LaSalle street where my brother worked for a while. I had worked at RCA’s magnetic tape plant on east 30th but spent some time on LaSalle Street where RCA’s family store was located. Employees could find bargains in elctronics there and I was always on the lookout for a real steal.
That old, closed and partially abandoned RCA plant had prompted all kinds of memories so we left the furniture store and headed east towards 5130 East Michigan. The house at that address contained four apartments and in the early 1960’s, the eastern upstairs unit had been rented by Larry Strange, my brother’s classmate and friend to both of us.

The place was the scene of a couple of life altering events for me. I came to Indianpolis from Loogootee one fridav night in March of 1963. With a nervous, shaky hand and using Larry’s phone, I called Susie to talk to her alone for the first time.
A couple of weeks later, I returned to the apartment with my cousin, Tony Summers in tow. We were preparing to leave Loogootee to seek our fortune in California but in truth, I was scared to death of such an idea and saw no way that I could ever really pick up and leave Loogootee. None the less, I went along with the plans, more afraid of backing out than I was of leaving home.
My second life altering event occurred that weekend when I called Susie and asked her for a date. She accepted and we made plans to go go to the downtown Lyric theatre on Illinois street to see ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ That date was the impetus I needed to tell Tony that I didn’t want to go. All my big talk about California was just that; big talk.
“I knew you wouldn’t go.” he said “And I especially knew you wouldn’t go when you met Susie.”
“You’re right. I can’t do it.” I told him, finally facing the fact that I had never really wanted to go.
A few weeks later, Tony went to California where he remained for the next thirty or so years, becoming a world traveler and a very successful geologist who worked for San Francisco’s Golden Gate museum. He died at age fifty three, never once regretting (at least to me) his move.
I remained behind and married Susie about a year later. Two weeks after we tied the knot, Larry Strange died after a months long struggle with cancer. He had been to sick to make the ceremony.
Marriage suited me just fine. I was a pretty happy fellow but still, every once in a while, especially after a bad day at work or an argument with Susie, I would longingly look westward and wonder how different things might have been had I went with Tony.
A bar and grille called ‘McShane’s Lounge just down the street from Larry’s apartment figured prominently in my life some years later. Me and three of my co-workers at P.R. Mallory ate lunch there every day for perhaps five years. At that time, the TV show, ‘Jeopardy’ was on at noon and it became an everyday challenge to see how much more (or less) knowledge that we possessed compared to the contestants.

McShanes now, obviously abandoned.
Mcshane’s was THE place to be in Indianapolis on St. Paddys and seats were at a premium. More often than not, on that particular holiday, we went somewhere else for lunch.
McShane’s day waitress was a lady named Mary of undeterminable age. She was grey haired, bent over by osteoporosis and moved about a half a mile an hour. She looked very old to me at the time, maybe even sixty or so. Of course, I was only thirty or thereabouts at the time.
Mary was also the cook on the limited menu grill. She made chili served one of five ways and cheeseburgers with chips. Occasionally I would have the five way chili but for the most part, I had the same meal everyday; a cheesburger with lettuce, tomato and mayonaise. Mary also introduced me to sliced Jalapeno hot peppers on my sandwich. I had little exposure to hot peppers in Loogootee and I loved the tangy, fiery taste that they added to my cheeseburger. I also felt very street wise eating those peppers.
There was a problem with this, however. After perhaps a month of this diet, I began to suspect that I had rectal cancer. My hind end burned like fire and I was too modest to mention it to anyone so I suffered in silence. Eventually, I made the connection between the Jalapenos and my digestive system. I began to eat the chili more often and over time, my posterior adapted to this new way of eating and it quit hurting so much.
I took the above pictures and we left the area, driving east. Behind us, a few blocks west on New York Street, stood the house where Sylvia Likens was tortured to death by Gertrude Banazewski and a couple of teenagers. That story was front page news for weeks and sadly, today it wouldn’t bear more than a mention on the second page of the city and state section.
North of us, on East 21st street, stands the house where I lived when I first moved to Indianapolis to be nearer to Susie. A little further east, still standing, was the Skyline motel where I stayed on my very first visit to the big city and where my friend Billy lost his brand new set of dentures.
There are stories about both of those places still in the forefront of my mind and if I wasn’t so hungry, I would tell you about them. Maybe someday if you’re interested. In the meantime, I went in search of a place to eat lunch. I drove by a small building on the western edge of Irvington, a neighborhood filled with large two story frame homes that represented the best there was to have in the old days. The small building used to house Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips where I used to stop on the way home and get a couple of orders of fish for me and Susie.
Eat Arthur’s fish and you would throw rocks at Long John Silver. It was the best I ever had. Of course, it was a different day and the whole idea of cooking fish and french fries and then calling it fish and chips was a novelty to me.
I knew that Mr Treacher had pulled up stakes and left town years ago but I was hoping against hope that he’d changed his mind. Nope. Today, the building houses a chinese carryout called Cheerful something or other. It didn’t look at all appetizing.
We decided to just go home and eat.