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Dan Witkowsky
Stephen Orosz, Bob Kurowsky, and Charles Tarr, when any of you mentioned Liberty Street, I remember the sycamore and horse chestnut trees that people had planted along both sides of the street years before we were born. They were beautiful trees by the time we were at WHS, especially every fall, but they played havoc by buckling those sidewalks! I also miss the smell of those burning leaves along the curbs during the fall when we walked home from the bus-to-school site.
I remember waiting for our bus across from the Liberty Tavern, but I only remember Jack Coyle, Judith Zigre (?), and Carol Harding being there. And wasn’t there a mom-and-pop grocery store diagonally across the street? Let me know who else waited at that bus site, or if I mentioned you and it was somebody else and not you!
Those who rode that bus from that stop walked home from Hopelawn one snowy night after the bus driver couldn’t get the bus up that big hill because of the snow-packed road. Everybody’s parents were really ticked off. The driver got into trouble from all the telephone calls to the school and told all of us who rode the bus that because of the complaints about the incident, there would be no more smoking in the back of the bus.
[By the way, in thinking back about that hill in Hopelawn, somebody told me that there was a ghost of a girl or young woman who haunted the woods adjacent to the clay pits (near the Turnpike) where the bus got stuck. Anybody heard that story? I can’t remember the name of the street, but if you send me the name, I might be able to at least confirm the location.]
I remember living up the hill on the left at 11 Lawrence Street which was just around the corner from you, Bob, on Liberty Street. And you, Charles, lived one block over on Cory (?) Street. When my father built that house from the ground-up, there was a wetland in back of our house and next to your house, Charles. Eventually, those were filled in and houses were also built on those sites. (Corey Street had a great hill at the other end of where we lived. I once took a simple racer that I had to the top of the hill and went down. Without brakes on the thing, I thought I could crisscross back-and-forth to maintain a slow, safe speed before I hit the fence at the bottom of the hill. Wrong! That fence kept me from crossing whatever the highway is below the hill! I gave up my any career aspirations I had for Indy racing after that!)
Do any of you remember the Alamo Tavern that burned down one night at the intersection of Crows Mill Rd. and New Brunswick Avenue? [Thanks Sharon and Georgiana (below) for the correct street names!]
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