My Entire Childhood (Except for Dave’s Bar) Has Disappeared
I stole this picture from flickr user oldbrushes. I asked permission, but I haven’t heard back. If she wants me to take it down, I will, so enjoy it while you can.
When I was just a wee little girl, waiting for the school bus in the wee hours of the crispy fall mornings, far off in the distance I could hear the sound of Farmer Peet’s wee little pigs squealing at the slaughterhouse. At least, that’s what my brother and sister told me I was listening to. It was definitely the sound of pigs squealing, but I don’t know if they were actually being slaughtered at that moment in time.
On a related note, pork is my favorite meat.
The pigs were at the Peet Packing Company, which is no longer around thanks, in part, to Denny McLain and his thieving, but I very rarely eat pork without remembering that sound. It’s oddly soothing, like jingle bells at Christmas. If you lived in Chesaning and had a job that wasn’t on the family farm or in one of the family-owned shops and restaurants back then, it’s very likely that you worked for Farmer Peet’s. Or GM. Or maybe you were a teacher, I don’t know. My dad worked at the local phone company and my mom worked at one of the family-owned shops. Bryan’s dad worked at GM and his mom worked at the same shop that my mom did, but lots of my friends’ parents worked at Peet’s. Anyway, it was a huge bummer when they closed.
Chesaning was lovely when I was young, and sometimes I think I would kill a person in order to have a blueberry muffin from the Heritage House. Why were they so yummy, you guys? Because I was white trash, I never ate them at the Heritage House. I ate them at the Heritage House’s basement bar, The Rathskellar, or at the Carriage Shoppe, which was an antique shop behind the Heritage House.
From the time I was 12-15, we didn’t have a phone, which put my popularity at risk, so instead of reading books and embracing my solitude, I walked to the nearest payphone to be in the loop with my friends. That phone was at a “mini mall” called Market Street Square, which was next to the Heritage House/Rathskellar/Carriage Shoppe lot. On the way to the phone, I would stop at the Carriage Shoppe and buy one of those magic muffins for 50 cents! I would have paid a whole dollar. Besides the great payphone, Market Street Square had a bunch of cute shops and a yummy deli, none of which are there anymore. Well, it looks like Market Street Square is still there, but now it’s a church and Christian bookstore, with plans for a deli and resale shop to be added later. But it’s not the mini mall from my childhood. And I think my sister told me that the local phone company took the payphone out of there.
The pigs, payphone, and muffins from my childhood might be gone, but the dominant sounds from my teenhood aren’t. By the time I was a teenager, my parents were divorced and my mom and I lived in an apartment up above a row of shops and bars in downtown Chesaning. Sometimes on summer nights, we would wake up to the sound of drunk people leaving Dave’s Bar and Farmer’s Inn after last call. Drunk people are funny. One time we saw one get hit by a car. He wasn’t hurt, so it was extra funny. He just kind of bounced off the car and then yelled at it as it drove away. We saw a couple of fist fights, but mostly we just eavesdropped on drunken, “I love you soooooo much!” conversations. Farmer’s Inn isn’t there anymore, but Dave’s still is. Dave’s will never die. Never!
During the daytime, there were (usually) no drunks for entertainment, so I had to pass the time by watching the security camera feed from one of the shops underneath our apartment. Do I have to tell you that this shop is no longer there? I didn’t think so. The shop had a camera in the make-up aisle and our tv would pick up the feed. I didn’t have cable so my friends and I would naturally watch the security camera channel sometimes. Or a lot. One lucky, lucky day I saw a girl who was a year ahead of me in school browsing the Bonne Bell display. I was just about to turn it off when I saw her turn her head to the left and right to make sure no one was watching her. That piqued my interest. I thought I was totally going to see her steal a Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smacker or something, but she surprised me by picking her nose and then her butt in quick succession. It. Was. Awesome. Way better than cable. 
Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a phone by then so I had to run to the nearest payphone to call all of my friends and tell them. If that happened today, I totally would have tweeted it. Well, I probably would have missed it because I would have been watching actual tv shows instead of security cameras. Even white trash kids get to have cable and high-speed internet these days. Not like when I was young and only the rich kids had it.
Maybe all of the landmarks from my childhood are gone, but I still have my memories. And Dave’s bar. When one or both of those go under, then it will be like I was never even born.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
How hilarous, Abby…what a way to bring back those awful, confidence-lacking years of middle school…I remember when it was ‘it’ to steal Wet ‘N Wild pink, shiny lip gloss from “name vanished from memory”…
And I never considered you white trash, at all. And I NEVER got one of those blueberry muffins…dang.
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June 10th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I totally forgot about Farmer Peets piggy squeals. Good times. Thanks for the warm fuzzies..
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June 10th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Abby… you are so nice…you could have totally outted that picker!
I was just home for a couple of days and did the old ‘cruise’ through town. It was awfully sad. The town is dying… Peets, Delphi, GM, Old Home Shoppes.. the jobs and the draws are no more.
Parshalburg Bridge is destroyed… I don’t know if you knew, but it was left in the river and another ice-heavy flood came through and destroyed the steel structure. The damn finally has given way (partly) and the river is down about 5 feet… teh Showboat is sitting on mud and even if the boat were staged at Showboat Park, the water is too shallow for the boat to go around the bend.
I remember Showboat weeks, parked along the guardrail down from Weigolds watching the boat go around.
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June 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
That was a wonderfull walk down memory lane. I forgot about the security camera deal. I thought that was the coolest thing. I dont remember the picker! You have to out her to me. Send an Email. LOL We lived right down from general meats that was on the corner of Stuart and 57 so I remember the piggy sounds! Do you remember that place. I use to steal a quarter from my dads dresser and ride my bike and get a glass bottle of pop out the vending machine. Now its just a grass lot.
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June 10th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
@ Katie… General Meats! I have forgotten them too. I remember my folks would buy like 1/4 or 1/2 cows there. We had a freezer in the garage with all kinds of brown wrapped meat… “ground beef”, “sirloin”, “roast”, etc…
@ Abby and all: Do you remember a green block building on Sharon just north of Gary Road and south of the river? Grandma Aldrich used to work there; it was a meat packer. As long as Grandma and Grandpa lived in their house up the road, every time we went over, Grandma had these big black markers (for labeling the meat) and plenty of white meat packing paper. I don’t remember her NOT having them…
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June 10th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Damn, now I miss my Grandma and Grandpa. It is hard when you grow up and realize that all of these people who know everything and can do anything actually are just flawed people, like all of us. I knew my Grandpa and all of his faults and all of his goodness and miss him. I wish I could hear just one more time about how he and his buddies found Amelia Earhardt’s crash site (on Hawaii I think) or some other story I have heard 100X… 101 wouldn’t be bad.
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June 10th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
@ Brandy: I beleive it was called “Little giant dicount stare” Not positive!
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June 11th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Dave’s Bar will never die, because even if it gets hit by a car, it is so drunk that it will just roll away and giggle.
Pork is my favorite food too. Mmmmmmmm bacon. I could totally be a vegetarian if bacon was a vegetable. And ham. Yes, ham, too, for sure. And spare ribs.
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June 14th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Holy stroll through memory lane, Batman! I haven’t been to Chesaning in ages, but the last time I did, it was sad. I drove by my old house on Gasper Road and cried… it looked so different! How dare people cut down trees and paint MY porch! Argh! And downtown just looked… down.
I remember Little Giant. And Ben Franklin! I remember watching Betty cut fabric, and when I was little, I wanted to grow up and snip and tear fabric like Betty did…
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June 15th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
@ Kristen.. I had forgotten about fabric at the Ben Franklin. That cutting table was kinda cool. I remember when Frank’s was still in the building next door to the Ben Franklin store. (then it was part of Sarah’s Attic for a bit).
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June 26th, 2009 at 11:07 am
I TOTALLY remember all of those things you guys have brought up. Little Giant, Ben Franklin, Farmer Peets (my Grandpa worked there), Franks (old location), even calling Rachael’s Dad at Daves Bar. I was a townie when I was very little so I remember going to McDonald Dairy (where Tuscarora Plastics was in recent years…I think it is just empty now) and we would knock on the door (like 6 neighbor kids, Donny Schlucbier, April Lawrence, Michelle Kempenin (sp?) and I can’t remember the others names) and they would give us choc. milk containers like the ones you get at school. We thought we were the schiz. I never got choc milk at home. Do you guys remember “The Point Party Store”? It was the turn around point of the cruise. I think it is a coffee shop or empty now too. I used to love the country store in the mini-mall. The smell was delicious.
Abby I totally remember singing and dancing to MJ at your house. I used to ride my bike down to your grey house on Corunna Rd and it was Michael Jackson fest. I never thought you were white trash….maybe I was too and just didn’t know it. I so remember covering my eyes when MJ turned into the beast in Thriller and hated that voice when he says “Go away!” creepy.
Thanks everyone for the revitalization of the memories. Funny thing is I’d move back in a heartbeat if I could. I used to walk that town like crazy…no wonder I was skinny in high school…even if I never thought I was (117 pounds is a distant dream now). Even at night and never had a bit of trouble…I love my memories of Chesaning.
OMG…remember IGA? we always shopped there cuz it was cheaper than Franks (or so my mom said). I even worked in the donut area one summer in high school….that was not fun with a hangover let me tell u.
Well, geez, I could just go on forever.
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December 10th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Thanks for the great memories! You make me wish I was 12 again and that all those things were back the way they used to be. I grew up by Parshallburg Bridge and it just broke my heart the day it fell in the river.
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April 30th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
wow – I have heard of Chesaning! I grew up in Ithaca. I used to love driving through Chesaning to see the Victorian houses and the schowboat. Sad how things have changed.
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