Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Wild West Sarsaparilla Follow-up

Last week I mentioned that there had been a big sign for Wild West Sarsaparilla (featuring the cartoon cowboy at left) down on West Erie Avenue just west of Leavitt Road on the side of a building in the 1970's. I remembered that you could see it from McDonald's. Unfortunately the building with the sign is long gone.

Fellow blogger Lisa posted a comment that the sign had been on the side of a beverage store – and wondered if the store had been an early version of Rite-Nau Beverage.

Well, I looked it up in the library tonight and she was right! Beginning in 1970, Rite-Nau Beverage was listed in Polk's Lorain City Directory at 2506 West Erie. For decades before that, it had been a private residence going back to at least the early 1940's. But by the late 1960's there seemed to be a front and back address designation with the property, with the front being the store and the rear continuing as a residence. The store later became Lakeside Beverage.

Here's the 1970 address listing of that area from the City Directory.



2 comments:

Lisa said...

Damn, you're good!

So what do I win? :) ha ha

Lisa said...

In talking with my husband (who grew up over there on Waverly Place), he says "you never really knew if somebody lived there" and vaguely remembers there being an upstairs.

I asked him if he remembered the Taco Boy I saw in that phone listing pic and said "You mean Scenes & Jeans? That's where Chapman's is now."

Thanks for the link, too!