Downtown Fargo is getting a well-publicized facelift. The revamped Donaldson Hotel and Black Building, the improved streets and lighting, new businesses and much more are giving the downtown new life.
Eddie Gall knows about the downtown. He owned the Grand Barber and Beauty World there for many years.
Eddie, now of Sun City, Ariz., has been reminiscing about the many businesses once located on just one street of downtown Fargo: 1st Avenue North between Broadway and Roberts Street.
Oh, that street is still alive and well with its many businesses, offices and a church, including the Avalon Events Center, Sarajevo restaurant, the Bill Stern building with several business offices, Northwest Airlines, Madsen's Jewelry, Hair Systems Inc., Guitar Associates, the Flower Market, Vinyl Connection, Hemp and Bead, the North Dakota Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the Springs of Living Water Church in the former Cinema Grill which used to be the Lark Theater and several other businesses.
But Eddie reminds readers of the businesses which used to line that relatively short stretch of 1st Avenue North.
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If you were around Fargo about 1940, you might remember some of them:
A jewelry repair shop (exact name unknown); Broadway Pharmacy and lunch counter; Fashion Beauty Salon; Red Kalp Barber Shop; Ray Whiting Office Supply; Eagles Shoe Repair, shoe shine and dry cleaners; Frank Hugh's lunch counter, bar and popcorn; Swenson's men's clothing store; The Grand Recreation Center with a lunch counter, bar, pool tables, card tables and where you could get stock market reports; an 18-lane bowling alley was upstairs as was the Eagles Club which Eddie believes had about 3,000 members at the time; The Grand Theater; Eddie's own Grand Barber; a men's haberdashery; Toledo Scales; Canadian Assurance Co.; Service Printers and Secretary Shop; Frank McKone Cigar Store; The Improvement Building, owned by Jim Reed, which housed 97 apartments; the North Dakota Employment Office; the state offices of the Congregational Church; and the Young Men's Christian Association, with a swimming pool, track, all types of exercise equipment, room rentals and Olsen's Masseur.
That's the way that section of 1st Avenue North was 60 years ago.
Do you remember it?
Getting it right
What Andy Badar remembers, and what bugs him, are the mispronunciations he hears on TV news broadcasts.
Case in point, Andy, of Audubon, Minn., writes: A local TV news anchor, who he mercifully doesn't identify, who calls horse soldiers "Calvary."
"I didn't go too far in my education," Andy writes, "but I know the difference between Calvary and cavalry."
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This reminds Andy of a rural mail carrier who used to deliver mail to his mother in Detroit Lakes, Minn.
The woman continually delivered the wrong mail to the people on her route for six months.
Then someone discovered she couldn't read.
Details, details.
If you have an item of interest for this column, mail it to Neighbors, The Forum, Box 2020, Fargo, N.D. 58107; fax it to 241-5487; or e-mail rlind@forumcomm.com
