Katja, Mike, and Duffy on Dayton St. in downtown Yellow Springs
Dear George,
Katja and I
and our sheepdogs Mike and Duffy recently visited Yellow Springs and spent a
few hours in the downtown business district. We graduated from Antioch
College in 1960, and when it came time to leave we were broken-hearted.
We loved Yellow Springs and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. A small town of about 3600, Yellow
Springs is unique in the region – full of writers, artists, and intellectuals,
many of whom are Antioch alumni. According to the Yellow Springs’s
website, Budget Travel named the community one of “America’s Coolest Small
Towns,” and I’d have to agree. The
downtown area contains over 75 shops, galleries, restaurants, and pubs, and,
even on our weekday afternoon visit, there were lots of visitors wandering
about. We discovered when we moved
to Ann Arbor after graduation, much to our amazement, that there are other
great places to live. However, a piece of our hearts will always remain
in Yellow Springs. Here are some of the sights from our visit.
Love,
Dave
Xenia Avenue
Xenia Avenue
(Highway 68) is Yellow Springs’ main thoroughfare and the location of its
only traffic light. The town’s two-block business district
is a quarter-mile north of the Antioch campus. Springfield, Ohio, is 9 miles to the north on Highway 68;
Xenia, 9 miles to the south.
Ye Olde Trail Tavern
This is the
first bar where I ever purchased a bottle of beer. I hadn’t drunk alcohol
at all during my high school years, so discovering beer was a thrilling (and
questionable) part of my first year in college. Ye Olde Trail Tavern
served good pizza too. Most beer today is 6% alcohol, but young Ohioans
back then could purchase diluted 3.2% beer when they turned 18. You just had
to drink more. Legendary folk
singer Pete Seeger gave a concert on campus during our freshman year, and a
select group of students joined him afterward on the second floor of Ye Olde
Trail Tavern for a private performance and sing-along. I didn’t hear
about it until later, but Katja, already a member of the campus inner circle,
was there.
The Little Art Theater
I probably
owe my married life to the Little Art Theater because that was most of Katja’s
and my Friday night dates occurred. We saw everything that Ingmar Bergman
produced, as well as the latest films by Fellini, Truffaut, Bertolucci,
Cocteau, and many others. Nowadays we still do Friday nights out at the
movies, and we were pleased to see that the Little Art Theater is
thriving.
Town Drugs
The drugstore
was one of the business establishments in downtown Yellow Springs that we
patronized regularly. I remember it most vividly with respect to the day
of our wedding. It was a hot August day, and I found myself sweating
uncontrollably. I walked down to the drugstore, told the pharmacist that
I couldn’t stop sweating because I was getting married in the afternoon, and
asked if he sold pills which would help.
I was disappointed when he explained that weren’t any such pills.
A few days later, I went to the drugstore to make my first condom purchase as a
new husband. I broke out again with uncontrollable sweating.
Presbyterian Church
The
Presbyterian Church offered a special reception for new Antioch students at the
beginning of our freshman year, and one of my hallmates, George M., cajoled me
as a fellow Presbyterian to attend. We went and sampled light
refreshments before the service, but that was the end of our formal religious
life as college students.
Laundry
Now an art
gallery, this building was the town laundry back in our day. For unknown
reasons, I remember bringing laundry there all the time with Katja, though she
claims that she was never there. Maybe Katja doesn’t remember having
laundry done because it was unmemorable and/or anti-feminist. Or maybe my
overactive imagination is simply fabricating memories.
Art Gallery
Yellow
Springs now has a lot more shops and galleries than it did in our day. Among other stops, Katja checked out
the Village Artisans Gallery while the sheepdogs and I took in the passing
scene out on the street.
Yellow Springs Pottery
Katja always
shops at the Yellow Springs Pottery and brings home a souvenir of our
visit.
The Smoking Octopus and Aleto’s Café
Yellow
Springs is a dog-friendly town, and the pups joined us for dinner on the patio
at Aleto’s Café (on the right side of the structure). This used to be the Wings Café, Yellow Springs’ most popular
dining establishment, but they moved up the street.
Tom’s IGA
Because we
usually ate at the college cafeteria, we didn’t patronize the IGA store a
lot. I went there mainly to buy
cartons of Marlboros or Kents ($1.99 per carton).
Dayton St. business district
Today this
block is the home of shops and cafes catering to tourists and visitors.
In the 1950’s, though, it was the site of the town’s black business
district. In one of the first organized civil rights protests in the
nation, Antioch students boycotted the segregated, all-white barber shop on
Xenia Avenue in Yellow Springs. Many of the male students, including
myself, patronized the black barbershop in one of the storefronts on this
strip.
Cone Corner Dairy Bar
Believe it or
not, a soft-serve establishment was in operation at this site fifty-five years
ago. It wasn’t called the Cone Corner then -- perhaps something like the
Creamy Whip or the Dairy King. In any case, we were regular
patrons. My parents had bought me a 1950 Buick which I brought to
campus. Having grown up in
Philadelphia, Katja had never learned to drive, so I set about teaching her
how. That was a harrowing experience which usually wound up with us
yelling at one another. Finally I simply gave up and turned the keys over
to her. Katja would drive five blocks by herself down High Street from my
apartment to the Creamy Whip, purchase a softserve cone, and then make a U-turn
and drive back. Self-teaching turned out to be the best method of
learning to drive, and it was tasty as well. On our recent trip I told the teenage clerk that we’d bought
softserve cones there 55 years ago, and she was impressed.
Ha Ha Pizza
Now a pizza
joint, this was the 68 Drive-In in the 1950s. I and my friends kept
late-night hours, and going to the 68 Drive-In around midnight was a frequent
ritual. One time my friend John N. and I brought glasses of bourbon into
the restaurant. The manager called the police who confiscated our drinks
and nearly confiscated us as well.
Com’s Tavern
Our favorite
hangout in Yellow Springs was Com’s Tavern, located at the intersection of W.
Davis and High Streets. Com and his wife Goldie had an upper bar room
(maroon in the photo) which catered mainly to local black customers, while the
lower room (at the right, now stucco) served the mostly white Antioch
students. Goldie was a fount of wisdom and a surrogate mother for Katja
and I and many of the other regulars who came in to order her pizza.
Our apartment
For a couple of
years I rented a tiny two-room apartment across the street from Com’s.
There was no heat except for the gas oven whose door I kept open during the
winter, and you had to leave the apartment and walk around to the front of the
building to visit a bathroom. I paid $10 a month in rent which the
landlady regarded as a more than fair price. Katja and I lived in Yellow
Springs for only one week after our wedding and before departing to Ann Arbor,
but this was our first home as a married couple.
Duffy and Mike in downtown Yellow
Springs
Our hippy
sheepdogs concluded that Yellow Springs is definitely their kind of town.
Our years in Yellow
Springs shaped all the rest of our lives – our values, aspirations, political
views, conceptions of ourselves, career choices, hobbies, and life styles. I’m grateful to my parents for sending
me there and to our many Antioch friends who provided countless life-changing
experiences.
Love,
Dave
