Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– When World War II ended in 1945, and veterans began returning home from all over the world, there was a housing shortage like this country had never before experienced. In Marysville, for example, there had been no new home construction in the past four years. So all those returning Vets and their families were hard pressed to find housing. My sister’s family found…
Author: Bill Boyd
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– When I was a kid during the early 1940s, one of my favorite places in town was Bert Sawyer’s house at the corner of West Fourth and Cedar Streets. I lived only a short distance away on Fifth…
Editor’s note: The following article appeared in the Dec. 16 Journal-Tribune, however a photo meant to appear with the column was inadvertently omitted. The entire column is being run again in its entirety. ––– It was sometime in the early 1990s, and I was working on a “rush” print ad for a client of mine. The deadline for submitting it was only a couple days away. I wrote the copy that afternoon, but to complete the ad I needed a photograph of an Elvis impersonator. Someone gave me the name of a man in Columbus who did Elvis impersonations at…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– It was sometime in the early 1990s, and I was working on a “rush” print ad for a client of mine. The deadline for submitting it was only a couple days away. I wrote the copy that afternoon, but to complete the ad I needed a photograph of an Elvis impersonator. Someone gave me the name of a man in Columbus who did…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– In 1933, a man named Leo “Tony” Butler opened a business at 117-119 West 5th Street. He sold light lunches, ice cream and candies. I was only one year old at the time, so I didn’t frequent the place for quite some time. But over the years, Tony turned Butlers Restaurant into one of the most popular places in town. There were two…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– I was in the Air Force during the Korean War, but the closest I ever got to Korea was Denver Colorado. I never saw a shot fired in anger. At the same time, one of my best high school friends, Bud Hoffman, was in the army, and he spent some time in Korea. When we both got out of the service, Bud had…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. With Marysville and Union County celebrating Bicentennial anniversaries in 2019 and 2020, respectively, these articles help depict what life was like in those early years. ––– I was born in 1932, in the heart of the Great Depression. Jobs were scarce, and in some places they were nonexistent. Some of my earliest memories, when I was five or six years old, are of men…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– During the late 1930s and early ‘40s when I was nine or 10 years old, I loved to go fishing with my dad. We usually went on a Sunday afternoon, but the fun for me started the night before, when we got the bait that I would use. You see, I always fished with night crawlers as bait. I walked around our yard…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– More than an artist I worked at Scotts for 24 years. During that time, I worked with a lot of talented artists and graphic designers. Some were Scotts employees, while others were ad agency people. But they all had one thing in common – they were art specialists, and they didn’t often venture into other areas. During that time, however, I worked with…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– One of my favorite classes during my junior year in high school was chemistry. It was taught by a man named Cecil Riser. The chemistry classroom was actually a suite of two adjoining rooms. One was where we had our daily classes and the other was our chemistry lab. It was full of all sorts of chemicals, as well as Bunsen burners, test…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– My grandmother, Hettie Tracy, had a wonderful sense of humor. When I was a kid, she could make me laugh whenever she wanted. I might be crying because I fell off my tricycle and skinned my knee, but in only a few minutes she would say or do something so funny I would start laughing. I think her sense of humor was a…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– I tried chewing gum for the first time when I was about five years old. My sister, Betty, gave me a stick. She told me to chew it, but not to swallow it. So what do you think was the first thing I did? You guessed it – I chewed the gum for a few minutes, and then I swallowed it. That’s the…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– I really like peaches. When I was a kid, during peach season I put them on my Wheaties every morning for breakfast. Then I often had a peach with my lunch. And for dinner we might enjoy peach pie or maybe peach cobbler for dessert. Sometime in the early 1970s, I heard about a peach orchard called Branstool, near Utica. Their peaches were…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– I went to the Ohio State fair for the first time when I was somewhere around 12 years old. I went with a cousin of mine named Tom Lockwood. A lot of Tom’s life involved horses. He was in charge of the stables at OSU, and he kept a few horses of his own on his small farm North of Worthington. At One…
Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories. ––– On cold winter evenings during the 1930s, our family often gathered in our living room where we could sit in front of our fireplace. We spent a lot of time sitting there as we played cards and board games. We also listened to the radio. There were a lot of great radio shows – Lum and Abner, Fibber McGee and Molly, Amos ‘n…