..If.You Can Use Gallenkamp and Weilbacher in a Sentence.

...If youcan use 'Gallenkamp'
and 'Weilbacher' in a sentence.

+++++++++++++ 

For those of you who don't remember (and also for those who do), there was a time when Easton and Polaris did not exist. There was a time before the now non-existent City Center and even the "Big Green E" of Eastland Mall.

In the early 1970s. Reynoldsburgians shopped at a place called "The Reynoldsburg Center" - a small strip mall located on Main Street and nestled between Briarcliff Road and Aida Drive. It included two competing grocery stores - The big Blue K of Kroger on one end and the big grey elephant of Super Duper on the other. A row of bodega-style stores stretched between the two.

Super Duper (based out of New York in during the WWII era) was the old run-of-the-mill grocery store, with rickety old shopping carts and dirty aisles filled with "Food Club" and "A&P" canned foods. Meanwhile, Kroger was the young new upstart, straight from Columbus, so Super Duper never had a chance.

Meanwhile, a housewife could always rely on Gallenkamp for the latest styles of women's shoes - a handful shown in the small display window or on the tiny tables inside the cramped store. If you did buy a pair, they came in pale yellow boxes with the familiar Gallenkamp logo - complete with the G featuring the upside-down beige boot.

Weilbachers never changed from the day it opened to the day it closed - Mr. and Mrs. Weilbacher took turns managing the store while a teenaged cashier worked in the front. Weilbacher's was written in fancy white script on a brown (or maybe black) background - next to a silhouette of a horse and buggy next to it.

There were other stores along that strip mall, too. The Reynoldsburg Library sat in a small yellow brick building which eventually became the Urgent Care and then something else after that. The gas station that sits at the northwest corner of Aida and Main was always there - but likely owned by different oil companies through the years. The Burger King that sits at the northeast corner of Main and Briarcliff was once a Don's Drive-In, complete with "car-hops", a "Soda Fountain" and a large neon marquee with the large DON'S in black and white - just like any of the signs originating in the 50s and 60s.

Don's and the old Library are stories for another place and another time, because they're both easy to spell and pronounce, unlike Gallenkamp or Weilbacher, two places any Reynoldsburgian from my generation and the ones before it could not forget, even if the names and faces and buildings have changed.