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

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

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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.

...If You Get Upset When Someone Gives you "Incorrect Tomato Information"

...If you get upset when someone gives you
"Incorrect Tomato Information".

+++++++++++++

For those of you who don't remember (and also for those who do), the Tomato Festival was originally held in Huber Park, east of Haft, south of Main Street, and north of Livingston Avenue. The Midway sat right along the through-street that connects Haft to Main and the rides were situated all along the far north side of Huber, right next to the City Pool.

For me, though, the time I remember was September 1988 when I took my then-girlfriend Shelly to the Tomato Festival. She was from Marion, the home of the Popcorn Festival, so it should have been an easy side-trip when we headed down Retton Road and parked right by the Klein house, just a short walk from the entrance to Huber.

But it was not.

It started even before we got into my black Mustang - the first car I ever owned. I explained to her how Reynoldsburg was "The Home of the Tomato".

"Not it's not. Tomatoes were discovered in South America."

"No they weren't. There was this guy...Dr. Alexander Liviingston. You know Livingston Avenue, right? It was named for him."

"So you're saying he discovered tomatoes? Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Come off it."

So I explained how Dr. Livingston did experiments with this little inedible fruit. I even took a detour, driving from Haft to Livingston to Graham Road and showing her The Livingston House.

"A fruit? Tomatoes are vegetables."

"No they aren't," I corrected her, "they're fruits."

"Then why are they in the vegetable section?"

I sighed.

"Fruits come from trees and vegetables come from the ground, like corn and potatoes and..."

"What about grapes?" I asked.

"They're full of citrus..."

"They're still from the ground."

At this point, I should've gotten into the particulars of fruits other than taste or location at Kroger's - I could've even focused on the fact that tomatoes were sitting right next to bananas in Kroger's. I could've told her about how it was produced by a flowering plant, like all fruits.

Fortunately, these were the days before The Internets - and so we were both right.

Nowadays, she'd probably win this argument, because there's The Damned Wikipedia.

FROOM WIKIPEDIA: "...While it is botanically a fruit, it is considered a vegetable for culinary purposes..."

And, there's no mention of Reynoldsburg, Ohio or Dr. Alexander W. Livingston or the Livingston House or the Tomato Festival anywhere.

What the hell?

Well, I digress...

We finally ended up at "THE Tomato Festival"...riding tilt-a-whirls and happening by the Dunk Tank where Roger "Dodger" Anderson sat atop the throne, so I chucked a handful of softballs at the target and submerged him 4 out of 6 times. Not too shabby.

Afterwards, we went to the Tomato Tent, where it detailed the history of Tomatoes and Livingston and Reynoldsburg and Truro Township, too. There were even prize-winning tomatoes and tomato concoctions, like Tomato Juice and tomato-covered pizza and tomato pie.

All in all, it was a learning experience for this girl named Shelly, like, I'm sure, it was for many Reynoldsburgian's ex-girlfriends or ex-spouses or ex-what-evers. To be involved with someone from Reynoldsburg is, eventually, to be involved with Tomato Information.

For those of us who are from Reynoldsburg, knowing too much about tomatoes is just another thing that makes us us.