Tonight I've been doing a little research for my proposed fifteen-volume encyclopedic work What Used To Be Where, Back In The Day (and you thought I was joking about that, didn't you?)
In the course of my studies, I just happened across a delightful web page devoted to the long-since-departed Sandy's Restaurant in Louisville. Sandy's, apparently a Scottish-themed burger joint, had a girl in a kilt and a plaid beret for their mascot and served a specialty burger called a "Big Scott". They operated one location in Paducah and three locations in Louisville. Of the Louisville stands, one was at 5009 South Third St. (pictured above in a photograph taken on October 16, 1971) another was at 1007 W. Broadway, and the other was at 1420 Poplar Level Road. The Paducah stand was at 1726 Broadway.
There's nothing like a gang of retro-obsessive hunter-gatherer archivists to restore my faith in the human condition. These people are hardcore serious about reconstructing the lost memory of Sandy's for posterity, as it should be. Here's an example from their site to illustrate their zeal:
"The 1968 Sandy's locations list shows one of these locations as a possible 1967 opening. The 1973 list shows Poplar Level Road as Sandy's #317 and 3rd Street as #318 which points to a 1973 opening. Perhaps these locations were rebuilt as the new mini or maxi Sandy's restaurants as some locations were switching to the new buildout at this time and maybe they were renumbered into the 300 range at that time.
Robby Delius shows yet another scenario by providing both the 1965 and 1969 city directory listings for Louisville which shows Poplar Level and S. Third Street as being in existence in 1965 as well as 1969!"
We need more people like this in America.
And it gets better. It turns out that this lovingly detailed paean to preserving memorabilia related to the Sandy's of Louisville is actually just one page among many in a greater effort to hoard photos, menus, and even signage from every Sandy's restaurant that ever existed on Earth. It could take two hours to absorb it all, and if you're as much a card-carrying member of the Society For The Preservation Of Everything as I am, then you will devote those two hours to this holy work.
But wait, there's more!
Sandy's is just the tip o' the iceberg - that link is actually just one small fraction of Captain Ernie's Showboat, a truly leviathan site that assiduously sniffs out all available effluvia regarding a whole raft of obscure and neglected stuff from our collective childhood of the Midwest - everything from Romper Room to Cactus Jim to the Davenport, Iowa Morning Farm Report!
Life is good.
2 comments:
I will be looking foward to that book. I've always drove around and wondered what used to be where. Like the Morrisy Parking Garage. Thats not only a good idea for what was but also for what is. I don't know how many times I've seen a building and knew what was exactly there and then two days later it's knoacked down and I forget what was there.
A lil project I'dike to do is Take pictures and post youtube videos of as much of louisville as I can. IT's good to know what was but it's just as best to know what is. I think this'll be my next entry on my other blog Rhapsodic Louisville on Wordpress. THink you'd like to join in, snce you've been kinda doin it already anyway.
There was at least one Sandy's in Cincinnati, on the west side of town. I remember it fondly.
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