RIPLEY in REVIEW

I was talking with some family members, reminiscing about Ripley, and we recalled there used to be something like five or six grocery stores in town, as well as four gas stations, a dress shop, hardware store and photography studio, among other thriving businesses. That got me to wondering about Ripley of the past, so I visited the Ripley Library and asked if there were any copies of the old newspaper, The Ripley Review. Jackpot! There are years, whole decades, of Ripley Reviews stored in boxes and boxes, forgotten and crumbling. So with the gracious permission of librarian Nancy McIntosh, I carefully took a look at some of the 1940s editions.
I was specifically looking for an April copy of the news back then and found an April 2, 1942 issue. In it were advertisements for the following grocery/food stores: Red & White Store, owned by Curley Grover; C. A. Patterson; H. D. MacNee; and Ross D. Wolf. Now this was back in 1942. In the mid 1950s, when I was a young child, I remember another store called Johnson & Day, located out West Main Street, past the Hamilton estate. We lived on North State Street at the time, opposite Ross Street, and when I was four years old (although my mother swears she can’t believe she’d do this) Mom would send up uptown, with a note in my hand, to get a few things from the store. I’d walk in and the owners would greet me and ask what I wanted. I would ask for some “Shep BoyRDee please,” they’d put the groceries on our tab, and I’d walk back home. Parents wouldn’t dream of letting their young children walk that far to a store these days. It was a simpler time.
Ripley had The Hat Shop, run by Mrs. Greeley, and Parlor Millinery & Gift Shop, run by Viola Jones as well. I have vague memories of one of those stores being located in a green house next to what was Rice’s Hardware. And I was amazed to see an ad in the paper for the Ripley Telephone Company. I hadn’t realized we once had our own phone company, but I chuckled as I saw, placed at the bottom of some ads, “phone 88” or “phone 7.” The price of goods was unbelievable of course.
There are lists of Ripley’s men being called for military service, and small snippets about the war, like “Ripley may have another scrap iron day sometime this month once the snow allows farmers to gather up their scrap iron lying about. Uncle Sam needs it because he sold too much of it to Japan before we got into the war” and “A 40 inch rainfall in New Guinea retarded and drove back the Japanese advance and rendered the terrain unusable for two months, which may help the Allied cause some.” My favorite part of perusing that old paper, however, was the personal articles. “Shower for Bride to Be – A miscellaneous bridal shower was given by Mrs. Winston O’Dell at her home at East Ripley in honor of Miss Beatrice Post whose marriage to Richard O’Dell will take place in the near future.” It’s interesting to note that Winston O’Dell’s name was on the list of men to be called up in May or June of that summer. I had the pleasure of meeting Bea O’Dell when I first moved back to Ripley, and it made the article in the 1942 paper all that more meaningful.
I’m hoping to research more of the treasure trove of information those old Ripley Reviews hold. Perhaps I’ll make bits and pieces of the old newspaper articles a regular part of my column. Let me know what you think.