An email going around a while back was titled “You Know You’re from Louisville if….” A few of my favorites include:

When you think “Kentucky” you don’t automatically think horse racing or fried chicken.
You know all four seasons: Almost Maybe Spring, Summer, kind of Autumn and Basketball season.
You think the rest of the world knows what Benedictine spread is.
You think the rest of the world knows what a Hot Brown is.
“Fixin’ to go” makes perfect sense.
You measure distance in minutes.
You give directions based on landmarks that no longer exist or street names that have changed, but your directions never confuse any of the other Louisvillians.

Even though (as I know I always point out) I grew up in a suburb, these ring true for me. I recently went back to my old neighborhood to see some of the sites from my childhood. All of these are a few minutes walk from my parent’s house.

This was a Convenient Food Mart. I thought the chain had gone out of business, but I looked online and there are still a few of them around.

While they kept the marquee, the theater inside is gone now. It closed many years ago when the first multiplex came to town and then had revivals as a second-run and art-house theater. Recently they gutted the whole thing and turned it into office space. (That first multiplex is gone now too.)

Almost next door to the Vogue theater was a Woolworth’s Five-and-Dime and a Taylor’s Drug store. Those were torn down and these stores built several years ago.

A little further down the street was a White Castle restaurant. It was closed years ago, but the building has remained. It’s about to be torn down finally and a bank built in its place.

Around the corner was an Ehrler’s Dairy. This location was mainly an ice cream parlor and all three of my older sisters had jobs there when they were in high school. I looked onlne to see if any of the Ehrler’s stores still exist and [I swear I didn't plan this in advance, but I wish I had] I found this headline:

CVS to begin construction soon on store at former Ehrler’s site

It’s not this store, but you gotta love the description of the site as “a building that once housed an Ehrler’s ice cream store, then a White Mountain Creamery…”. I know just where that is!

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Posted by Tim