Ice Cream and Soft Drink Parlor

Imagine my surprise to discover that in February 1921 there was an ice cream and soft drink parlor in Ainsworth!


(Click on image to enlarge)

I suspect this parlor occupied the former saloon building, rented from the Wollenbergs.

Harry Sherman is a mystery. There was someone by that name who grew up on a farm in Ross Township, but he apparently spent the early 1920s living and working in Gary. Another possibility would be some Chicago relative of the Wollenbergs — I find a 1911 reference to the Wollenberg boys visiting an aunt in Chicago, "Mrs. Sherman" … perhaps she had a son named Harry who wanted to try running a business in Uncle Bill's defunct saloon. Makes sense, doesn't it? — even it's if all in my imagination.

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There are too many Fasels around for me to feel sure that the Frank Fasel who is mentioned on the page above is the same one who once faced a "serious charge" by Christ Ols, or who was little Mable's uncle, or even the Frank Fasel who turns up in the 1920 census running a dairy farm on his own land in Ross Township — why would he leave his own farm to move to the "old Bodamer farm"? If he did, it was an ill-fated move; in January 1921, while the Fasel family was away from home, the barn caught fire and burned down, taking with it other outbuildings, as well as some pigs and chickens, and hay and grain.

Where exactly was said "old Bodamer farm," anyway? The 1921 Union Township plat map shows several Bodamer parcels along the Lincoln Highway.

You know what? I hope Frank goes and lives happily ever after east of Chesterton so I don't have to worry about him anymore.




Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Ainsworth." Hobart News 17 Aug. 1911.
♦ Ancestry.com. Polk's Gary (Indiana) City Directory 1922. R.L. Polk & Co. (1922).
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 13 Jan. 1921; 24 Feb. 1921.