Bad Times at the Black Cat: Dead Man Renting

On the morning of November 10, 1961, Bill Reed of the Black Cat motel discovered that one of his guests had checked out of this world.


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The deputy coroner, Dr. Warren H. Pike, Jr., had grown up in the Harper-Carlson-Grabowski-Pike house. His father was Warren Pike, Sr. At some point, after I've learned to tell them apart, I shall have to write about them more. But not today, because I have just finished up 2.5 weeks of foster puppies with diarrhea, and I am tired.


The Black Cat also features in the story in the next column about a truck driver taking his license plate and leaving the truck (if I understand it correctly) after having lost some of his wheels.

Bad Times at the Black Cat: Drunk and Disorderly

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Hobart Gazette, 21 July 1955.

Somebody creating a disturbance at the Black Cat — so, what else is new?


… What else is new, you ask? — Jack Hendrix is now performing at the Country Lounge.


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Hobart Gazette, 2 June 1955.

In the Gazette's "Hobart Happenings" column of September 8, 1955, we come across this item: "Mrs. Ida M. Hendrix, mother of Jack Hendrix, will leave next week for Key West, Florida, to make her home with her son."


I have only just recently learned that, as early as the mid-1940s, Key West was becoming known in gay subculture as a something of a sanctuary. I wonder what sort of impression Key West made on Ida Hendrix?

Bad Times at the Black Cat: Domestic Edition

"The triumph of hope over experience" turns into "fool me twice …"


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Hobart Gazette, 20 Jan. 1955.

The 1950 Census shows Ronald Reed managing the Black Cat, along with his brother William (and William's wife, Darrielyn).

I've found the October 1953 record of Ronald and Laura's re-marriage in Lake County, Indiana. I can't find the record of their original marriage. I'm guessing that happened in Pennsylvania sometime between (probably) 1935 and 1940, when they show up married in the census, living in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

The owners of the Black Cat, Paul and Elva Allen, are recorded the 1950 census on the page before the Reed brothers. Elva was the mother of Ronald and William. Paul was their stepfather. Apparently Elva and their father, William, had been divorced, since William lived until 1959.

Now I'm wondering about Betty Reed, described in the 1953 article as the "wife of the owner." I can't find any Betty in the 1950 census. Did the article just get her name wrong?


I don't actually know if the divorce went through for Ronald and Laura. If she got her $30,000 in alimony, she did pretty well; that's about $341,000 in 2023 dollars (the $200,000 gross income of the Black Cat would be over $2,000,000 today). The next I hear about Ronald is a newspaper item in 1957 saying that he was marrying Lorraine Brady.[1] But I can't figure out what happened to Laura.

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In happier news, Jack Hendrix is back!


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Hobart Gazette

He was "back" from Key West, Florida, where he lived most of the time, I believe. A "Hobart Happenings" item from the Gazette of March 3, 1955, said:

Jack Hendrix will leave Tuesday for Florida, where he is the featured organist in the Bamboo Room at Key West. He has been visiting friends and relatives in this area for the past two months.

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[1] "News From the Court House," The Brook Reporter (Brook, Ind.), 3 Jan. 1957.

Bad Times at the Black Cat: Crime Report

Thanks to an outbreak of crime in 1953, we learn that in addition to the restaurant/motel, there was a Black Cat Garage.

This first is from the Hobart Gazette of January 8, 1953.


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Betty Reed was working at midnight — when did she get to sleep? And then this jerk hits her! His fine was about $177 in today's money.


I didn't keep track of the exact dates for these next two Gazette articles, but they were from the spring or summer of 1953.

Ninth and Lincoln, Fifth and Lake

The "Local Drifts" in the Hobart Gazette of April 7, 1922, reported on a child's birthday party in the Briney house, on the northwest corner of Ninth and Lincoln, which is for sale these days.


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Hobart Gazette 7 Apr. 1922

Earl Blachly, who recently sold his farm, is opening an auto repair shop at Fifth and Lake, which sounds like the old German Methodist Church building. The 1922 Sanborn map confirms that the building was being used then for auto repair.


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Image courtesy of the Sanborn Company and Indiana University.

According to Hobart's Historic Buildings by Elin Christianson, the building had ceased to be a church in 1914 and was bought first by the town of Hobart, and then (in 1916) by L.E. Barnes, who leased it out to a laundry business. "The old church was used for commercial purposes for many years" — now we know another of those purposes.

Also, over in the "All kinds of Wants" column, someone is selling Rhode Island Red eggs, and that someone has Lovisa Nelson's phone number.

Weekend Wreckage Report

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Hobart News 25 Aug. 1921.

The first accident occurred at the intersection of present-day E. 73rd Ave. and Grand Blvd./S.R. 51. That spot may have been particularly dangerous, with Lincoln Highway tourists adding to the traffic, and heaven knows if there was even a stop sign at the intersection.

William Fisher (husband of Jennie Hurlburt) was innocently getting the honey from Joe's bees when an anonymous driver struck his car on Old Ridge Road.

The column to the left of the "Week-End Accidents" relates the adventures of the local young men in the National Guard. I believe the John Fisher mentioned in that story was William's nephew.

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In other auto-related news, I now learn of yet another named highway that (like the Yellowstone Trail) I'd never heard of before; but the "Liberty Highway" is so obscure that I have not been able yet to determine whether it, too, was a cross-country route, or ran only between Kokomo and Chicago.


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Hobart Gazette 26 Aug. 1921.

In addition to a reminder of the hard times the nation was experiencing, the "Local Drifts" column notes the purchase by Joseph Wegesin of the Thomas Roper farm "south of Deepriver." The only farm I can find matching that description shows up in the 1891 Plat Book in the northeast corner of Winfield Township:


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Image from the 1939 Plat Book.

Blog-wise, I've ignored the Wegesin family up until now. In my newspaper notes, I've recorded only two mentions.* One was in 1911, when Mrs. Conrad Wegesin (Joseph's mother) came down from Chicago to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. for Mrs. Fasel's 54th birthday party. The second was in May 1920, when Joseph's oldest daughter, Gladys, attended a birthday party for Lillie Fasel, who was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fasel, Sr. (I wonder if the Wegesins had a family connection to the Fasels?)

From a brief look at the official records, I gather that sometime after Joseph's birth in Ohio in 1881, his parents, Conrad and Mary, moved the family to Chicago, where 1900 census found them. About a year later, Joseph married Martha Semmer, who also went by the name Magdalen in some censuses. By 1910 Joseph and Martha-Magdalen had moved to Hobart. Ten years later, they had seven children of their own, plus a niece and a nephew living with them.

I'm not sure I'm going to have to pay much more attention to this family, as it appears that by 1930 they had moved to Muncie, Indiana.

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*There may have been more, but I did not record them.


Additional Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ Cook County, Illinois, Marriages Index.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 3 Feb. 1911.
♦ "Young Lady Surprised." Hobart Gazette 28 May 1920.

Ford v. Cement Truck

Apparently, if you were bored in Hobart, you could go hang around the Nickel Plate Garage and wait for something to happen. Just one day after the barber-v.-barber grudge match, a cement truck showed what it could do to a Ford car out in front of the Nickel Plate Garage. The Ford belonged to our friend Roland Dolphus Sizelove.


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"Local and Personal," Hobart News 11 Aug. 1921.

In news of other acquaintances — yet another relative for the mysterious Mary Kipp. "Mrs. Wm. Halsted" may have been W.O.'s widow, Barbara; that was how the Gazette of August 12 identified a woman beginning a new house on Garfield Street, though there could have been two such women.

And Vera Quinlan had a job in Gary. From the next day's Gazette, we learn that her brother, Lester, who was then about 16 or 17, had joined the National Guard:


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"Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette 12 Aug. 1921.

… and yes, Mrs. Gottfried Mayer was Oscar's sister-in-law.