Ok it’s been a couple of days since I said I would get some pics of the site, I had no idea I was about to embark on this journey.
What happened was that Dylan took a rather profound and naked picture of my corner store. Not now, but 50 years ago. I grew up on this street in the days when the “Beaver” and I matured together, along with David Foster, Eddy Eng, Pam Bentley, Pat, Jimmy, Doug, Ian and a host of other Victoria originals.
In our day it was “Phil’s Confectionary” that inhabited the north corner of this property. Phil would sell you two cigarettes out of a pack for a nickel. A pack of smokes then would cost 38 cents. Phil would pick up an extra 12 cents on a pack by selling the “deuces”. Yes, you could also buy a quart of milk and a loaf of bread, but we preferred a bottle of Orange Crush for 8 cents if we drank it in the store and left the 2 cent bottle with Phil.
Life was grand, 10 years old, 2 smokes and a bottle of pop on the way home from Cloverdale School for 13 cents.
Alright, picture me up on the scaffold the following morning (the scaffold must have been erected in the previous afternoon after Dylan took his picture), and some young pup (25 at most) says from the ground.
“Excuse me sir you need to come down from there!!!” (that's me in the shadow)
“Why?” I said.
“You could hurt yourself” he replied.
“Don’t be hideous, can’t you see I’m working with my camera up here?”
He goes and gets his boss, who climbs up the scaffold, looks me in the eye and says “What the hell are you doing”
I said “What do you think I’m doing? I’m taking pictures of this sign that you exposed yesterday……do you have any idea what you have here?”
We may not get to the answer about the phone number, and we may not get to the real answer of which shoe repair store painted the sign, because the history of this site is as varied as life itself.
My quest to trace the history of this building will take a while, I will share details with you as I piece the puzzle together. I swung by the Library in the afternoon and checked out the old “directories”.
I will bait you with a few pics….then you will need to return for more.
Who said Vibrant Victoria isn't exciting?
I will add to this tomorrow. Then it will start to come together.