Editor’s note: On Dec. 11, 1816, Indiana became the 19th state in the Union. On Jan. 28, 1836, Porter County was created. A year later, on Jan. 18, Lake County became independent. As the state celebrates its bicentennial, the Post-Tribune will be taking a regular look back at the history of Northwest Indiana.
“My father was a ragman. We had a horse and wagon and my father would go down the alley and call ‘rags! old iron!’ That’s how they went, down the alley, looking for anything people wanted to get rid of,” said Ida Barton Friedman, 101, sharing stories of growing up in Hammond.
“They took it all to the junk yard. We had a barn where we kept the horse. Later, my dad peddled fruit down the streets. There was a market on Plummer Street and farmers would bring in their bushels,” she said.
Many of those farmers in the early 1900s came from the Ridge communities of Munster and Highland where large tracts had not yet given way to suburban neighborhoods and shopping centers.
The world has changed substantially since Friedman was born in her parents’ home in the 5400 block of Oakley Avenue in Hammond. She lived there until 1968, when she moved to Munster, she said.
Today, her family and friends call her Idie and marvel at her longevity. She lives with her daughter, Sharon Bartel, and has a son, Howard, and another daughter, Marilyn. She has four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Friedman’s parents, Rose and Hyman Barton, immigrated to the United States from Minsk, Russia, in about 1910 with her brother, 1-year-old Raymond. Like many who came to Hammond then, they learned to speak English by attending classes at Hammond Technical Vocational High School.
Over time, they turned from peddling to building an open-air grocery business at 5222 Calumet Ave., at the corner of Truman Street and Calumet Avenue. The store was remodeled a couple of times over the years and eventually became a grocery with an adjacent Rexall drug store.
When Friedman was born in 1915, middleweight fighter Jimmy Clabby was the “Pride of Hammond,” according to the Feb. 7, 1915, baiduhai, and audiences awaited release of the movie epic, “Birth of a Nation.”
The Bartons, like many Hammond families, spent what little leisure time they had visiting with relatives or going on picnics at Harrison Park.
“The men would play pinochle and the women would chase after the kids. We would have gunny sack races,” Friedman said.
She walked to Lafayette Elementary School and remembers the school’s fire escape was a slide.
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“We never had a gymnasium. We had gym outside when the weather was good,” she said. She also remembers the street car that traveled down Sibley Street to downtown Hammond.
“We took five streetcars to visit my aunt on the west side of Chicago until my father had a car,” she said. But the new mode of travel was not perfect. “It took us four hours by car because the kids would get carsick.”
She saw movies at Hammond theaters.
“The State Theatre had live theater,” Friedman said, and in 1927, when she was about 12, the theater sponsored a talent show for kids. “They had tryouts at the State Theatre and I remember we did a tumble act with clowns. The kids came from all over for the talent show.”
Not long after, on Nov. 8, 1927, the $1.7 million State Theater was virtually destroyed by a bomb blast that did more than $1 million in damage, according to Tribune coverage of the investigation April 7, 1928.
Friedman and other family members helped out at the Barton Bros. Fruit Mart.
In the early days, “I schlepped watermelons and bushels of apples,” she said. “We sold Christmas trees. I worked out in the open air.”
She graduated from Hammond Tech in 1934 and in 1939 married Irving Friedman.
Her niece, Barbara Barton, saved family photos of her father, Ray, and her “Zayde” (grandfather) Hyman working at the fruit mart. She has photos of her father supervising the unloading of a truck overflowing with Christmas tree. She said she remembers when the first building was demolished and the new store was built.
“Barton’s was the first 24-hour store in the area,” Barton said. “They raffled off a car for the grand opening of the store. Employees from the steel mills would stop at the store on Friday nights to cash their checks and pick up their groceries.”
Friedman has been paying attention to the presidential campaigns and tries to keep up with what’s happening in the news. When asked about the first election she voted in, she said it is hard to remember, but knows the first one for which she was eligible to vote was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was seeking a second term.
“I remember a president once came to town — maybe Coolidge?” she guessed.
She was correct. President Calvin Coolidge came to Highland to speak at the dedication of Wicker Park on Flag Day on June 14, 1927.
Barton said her grandfather continued working at the family store well into his 80s. He died in 1966, six years after his wife, Rose. The business closed when the Calumet Avenue overpass was constructed in the 1960s.
Nancy Coltun Webster is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.