Vic De Rose interview

Interview with Vic De Rose - Part IV

For 47 years Vic De Rose has operated a barber shop at 864 N. High Street. In this installment of an interview by Andy Klein, Vic talks about the other businesses surrounding him over the years.

Andy: What was across the street from here [where Bargain House Furniture recently closed]?

Vic: That building was built for the future home of the Tucker automobile. After WWII, you couldn't build a new building but you could remodel a building. And where their side door is was a Chinese Laundry, on West First Avenue. They remodeled the building, and when they got through, the Chinese laundry was inside, and they tore it down after they finished building the addition.

Andy: Did they sell the Tucker automobile there for very long?

Vic: They never sold them there, period. He couldn't get the money to produce his cars. He would go to a bank and apply for a loan, and Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, they'd go buy that bank and cancel his application. I think there was only 50 cars made. They actually had one sitting in there, though. You could go in and look at it. The Tucker car was in the front. I remember I come up to get a haircut one time and my dad took me over there, and we had to stand in line to look at it. It was a great thing. People come from all over to look at it. You've heard of the Tucker? Instead of getting your engine tuned up, you'd just replace the engine. It only had something like 400 moving parts.

A: What happened after Tucker lost his shirt?

V: The building stood empty for a long while, there's been all kind of businesses in there at one time or another. The Bureau of Workers Compensation had offices in there for some time, and Peter Johnson automotive supply owned it for awhile, and they had a retail store in there. They wanted to expand, and moved out to W. Fifth Avenue. Across the street at the southwest corner of W. First and High was a drug store. Bill Marx and Bill MacKinley, the name of it was Maramac. They took the first three letters of each of their last names. You could go into that drug store, and they had a soda fountain on the southside wall, and you could get you a lemon phosphate or a cherry coke, a grilled cheese sandwich, a piece of pie, a dish of ice cream. There's no place where you can get that anymore. They had stools at the counter. The drug store was on the corner, and there was another room next to the drug store, and that was a grocery store, and it was el shaped, and the meat market was in your office [at 13 W. First]. The name was Herron's Market. Johnny Herron. When he moved out, he had the Red & White grocery store in Dublin. He moved out probably in the 60's. A few years after that, the drug store finally went out of business. I'll tell you what put them out of business: Franklin County Welfare Department. At one time they were about 18 months behind in paying their bill. The pharmacist told me one time that he would call the welfare dept about four or five times a day to get permission to fill prescriptions, and each time he called, he had about 30 to 40 prescriptions to fill.

A: Was that because he was across from the worker's compensation?

V: No, it was just the neighborhood. In the other room next to you [15 W. First, now the Short North Wellness Center] was a beauty shop. He was there a long time. He lived down the street.

A: What happened to the space where the grocery store was [now Ohio State Legal Services]?

V: There's been several things in there. A couple guys who put records in jukeboxes, they had a warehouse there for a long time. Something happened to one of them, the business folded. In your room, there was a little confectionary, he was there maybe 4 or 5 years. There was a variety of things in the drug store space. Several used furniture stores, Bud Stover was probably in there the longest. He had used furniture, and he had a room right across the alley here where the bar used to be. He finally realized that the furniture he wasn't selling in Columbus the people in Florida ate up, so he moved his whole business down there, probably toward the end of the 70's.