Vic De Rose interview

Interview with Vic De Rose - Part V

For 47 years Vic De Rose has operated a barber shop at 864 N. High Street. Before that, his father operated a shop in a different building in the same location. In this installment of an interview by Andy Klein, Vic talks about the decline of the neighborhood in the 1970s.

Andy: When did lightning strike the apartment building at E. 1st & High?

Vic: Oh, probably in the 70's. The lightning struck the building and it was condemned. They didn't have a fire, I guess it moved off its foundation. It was occupied, they moved everybody out of there.

Andy: Did you get many customers from those apartments?

Vic: Oh yeah.

A: What were the apartments like?

V: I never went in any. That was a place, if you had good sense, you didn't go into. (Chuckles)

A: Why'd the neighborhood start to change?

V: The old reliable people started to move out, and they just let anybody move in. But it's a lot better now than it used to be.

A: Was there a time when you thought about leaving here?

V: No. My customers today come from all sections of Franklin County, but at one time they lived in this neighborhood. I have a customer named Frank, he's been coming into this shop since right after the Second World War. He worked at Smith Brothers Hardware. Many many years ago there was a hotel downtown called the Virginia Hotel. They had a health club, and my father went there and met this guy, who was recuperating from an automobile accident, he had a broken back, and was told he'd never walk again. He and his doctor went to the health club and set up a series of exercise, and he started walking again. He still comes in. He's in his early 90s.

A: Do you have many customers who went to your father too?

V: They're mostly all dead. Let's see. I suppose about 10 of them. They're getting to the place where it's getting hard for them to get here.

A: Did you notice a difference when Jeffrey sold out in the early 70's?

V: For a while we thought we were employed by Jeffrey, we had so many of their employees. At one time, I'd say 50% of our customers worked at Jeffrey. And also the bakery, Wonder Bread. They had a thrift store, and you could go in and buy day old bread, right there at the factory on Warren.

A: Do you still get many folks who worked at Jeffrey?

V: Retirees. Nice people, good people, hard working people. We had a woman who lived upstairs here, she was the first tenant to move into this building when it was built, she was a secretary over there. She retired and went back to her hometown of Jackson, Ohio.

A: How are the apartments set up upstairs?

V: Efficiency apartments, very small kitchen, bathroom, one big room which was your living room and bedroom. I've only been up there one time, and I thought, if I ever have to live in a place like this ... because it was so small.

A: What neighborhoods have you lived in?

V: Oh, I've never lived in this neighborhood. We lived on the far west side and then I got married in 1950 and bought a house in Whitehall, one of those little prefab houses. Do you know where Holy Spirit Church is, at the corner of Yearling and Broad? At one time the Catholic church owned all that property behind there, and they put a lot of those prefab houses, without basements, on a concrete slab. From there, I moved to Courtright Road, I lived there 38 years. About 2 years ago we moved to Pataskala.

A: Where on the south side did you grow up?

V: On Kossuth and Bruck. I don't know if that's part of German Village today.

A: Did you have other contacts in this neighborhood?

V: We went to church over at 2d Avenue Presbyterian Church, at Highland. I think it's more of a mission church now. My parents were married in what they called the chapel, on Main Street near the armory, in that area. The man who was the minister there received a call to come up here and since my mother played the piano, he asked her to come up and play the piano, and that's how they got going here.