L.J. Start, Wholesale Grocer

[Dave]

Oct 27, 2011 11:55:21 GMT -5 fiona said:

OK Dave and Kevin: I'm sending you on a mission. I found this in Card Cow. It's somewhere in Utica. HaHa. Good luck.

Sure! L.J. Start's Wholesale Grocery business was (when pictured above) on the site of the old York House at 138 Whitesboro St. in Utica. I can't find "York" on the 1883 Utica map, but here's where it should have been at 138 Whitesboro, not too far from where the street crossed the old Erie Canal and met with Varick St. The structure on the map is represented as yellow and therefore a wooden building, whereas the photo shows a brick building, evidently build later and eventually occupied by Start.




Here's an ad:




Another:





Here's some free press:





Mr. Start died in 1927:






And his assets were soon distributed and sold.




thanks to fultonhistory.com!

[fiona]

Good job! You can't out research the Dave!

[Dave]

Hahaha! Jon certainly can!

[keith]

Since I realize I'm reaching (or perhaps have reached) the 60th anniversary of making my own peanut butter toast, I need to look into that nut margarine.

[Dave]

In that case, I cannot keep myself from re-publishing the following paragraph:

So THAT'S what my little brother was practicing to be ... a Research Chef! In the summer before fifth grade he'd toast two slices of bread and slather on the peanut butter while frying baloney in a pan. Just before plopping on the top slice of his sandwich, he would carefully lay four large potato chips down on the baloney and 4 slices of hard boiled egg. He then set Mom's cookbook on top of the assembled sandwich, placed his hands on the cover and pressed down with his entire upper body weight. Removing the cookbook and wiping it clean on his jeans, the resulting mess was squared off with a butter knife and wrapped in paper towels to keep it from leaking out the bottom. He carried his creation out on the back porch and enjoyed a leisurely summer vacation lunch of what he called his Four Eyes Sandwich. He's still alive today, but has high cholesterol.

LATER: The above anecdote resulted in two stories:

Four Eyes Sandwich
www.windsweptpress.com/foureyes.doc

Beer Battered PBJ
www.windsweptpress.com/pbj.doc