Glidden Dairy Bar

GLIDDEN DAIRY BAR HAS GONE TO                    THE DOGS!!!

 

   
   
 

 

 

From:  John (Juha) Simes
Email:  john.global@yahoo.com
For Year:  1961


Hi Jack, When the notice arrived about the Glidden Dairy Bar closing, I felt compelled to say something. It holds some of my most enjoyable memories about attending Edith Cavell. It was my birthday – I do not recall which one but 1961 seems to ring a bell. My mom knew that I wanted to treat 2 friends to ice cream and proceeded to give me an extra dollar on top of my usual allowance. I ended up ordering 3 fantastic banana splits compete with all the trimmings for a total cost of $1.05. My travels have taken me all over the world and so far, I have found only one ice cream parlor in all the continents that is comparable to Glidden. It is a family owned shop up the boulevard from the Hilton in Clearwater Beach, FL. I am so sorry to see the Glidden close. Regards and Merry Christmas to all, John (Juha) Simes Heathrow, FL

 

Martial Voligny <moparmartial@hotmail.com>
To:jack barlow
Dec 22 at 5:06 PM
 
Hi how are you hope all well I remember the gliden dairy bar raymond cosh usedto work there after school SAM let us take his 1953 black mercury convertible for a ride we would go out on number 2 highway and burn the carbon out of it SAM was a slow driver martial
 

Jerry Dowling <fstopjd@fuse.net>
To:barlow_jack@yahoo.com
Dec 23 at 4:07 PM
 
Sam also owned the Bulldogs for a while. Rose was a BABE!
 
The original owners were some kind of Europeans and I can't member their name. The lady used to watch the store from a little window at the top back, upstairs where they lived. Caught me swiping a chocolate bar once. Son's or grandson's name was Roy Winsek?
 
Jerry Dowling
 
 
Hi Jack
I remember going to the Glidden Dairy Bar after we had eaten lunch at school - we had time to walk the block - and I often ordered a glass of skim milk for 5 cents. It was icy cold and delicious - and I guess a good choice - but mostly it was one of the cheapest things they had. I do remember very occasionally having a soda or something like that - but it was often shared or for a special treat.
Beth Abbott (DAY)
 
 
            N0 ICE CREAM LEFT
 
 
 
 
 

 

 Jack...ie

I saw your photo of the Last Cone at Glidden Dairy Bar. That takes me back 60 + years.

 When we moved to Riverside in 1951 my parents purchased a house on St. Rose Blvd. We were there about 4 years when my folks purchased a newly constructed home on Glidden Ave right next  to the Glidden Dairy Bar. From St. Rose I walked a couple of miles to and from school and then I was in my final year at RHS my parents bought this house and I was only 1 couple of hundred yards from school.

 Somewhere during that period of 1951-56 Sam Fox and his wife bought Glidden Dairy Bar. It was under their ownership that it became THE social magnet for the RHS kids of that generation. A great deal of time was spent at the Dairy Bar socializing with our peer group.

 When we moved next door we witnessed the parade of school kids to and from the Dairy Bar. We had a beautiful German Shepherd dog, Jeff. He would sit on the  front porch surveying his domain. Kids going to and from school would come up and sit petting and talking to him. That was  fun to watch.

 Having the Dairy Bar as an immediate neighbour was not raucous as one might think. They were a great neighbour.

 Alan Greenwood

 
 
You look great with your empty cone!!  Heather Marnoch and I used to go for peanut toffee sundaes.  We were both pretty skinny in those bygone days so we never worried about the  calories.  Couldnt help but notice the male/female smoochers statue on the counter opposite your left arm.  I have the same one that I got on the beach in Puerta Plata in 2000.  Wish I had felt up to going today for the last day.    Thanks for the memories.  Hugs. Dorothy (Humphreys) Potter
 
 
For the Glidden Dairy bar, I have this remembrance. There were pear trees across the street, and I used to just toss pears in the air, at random, not caring where they went. One day i barely missed Mr. Hetherington. He came to me and said, after clearing his throat, which he always did, "Throw a pear?" I replied yes, but I didn't intend to hit you. He then said "Well. frankly, I don't believe you!".
 
Jerry Dowling
 
 

GLIDDEN DAIRY BAR

“Sam & Rose Fox in the 1950’s”

by Ernie Fraser

It was a hot summer day in 1954 and I was dying for a two scoop vanilla milkshake.  As I entered the Glidden Dairy Bar I saw Sam hurl a carton of pop bottles at someone who was running for his life out the side door of the store.  I had sat down on one of the stools and was enjoying my milkshake when Sam came up to me and asked if I wanted a job .... I was too afraid to say no!  That was the beginning of my friendship with Sam & Rose which lasted until Sam passed away in 1989.

The Glidden Dairy Bar was famous for having an iconic one of a kind customized soda fountain ... you could get shakes, one scoop 15 cents; two scoops 20 cents; malts, sodas, banana splits, cherry cokes, sundaes and ice cream cones .... one scoop 5 cents, two scoops 10 cents.  (A package of cigarettes was 25 cents.).  The Glidden Dairy Bar sold more ice cream than any other dairy bar in Southern Ontario.

Sam & Rose loved running the Glidden Dairy Bar.  Sam took great pleasure in needling the students and giving certain special students a particularly hard time.  The one thing that made Sam paranoid was people stealing.  He always had an eye out for a potential thief and, when he saw one, he would tip me off and I would go in to my surveillance mode.

Jackie Barlow did not fit the category of thief.  In fact, Rose had a real liking for Jackie which made me jealous.  Rose always liked to serve Jackie who would buy butterscotch double dip cones.  I noticed one day that the ice cream cones Rose served Barlow were much bigger than the size she served to others.  Now, Sam taught us a system on how to make an ice cream cone which we essentially rolled so that the centre was void of ice cream.  He always checked the temperatures of the freezers so that we could do a professional roll and scoop.  I pointed out to Sam that I think Rose was giving Barlow a solid scoop of ice cream.  He said he would keep an eye out next time Barlow came in but, nothing really happened and, Barlow continued to be Rose’s favourite!

After selling the Glidden Dairy Bar business, Rose went to work for an NBC affiliate at the Penobscot building in Detroit.  In 1962, Sam joined a syndicate who bought the Windsor Arena which he managed for awhile.  This was the period when the Windsor Bulldogs won the Allen Cup which led to a trip to Russia.

Every day Sam would pick Rose up at the tunnel and drive her home in his Cadillac convertible, which was usually blue!  One day on the drive home, Rose had an aneurysm and passed away!  A few years before Sam had bought a beautiful home on Patrice Avenue but, Rose refused to move from the apartment behind the store.

One day, while sitting with Rose on the steps behind the store, I asked her why she didn’t have any desire to move into the beautiful home on Patrice .... her reply was, “I don’t need a beautiful home, I just need my man Sam”!  Rose was a beautiful person, pretty, private and very religious. 

Sam was devastated when Rose passed away and, because of his physical disabilities, he was moved to a Nursing Home in South Windsor until he passed away.

Sam lived by the motto, “Let them know you are coming and, when you get there, let them know you are there”!

If you have a memory of the Glidden Dairy Bar from the 1950’s cherish it because there will never be another place or time like it!

Ernie Fraser

January 6th, 2020

 
  Sam & Rose at New Years eve Party 1975
 
 
 
 
So Jack- I have put off responding to this topic for some time as I was last a patron of the Glidden Dairy Bar way before 1979.
I have two distinct memories:
1) probably in the 1960 range, my Dad would give me some money and I would ride over to the Dairy Bar (we lived on St. Mary’s) and buy a 1/2 gallon of Peerless butter pecan ice cream for our dessert.
2) my second memory - same time area, it was May and 3 of us went to the dairy bar to buy fire crackers. We had little money and I got the bright idea to fill the front of my t-shirt with a variety of packages including the 4” cannons and try to walk out of the store. The guy at the counter stopped me (my friends had long since disappeared) and made me put ‘the goods’ on the counter. He then called my Dad and told him of my attempt. Needless to say, I didn’t get to buy ice cream for some time.
 
Best to all
 
Sandy Douglas
 
I remember the dairy bar very well with Sam and Rose Fox and a Pink Cadillac Convertible Later in the fifties a  young Art Haines ( from HAINES DRUGSTORE AT PILLETTE ) and his partner Shirley took over until they sold out and moved to DORSET near HUNTSVILLE to run a MARINA . I'm assuming this is the SHIRLEY in questipn         Sam Cornett
 
I attended Edith Cavell for grades 1, 2 and 3 starting in 1952. Our family lived at 41 Esdras Place, and I clearly remember when the Glidden Dairy Bar was being built, and how excited we were when it opened. With a silver quarter, I would join my friends to visit there. A milk shake was 15 cents, a popsicle 5 cents and I had a nickel left over for something else. We almost never used paper money. I bought a yo-yo there, and we would watch the yo-yo contests over at the drug store corner. We shared at party line phone with the Bunt family on Reedmere, and our number was WHitehall 5-9998. There were lots of kids on Esdras, and we had our freedom in those days. We were never ever to go as far as the railway tracks up Jefferson, but we did and would crawl into the culvert under the tracks as the steam trains rumbled overhead. Luckily, we never go caught. Mr. Bernhart would load up his station wagon with a bunch of kids on a Sunday afternoon and take us over to Detroit for soft ice cream and a spin around Belle Isle. 
 
Grades 1 and 2 with Mrs. Trotter were combined classes of about 40 kids. I rarely had any trouble with her, although she did bring out the strap a few times. Discipline at home was strict, so this wasn’t any different. I returned for a visit to Edith Cavell in the 1970s when it was a middle school, and the principal took me on a tour of the school. When I led him down to where our basement classroom was, he opened the door and it was now a work shop classroom. He couldn’t believe that my first two years were in the basement. For grade 3 we moved to the top floor, with a view. One day a television was brought into our classroom to show educational TV from Detroit, and Miss Oliver explained this was going to be part of our education in the future. As it turned out, that was the only TV I ever saw in a classroom. I usually walked home for lunch. The boulevard was still along Wyandotte, which made it easier to cross the street. I learned later that streetcars ran there until 1940. 
 
One day there were sirens from fire trucks that stopped at the end of Esdras, and we all ran up to see what happened. The Glidden had several large tables of fireworks, and these had ignited and exploded. I have met many people over the years from Windsor, and if they happened to be from Riverside the Glidden Dairy Bar is always part of the conversation.  Sad to hear of it closing. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Angus McIntyre.
 
 
Hi Jack, I hope you are enjoying Bob Lo living.....I have read the Glidden  Dairy Bar stories with interest ....I lived at the corner of Patrice and Wyandotte though my elementary school years, which made it an easy 2 block walk or bike ride to the dairy bar...and I have those same fond memories of ice cream and  buying  “Grape Crush “ out of the “Coke” cooler filled with water and ice....my Dairy Bar story is a little different....Sam Cornett mentioned Art and Shirley who took over after Sam and then they subsequently moved to Dorset to run a Marina....
 
     Well sometime in the early 60’s.  maybe 1963, I was a counsellor at a camp in Haliburton....and with another counsellor taking our kids on a 5 day canoe trip around the Haliburton Lakes.....We had done this a lot and in those days we didn’t use tents......So on about day 2 of this trip it started to rain and it didn’t stop for about 24 hours ...we were soaked and decided we had to call the camp to come pick us up.....so we paddled through the rain to a marina where I thought we could call from...(there were about 12 of us)....so I walked up the stairs to the Marina and lo and behold was surprised to be greeted by Art and Shirley....what a nice surprise...they remembered me immediately and invited all our kids in to warm up and dry off....giving them all food and drinks....
 
The Glidden Dairy Bar to the rescue many miles from home.....
 
Best Regards
 
Brian Barker