Virtute.org

The pictures in my previous Tiffin post showed some of the character and history of Tiffin. This next set shows some of the changes and quirkiness of the town.

When we went out for ice cream as a special treat, we always went to Little Hugos because they put eyes on their ice cream. We decided to roam around the town to explore. Another random odd thing about my hometown is that we have our own potato chip factory.  Tiffin has been the home of Ballreich’s Bros., a potato chip company, since 1920.  I remember going on a tour of the potato chip factory in elementary school.  I had hoped to take the kids on a tour while we were home, but they don’t do tours anymore. Another hometown favorite is A.J.’s Heavenly Pizza.  They are well known for their jumbo pizza and for putting scriptures on their boxes.  They used to just include a strip of paper with a scripture printed on it, but now they print the scriptures right on the box, and on their ads: Here’s a picture of the box: Here’s what a Jumbo pizza looks like:This was a drive through grocery store many years ago.  You would pull up to the window and ask for what you wanted. This statue is on the outskirts of town in someone’s yard.  My Dad apparently commented on how much he liked it a time or two.  My mom thinks it’s the worst looking statue she has ever seen:We sometimes got our fruit at Molyet Market on the West side of town.  There is only one grocery store on the East side of town and my parents almost never went there.   When I was growing up, all the shopping was on the West side of town.  This is what Westgate Village looks like now.  It used to have a Food Town on the strip and later a staples, but both have moved out of town.  Most of the store fronts are vacant now. We had our family picture taken at Olan Mills every year in this now orange building. So many businesses have had a hard time staying in business in Tiffin, but the Butt Hut is still operating.
Of all the things that are now sad and empty, I think the Tiffin Mall is worst of all.  My best friend and I spent many an afternoon trolling the mall for boys back in the day. Now they advertise for BINGO on the Marquee. Have you ever seen a mall with such an empty parking lot? And now you see why.  From the moment we stepped in, it was shocking to see how empty it is.  It also looks exactly the same in terms of decor and I moved away from Tiffin the summer of ’97 (17 years ago!)The JC Penny’s is still open.  The storefront to the right was a Real Estate office which showed home listings on a screen through the square that hangs down: The jewelry store, the fabric store, and the big lots are long gone: I’ve never heard of this place before, but it is open:There’s a generically named Mexican restaurant where the Ponderosa used to be.  The vacant store front in the middle (and the picture below this one) was once a candy store and then an ice cream shop: This was the original location of “Candy Time” it had a wrap around counter and sold gum in the shape of a cigarette for 1 cent.  My dad forbid us from buying any candy that looked like cigarettes. At one time after I left, the mall was the home to a Telemarketing company, but even they left!But at least they have BINGO!

And a wrestling club. . . This was our movie theater. It’s now vacant, but this company built a big new one next to the mall. The kids insisted on a bathroom break.  The bathroom was as ugly as it could be:
East of Chicago Pizza established itself in the mall twice in at least two different locations before closing up shop and moving out of Tiffin: Even the claw game was shockingly pathetic: They used to have those quarter kiddie rides here.  Now they sell aspirin and stamps: The half filled arcade with no attendant: Which was apparently decorated with haves of fake fruit that has mostly fallen off: The vacant store covered in mirrors is where I got my first pair of glasses: They even have a church in the mall.   Or they had a church, the sign seems to indicate that they’ve moved over to where the old Kroger used to be.This structure didn’t exist when I lived in Tiffin.  It’s in the place where K-mart used to be and it now has an Asian Buffet and movie theater: This was the Kroger, but they moved a few blocks East to save on property tax.  According to the sign in the mall, the Lutheran church now meets here. This place is new too.  It’s located where the old Walmart used to be.  The name was humorous to me so I took a picture.  Tiffin does still have a Walmart, they built a big new one on the West side of town. There are busy railway lines that run through town and it’s not uncommon to be stopped by a train on the way into town.
Here’s the train that we waited for on the way into church on Sunday:I think all these signs are new and I like them:And that my friends is the end of my Tiffin pictures, except that I never took a picture of the Ritz Theater in Downtown Tiffin.  Here are some pictures from the Internet:The colors are probably a little exaggerated in this picture, but the picture with more normal coloring weren’t a high enough quality to share:Although I’ve shared all the Tiffin pictures I plan to share here, I do have some pictures to share from my parent’s property and the area around where we lived outside of the city limits.