Our neighboring community to the north and east of East Cleveland is
Collinwood. When I lived in East
Cleveland during the 1940s and 50s, that community, a middle class residential
community, was in many ways like East Cleveland. Unlike East Cleveland, it also had a strong
industrial base and provided jobs for many including some who lived in East
Cleveland. Collinwood had been a village
before being annexed by the City of Cleveland. In spite of that, it had maintained a separate identity within Cleveland.
The Dreifort family had strong ties with Collinwood. My grandfather, Herman Dreifort, started his long career with General Electric in 1912 at their original plant at East 40th and Hough. After World War I, General Electric bought an old auto plant on East 152nd Street. That facility and NELA Park in East Cleveland were devoted to the development and manufacture of electric light bulbs. When grandpa was transferred to the new plant on East 152nd Street in 1920, he moved his family to a single family house at 906 Alhambra Road. He walked to and from work every day until he died in 1954.
My father, Carl Dreifort, and his brothers and sister grew
up in that home and went to school at W.H. Brett Elementary School and
Collinwood High School. Dad lived in that
Alhambra Road house until he married my mother, Greta, and bought his first
home at 1721 Shaw Avenue in 1940. I was
born in 1940 and lived in that Shaw Avenue home for the first 13 years of my
life. Although I was intensely loyal to
East Cleveland my entire life, I always had a fondness for Collinwood. My grandmother lived in that Alhambra Road
home until she died in 1971.
Collinwood High was always one of our biggest Shaw High
rivals. In fact emotions frequently
became heated at Shaw /Collinwood football games. I found that hard to understand, because my
family had strong ties to Collinwood as well as to East Cleveland. We did some of our shopping at Five Points
(the intersection of St. Clair, Ivanhoe and East 152nd Street). My dentist’s office was on St. Clair; not a
place I enjoyed visiting. He later moved
to Noble Road in East Cleveland. My dad
worked in two different war plants in Collinwood during World War II. One of those plants was National Acme and the
other was Parker Appliance. He actually
walked to National Acme from our Shaw Avenue home, because he didn’t own a car
during the war. He took the streetcar to
Parker Appliance.
Collinwood was an important source of employment for many
who lived in East Cleveland. There was a
wide swath of industrial land North of East Cleveland starting at East 152nd
Street and Noble Road and extending all the way to Lake Erie and along the New
York Central Railroad from Eddy Road all the way into the City of Euclid. A similar source of employment stretched
along Euclid Avenue from the East Cleveland border through Collinwood and into
Euclid including Parker Appliance, Chase Brass, Thompson Products and many
other industries.
East Clevelanders also visited Collinwood often when they
went to Euclid Beach Park. Most of us
never missed the annual East Cleveland Picnic at Euclid Beach. That event was sponsored by the East
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, which passed out tickets at stores all around
town. So you can see that Collinwood was
more than a football rival for us back in the day. It was a source of employment and
entertainment as well as the place in which many of our family and friends
lived.
Trip With My Grandmother
This is a story of one of my best memories of Collinwood and
its relationship to East Cleveland. Some
of the fondest memories from my childhood are the times spent with my
grandmother, Tillie Dreifort, in Collinwood.
It seemed like a great distance between her home and mine when I was
young; but when I was about ten years old I talked Grandma into walking that
distance with me.
To understand this story you need some background. In the first place, I adored Grandma. She was my father’s mother and I was the
oldest of her seven grandchildren. In
retrospect I realize that grandma indulged her grandchildren and she
particularly favored the boys. My aunt
Lorna, who was the only girl among Grandma’s four children, has confirmed
this. I guess she had a hard time of it
with three older brothers.
In any case I could talk Grandma into almost anything. This may be one reason why I enjoyed the many
occasions when Grandma would stay with my sister and me when my parents went
out. Sometimes she would come to our
home in East Cleveland and many times we would stay with her in
Collinwood. I especially liked the times
when I would stay overnight at Grandma’s house.
She lived about a block from the railroad switchyards that ran between
Ivanhoe and London Roads on the Nickel Plate Railroad. Each night while I was going to sleep Grandma
would sit at the foot of my bed and either read me a story or just talk with
me. My favorite times were when I would
say “tell me about the old days Grandma”.
She would reminisce about her life and tell me about how things were
when she was a girl. I was fascinated by
how different things were back then.
It was wonderful to fall asleep while listening to grandma’s
stories or just listening to the sounds of the trains passing on the main line
or the switch engines moving box cars around the yards about a block away. London Road was a grade crossing so those
Steam Engines on the main line blew their horns before crossing the intersection.
One time when I was about ten, my sister and I were staying
at Grandma’s house for about a week while my parents were out of town. After a few days, I decided I just had to see
my friends back in East Cleveland.
Ordinarily this would involve a streetcar trip up Euclid Avenue and a
little bit of walking to or from the streetcar at either end. However, I had developed a sense of geography
and must have been looking at maps. I
realized that the railroad that ran only three doors from my home at the corner
of Shaw and Plymouth in East Cleveland was the same one that ran about a block
away from Grandma’s house. By that time
my friends and I had also been playing on the tracks near my Shaw Avenue house.
I’m not sure how I did it, (remember I could talk her into
almost anything); but I convinced grandma that we should walk to my home in
East Cleveland along the railroad tracks.
What a sight we must have made walking down the tracks, through the
switchyards over the bridges and up and down embankments. We were an elderly lady two children and a
dog. We made it very easily and I did it
a few times after that, but not with Grandma.
In fact I remember that Grandpa came to pick us up in his 1929 Chandler
automobile later that day. Riding in
that car was as great a thrill as walking down the railroad tracks.
I have plotted that trip on Google maps and determined that
it is two miles long by road and takes six minutes driving. The map also reveals that I was correct. The trip down the railroad is much more
direct, shorter and certainly more interesting if you don’t mind walking on
railroad ties or roadbeds. Of course you
need an indulgent grandmother to do the latter.
