Hatfield is well-known in his hometown, his early days on radio having morphed into a career as a dance and wedding DJ (“I’ve played just thousands and thousands of gigs over the years.”).
More recently, he’s specialized in class reunions, often assembling a disc of period tunes for the celebrations.
Now, using a voice as smooth as a fur-lined coat and a scarf-silky delivery, DJ Imperial D has put a wrap on a nostalgic CD for the holiday season.
“Remembering Downtown Springfield, Ohio, at Christmastime” is the practical but clunky title for a disc that will send Springfielders sliding back into the holiday seasons of the 1940s-60s like a circular sled on snow-covered slopes.
A wintry mix
Infused with the jazz influenced Big Band sounds Hatfield loves, the disc drips nostalgia, like an overloaded rum ball that causes the holiday reveler pulled to the side of the road to roll down his window and blurt out: “Officer, I only had two.”
Like cinnamon sticks in hot cider, the mix is spiced up by the swingin’ sounds of Frank Sinatra, Steubenville’s own Dean Martin, the Anita Kerr Singers and polished mahogany voice of Nat King Cole.
Hatfield tells us that back in the day, Springfielders walking the downtown streets passed through a “panorama of holiday splendor.”
Among the staples were the live Nativity scene at St. Raphael’s Church, Stan Dahlman’s electric displays at the Ohio Edison office and John Minogue Sr.’s artful designs in both the Fountain and Main street windows of Wren’s Department Store.
Entones Hatfield: “You could hear carols from overhead speakers, and quarter-size snowflakes would fall from the sky as you walked around the core block and ran into just about everyone you ever knew.”
Stocking stuffers
Using research done to assemble a “Beat the Block” map of downtown Springfield — research that is the basis for his presentations at the Heritage Center of Clark County — Hatfield serves up some stocking-stuffer facts: The city’s Core Block held 103 stores, the main attractions at the center of a greater downtown packed with more than 1,000 stores.
Those who hunger for the past will be offered a taste of the butter brickle ice cream at Riverdale Dairy made with “pure cane sugar, no imitations.”
There’s mention, too, of hamburgers at the American Restaurant; chili and chicken-and-noodles at Baker’s Cafeteria; devil’s food cupcakes in Wren’s Tea Room; and rib-sticking fare served up by the Vlahos sisters at the Wagon Wheel.
The disc takes us shopping in the Boston Store, Penney’s and the Hub where, in the era before wide use of cash registers, money and sale slips were sent through a tube to a single cashier, who returned a receipt and change through the same pipeline.
The tubes at the Boston Store and Penney’s were chain-drive, we learn; but in the air-powered system at the upscale Hub, “your money would be impelled like a rocket up to the second floor.”
When you’re out of Schlitz ...
Track 7 of 15, recalls a Downtown Merchants’ promotion that sent Santa to five homes a week during the Christmas season to deliver presents to children 6 and younger.
Among the participating merchants: People’s Outfitting, Central Rug and Linoleum, Click Camera, Gilbert’s Shoes, Ideal Jewelry, Wren’s and the Boston Store.
Those who served up spirits year round at the Mecca, the Yardsley, Parker’s, the Esquire Grill and Lord Lansdowne’s are honored with a toast to Schlitz.
As the old commercial says “If you like it light with a big taste, too, there’s only one brew that will do: When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.”
Hatfield taps the deep voice of Springfielder and former radio man Craig Robinson for an homage to R.J. States Motors, which sold Lincolns, Mercurys and English Fords and was home to Ed Sullivan’s Safe Buy Used Cars at 117 E. Columbia St.
R.J. States also handled the leftover inventory after the failed experiment with the Edsel sent the Enscoe-Ripley dealership belly up.
The apparent rebirth of General Motors this holiday gives reason to smile at Dinah Shore’s classic rendition of “See the USA (in your Chevrolet),” a tune that a Cold War comedian spoofed with the lyrics: “See the U.S.S.R. in your armored car.”
Unbroken threads
No Hatfield remembrance of the downtown would be complete without a tribute to the fashionable clothiers, so we are told that Jack Thornton stood for “the signature of smartness in men’s clothing”; the Harvard offered the finest of suits; and Charters Patterson’s nationally known brands were “for young men and men who want to stay young.”
In an interview, Hatfield allowed he might be one such man: “I feel like a 20-year-old trapped in a 74-year-old body.”
He may have stayed that way by avoiding the cigarettes sold at a time when “ABC means Always Buy Chesterfields” and LSMFT told us “Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.”
All were available at Dow, Gallaher and Walgreen drug stores for 22 cents a pack, we’re told — a set-up for the complaining voice that promises: “If they ever go up to a quarter a pack, I’m quittin.”
Thanks for listening
The disc comes to an end with “Winter Wonderland” and a tribute to Springfield institutions: the Woolworth’s clock, under which everyone met; Springfield radio stations, WBLY, WWSO and WJEL; and two of the many colorful Springfield personalities of that bygone era, Percy H. Rosenfield Jr. of the Vogue Shop and Jim the Hatter.
“This is Dick Hatfield,” DJ Imperial D signs off.
“Thanks for listening.”
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