On February 7, 2003, I interviewed Vandalia businessman and musician, Ed Taylor, Jr., at his shop, The Noise Store, on Dallas Street. Ed sells musical instruments and Radio Shack products and gives music lessons, a lot of lessons. This is his story.
Vagabond: I'm interviewing Ed Taylor, Jr. at The Noise Store on Dallas Street in Vandalia, Illinois on February 7, 2003. Ed is a business man, operating a store that sells musical instruments and Radio Shack products. He is also a musician. I saw Ed perform at the songwriters group earlier in the week; he sang a song about "Main Street is alive" and I'd like to ask him about that song and the impulse behind it. Ed was born and raised in Vandalia and has chosen to stay in the community and run this business in downtown Vandalia. Ed, start out, if you would, describing the contents of the "Main Street" song that you were singing the other night and what you were trying to say with that. And then something about where that comes from.
Ed Taylor, Jr.: We have a program here in Vandalia called The Main Street Program. It's all about trying to redevelop the downtown area of Vandalia. They have done several promotions. As a songwriter I was thinking one day about Vandalia. I grew up here just two blocks from downtown. As a kid I'd come downtown, ride down the street and everything. The beginning of the song is about Vandalia in the early years and what I remember as a kid. One memory was of G.C. Murphy's, what we called the dime store. There was a huge candy counter in the middle of it. The minute you'd walk in the door, the first thing you smelled was roasted peanuts. It just kind of hit you in the face. To this day I can still remember that. Of course that's one of the lines in the song. We had all kinds of businesses downtown. My grandparents ran a hardware store. They started out in a real small building, about a fourth the size of this place. It was back in an alley behind the coffeehouse. It was back in the alley. You couldn't see it from the road. But that's where they had their hardware store. I remember going in there and they'd have these big garbage cans full of grass seed. A bin full of nails. You'd walk over and reach in and touch them and they'd prick you all over your hands, because of the jagged edges sticking up. I remember they had a little natural gas stove, like a pot-bellied stove. I remember as a real small child going in there. Then they moved to a bigger hardware store. As a kid I'd go up and down the street, you know, and I got to know some of the storeowners. But that's kind of what the song is about. The fact that years ago life was much simpler, or seemed to be much simpler. The downtown area just bustled; there were cars everywhere, restaurants, and hotels. All kinds of things. Then as the years progressed, they’d talk about how society in general has changed. The years pass by and some are not so kind. In fact, we have a lot of empty stores downtown now. It seems like smaller stores and smaller shops; they often have a much harder time making a go of it now because of the huge shopping centers and the mega stores like Walmart. The smaller guys kind of get squeaked out. But by the same token, even though times have been hard, the pulse of downtown, pulse of Main Street still beats. Even thought we’ve been through a lot, we’re still here. Some of us are downtown and have stores and we’re still working. There are some people who just don’t come downtown.
To be continued....
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