What’s that? You were hoping for something more exciting? Tough. You’ll take this Cantu & Sons stamp and you’ll like it.
It’s on the west side of South Hayford Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
S. Hayford Ave., Cantu & Sons, 1987
S. Hayford Ave., Cantu & Sons, 1987
This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is on the east side of South Hayford Avenue just south of Prospect Street. Look, you try finding something more exciting when it dumped eight inches of snow overnight. I was ready to kiss the ground in gratitude every time I got to a cleared sidewalk.
All that snow is very pretty, though.
N. Hayford Ave., RW, 1992
Here’s a cryptic one from the east side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw. It’s the only one like it I’ve seen. I initially took it to read “HW” but on closer inspection I think it is “RW.” The style reminds me a little of the BWL stamps.
A name with two letters doesn’t give me much to go on. There is an RW Concrete Sawing out of Dorr, but they describe their main lines of business as “Concrete Breaking, Sawing & Drilling.” In other words, they are all about deconstructing concrete, not constructing it. Dorr is also a good hike away, though not an implausible one.
S. Hayford Ave., Cantu & Sons, undated
The sidewalks were less hazardous when I went out today, but slushier, so it was difficult to find an uncovered stamp. I settled for this garden variety Cantu & Sons stamp on the east side of South Hayford Avenue alongside Provident Place.
It is strange, though, that this one is undated. Undated stamps are always something of a mystery, but this one is even more so. The city code says that sidewalk work must be marked with a name and date, so undated stamps might reflect contractors who are either ignorant of or unconcerned with the law. But that can’t be the case here, since dated Cantu & Sons stamps are very common. Did they forget their date stamp that day, or just forget to use it?
S. Hayford Ave., O.M. Smith(?) [actually O.V.], 1962
This corner-placed stamp is on the west side of South Hayford Avenue midway between Prospect and Michigan. The contractor is definitely Smith, probably O.M. [something] Smith, and tentatively O.M. Smith. It does look like an M to me. There is another similar stamp on this block but unfortunately the second letter on that one is at least as worn. Although at first glance this looks like 1982, closer inspection shows it is 1962. (I find that is often a hazard of the fonts they like to use for numbers; they tend to have a highly curved 6.)
I haven’t been able to find anything out about the contractor. I can find from the Lansing State Journal that an O.M. Smith was living in Lansing in the 1940s, but nothing about a cement business. Perhaps I’m wrong about it being O.M. Or perhaps I just haven’t done enough research yet. (I can’t help thinking of the character One Million, who goes by “O.M.,” from the Rankin-Bass special Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.)
A tween-aged kid was practicing basketball solo in his driveway, making a go at doing flashy moves like spinning around as he approached the basket. I glanced away as I passed in order to avoid embarrassing him but honestly it was pretty endearing. It reminded me of my brother messing around on his skateboard when we were that age. You can make out just his legs in my photo above.
Update 3/21/21: I now know that it is O.V. Smith, as I happened across his name in the classifieds while research a different contractor!
N. Hayford Ave., J.A. Johnson, 1960
Here’s a first so far: two stamps on the same slab, facing opposite directions. This is on the west side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Vine.
It’s difficult to read in the photo, but based on the several others on this block of Hayford (all 1960) I know that it says J.A. Johnson.
I didn’t notice any other doubled up stamps on this block, even though there are several other J.A. Johnson stamps. My guess is that their practice was to stamp the beginning and end of a run of sidewalk paving, and this was a solo block so they stamped both sides. It makes sense to me, anyway.
