You’re probably thinking I’m about to say that due to the snow today and recently, I could only find this one stamp. But no: I probably saw at least a dozen stamps on my walk – not very many, but still enough for a reasonable selection, right?
Wrong. Every one I saw was a Cantu & Sons. And that’s really just how common they are, that a dozen random stamps on the east side have a good chance of all being theirs. Here’s one from the west side of South Fairview Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
It’s a little hard to read, but this is one of the many stamps where they have ad hoc changed the 1987 date stamp to 1988 by drawing an 8 in.
The stamp is somewhere in that cleared stretch. You can see what I had to work with today.
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.
Looking north on South Hayford. On the right you can see where I set down the bag of Quality Dairy paçzki I had just bought.
This is probably the paired stamp, a bit south of the one above.
Yes, it’s the blog’s bread and butter, a Cantu & Sons stamp. It must have been a real sight to see so many sidewalks around the east side worked on at (almost) the same time in 1987-88. I wonder why the city did such a huge sidewalk replacement project then?
Note the imprint of the YakTrax I’ve been wearing over my boots ever since I took a spill on a patch of ice and cracked my head on the pavement.
Anyway, I didn’t have much choice. Even most of the sidewalks that had been cleared after last night’s snowstorm had another fine layer of snow on them. Luckily I could make out the white shadow of a stamp in order to know where to brush the pavement off with my mitten.
Looking south on Leslie.
I walked this way because this house still has long strings of lights on their fences, stretching impressively along the west side of the 400 block of Leslie, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. They flash and twinkle and on a cold winter night like this, I’m sure glad they’re still around.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Look, at least it’s the less common variation, right? It’s on the east side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
Right now this blog is less a sidewalk stamp blog and more a hall of fame of people who actually keep their sidewalks clear. Well, maybe the groundhog won’t see her shadow tomorrow.
Oh yeah baby, look at that sexy, snow-free sidewalk. I’m lucky I didn’t turn into a Tex Avery wolf when I laid eyes on it.
A friend recently cursed me by introducing me to HistoricAerials.com. I say “cursed” because for the last few days I have spent hours examining the changes in local streets instead of, say, going to bed at a reasonable hour. I have spent a lot of this time looking at how the freeway and time have changed the Urbandale neighborhood. So that is why I set out to walk through it in real life tonight, without considering that the snow of last night and today would probably not be very cleared there. All this preamble is mainly just to apologize for tonight’s entry, gleaned from one of the only cleared sidewalks I traversed.
OK, yes, it’s one of these. But isn’t it pretty?
This is on the east side of South Fairview Avenue, just south of the corner of Harton. (Harton is a source of fascination for me and I have spent some time on HistoricAerials trying to figure out when and why it lost its three middle blocks. Sadly there is no sidewalk on any part of Harton, so I will not be able to feature it here.) I can’t read the date but it is obviously one of the numerous 1987-88 stamps found all over the east side. The house it’s in front of is the only one on the east side of the 700 block. The southernmost blocks of the Urbandale streets have lost many houses to demolition and look very sparse and forlorn.
Looking south on South Fairview. This is the last house on this side of the street. I appreciated that they shoveled their walk. You can just make out the cleared area where I brushed snow off the stamp, past where the fence begins.
Looking north on South Fairview, toward the intersection of Harton.
I know, I know, it’s a plain old Cantu & Sons 1987. They’re everywhere. I can’t help it; there was a dusting of snow over almost everything and I got desperate and took something I could actually see, if barely. There is a pair of them in front of StateSide Wellness, on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Regent and Clemens. They are very worn, almost certainly due to being next to the building’s driveway.
A very, very worn stamp. This is the eastern of the two.
I’m still not quite used to the place being a marijuana dispensary, as it recently remade itself. When I moved to town, it had been Lucky’s Market, a convenience store. I thought it was nice having a shop close by my house in case I ran out of pop, though it was pretty disorderly inside, had an off-kilter selection, and took only cash. I gathered that it had a bit of a reputation on the east side. Someone in my pinball league once said to me, “You know, they used to sell little balls of steel wool there for a dime each.” My husband likes to say that it became much more reputable as a pot shop than it was as a convenience store. I will admit that it looks neater and does a better job shoveling its sidewalk.
This is the western of the pair. Sorry it’s not a better photo, but I had to take it in a hurry as I was in the way of traffic. The place was positively jumping. They have a recreational permit now too, so…
Another longtime resident told me that she remembered when it had been a fried chicken place. She said people used to like to get their fried chicken there and then eat it while doing laundry next door. (The place next door is now a convenience store – for a long time there were two of them side by side taking up that side of the block – but had been a coin laundry before I moved to town.) I looked into it, and it appears it was one of several Lansing locations of Famous Recipe Chicken (sometimes called Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken). It seems to have been that from around 1966 to 1991, so during the era of these stamps. After that, it seems to have been something called Steak 2 U for a while before becoming Lucky’s in 1994.
It’s a far less sketchy looking building now, but it sure is drab as heck, with that dark gray, corrugated siding.
The building was built in 1956. While Lucky’s was shedding its old cladding and plastic roof trim (during the transformation to StateSide Wellness) we got a chance to see the building naked. It was a surprisingly tiny pillbox of a building made of concrete block. This revealed bricked-over remnants of garage bay doors, suggesting an early existence as a service station.
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?
Looking at Provident Place, with the stamp in question located on the nearest (full) slab, facing the other way.
Yes, yes, I know, another Cantu & Son(s). But this one is notable for being the most recent one I have found. It’s actually a pair of them, on the north side of Prospect Street just west of Fairview.
The eastern stamp.
The style is the same as the ubiquitous 1987-88 stamps except for the handwritten date.
This is an unusual Cantu & Sons variation on the south side of Prospect Street just east of the intersection of South Clemens. While I was taking the photo, a car pulled up at the stop sign. I tried to act nonchalant, like I was just checking my texts or something, since I’m always worried someone is going to start asking me what I think I’m doing taking photos of neighborhood streets. But alas, I could hear over my earbuds that the driver, an older man with white hair, was talking to me. I pulled my earbuds out and he was asking me, “Is it an old one?”
I was surprised, but I suppose it was bound to happen eventually that someone would actually know what it was I was after. I explained that it was undated but a variation I hadn’t seen before, and he told me there was a very old one “up that way,” meaning north on Clemens. From the 1920s, he thought. “Oh yeah,” I said, “I think I know the one you mean. It’s 1922 Department of Public Works.” He declared that he thought I was right. I shared with him that the oldest one I’d ever seen was from 1907. After he left I walked away amused with myself for having come across as a human gazetteer of east side sidewalk stamps. A few minutes later I realized that it would have been even more impressive if I had remembered the date right.
Here is a rare Cantu stamp that isn’t from the 1987-88 swarm, on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. This one is just Cantu and Son. Evidently only one son had thus far joined the business.
It is difficult to read the date, and the photo doesn’t do much to make it clearer, but close inspection leads me to be pretty sure it is 1980.
