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N. Fairview Ave., Herb Riebow, 1953

I was delighted to find this pair of stamps on the west side of North Fairview Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw. Why? Because they solved a previous mystery. I had found another Herb Riebow stamp on Vine Street, but was unable to fully read the last name.

The northern stamp.

Unfortunately, I can tell you little about Herb Riebow besides that he existed. The Traverse City Record-Eagle of April 10, 1947, reports that Mr. and Mrs. Herb Riebow of Lansing were in town staying with relatives, having been driven from their home by flooding. From this I infer that they must have lived near the river. The 1940 census places the Riebows in Ward 7, but I confess I don’t know where that would have been. Lansing currently has only four wards.

The southern stamp. Interestingly, they both face in the same direction, instead of opposing each other as is more usual for paired stamps.

The August 4, 1953, Lansing State Journal reports that “Herbert Riebow of Lansing was awarded a contract to install curb and gutter on S. Cedar St. in front of the new West Side grade school, and a sidewalk on the west side of S. Cedar, between Columbia and W. Ash, extending from Ash to the school, and also down the south side of Ash to connect with the existing walk.” Later in the 1950s and early 1960s, however, I find a few scattered classified ads suggesting that Riebow was now in the real estate business instead.

Looking north on Fairview with the southern stamp at lower right. The other stamp is on the next block.

Herbert S. Riebow is buried in Deckerville, having died in 1993 at the age of 84. Obituaries are often a useful source of information on people’s businesses, but they don’t seem to have run one in the Lansing State Journal and I don’t have access to the Deckerville Recorder.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Vine St., Herb [?] [Riebow], 1950

This is a frustrating one. It’s just west of the corner of Vine Street and Rumsey, on the south side of Vine. I had noticed it a few nights ago (I’ve been walking through the Rumsey/Vine/Custer area a lot lately to admire the cluster of late holiday lights there) but it was too dark for a photo. I could almost make it out, and thought in daylight it would be easy to read. I was wrong.

It’s “Herb [Something] Cont” (meaning contractor). That much is clear. Of course the most useful part for research is the part I can’t figure out. The first part looks like RIEBO, but then there is at least one more letter and I can’t make sense of it. It’s too small and the wrong shape and slant to be R (compare it with the R at the start), which is what I initially considered. I can’t see it as anything else either. Then there’s the question of whether it’s one or two letters. It looks like two distinct marks, but they’re too close together compared with the spacing of the rest of the letters. The dark mark in the midst of it is a hole (seemingly a pretty deep one, as I poked it with my finger to see if it was part of the stamp and didn’t find the bottom under the mud).

Facing northwest. Cropped out: the neighbor giving me a suspicious look. Left in: a dog who wasn’t worried about me.

Sadly, with the last name unknown I can’t tell you anything about this contractor.

Update 2/27/21: I now know it to be Herb Riebow.