A & E Grocery, East Columbus

[David Sechrest]

The old A & E Grocery Store was located at the furthest most western side of the strip mall on the corner of State and Hege Sts. in East Columbus.

[David Sechrest]

richard said:

Hello all,

I’m not sure where to post this as it pertains to the A & E Grocery post/picture by David on October 7, 2005, in the 1950's thread. The Mom & Pop thread has been started since that post. David, move this if you believe it should be in the other thread. I don’t want to post it twice! I’m sure they allowed some customers to charge their bill just as the Mom and Pop stores did. But, they had two check out registers and had a full time man in the meat department and the produce area. I worked in that block and on Friday nights and Saturday’s both registers were busy! I shared/spent my nickels there and at the Coffman Drug Store. It seems to me that at that time all stores were open til nine on Fridays and five on Saturdays.

I made another trip to the Bartholomew County Library last week and found the following information. As I’ve said the library doesn’t have a Columbus City Directory for every year and it’s the same for the Columbus Telephone Books. In my mind’s eye, I was sure that the A & E Grocery was on State Street next to Beatty Lane which was straight across from Oak Street in the early 1950's. I started with the 1950 Columbus City Directory and worked backward.

The 1950 Columbus City Directory lists the A & E Grocery owned by Austin and Estella Sylvester at 615 State (in East Columbus). Do you see where the A & E came from? I’ve noticed that East Columbus note for many listings that was in East Columbus! Custer’s Food Market was listed at 558 Indiana. Note: At that time, Oak Street crossed Indiana Avenue and went to State Street. Today, Indiana and Oak both intersect with State at the same point. In 1950 and until the state rebuilt State Street to four lanes there was a small triangle of land that separated the intersections of Oak, Indiana and State Street. Custer’s was located at 558 Indiana Avenue which was on the north side of Indiana Avenue between Oak and State Streets.

I found a 1946 Telephone Book and it lists the Austin Sylvester Grocery at 615 State Street and a phone number of 8312.

The next Columbus City Directory that’s available was published in 1947. That Directory lists the A & E and Custer’s with the same information as the 1950 Columbus City Directory. One new item I saw was the Ace Shoe Service next (east) to the A & E. The owner is listed as Billy Love.


The 1942-43 Columbus City Directory had different listings. The 615 State Street location of the A & E, was Edward’s Garage Auto Repair.

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[Babs]

Okay the son of the owners of the A&E grocery store was James (Jimmy) Sylvester and he went to East Columbus School with us and also Columbus High School, until I believe our junior year they moved and he finished school in Seymour? He was in "our gang" and though I knew his folks owned their own store don't believe I was ever in the store, but then we didn't live in East Columbus,

Not actually related to this store, but someone commented about stores allowing people to charge their groceries and yes this was the policy of a lot of mom and pop stores. My dad worked in a number of small stores and he said one man that he remembers would come in each payday and they would cash his check, he would pay off the previous week's groceries and begin a charge again for that week. So things like this must've been fairly common.

[RER]

Austin Sylvester owned the A & E Grocery store on State Street. He went by the name Sylvester by my observation. His grocery was one the few stores that had a delivery service in the 1950s. I personally knew one of the delivery people that came out of WWII and that was one of his jobs. My dad and I would stop in the A & E periodically to buy a few items in the 1950s. Down the street on the same side was Coffman Drugs and across the street a barber shop and gas station. The gas station was owned later years by Ronnie Eddy which is Gene Eddy's son. They lived in East Columbus in the early days. Gene had and oil company in Columbus and several gasoline stations.

[RER]

Also, I forgot to mention that in the 1950s Sylvester did not use a cash register. He was so good at math in his head that at check-out he would add up the total bill and verbally tell the customer the grand total. This information was gained from former employees and family. Apparently, more people had a trusting attitude in those days with others, which seems to be lacking more in today's world.

[Pam]

My Dad started working at the A & E, boxing groceries when he was 12 years old and eventually became a meat cutter in the meat department. Austin was more of a grandfather to me than my grandfathers were.
After closing the A & E, he bought Lucas Brothers restaurant (when it was still downtown) and operated it for several years. Dean and Donna Cannon bought it from him. At that time they all lived in Brown County.
Estelle passed away before Austin did. According to their obits, they had no children.
Austin's nephew was Dennis Sylvester a former teacher and coach at CHS. He retired and was living in Bloomington when Austin passed.

[jabaker]

This was the grocery store where my Mom shopped up until the late 50"s or early 60"s when the new Marsh Supermarket was opened on State Street (next to the farm implement store and not far from Hamilton/Cosco.)
We always parked in the back and entered the store through the stock room. Not too much to remember other than it was small, dark and had hardwood floors. Instead of paper sacks, groceries would be packed up into boxes that stock had been shipped in. I was only about 5 at the time.