Green Lantern Restaurant
Hartford Michigan

Paw Paw River Journal
Roy Davis
TriCity Record
4-16-2008

Green Lantern Memories

     The Green Lantern is no more... most of you by this time have heard about Hartford’s recent fire. Seems as though every few years we lose another fixture of the past to tragedy of some kind. And this is the latest to suffer the ravages of time and destructive flames.
     The block of buildings, located on the northeast corner of W. Main and Maple streets, originally housed an opera house upstairs. Entry was gained by climbing a wide wooden staircase from Main Street. Owned and operated by Cenius Engle, the place gave Hartford some claim to social prominence!  Many entertainments were held there, with Cenius taking tickets in a booth at the top of the stairs.
     My Dad recalled attending a show at the opera house when he was yet a single man. One feature was a hypnotist who proposed to demonstrate his powers right there. He invited a young man up to the stage and thereafter put him in a trance. Then he told his victim that he was going fishing… he handed the man an imaginary fishing rod and line. Thereafter, the victim walked right out over the empty seats in front and began casting his line.
     After a couple of minutes, the mesmerist called out to him, “How’s the fishing?”  The angler kept right on casting, while he shouted over his shoulder, “No damn good!”
     Cenius, keeping up with the times, installed one of the area’s first movie projectors and began showing the crude films available at the time. One of the first shows was scandalous… a somewhat ugly man passionately kissing an equally un-attractive woman. This offended Hartford’s “blue noses.”
     Another film had a roaring locomotive coming down the tracks right toward the audience. Patrons of the show said people actually ducked in their seats and a few ran for the exit, fearing they would be crushed.
     But progress did Cenius’ movies in. Those early film projectors were prone to fires, and the film was highly flammable. Authorities passed a law forbidding movies to be shown in upstairs theaters, be-cause of the inability to exit quickly. This spelled the end for Cenius and his movie theater.
     Somewhere in there, Rob Brown bought the buildings. He was a local politician and man about town. He became Hartford’s mayor. One year he and his wife had a granddaughter come out from Chicago to stay with them. Mary Crowder, an attractive girl, soon became popular with the local kids. She was most proficient at ice skating and later on became a professional skater. Friend Margaret Colman Martens told us that Mary taught the Colman kids how to ice skate. Margaret’s brother, Jim, always thought Mary was very special.
     Rob Brown remodeled the buildings on Main Street and made the upstairs into apartments where they lived. Down below, a couple named Watson opened a restaurant called The Green Lantern. It was a combination soda bar and café. Pearl Lutin was the cook and her son, Warren, was a friend of mine in high school.
     In the summer, our high school band played concerts in the park adjacent to the west on Wednesday evenings and I can remember Ernest “Boisie” Boisman, our director, telling us after an evening of “Under The Double Eagle” and “Poet & Peasant Overture,” as we packed up our instruments, “All right, youse guys, everybody over to the Blue Lantern for ice cream!” Although he was technically a member of our school faculty, he could really mangle the English language!
     That restaurant had a special ambience… almost an old world look with tables and chairs… little bouquets of flowers on each table. At the soda fountain they served a specialty: double ice cream cones with a scoop on each side. My Chief Accountant recalls as a girl all of the farm families (including hers) would come into Hartford on Saturday night for a social evening, to shop and visit.
     The kids walked arm in arm around the downtown block, sometimes attending a film at the theater in the middle of the block, north side. Marion said she and sister Dolores would go into the Green Lantern. On the counter they had a flat glass box with slot in the top and pegs placed all the way down to the bottom. They put their nickel in the top, watched it zigzag down and if it landed in a slot at the bottom with a “2” on it, they got double their money in goodies. If they hit it lucky they each got an ice cream cone for a nickel. If not, they still got one.
     Friend Ray Sreboth told me that Betty Ament, a Hartford High student, worked at the soda fountain. Betty was so short they could hardly see her head over the counter. She was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Watson’s daughter, Sally. Popular girls… and for my generation “some of the big kids.” To us they were impossibly glamorous. Mrs. Watson was a “stringer” for the News Palladium, and always looking for local news. My Mom once said, “Don’t talk about anything to Mrs. Watson if you don’t want it in the paper!”
     On the west side, facing the park, their sign remained for years… “Eat Kreamo Bread… The Green Lantern Restaurant”... until a class from our local school painted it out partly with a pastoral scene showing Hispanic workers.
     Now… as all things pass, the building will become just one of the golden threads woven into the tapestry of Story Book Town. And those of us who are old enough… we will have only memories of what was an important part of small-town life back in the day!
 

Other Green Lantern Memories
40s and 50s

   The old Green Lantern Restaurant building was my uncle Roy Knapp's restaurant when I was a child. I'm going to send here some of my memories of it from the 40s and 50s.    
     I remember that when one entered the restaurant, eating tables were to the right and rear, and a long soda fountain was to the left. I rarely got things at the Green Lantern soda fountain. (I think mostly only adults did.)  I preferred to buy "Blue Moon" ice cream at the Bookstore (over east, mid block. Now gone.)  When I got to be a teen, I preferred to hang out at Clark's Drug Store and buy my sodas there--or usually cherry Cokes or a concoction we called a Cherry Green River.     
     Along the back (north wall) of the eating room at the Green Lantern were booths.  In the NW corner was the door to the cooking area in the back. Just in front of that door, on the west wall, was a Las Vegas type slot machine that took quarters.  My uncle gave me quarters to play the machine. (I never won anything.)  Old timers used to sit in the booths and eat and play cards when it wasn't rush hour meal times. I used to play Tunk Rummy there with my uncle when business was light.       
     In the back room cooking area, the cooking ranges were immediately to your right along the dividing wall.  Beyond them, and a bit north, were the dishwashing tubs. A few steps north of the cooking ranges was the big island on which food was prepared.  Along the west wall was that door that opened onto Maple Street with no steps down. It was never used for entering or exiting, but Uncle Roy (the cook as well as manager) would stand at it to cool off on hot summer days. On the north wall was the rear door to the alley.  In the northeast corner was a bathroom stall.     
     One time when I was coming home from school, the town policeman, Volney Austin, was doing crossing guard duty at Main and East Streets.  Another kid dared me to grab his billy club and run with it.  Because Volney was a distant cousin, I guess I thought I could get away with that. I adroitly snatched it and ran, with Volney in hot pursuit.  I ran all the way to the Green Lantern, ran in the front door and back to the bathroom to hide. It did me no good. Uncle Roy turned me in, and Cousin Volney handcuffed me to the bathroom stall where I sat for a good long time pondering my crime before he turned me loose. (A policeman couldn't do such a thing to a kid today, but it worked just fine back then.)

Donna Knapp Broadhurst (HHS class of '56)