My memories of the best Christmas ever come in a package wrapped from stores located in the Lima public square.
I know. It's sounds impossible to viewers born after Neil A. walked on the moon; but it's true.
There was nothing...nothing like going to Lima and shopping downtown for Christmas.
Picture this: Somewhere on South Main, Lima, there was Porter's Music Store. You could actually select a 33 1/3 rpm album, enter a listening booth and listen to the album in privacy. That way you'd know if you wanted to buy it or pass.
It was taken in the days when Truman was in the White House. The scene is from our family yard at 201 N. Lawn Avenue, at the corner of Lawn and Elm.
My brother, Rudolf, was born in 1943 or was it '42?. He was named after his great-grandfather, Rudolf Althaus. Well, everything was going along fine until Gene Autry recorded Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. That was in 1949, the year I was born.
Sarah R. Ginther, 36, of Bluffton, died at 7:46 p.m., Dec. 21, 2013 at Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus.
She was born Dec. 2, 1977, in Bluffton to Dean and Mary Shank Luginbill and they survive in Pandora. On Nov. 11, 2000 she married Paul Ginther and he survives.
She was a homemaker. She was a member of St. John Mennonite Church, Pandora, a 1996 graduate of Pandora-Gilboa High School and graduated from Malone College with a bachelor's degree in social work.
