The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-06-19
BY ARCH STEINEL
Times staff Writer

Times Staff Writer
CTREETS are like children
- freckled, knock kneed, tooth
less, squirming, stumpy or fat as
butterballS.
They grow up. They become
sly, fast, practical, honey, busy,
lazy.
And the years between bring
successes, failures, misfortune,
good luck.
Streets mark town. New York
has its Broadway, Atlanta it's
Peachtree, San Francisco it's Mar
ket, Kansas City it's Twelfth
street.
And indianapolis it's Washing
ton street.
Everything from the 'aigger"
(ague, medically to the day in
1882, when President Roosevelt's
parade honked down its busy
roadway to cheers and adding
machine tape, has been Washing
tons birthright.
1t was an ugly babe.
Born of a swamp mother and a
forest daddy it was stumpy and
S1ckly on its birthday in 1921.
D ATTLESNAKES infested it's
IN wooded borders and the oil
was treasured for the ailing.
Cows kicked over milk buckets in
its tree-stumped middle. Mud
mired it in rainy seasons. A few
tavernS, Lighthouses and a store
made it a village.
In Dunns history of Indianapo-
lis, the street is described as:
Crowded with stumps, heaps of
logs and hazel underground spiced
with brush and paw-paws. Travel
along it is impossible, to cross it
is difficult, and to see across it is
a feat of little easier performance
than looking through a stone
wall"
Today, autos and pedestrians
crowd it. Crossing it still is diff
cult on Saturdays for the infirm,
and seeing across it still is like
looking through a wall of stone
high buildings.
Washington was plated as the
towns main street. It was called
Main street in the away back
when" era, in preference to it's
baptismal title.
Where meetings of the Indiana
general assembly bring purchases
of new dresses for the wives of
SolonS in present days, so, too, did
the Washington street of the
1905 look to those legislative
gatherings with seven tavern keep
ers on its borders to assuage
thirst, sleep, and talk.
XXTEARIED of stumbling over
w the stumps in the street, the
state decided to clear it of wood
and hired Lemuel Bayse to de-
nude it of timber.
Lumber was needed to build
homes, but the town had no mills.
Bayse decided, as the trees and
stumps we're Of little use, that
he'd roll them in pile and burn
them. He did and also his fingers,
as one historian reports.
Squirrels migrated to Washing
ton street in 1923. They tried to
take" the street and ended by
hanging by their tails in smoke
houses.
In the same year the first play,
Doctors Courtship," was given in
Carriers tavern, opposite the pres
ent site of the courthouse. A
single fiddle constituted the Or
chestra and the admission was
3712 cents.
Bayse was one of the first JUS
tees Of peace of the forest town.
He was not learned in law and so
the village wit, Nathaniel Cox,
put this QUESTION up to Bayse:
If a person should be brought
before you charged with burglary
Ht-AN< ~ O'CQ . OAAby ICY Ol4N q QOQUI,
what would you do?"
Il would fine him 500 and
make him marry the woman" re-
torted Bayse.
THE village butcher. Wilkes
l. Reagan, had a shop at the
northwest corner of Delaware and
Washington streets, the present
site of the Goldstein department
store.
Reagan, between sales of deer
steaks, also served as justice of the
peace with Obed Foote and Bayse.
Foote ate roasted potatoes in
the same manner as a chestnut
addict. He would roast the po-
tatoes in a fireplace in his office
while hearing a case and say,
Nov, Mister Pettifogger, you can
proceed with your arguments
while I eat my potatoes"
The covered bridge did not span
White river at Washington street
in those days. A ferry served as
the towns outlet on the National
road to the west, with each man,