The other week in the comments, reader JAYPEE asked:
Any chance you have any info on a place called Wadell’s which was located on University Ave. at the corner of
Janette[EDIT] Cameron. They used to sell appliances and electronics.
Here you are JAYPEE.
I’m not sure about the timelines for this business, the photos on this page are from the Windsor Star in December 1952. What I do know is, that the building is still standing, but is now vacant. It spent its last few years as the Derby Bingo. If you drive past you can see the base of the frame for the neon sign on the roof on the front of the building along University Ave.
Mr. Waddell.
Their full page ad from 1952…
Very interesting. Does anyone know why Waddell’s ceased to be? It looks like it grew quite rapidly between 1948 – 1952, when this ad was placed in the paper. 52 employees and 13 (!) trucks on the road. This guy didn’t mess around.
i’m willing to pput down money thay says somewhere in windsor, one of those fridges is still running in some old ladies basement, or in some dudes garage for beer! check out that “simpicity” washer!!! how cool is that?! i’m not sure why they closed john, but this city will be hard pressed to find service like this ad claims again.
My parents bought our first television from Waddell’s and I remember going with them to pick it out. Several years later they bought thee oh so new high fidelity stereo system from them and got a selection of ten long playing records for doing so. What was really cool, was if something happen to your TV, you could bring in any one of the tubes if it appeared burned out and check it at the counter and get a new one or a service person would come out and do they same thing. And yes, I remember those wringer washers and my mother spending most of every Monday doing the “wash!”
Urbanrat – do you know if you mom actually seemed to find that washer more of a conveinence or burden from…..a washboard i’d imagine? lol i’m not to up on the evolution of the washng machine, so i don’t know what came before the one featured here.
just looks like a pain in the butt to me….cool, but a pain.
weird that i could’ve got a TV on a chassis that delivered strikingly superior pictures anywhere, but nowadays i’m lucky to find one that doesn’t mount to a wall and isn’t 52 inches wide. i suppose most every room in a modern home has it’s own TV though. no need for wheels i guess.
Corner of Janette and University Ave? The only things on that corner are an apartment building, a nice house and Bubi’s. On the corner of Caron and University there is a small apartment, a house, and a printing shop.
Is there a typo as to the location?
According to the address it should be the corner of Cameron.
Aaron, thanks for the invite to tell a story of wash day way back when! In the early fifties and for much of them, most moms were stay at home moms and Monday was the traditional wash day. So if us kids needed something special for school the week ahead, it had to come down on Monday, there were no extra wash days! Until…one late Tuesday I need a clean white shirt for school for something or other, I to learn and to do a whole laundry, you just couldn’t waste the water and electricity to do one shirt, I ended up doing all that had to be done (four hours of laundry)
Hubby and kids were off to work and school, my mother would gather up every thing that needed washing, sheets from all the beds, a week’s worth of soil clothing from everybody and anything else that needed washing.
Down to the basement she went and started sorting everything into colour groups, whites, colours, darks. First fill the tub of the washer with hot water,detergent and Javex, start with my dads white shirts, blouses etc., start the cycle and wash in soapy water for fifteen minutes, stop washer, start the wringer mechanism, put shirts through wringer into a clean galvanize tub, set aside. Adding just a bit more hot water and soap, start on all the linen sheets (no perma-press then!), this might take four loads, wring out each load and set aside. Now do the colour items adding soap and hot water if needed, wring those out and set aside. Now lastly the darks, our jeans etc. repeat wash and wring cycle.
Now empty tub, wipe clean and add new hot water with some vinegar (cuts the soap) proceed to start process of rinsing and wringing all over again, first with shirts/blouses etc and on down the line, tub by tub.
As each load is rinsed and wrung, carry upstairs and put on clothes line(s), wait to dry. Take clothes off line, fold, iron and put away.
There were only five in our household in the east end but most families had more children, four, five and six and one family 12 (laundry every day as I described it above).
It was almost an all day chore not including lunches (dad and us kids came home for lunch) and then dinner at night at 5:00 (a hot basic full course meal!)
And if you look at the left of the add above, you will see that new fangle machine …the refrigerator! Iceboxes were the norm in the early fifties and I can remember when my mom got one of them and was first on the block! I also remember the joyous day when she got her first automatic washer and dryer!
But you also have to remember that back in those days, people didn’t have as many clothes then as they have today and you wore many clothes many times before they got to the wash. No changing clothes twice or five times a day.
It was a convenience Aaron, the wringer washer but there was really no consumer choice otherwise to do laundry. I can remember my great grand mother and grandmother using scrub boards to do laundry though and the whole day it took to do it!
Also in those days, people did not bathe every day …yes I was alive before the shower became a household item, but would wash the essentials and hair was done once a week!
D’OH! I meant Cameron. Where the bingo is/was.
Thanks for the story Urbanrat.
I meant to say “wash the essentials daily, feet, crotch, arm pits, face and hands in the sink!” A pigeon bath in other words.
That 17″ Admiral TV at $ 289.00 is equivalent to about $2300.00 today, even the refridgerator is equivallent to about 2 grand.
So, who complains about doing laundry now! Anybody?
Your welcome for the story and all us kids learned to do a laundry that way…AND..My mom was ahead of the ecological curve, even when we got thee new washer and dryer and it became almost to convenient, if we kids were going to wash something, mom made sure that there was always something else to go into that washer …always a full load!
Man – who opened the door to another UrbanRat story?!? 😉
There’s a working Maytag dishwasher in my kitchen bought from “Waddell’s Sound and Radio Ltd.†in December, 1978. Final price after discount and taxes, $695.45. Costly but it was worth it since it ended a lot of arguments about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Appliances back then were mostly steel parts, not today’s plastic, explaining the long life. I can replace any part although it takes a set of wrenches and three types of screwdrivers. As for washday, the church and Sunday played big in the timing. One had a bath on Saturday night to be clean for Sunday. And you wouldn’t dare do laundry on the day of rest. The wet wash on the clothesline would cause a scandal. Monday was the day
Aaron! Aaron baited me to tell a story, Chris! Don’t you just hate us old geezers with long memories and the way it was so long ago…EH!
So do does the laundry in your house, now that you are in school and blogging all over the place? 😉
My grandmother still has a working wringer washer in her basement!! I’ll have to ask her where she got it!!!
Urbanrat, I too am very familiar with the wringer/washer type.
As a child I had my arm stuck in one. It pulled me into it all the way up tot my armpit. As soon as it started to lift my little body off of the floor I started to scream. Luckily my Mom was upstairs and came running to stop it.
Now you know why I am as demented as I am 🙂
Oh my god! How I remember Waddell’s..wringer washers, hanging clean clothes on the line in the back yard, ironing with that coke bottle with the sprinkly cap to wet the shirts..before permanent press!…
I have fond memories of the “Hi-Fi” my parents had in the living room..and yes…seems to me they received a “gift with purchase” of LP’s…classical and show tunes! That Christmas my brother & I received the Beatles “white” album and we played it on the beloved Hi-Fi for hours on end!
That was way back when the “egg lady” deliverd my mom two or three dozen farm fresh eggs every Friday afternoon. She would have cleaned the house from top to bottom which included hard waxing the floors with that “Buffer” and it’s lamb wool pads! Later that evening, my paents would go to Dominion Store on Dougall Rd…park in the same spot every time, and buy the groceries for the week…no mid-week shopping back then! By Friday’s we were left with a few eggs, some potaotes and some stray pieces of fresh fruit.
Does anyone remember
ME, that’s part of my story I didn’t tell you, I to got my arm caught in the wringer right up to my armpit also but nothing was broken …young, pilable and it seems stupid!
Susan, my mom also had the coke bottle with the stopper in it to dampen clothes for ironing, eight white shirts per week all ironed and starched for my dad, and we too shopped at that Dominion Store. or when we took my grandmother the Loblaws on Ouellette.
Urbanrat…I wonder if we know each other from back then…we must have lived in the same neighbourhood.
I live in Ottawa now and my younger brother sends me stuff from International Metropolis. Do you feel safe telling me who you are?
Oh, and by the way, I got my arm caught in the wringer as well. My mom kept a laundry basket on a stool under the last laundry tub and I stood there to “help” her one fateful day and ended up with my arm gridning in the wringer! Not one scar to show for my mother’s horror!
Washday on Mondays only? Is this from a single-person household? I couldn’t imagine doing laundry on one particular day only–that does not compute–unless you have an unlimited stash of clothing and bedding. My mom did wash every day but Sunday–the one day of “rest” where she “only” had to make 3 meals from scratch for 8 people, and clean up and wash dishes by hand afterwards. There were always 4 long clotheslines in constant use; on rainy days, out came the wooden-rack clothes dryers with constant turning and re-arranging of damp clothes–for those not lucky enough to have a basement for indoor clotheslines.
As for those wringer washers, those damned things are instruments of the devil; I nearly lost my arm in the wringer in a jumble of laundry. My mom had no use for the machine, either, and preferred to do all the laundry in the bathtub, wringing by hand. I was very, very happy when I got my first automatic washer!
Ernie had a beautiful ranch style home on Riverside Drive East, west of Lauzon Road, and at Christmas time it had a fantastic display with Santa, his sleigh and reindeer (including a blinking red-nosed Rudolph) on the roof. He was quite a flyer himself and in the early ’70s owned the most expensive private aircraft ( a Piper Navajo) based in Windsor at that time.
Thanks for running the Waddell’s story. I remember as a small child accompanying my grandmother , who lived on Wellington , to Waddell’s to purchase one of those old style wringer washer’s which she continued to use well into the 80’s. I still have an old stereo console ( made with actual hardwoods ) that my grandparents bought there. And it still works , phonograph and all. Quality seems to be synonomous with history. THANKS AGAIN JAYPEE
wow, thanks for the story Urbanrat !!! what a pain!! so i opened a can of worms huh? lol that’s alright with me, i liked your story 🙂
Susan, send an email to Andrew and ask him to forward it on to me. At the time of the story, we were living on Olive road just south of Seminole and my sister and I went to David Maxwell school.
Steve, you’re right about some families, large families did laundry everyday except Sunday as I noted above, at the time of the story there were only four in our family with my brother being born in the late fifites.
LOL! So there are at least three of us who stuck their hands and arms into the wringer! I wonder how many more of us are out there that did that. How times have changed, Imagine today if there was a product on the market like those wringer washers and just one kid put his/her hand and arm into it, imagine the hew and cry for product recall and the alarm bells going off, the media frenzy!
…but how did you ALL manage to get your arm pulled in in the first place? LOL!
were they electric or did you just plain ol’ crank your own arm in till you got scared?? lol
Urbanrat, since there’s alreay the 3 of you just on this post alone, i’m willing to bet 6/10 kids who’s mom had one did it at least once!
don’t ask where i got that number from lol
Yes Aaron, the machines were electric. You got your arm stuck (yes, it happened to me too), because you had to “feed” the clothes into the wringer. Once that wringer got ahold of your finger, usually wrapped up in the clothing, sheets, etc., it grabbed you till the “stop bar” on top of the wringer unit was hit hard enough to make it stop. You didn’t dare pull the plug because your hands were always soaking wet …. After my arm got caught up once, we started using a wooden rod to push the clothes with, you should have seen that think fly through the air if it got caught in the wringer and made it out the other side. Memories, ahh yes, lol.
Susan, you described that wringer to a T. I recall helping with the HUGE loads of laundry, wanting to go fast to tackle it, and having my arms get all wrapped in the jumble of wet laundry going through in assembly-line fashion. And you can’t move your arm out fast enough when that happens–picture that scene on I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel can’t keep up with wrapping the barrage of fast-moving chocolates on the assembly line…
Yes, Urbanrat–about daily wash days–not to diminish smaller families, but with increased numbers comes increased numbers of wash days… You’re right: these days, the manufacturers would be sued if anyone hurt himself on a wringer washer.
I don’t know what was more scary: having an arm accidentally leading into the wringers, and being unable to pull it out fast enough, or hearing that God-awful popping noise and seeing that stop mechanism go flying up when it became overloaded! It’s burned into my memory; there’s no other noise or action like it!
And who hasn’t forgotten to start with the whites and end with the colours in the wash water?
Yes, the old stereos were made to last; there was one from the 50s in my family, and all it needed was minor repairs over the years–such as a new needle for the phonograph. And they were so homely, they were attractive, on those gangly legs.
In reference to wringer washers, thank God for automatic washers!
LOL!! thanks Susan! those are some…….great memories lol
I grew up on Cameron Ave. in the 60’s. Waddell’s was always a good source of materials for fort building. We would make small buildings out of the discarded card board cartons the washers and dryers were shipped in. Many summers past doing this. During the winter we would use the card board to slide down the “Cut” behind Waddells. A shame I have no pictures.
Great website…stirs lots of memories!
Thank you