Historical Bluffton

Tom Bell, member of the Bluffton High School class of 1965, wrote this story on how street painting in front of Bluffton High School first began. This story is included in the book, “A Good Place To Miss – Bluffton Stories 1900-1975.” Copies are available at the Bluffton Senior Citizens Center.

By Tom Bell

Ron “Gridley” Steiner actually masterminded the entire deployment. He recruited an unlikely group of artists to carry out his plan. Dick Herr, Larry Moser and I were selected for no obvious rhyme or reason.

We borrowed paint from our parents and mixed it all together. Barn white, porch gray and clothesline pole silver did the trick.

Security, or not getting caught, was a major concern. We knew that Carter Shisler of the police department would be on patrol. We also knew that he would cruise past the high school and use Maple Grove Cemetery as his turn around. We considered locking him in the cemetery, but since Wade Bechtel had experienced that, the police had been alternating the gates they entered.

Finally, after several creative plans were scuttled, it was decided that Larry Moser would be the lookout. He was to hide behind the ivy growing on the school.

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Oil lamps were street lights; hogs roamed at large on Main Street; in rainy weather, the road was axle deep

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

Back in the days before electric lights, running water, concrete sidewalks, pavements and other modern improvements, Bluffton presented an appearance much different than it does today. 

In rainy weather, the road was axle deep on Main Street and transportation was as much of a problem as in the country.

Places of business had board walks built in front of the stories, and these for  some reason or other had an overshoot from the roof over the pavement. 

Most of the buildings were one story affairs and many of them had “false fronts” above the roofs to lend the appearance of an upper story. On these false fronts were usually the names of the proprietors of the store.

It was not until the late 1880s that the town got oil lamps on the Main Streets. A lamp lighter was hired by the town council for the purpose of lighting the lamps at dusk, and this individual carrying a ladder about on the round of his duties was much a part of the scene as in the England of “Pomander Walk” fame.

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