The Oldest Store on The Danforth

            I spent a lot of my time on Sunday writing about my food bank adventure.

            Since I planned on going to get a haircut the next day I washed a pair of shorts so when Amy would be standing over me they wouldn’t smell loud and funky.

            It was relatively cool in my apartment all day compared to the way it’s been throughout most of July and August, but when I went for my bike ride I found that, though it wasn’t stifling, it was quite warm outside.

            I was expecting to be detoured again at Byng Avenue but it turned out that the Wheels on Danforth festival had only been on for one day. I rode to Birchmount and then one block north to Pinegrove Ave. I thought that after a block there would be another street going south back to Danforth Ave, but there was no right turn off. I could see Danforth racing along on the other side of a long strip of narrow park. Pinegrove curved slightly north to end at Highview Ave, which I followed east for a short distance until it ended at Kingston Rd, which I followed back until I’d returned to the end of the Danforth.

            The Danforth from Warden and going west all the way to the beginning of Greek Town is a low-income area but it looks particularly run down from Warden to Victoria Park. A few days ago I stopped to take pictures of an interesting storefront between Pharmacy and Warden that closed a couple of years ago but still has the signs up for Lightman’s Department Stores, which specialized in work wear. The sign says "stores" but I think there was only one, unless it means that the one store consisted of three stores side by side. They opened in 1943 when there were still farmers working north and east of there and after their farmer’s market on Saturday all the farmers used to come to Lightman's to stock up on clothing before they went back to their farms. As Danforth was building up there was a lot of construction and on Mondays there would be a line-up in front of the store of construction workers wanting to get work boots. Before it closed, Lightman's was the oldest store on the Danforth.

            I got home at about 19:20.

            For dinner I had an egg and some cheese with three toasted crumpets and a beer while watching Mike Hammer. This episode was a little more interesting than the first four, but that’s not saying much.

            Hammer goes out to California because a friend of his named Kate, who moved out to Hollywood a few years before and became a B movie actor, was now charged with the murder of her agent-boyfriend. She says she didn’t do it but doesn't remember because she'd blacked out. They played up the comic relief of Hammer as a New Yorker being a fish out of water in LA. When his rental car breaks down the woman known only as “The Face" drives past him in a sports car. Hammer gets beaten up again by guys posing as cops that tell him to mind his own business. In the end we find out that Kate's lawyer was the killer.

            Kate was played by Denise Gentile, who played the wife of Garibaldi on ten episodes of Babylon 5.