The story of Jim and Jessie

A few years back we had a restaurant in the Arcade in Downtown Newark. I started sending out a FAX each night in a newsletter format. I had always sensed "something" strange happening in the Arcade. Below is the first installment of a series of stores I called, "The Story of Jim and Jessie. Much is from my imagination, much many of the incidents actually happened. I think that Jim's spirit still lives there ...... 


The Beginning

  I am learning more about the ghost in the basement of the Arcade that surrounds the whole complex.
  Jim Harmon worked in the furnace room in the basement, was a hard working, God fearing man, who attended church regularly at the United Brethren Church on East Main Street. He lived on Hudson Avenue, and walked the few blocks to work each day. Many days, his wife Jessie would walk with him to work, and she would walk him to the Home-style Diner on 4th Street, and they would part on that corner ... he would head on to the Arcade, and Jessie would return home. She would always turn and see him enter the 4th Street Entrance. Jim would enter the Arcade, and go down in to the basement where the huge power plant and furnace were located. He kept every piece of machinery and equipment in "his" "engine room" as he called it, cleaned and polished. He worked and fussed over all of the equipment, the stokers, the coal bins, the burners, the diffusers, as if they were his own.
  Jim had grown up around Mary Ann Furnace, and had attended a small one room school house on Montgomery Road. His family later moved to Brownsville, and he attended and graduated from school there. Shortly after graduation his father was offered a job at the Weyant Greenhouse, "out East" as it was referred to in those days, to work in the Power Plant there. They moved out on East Main, and his father would take the inter-urban each day to Marne.




THE REST OF THE STORY

Letter to the Editor

From: Justin O. Smith

Dear Sir:

My dreams are now shattered, let me explain. All my life I have dreamed of owning a heavy truck repair business in Downtown Newark, on the square, and the Newark City Council has bashed those dreams on the rocks of city government.

Twenty years ago I started saving money for this venture. Estimates were that it would cost approximately four million dollars to open such a garage, and I started saving. I shook my drug habit, cut down on eating and did away with many of the necessities of life to see this dream come true. I could just picture my garage taking up most of the South side of the square, with all the easy access for those big 18 wheelers to stop by. Trucks from Route 16 and 79, the big boys stopping in off of Route 70, driving all the way over from 71, an ideal location.

I talked with some who thought Route 70 or a similar location would be better, but I always got the same answer when I asked why, "Traffic." I told them, "You've never seen that Square at night."

Now, NO HEAVY TRUCK REPAIR, thanks to City Council, my dreams are shattered.

I am considering taking the money I have saved and contacting the owner of that Arcade building, where ever it is, and opening a brothel. I understand it has many rooms in it, so it seems adequate, and I guess it is on council's list of acceptable businesses for the downtown area.

I have been in touch with Joe Conforte in Brazil and gotten some ideas from him, he wants me to call it "The Mustang Building." Catchy name.

Justin O. Smith