Hi Carol,

I have never heard of this place myself, but I noticed the address on the matchbox cover. I entered it into Google Maps and looked at the location using the "StreetView" (I love StreetView!) and the "Get Directions" features. It turns out that it was less than a mile from where I grew up on 22nd Street almost at the corner of Parish Avenue. Using StreetView I "traveled" a block or two further northwest on Chestnut Avenue until I noticed a small seafood market named, surprisingly, "Seafood Market" on the other side of the street on the corner of 32nd Street and Chestnut. I remembered when I was a boy I would go with my mother when she went to a seafood market that was located in a small building very close to this place. It seems unbelievable that this could be the very same building. As for it being the very same seafood market, that would be just about impossible. That place sold very fresh fish and other seafood as I recall. But, as a boy I had very little appreciation for seafood.

You can tell from the style of the art on the matchbook that it may go back to the '20's. I have a ninety-one year-old maternal uncle (Wesley Berryman, NNHS, '38) who lived on 23rd Street near where Sammy's Confectionary used to be on Chestnut. There is a very small chance that he would remember this place. Distances seemed so much greater when I was a kid. That trip to the seafood market seemed much longer than it actually was.

- Doug Nelson ('64) of VA - 01/23/12
Thanks so much, Doug! Wouldn't that be super if he did remember?!?