Lawrence Szantor

After receiving a degree in industrial and graphic design from Michigan
State University, I worked for several design firms in Chicago before
moving to Niagara Falls, NY to join The Carborundum Company.
At Carborundum for nine years, I was manager of graphic design,
advertising and creative services in the corporate marketing division.
I left this position to start my own design consulting business.

Fifteen years later, I joined a Buffalo-based exhibit design and
fabrication company as graphic design director. There, I have been
privileged to have been involved in the design of projects for some
of this country's finest museums and visitor centers including those
for the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. After
sixteen years there, I am now semi-retired, doing only freelance
projects and designing greeting cards for my Etsy shop. A very small
collection of my other work can be viewed at www.coroflot.com/szantor

I did return to Kenosha for a day in August of 2012 with my children and
grandchildren. In addition to visiting old haunts, we treated ourselves to
hamburgers and root beers at the Spot. (Still great, fifty years later!)

Like many guys from Bradford, I often
made a stop at the notorious “Hole”
after school, or after one of my many
part-time jobs before boarding a Red
Line bus for the trip home. It was an
almost obligatory ritual followed by
many guys whether they wanted to
shoot a game of pool, play pinball, have
a soda, or just sit around and talk.

On the day before my eighteenth birthday,
(when I would become legally permitted
to enter a pool hall – who knew?) after
ascending the stairs from the “Hole” and
opening the door to the street, I was greeted
by two members of the Kenosha Police
Department. After asking my age, they put
me in their patrol car and drove me to the
Police Station. (Someone had apparently
decided that a law none of us knew existed
should be enforced at least once.)

Once there, they called Mr. Stoker who,
thankfully, assured them that I was not
a “bum,” and they released me with the
proviso that one of my parents call them
the following day to prove that I had
reported my misdeed.

I told my father, he made the phone call
from work the next day, and to my knowledge,
my mother was never the wiser.