Page 32 - Scene Magazine 41-09 September 2016
P. 32

Scene In Time
What’s In a Name: White Rabbit Road
By ELIzABEth NEUMEyER
White Rabbit Road (T Drive North) goes from M66 to North Ave- nue. I was curious about the name. Were there white rabbits running all over the place? It
turns out that the Rabbitt family, spelled with two “t”s, had a number of businesses there. The surname Rabbitt has nothing to do with bunnies. It is a derivation of the name Robert which became popular in En- gland with the Norman Conquest of 1066. Rabb and Rabbitt are diminutives of the name Robert. I am not sure why the county did not spell it correctly as the surname for the road sign. It should say White Rabbitt Road.
Carl (1898-1988) and Esther Stroud Rabbitt (1902-1998) (married in 1920) pur- chased land at the end of T Drive and M66 after they came here from Indiana after World War I. (A bit of trivia: M66 was then M14 and later M78 but in 1944 became M66.) Carl enlisted and served in France from May of 1917 to August of 1919. Carl and his brother Orie purchased land at the M-66 and T Drive North corner. Carl start- ed a gas station called the White Star. White Star was a part of Standard Oil but in the early days, Standard let each owner deter-
mine the brand name. Harry Boyd Earhart (1870-1954) owned the entire Michigan chain and he called it White Star. Later he sold it to an oil company which eventually became Mobil Oil. Carl built his gas station by purchasing two old trolley cars from the city of Battle Creek and using them for his office and his oil shed.
Carl was a multi-talented craftsman. He also worked for Consumers Power as a construction supervisor, for Nichols and Shepard, and did electrical work for the Kellogg Company during their 1940s re- modeling. According to his son Ken, Carl sold his pumps to Mobil and proceeded to separate the two trolley cars, take apart some buildings from a Goguac amusement park (possibly Liberty) and build the dance hall. He held a contest among the locals and a young man suggested the winning name -White Rabbitt Dance Hall. His name has been forgotten. Maybe he blended the idea of white from the White Star station
with Rabbitt and perhaps was a reader of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. If you look at the photo of the Rabbitt children, you can see the White Star emblem from the gas station attached to the side of one of the trolley cars. He kept expanding until the building took in almost three-quarters of an acre.
The Dance Hall was very popular and was open on Saturdays. A series of ads in the 1930s and 40s illustrated that Carl was very firm about no beer or any other liquor. He patrolled the lot and Ken did too when he was old enough. Ken’s wife Pat said Esther made the food: “sloppy joes,” hot dogs, sandwiches, and pies. Non-alcohol- ic drinks were sold and an ice cream bar was added later. Bellevue resident, Leon R. Thomas (1911-1980) was the floor manag- er and the square dance caller. As I talked about this subject to others, many people remembered attending dances there.
In 1952 Carl turned the dance hall into the Rabbitt Furniture Store. Ken said his Dad met a fellow named Smith from Berne, Indiana who made furniture and suggested the idea for the dance hall. I looked up Smith Furniture in Berne, Indi- ana and they are still in business specializ- ing in Swiss-Amish traditional design. The Smiths decided to expand into the rest of the Midwest – Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. See www.smithbrothersfurniture.com for more history.
Esther and Carl Rabbitt standing in front of the White Rabbitt Dance Hall.
The boys on the
left are Carl’s boys, Lewis and Ken. Orie’s children, John and Eileen are to the right. Notice the White Star sign on the right which was attached to a Battle Creek Trolley Car.
32 SCENE 4109 I COGNITIVE & MENTAL HEALTH


































































































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