By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

LA PORTE, Ind. — It was once a popular northern Indiana hangout with milkshakes and sodas. Bottled milk also came rolling out for home delivery on horse-drawn wagons and, later, trucks.

It won’t be long, however, before one of the cherished staples of yesteryear in a community mindful of tradition becomes a source of fresh produce instead. The old Lenick’s Dairy in La Porte, except for the old storefront, has been demolished to make way for a community garden.

The neighborhood built on manufacturing generations ago has long fallen into economic decline with fresh produce out of reach for many of its residents. State Street Community Church, which operates a community garden in another declining neighborhood in the city, is behind the estimated $500,000 project.

Pastor Nate Loucks said community gardens improve access to fresh produce in economically struggling neighborhoods where people, because of cost and lack of reliable transportation, often turn to less nutritious foods.

“If we can help make those areas be more beautified, if we can help make it come alive again, we love doing those projects,” he said.

The 1,800 square-foot storefront will be converted into a year-round education center for people to learn not just about nutrition but how to grow and cook vegetables. By the end of 2019, there will be designated plots for residents to grow their own produce.

There will be a U-pick section and a kids’ garden on the 1.5-acre site. As many as 20 fruit trees will also be planted.

Thelma Pataluch of La Porte remembers saving up money from chores she did at home as a child during the Great Depression, to stop at the dairy for a frozen treat with some of her friends.

 “We couldn’t afford it every day, but about once or twice a week we’d get over there to have our milkshakes,” said Pataluch, now 95.

According to history, the dairy was founded in 1908 by Fred Lenick, a butter-maker by trade who went into business for himself after persuaded to do so by dairy farmers in the area looking for another distributor of their milk. The milk arrived in steel containers and by 1914 the dairy produced its first pasteurized bottles.

Lenick started making ice cream a year later and 1934 is when he opened a soda fountain.

Bill Drewes, 86, also of La Porte, said his father, Carl, was a milkman for Lenick’s Dairy and wore spiked shoes in the winter so he wouldn’t slip on the ice walking bottles to doorsteps from his horse-drawn wagon.

“I’d go on Sundays with him on his route down the avenues. He’d go and collect the money from the people who owed,” Drewes recalled.

John Mills, 57, said he tagged along with his grandmother as a kid on her short trips to town and before heading back, they would stop for a soda at the always-busy dairy.

“After school or after a ball game, that’s where they would go. Lenick’s Dairy,” he reminisced.

He said his father and grandfather also bought from Lenick’s and other local dairies milk that had soured, for a half-cent a gallon to give to their hogs to stretch the feed money. “(The hogs) would slurp that stuff up. It was like giving them candy.”

According to history, Lenick and later his son, Norman, ran the operation, which closed in the 1980s. Loucks said the roof on roughly half of the old storefront has caved in.

“It’s in really bad shape. Not a whole lot of work has been done to it over the last 20 to 30 years,” he explained.

About half the cost of the project is funded with a grant from the Healthcare Foundation of La Porte.