My Point In the Previous Column Is That Penick & Ford [Now Penford] Is An Eyesore, Has Always Been An Eyesore and Is An Embarrassment To Cedar Rapids

I say that even though my paternal grandfather worked at Penick & Ford for many years, carrying a lunch bucket with him every day. I also knew plenty of others who worked at what then was often referred to as "the starch works." My mother and her parents lived a block from the place on Second Street. When my mother was a young girl, the starch works exploded one day, one of the front windows shattered in their home and she had to be taken to a hospital to treat her wounds. Penick & Ford had a foul odor to it when we played baseball there in the 1940s, and I'll bet it's still got a foul odor. That part of Cedar Rapids would be much more attractive, and would smell better, without the starch works.