IMPERIAL: The answer to the question Andy Heffner of Ormsby posed to readers in Saturday’s column is Carl Singer’s Furniture Store.

He tested readers on whether they knew what store was at street level in the Imperial Hotel that used to sit on Main Street in Bradford.

On a different topic, Andy told us he has a copy of The Era from 1863. For any of you struggling with the math, that is 151 years ago. Imagine.

Anyway, the paper talked about the Odd Fellows building in Mount Jewett

Our readers might recall that is the building on Mount Jewett’s Main Street that started to collapse a couple of weeks ago. When it started to fall, the building had a 46-by-80-foot Mount Jewett Heritage Mural.

You know what else Andy told us we found really intriguing?

He told us there used to be a quick sand hole on Main Street in Bradford, across from the Holley Hotel.

There was an elderly woman he used to visit when she was in her 90s who told him about it. She lived on Amm Street and he called her “Grandma Cole.”

When the quick sand hole was there, “more than one drunk was lost they never found. They had a barricade around it,” he said, relating what he heard. Sometimes horses would fall in. “There was no getting them back out.”

According to Andy, when the Erie tracks were put in, they dumped rocks in the hole until they stopped sinking, then they put smaller rocks in to fill the spaces. “You notice that piece of road breaks up all the time,” he added.

We’re not sure that Grandma Cole wasn’t pulling Andy’s leg, but we liked the story so well we’ll repeat it anyway.

Grandma Cole also told him about a train wreck she witnessed.

Her family lived in Simpson when she was younger, and one day she was taking the buggy downtown. “All of a sudden there was a big commotion. A train had went wild,” Andy explained.

The train, which was on its way to the refinery, carried tanks of crude oil, which were on fire. Its breaks weren’t working either. The tracks at that time went from behind Oak Hill Cemetery to the quarry on High Street.

She told Andy, “I was on Main Street. I saw that train come into town with those tanks ablaze. That was a sight to see.”

Oh man.

Andy found a bottle in the cellar that he was wondering about. It’s about 8 ounces and says “Hart’s Pharmacy” on it. He wondered if it was a local pharmacy. Does anyone remember a Hart’s Pharmacy?