Several years ago, while on a mini-vacation in Branson, Missouri, we took a short tour of their downtown area. Branson's downtown was nothing like the famous area known as the "Branson Strip," where all of the theaters and "tourist traps" are. It pretty much looked like a lot of downtowns around today, including some empty buildings with "For Rent" signs in the windows.
It has a drug store and a couple of insurance agencies, a couple of Real Estate offices, the usual City complexes (utilities dept., City Hall, etc.) and directly in the center, a "Five and Dime" store. Being all the curious, we stepped inside and to our amazement, we stepped back fifty years into history. It was just like our two "Five and Dimes," the J. J. Newberry store and "Ben Franklin."
Many readers of this Blog are old enough to remember strong downtowns, including "Five and Dime" stores but if you're under fifty years old, you probably don't. Let me try to describe them.;
First of all both were very similar, with Newberry's being slightly larger. When you walked into the front door, you were immediately greeted with a candy and nut gallery and the aroma of this area was the kind that stayed with you forever. It was usually a small area surrounded on at least three sides with glass showcases displaying an array of chocolate covered peanuts, malted milk balls, fresh hot cashews and peanuts. These were purchased by the "scoop" and placed in a small sanitary white paper bag. One of the neatest things to do in the winter was visit one of these "candy factories," purchase some chocolate covered peanuts and go out and see the Christmas Parade (which was always held on Saturday morning). For several years, my Mother, Aunt and some cousins would do this and immediately after the Central City Parade, we'd load up in our Studebaker and drive (via Hwy. 70) to Madisonville to see their parade. They also had a couple of "Five and Dimes" and they were pretty much like ours, including the candy counters.
In Newberry's, along the west wall by the candy counters was the magazine section, including an unbelievable selection of comic books. There was Superman, Batman, Little Lulu, Nancy and Sluggo, Archie, Spiderman and a host of others and each was only a dime. Since I got a quarter a week allowance, I could "while away" a couple of hours in one of these "Five and 'Dimes"
Of course, they also carried a lot of "junk" like cosmetics, underwear, women's clothing, domestic stuff and the like. But in those days, at least to me, they had a toy department equal to the largest "Toys R Us," and I could spend a lot of time just dreaming in there. Most of their toys were pretty affordable. In March (and ONLY in March), you could purchase a kite and string for about fifteen cents. You could purchase a "pea shooter" for a nickel and a package of peas for another nickel. (Anybody who played a "tuba" in one of the marching bands can identify with a pea shooter during the Christmas Parade because it looked like it had been in a hailstorm immediately after). Cap pistols were about a dollar (complete with holster and belt). Hula Hoops were around fifty cents.
One of the neatest areas was in the rear of Ben Franklin...back there they had goldfish for a nickel (bring your own jar) and for a quarter you could purchase a live turtle (my Mom loved those). The fish would live two days if you were lucky or ten years if you weren't. I remember buying some "fish food" (lord knows what it was made of) and I ate some of it and it tasted just like Communion we took at church. I guess all fish went to heaven when they died.
In the early days, both of these stores had "oiled floors." This was simply a "tongue and grooved" wood floor that was "oiled" about once a year. It required very little maintenance (other than applying the oil) and always looked the same whether it was clean or dirty. About all you had to do was sweep up the cigarette butts and you were in business.
Most years my folks would give my brother and I about $5.00 each to spend on Christmas shopping. With this, we had to purchase gifts for each parent, our grandparents, each other, a couple of our "closer" cousins, an Aunt and one or two of our closest friends. When we did all our shopping in the "Five and Dimes," it really wasn't too difficult and we even had a few cents left over to buy ourselves a comic book or bag of nuts. I remember one year, Newberry's had a bottle of "toilet water" (I never knew why they called it that because it smelled good) shaped like a tiny table lamp. The toilet water in it was pure blue and I thought it was about the prettiest gift I could have given my Mother. I believe it cost about thirty-nine cents but she was darned well worth it. I purchased it and gift wrapped it and gave it to her. She was estatic (or at least she acted like she was) and that made me very proud. She placed it in her bathroom where it remained for the next forty-four years until her death.
Pat & I still have it somewhere (probably in a storage box). She's not quite as proud of it as Mom was but she knows it's dear to me.
Other gifts were easy to come by. You could buy a nice hairbrush set for about fifty cents. A pack of BB's was a nickel. A rubber dagger was about a quarter.
When I got a little older, I got a paper route and made about $5.00 a week. I remember Buddy Becker (Buddy's Hardware) had a Daisy "Slide Pump" action BB gun and it sold for $15.00. I would go down there and he'd let me hold it and aim it and mostly "dream" about it. One day Hazel (jBuddy's wife) asked me if I'd like to put it on "Lay-A-Way" and pay $1.00 per week for it until I got it paid for. It was my first experience at "credit." Every Saturday morning (after I was through "collecting" for the paper), I would ride my bicycle to town and make a payment on the gun. I paid about $4.00 per week on it and in a little over a month, it was all mine. I was the envy of the neighborhood as most of the other guys had regular "lever action" BB guns. Mine was a genuine "Pump!" Even today I'm amazed at how kind it was of the Beckers to extend credit to an eleven year old kid and teach him some responsibility. They had a neat store too.
I wonder how many of you remember when Central Amusement Company was located on Locust Street, next door to Sanitary Cleaners. Central Amusement was a distributor of jukeboxes and the records that were played in them, along with pinball machines. After a record was either semi-worn out or it's popularity had faded, we could go down there and purchase a "forty-five" for a quarter. These were songs by Bobby Rydelle, Elvis, the Everlys that were the hits of the day. They usually sold for about a buck new. My old record player was a three speed Silvertone (Sears) and only had one speaker. It didn't matter if the record had a slight scratch....it sounded good to me!
Before there were any shopping centers and Wal-Marts, there was downtown. On Friday nights, most of the stores stayed open until around 8:00 p.m. and there was a lot of "hustle and bustle" down there. It wasn't uncommon to find a parking place in front of some of the stores and simply "window shop" and "socialize!" My Aunt lived over Newberry's in the Gish Apartments and it was really neat to visit her and watch the hordes of people below. The sign on the front of the State Theater had what seemed like a "million light bulbs" on it that flashed and blinked and really added to the atmosphere. The Drug Stores (actually "Drugs" were only a small part of their inventory) had soda fountains and milk shakes were mixed in a metal can and transferred to a Coke glass....Man, they were good! These were the social centers of downtown.
Right before Easter, Mom would take Bub (my younger brother) and me to J. C. Penney for Easter outfits. More often than not, this would be a new pair of Converse tennis shoes. Most of our other clothes were "used" because we outgrew them in a few months, making it impracticle to buy new. We'd go in there and I believe it was Mr. Matherly who sat us down and using a "shoe horn" let us try on the shoes. Man I felt I could jump six feet in the air when I wore them. Mom would make us put them back in the box and wouldn't let us get them back out until Easter Sunday. She expected us to wear "clean" shoes to Church that one day a year. I thought it was neat when she paid for them because the clerk would stick the money into one of those vacuum tubes where it would disappear into heaven only to return a few seconds later with some change and a receipt in it.
I always enjoyed going with Dad to Wallace Hardware. This was a "Man's Store" where they had tools, gardening stuff, paint and brushes. It was the Home Depot of our day. To this day, I can still see the giant "Rattlesnake" skin that adorned the wall. I also remember Mr. Fred letting me ride the freight elevator a couple of times. Of course no trip to the bank was complete without buying a pencil from Walter (Creager). At that early age, I never knew what he said but I could tell he enjoyed the company of kids.
If somebody died or got married, we'd go down to Barnes. Dad would purchase a tie or shirt and Mom bought a new dress about once a year.
Mr. Greenwood went "overboard" to be nice to us (you can tell when someone truly appreciates your business) and Aunt Belle would take our money and ring it up on a cash register the size of Texas. It was really neat when we went upstairs (they had women's "frolicky" stuff up there) and turn around at the top of the stairs and you could see the entire store.
Sadly, downtowns are a dying art. The big Mega Stores have displaced them and we've become a society of convenience. I remember a few years ago when we had a gasoline shortage, Congress contemplated making one day a week (Sunday) a "no drive" day. Everyone thought this was terrible but in hindsight, it probably wouldn't have been so bad. It would have forced us to "sit on the porch" and say "hello" to our passing neighbors...something that was common place years ago.
A few weeks ago, Brad, our middle son gave us a pair of tickets to see Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" in Louisville. It was at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts and was downtown. It was extremely cold that day and some light snow was blowing outside. It was on a Saturday and most of the downtown stores were closed. Apparently they depended on the downtown workers for their business and since it was a weekend, there just wasn't enough of them to justify staying open. We enjoyed walking the streets anyhow and seeing some of the restaurants and tobacco shops. It was really quaint.
In the sixties, I (like many of you) had to "go north" to find employment and landed in the Chicago area. If you haven't been to Chicago in the winter, it's quite an experience. They don't call it the "windy city" for nothing. In the winter, the wind blowing in off of Lake Michigan gave a "wind chill" factor about twenty degrees colder than the actual temperature. A couple of weeks before Christmas in 1966, I had the night off and a friend and I decided to go to the Chicago Loop to do some Christmas shopping. The actual temperature was about twenty-eight and the wind made it feel more like eighteen. A light to medium snow was blowing (which happened pretty much every day). Marshall Fields was Chicago's version of Macy's. It covered an entire city block and had a showroom window about every fifty feet throughout it's perimeter. All of these windows had to be decorated for the holidays and it was truly a sight to see. Christmas was really in the air and I'm not sure I've felt that much in the spirit since. The hustle and bustle of the shoppers. It was a perfect depiction of both "Silver Bells," the Christmas Carol and Petula Clark's hit song "Downtown." I keep telling Pat that we're going up there during the Christmas season someday to see if we can re-live that feeling.
Yep, I miss downtown. Malls, Shopping Centers....they're fun but they're a far cry from downtown. Before I die, it's my goal to take my grandchildren across a river on a ferry and to an active downtown complete with a "five and dime," and buy them a milk shake made in a metal can and maybe some chocolate covered peanuts. Yessir....maybe this year!
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