In the small town where I grew up, Main Street offered all the shops one needed in the small town where I grew up. That was the place where everybody congregated on Saturday night. There was the kids’ favorite, Potters Dime Store; mothers’ grocery shopping was done at Bob’s or Harry’s, and drug needs were filled at Setters or the Corner Drug just off Main Street. After working in the fields all week, farmers either sat in their cars or on car fenders, smoking and visiting with other men. Men were waiting for the “little woman” to complete her grocery shopping for the week, and he might have an “itch” for a bit of recreation. He could order a beer and shoot a game of pool in the low lit back room at Dick’s Recreation.
A kids’ allowance and babysitting money was usually enough for a ticket to the movies at the Glenwood Theatre. Usually there was a kid-friendly Saturday western starring John Wayne, Alan Ladd or Roy Rogers. Maybe there’d be enough change to buy a box of popcorn and some Mild Duds. A kid would sit in the balcony of the theatre and watch teenagers making out or view the thriller with a pal downstairs enjoying a double wide aisle seat.
With a wide smile, Lee Sorset would be standing on the street corner outside Potters. He knew everyone in town and wanted to hear their latest news. Sometimes, on the corner of the Minton Hotel several enthusiastic purveyors of the gospel, with Bible in hand, would stop passersby to inquire, “Are You Saved?” They were a curiousity for me as a kid, but rather frightening. Was I saved; it was a deep thought for a kid? Though I attended Sunday School and confirmation classes regularly, I had a few doubts...
On the northeast corner of Main Street Harry’s grocery had the best selection of candy cigarettes, big red waxed lips, tootsie rolls and coconut Neapolitan candies…even better than Potter’s Dime Story at the other end of the city block. The candies were in cardboard candy boxes from Henry’s Candy Company and stacked just behind Harry’s checkout counter. I loved the 3 for a nickel deals on Tootsie Roll Pops, especially the grape, orange and cherry flavors. Sweet tarts, dots of pink, yellow and green on the long white waxed strip of paper, lasted for minutes on my tongue. Black licorice pipes were fun to smoke, but the big red waxed lips lent a bit of glamour to my life. Bit of Honey, wrapped in the red and yellow paper, was chewy; the pink, white and chocolate coconut squares tasted so sweet, they sometimes made my teeth ache. I wasn’t big on visits to the dentist. Buzzing drills hurt my ears as well as my mouth when they drilled holes in my cavities for those ugly silver fillings that Doc Gilman was big on.
Most of us will remember buying white tennies for gym class and fabric for a sewing project in home economics at Potters’ Dime Store. Wimpy’s cafe was next to the barber shop; across the street were the sweet rolls featured at the Chimes Cafe and the darkened atmosphers at Rodgers Cafe . There was a grocery store on the southwest corner where Mrs. Sandeen clerked. Was that grocery store the Red Owl? Next door to that grocery was a small beer joint where little kids sat on the curb outside waiting for their parents at the bar. So many stories, but I don’t know if Mrs. Avery, the social columnist ofThe Pope County Tribune back in the fifties and sixties, would have published several of my Main Street memories. Dona Longaker wrote that my columns remind her of Mrs. Avery’s “Local Briefs”.
Carol Dick told us that when she was a seventh grader, her father bought a business downtown, a beer parlor with swivling stools plus the back room pool hall. Being a teenager, she remembered how embarassing it was for her that Dad owned Dick’s Recreation. Dona Longaker’s remembered that her dad often walked from the movie theater, which he owned, up the alley to the back door of the pool hall to play pool and smoke his Old Gold or Chesterfields cigarettes. Hioajjjvio.l/ng no sons, he asked Dona if she wanted to come with him to the pool/ .lohoall and he would teach her to play pool. But Dona knew that some of helr classmates might be there, maybe Ray Handorff, Dick Ziminske and others. She felt she might embarrass herself by ripping the green felt cloth of the pool table with the pool cue. She turned him down.
Wendy Schaub and I were too young to feel embarassed about riding our bikes in the back alley to the pool hall and going in the back door of the darkened pool hall to say hi to the guys I knew from their days at the jail. Patiently, they taught two pigtailed girls to play a game of pool.
Everyone was drawn to Main Street on Saturday night! It was the “Happenning Place” in town. From the cash drawing to the turkey giveaway at holidays, no one wanted to miss the week’s excitement of a Saturday night in small town America.
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