A Stroll down Main Street

My dad was a teacher at my school. He had to stay a half-hour after school let out and then he went straight to his barber shop on main street. The pool hall or tavern was on one side of his shop. My dad used to take the used beer bottles home and sterilize them so we could bottle root beer on the 4th of July. He thought it was great fun to serve people home made root beer from beer bottles. On the other side of the shop was a deaf shoemaker who repaired shoes. Next to that was the Crown Cafe.

The best penny candy in town was at the Crown Cafe. It was in a glass case that had to be reached from the inside by the workers and put in little brown bags. They hated waiting on little kids that sat and stared at the candy while trying to decide what to buy. They had a huge assortment of nickel candy bars and nickel ice cream bars called milk nickels, creamcicles and fudgecicles. My favorite candy bars were Idaho Spuds, Cherry-a-let and Heath Bars. Some of the penny candy were really a bargain. They were two for a penny. I loved getting the wide taffy, six-lets, and cinnamon bears.

The Crown had an ice cream fountain with soft drinks and sodas but we never stayed there long. The best treat there was their homemade ice cream. I loved the lemon custard. But, when we wanted a soft drink, we went to the drug store. It was more friendly. Back then, drug stores had soda fountains like they had in "It's a Wonderful Life."

There were two drug stores in town. They didn't mind when we asked them to make us crazy drinks. There was the "crab-apple". That was cherry flavoring with soda water and a twist of fresh lime. A chocolate coke or chocolate root beer was fun. An Iron port was root beer with a little vanilla flavoring in it, I think. We also liked a fresh lime which was simple syrup, soda water and a twist of lime. Every soda was better with a package of peanuts or cashews to go with it.

We had a couple of public drinking fountains outside each drug store. I was getting a drink from one of them one day and a guy said to me, "Your going to get what I got if you drink from that fountain." I looked nervous as if I was going to get a dread disease. I said "What did you get?" He said, "Water."

We had two theaters in town. The Ideal theater was next to the Crown Cafe. The Avon was two blocks down. I remember going to a movie that I didn't know was a little bit too adult for me. The owner let me go in and sit down with my friends. Then she called my mom and told her I shouldn't be seeing that movie. So, she kept mom on the phone and then came and got me to tell me my mom wanted me on the phone. Mom told me to come home. I lived three blocks from the theater. My friends left with me but they were pretty annoyed. I still remember the name of the movie: "The Family Way." I was 10 years old.