Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Oh, not only parakeets ... but these little miniature turtles too!
Since we are taking a stroll down nostalgia lane, I always enjoy recalling - as a young lad - getting a haircut from the barbershop downtown that had a real striped barbershop pole outside. Joe the Barber (yes, that was his name!) had a glass shelf of combs in glass jars filled with green liquid, bottles of Bay Rum, etc. If there was a customer ahead of you, you sat in chair and perused his stack of "men's magazines" like Argosy, True Detective, and Esquire. On the wall there were photos of guys with types of haircuts popular back in those days: a crew cut, semi-crew cut, a flat top, a "butch," a "D.A." and a "Pompadour." Then the "Beatle" haircut was the rage.
Candy stores which were not just for selling candy. This is where you bought your newspapers and magazines. They also had a lunch counter where you would get an ice-cream soda or egg cream. They also sold bubble gum with baseball cards. Throw away the gum and keep the cards for trading.
While we called them the candy stores, the sign over the door read Luncheonette or Stationary.
The candy store we frequented had the generic Luncheonette sign, wood floors, an ancient wooden pay phone booth, a few spinning stools by the lunch counter, a spinning comic book rack, a newspaper & magazine shelf, a candy counter with glass dividers which sat above the enclosed tobacco products. There were some small novelty toys (balsa wood airplanes, handballs, balls attached to a paddle, and some gags) near the comic books.
Random Luncheonette signage:
Here's a random interior image -- lunch counter, cigar & cigarette counter, candy counter.
Random OhBeehave trivia: My mom met my dad in a Bronx candy store in the 1950's.
Last edited by OhBeeHave; 07-06-2014 at 10:02 AM..
Reason: bad link
I remember the old Chinese laundries. Usually owned by an immigrant couple who lived behind the stores in a small apartment. People usually just brought their sheets and shirts to be laundered. You got them back wrapped in brown paper tied with string.
Every neighborhood had one. They are long gone now. My local coin operated laundermat, which is owned by a young chinese immigrant has picked up the slack. They do shirts and sheets and other misc. laundering for you for a very reasonable rate. As someone that can wash sheets but not fold them Im grateful for his services. You dont get them tied in brown paper...plastic bags have replaced that.
That brings me back to being a little girl and visiting my Uncle's home. He would take my cousins and I along with him for Saturday errands, and I always wondered why his laundry came back wrapped in paper and string, like a plain little gift.
Oh, not only parakeets ... but these little miniature turtles too!
This nostalgia has me both smiling and tearing up! When we lived in the Bronx, my pet was a little turtle (don't remember where he was purchased) who lived in a plastic tray with a plastic island complete with a plastic palm tree. Mom kept him on top of the refrigerator so I wouldn't play with it and get some bizarre turtle disease. What a sad little life for that poor turtle.
Quote:
Since we are taking a stroll down nostalgia lane, I always enjoy recalling - as a young lad - getting a haircut from the barbershop downtown that had a real striped barbershop pole outside. Joe the Barber (yes, that was his name!) had a glass shelf of combs in glass jars filled with green liquid, bottles of Bay Rum, etc. If there was a customer ahead of you, you sat in chair and perused his stack of "men's magazines" like Argosy, True Detective, and Esquire. On the wall there were photos of guys with types of haircuts popular back in those days: a crew cut, semi-crew cut, a flat top, a "butch," a "D.A." and a "Pompadour." Then the "Beatle" haircut was the rage.
My husband bought Bay Rum aftershave at the Vermont Country Store. Apparently they could put a price on nostalgia: $24.95
I remember the local record shop where I would buy all my Queen vinyl records as soon as a new one would come in. That was in the 70s.
Fast forward to the 90s, I remember when I moved to Seattle, Frederick and Nelson were closing their doors. F&N opened around the time of the Gold Rush era. It changed hands many times, eventually new management ran it into the ground. By the time they closed, the only thing they had was underwear and furs, 75% off. The anti-fur protestors were out every day, while Seattle was losing a landmark.
There is a wonderful old hat shop in downtown Seattle though. Byrnie Utz hats, family owned since 1934. The staff is very friendly, the shop has old wooden floors. You can buy any hat there, bowlers, Homburgs, porkpies, newsboys, Stetsons, anything.
In the fifties, if we drove twenty miles, we could eat at a Chinese restaurant. And these were real Chinese serving real Mandarin and Cantonese style dishes. That was a definite curiosity in small-town Midwest in those days. There was a multigenerational family running the restaurant and the youngers ones were Americanized but the older ones wore Cantonese dress and spoke in their native language. The eldest of all took the customer's money at the end of the meal and he didn't use a cash register but rather did all his figuring on an abacus.
We still used the old-fashioned word for people from the Far East then - Oriental. To this day that word rings with the delight of something special in my thoughts.
In my little home town there was a tobacco shop owned by an old bachelor named O. C. Mynheer. He claimed to have the largest selection of tobacco products this side of the Mississippi and that may have been true. I know they came from all over the world. In the store were also some billiards tables and only men ever went in.
I guess it was somewhat of a rite of passage for the young boys when they were allowed to come in and play pool. But for us girls it was forbidden territory. On warm days the proprietor would prop open the front door and a steady stream of blue smoke would be pouring forth as I walked past, not too fast, trying to sneak a glimpse of what occurred in its depths.
Talk about smell! I will never forget the foul smell that issued from that building. It wasn't just fresh-smoked tobacco. I think the very wood was permeated with the smell of sweat and smoke and "chew."
But if the front of the building was noisome the back was even worse. There the owner had three crawlspaces under the floor and a fence stretched along the alleyway. And chained to the building, living in the crawlspaces, were three, very fierce blue tick hounds. To walk past was to invite a sudden rush from the dark underground holes and a volley of barking and straining at chains.
That was startling but it wasn't the worst of it. Because those poor dogs lived in their excrement. I don't think the yard had ever been cleaned out.
Everything about the place spelled "forbidden" including the owner himself. And thus it was a subject of much speculation and fascination among my pals and me. We had our secret too, a name for the owner - Oh See my Rear.
(And here I need to add an apology should Mr. Mynheer have any living relatives who are reading here. If it matters, I did weigh the consideration of leaving his name out of the story versus the fun of adding my childhood joke. I hope I haven't chosen unwisely.)
I can remember my grandma taking me in woolworths and getting her hankercheifs for ladies and Im talking cloth hankercheifs and I still have some and I wash them in woollite just like she used too . she also bought her lipstick there too and always tested it on me yeah grand was kind of eccentric and she loved me to bits and the feeling was mutual . She also bought me one of the parakeets it was green and yellow and mama had a fit and grand told her to pipe down and she would take care of the da*n thing .She did too and she bought the food for it too .the bird and grand died within three days of each other ...still miss them both to high heaven .
I remember when going to buy shoes was an event. You sat in a chair, got your foot measured. The stores were often really lovely. The salesperson had to "go in the back to see if we have your size".
When I was a kid, I could fit into sample-size shoes. They were usually a ladies' 4 or 5. We would wait for those sample sales-they were fun!
I, too, remember when going to buy shoes as a kid was an event. They would measure your foot. We were always excited to pick out a little toy in the toy chest, this was the treat for kids. I also remember being really grateful for a new pair of shoes because they had to last, they were made well and did last a long time.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
