I remember when.. bits

Coworkers were talking in the breakroom about 'I remember when' and this city we live in. I'm from another place, Grand Rapids, MN. Some of what they said spurred memories of my own from my childhood. They had a Ben Franklin 'five and dime' store here, and we did in Grand Rapids, too. Our next door neighbor Mrs. Arlene Tarbell worked there and my mom would bring me in to say 'hello' to her when we did our shopping. She worked in the basement area but I don't remember much about what she did there. When I was a child I envisioned her as a banker because of the little teller window she worked in - it might have been a bill paying office or a change office. My grandparents would often bring me in, as well and they would take my sister and cousin and I to the long lunch counter for ice cream and I would eat ice cream and look at toys and stare at the goldfish in the tanks for hours as they talked with other old folks. That is a memory from WAY back when I was younger than five - as my grandmother died about then and it had to have been before that or just soon after when my cousin still lived with my grandfather and grandmother.

There was a tiny elevator that went all the way upstairs to the 'loft' area - where the bedding and fabrics were sold. That elevator always reminded me of the elevator at the hospital. I believe they were the only two elevators I had ever seen in my life up to that point. I loved to go up there with my Mom and look through the bolts of cloth. My mom hated the elevator though, and she didn't want to take the stairs - so I had to beg very hard to get to go up there without needing something. My first sewing class in school we bought the fabric at the Ben Franklin. That must have been about 1992, and I do not think the store was open much longer after that. My sister and I would also buy little flocked bear toys at the checkout counter for 20 cents each, in different patterns and collect them. I still had a container of some of those bears in a box in my Mom's house, along with some other childhood treasures.

The other memory I have is riding our bicycles down to the M&H gas station which was a very long distance for us. We all had to go together or I could not go with, being the youngest by quite a lot. It was across the street from the Ben Franklin which must have been two or three miles from our house down the sidewalks of the major highway #38. When I was a toddler my mother had worked with a lady at Mickey's Diner named Reggie, and she was the clerk at the gas station by the time I was old enough to go with the other children on bikes. Sometimes she would talk to us over the loudspeaker from inside, before we even got up to the doors. We always thought that was amazing. We would save up our change to buy 20 cent candy cigarettes, bottle cap candy and sixlets - and buy soda in alumninum cans which was 'a big thing' in the early 80s, and I can remember it being as low as 40 cents a can. Reggie and the other clerks were usually patient as we counted out our pennies and nickels and dimes and coveted our quarters. We would buy cans of Squirt soda and dare each other to drink it all quickly because it was 'sour' and 'nasty.' We needed the quarters for playing Skeeball and other games at the 'Skill Mill' in the Central Square mall that most likely drove the Ben Franklin out of business.

All of these things were our 'downtown' and back when we were that age it was an important thing to be able to go do those things. I also remember being amazed at the tiny skywalk in the JCPenney store that connected it to the mall - it was originally on another street facing the Central School, near the Reeds drug store. Reeds was a big part of our childhood, as well - we would buy our school supplies there. There was a candy store in that mall with a mechanical statue of a cook stirring a pot. I used to stare at that because he always stopped for a moment, and then he would start again. That store sold 5 cent "peppermint sticks" in all flavors imaginable. We would buy a lot of those sticks and save them for later breaking off little pieces of root beer, green apple, lemon, lime, strawberry and blueberry and looking at the colors of our tongues in the mirrors in the stores. There was also the 'Two plus Two' jewelry accessories store - where we bought charm bracelets, got our ears pierced and all of the little 'hot' and 'cool' things my older sister knew about and had to have.  I bought my first piece of 'expensive' clothing in the JCPenney in sophmore year in high school - 35.00 for a cotton sweater that lasted from 1994 to 2006 when it was lost in my other possessions in moving from Minnesota. That sweater was still in almost perfect condition. They don't make much like they used to.

The Village Bookstore and the Perkins were in the mall, too. We would save money for books or ask the people at the desks to look up their big catalogs to see when books were coming out, as we could not do that by computer yet. Computers were still 'Apple IIe' and the Internet was unheard of. We would spend hours in the Perkins with our parents or grandparents or Uncle Jim if he was talking to Mom. Uncle Jim lived just a block away from the restaurant, so he and our aunt would walk over. It was a 'fancy' restaurant to us, and we had to be on best behavior or get stared at by everyone Mom and Grandpa knew and make them embarrassed. Sometimes I would get to sit with my sister and her friends when they hung out in the Perkins late at night because if you met the minimum bill as a group (cheese fries and drinks) they let you stay. Then about 1993 or so a girl was picked up from outside the Perkins by a stranger and killed - the first time that happened in our memories in our little town. It shook everyone up in the entire town. After that year our parents were MUCH tighter with us - I could not even ride my bike to the end of the road without an older sibling, even though that was nowhere near downtown.

Another restaurant in the town was the Frontier Cake & Steak, where my father worked as a fry cook when I was small. Thinking about the Perkins made me remember sitting there as well, in the little tiny booths and eating onion rings with my grandfather, peering up over the partitions to catch a glimpse of my dad in his white paper hat cooking. My father did not intend to stay there forever, he wanted to go back to school and he had met a waitress there... my memories of that time are very slim and sometimes even these ones I am writing about have been blocked in the overlap. My parents divorced, and there was a dark time in our house for months to a year where everyone was mad at everyone and everything and no one got along, we all just 'drug' along. My father moved to Iowa and I did not hear from him for five to eight years. We continued on, and life became Mom, Grandpa, my brother, sister, cousin and I for a while. Then my cousin went to live with the pastor for a while and his family, as my Grandfather felt a 'teenager' was too much for him and my Mom already had two herself. He was nearly like my brother, as well - so that was a little hard, but nowhere near as hard as it was on him.

//long trip down memory lane... ha

I wonder what Esme will remember in these lines when she grows up - going to Grandma and Grandpa's house, the library, the fabric counters at the stores and getting lollipops and chicken leg at the QMart in Bruceton. She will probably remember the bookstore in Jackson with all of its toys laid out in bins and stuffed animals in racks and pens and puzzles, as she already said 'it's you, we're back!' the last time we were there after having not been for months. And I know she will never believe her Mama ever did these things :)