More Memories

by Bill Monson



You're an old-timer if you remember:

When they used cinders instead of salt on snowy streets and sidewalks.

The coal yard at Berrien and the Burlington underpass.

Having coal delivered to your house and dumped down a chute into your basement.

Pulling out the choke on your car's dashboard to help it start on a cold morning.

Big starter buttons on the car floor.

MechanIcal brakes.

Railroad watches.

Six-ounce bottles of Pepsi Cola. (Yes, SIX ounces!)

Fleers Double Bubble bubblegum.

Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron.

Decoding secret messages on your Codeagraph badge.

Batman and Robin as guests on Superman's radio show.

Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.

Waiting impatiently for the tubes on your radio to warm up.

Bill Stern's incredible stories on the Colgate Sports Newsreel.

Blanchard and Davis.

Buddy Young.

Vaughn Monroe ''Racing with the Moon.''

Al ''Lash'' LaRue.

Commando Cody serials at Saturday matinees.

Making snow angels at recess.

Fox and geese.

The ugly Santa Fe depot.

Railway Express Agency trucks.

Hanging out washing on winter Monday mornings in hopes it dried before it froze.

Angled parking on Main Street.

Looking at your foot bones in the fluoroscope machine at Ted Grothe's shoe store.

When grocery stores sold cookies out of plastlcene-covered boxes and you sacked them yourself.

The duck pin bowling alley on North Cherry.

Mayor Curley Morrison.

When mall was delivered twice a day and a letter could cross town on the same day.

''Strand's Studio Story Hour'' on WGIL.

Bishop Fulton Sheen on TV (opposite Milton Berle!)

When you had to tell an operator the number every time you telephoned.

Making your own telephone from two tin cans and a long piece of waxed string.

Your grandfather's Bay Rum.

How far out Dick Tracy's radio (and later TV) wrist watch seemed.

When a clerk at O.T. Johnson's put your money and the bill in a pneumatic tube and shot it off someplace and two minutes later it came back with your change.

The basket system at J.C. Penney's.

When the original Zephyrs ran on the Burlington looking a hundred years ahead of their time.

The fireman running out onto Simmons Street to stop traffic for fire engines emerging from Central Station, then swinging aboard as they howled up the street.

The windmill at the entrance to Lincoln Park.

The Bond Theater.

Donkey basketball at Steele Gym.

Canaries singing in a Main Street dime store.



Uploaded to The Zephyr Online January 24, 2001

Back to The Zephyr