Remember when?

Let’s take another trip down memory lane by enjoying little tidbits about the area shared by readers.

• The day before Thanksgiving was called Potato Day as each student brought a potato to school. More than 100 bushels of potatoes were distributed among the needy for their Thanksgiving dinner.

• Remember having to decide which drive-in movie you would go to for the evening? The choices included the Webb City Drive-in, Tri-State Drive-in (by the Schifferdecker golf course), The Crest Drive-in (east of  32nd Street and Range Line), and the Route 66 Drive-in (west of Carthage). At least we still have the Route 66 Drive-in today!

• One reader recalls her uncle during the ’40s taking 12 kids to the drive-in on the back of a flat-bed truck. Adults had to pay and kids were free, so it was a fun and cheap entertainment for the kids that night.

• Harry Hayes recalls when gas was 14 cents a gallon. To make his fill-up even cheaper, he could mix kerosene for 6 cents a gallon, and the car still ran just fine. Gas attendants came running out to the car to put the gas in the tank for you. Today, kerosene is more expensive than gasoline, so that wouldn’t work now.

• How about those school shots? Remember the long lines with everyone watching to see if you flinched or worse yet, cried! Some remember going to the Jasper County TB Hospital for Tuberculosis shots and X-rays.

• Remember being proud to have a store-bought dress or shirt or store-bought candy? Home-made would be the rarity today.

• The the fun of doing the laundry. You washed the clothes one day, sprinkled them with water, kept them in the refrigerator, ironed them the next day. Then they came out with the steam iron, and you didn’t have to sprinkle your clothes anymore. Modernization!

• Remember Teen Town, on the third floor of the Elk’s building at Webb Street and Broadway? Remember “Teen Hop” every Saturday on local TV?

• Every store in town used to close at 6 so everyone could go home to have dinner with their family. You had to make sure that you’d bought everything you needed, like food and gas, by 6 on Saturday night because nothing was open on Sunday.

• Remember having small mom-and-pop grocery stores every few blocks? When the big supermarkets came along, the little stores couldn’t compete with their prices, so they just faded away. Now we have convenience stores all over the place.

• Remember the red gym suits the girls had to wear in the ’60s at WCHS?

• Remember when it took 5 minutes for the television tube to warm up before you could see anything? If you wanted to change the channel, you had to get up, walk over to the television and turn the dial. And when you turned off the television, there was a dot in the center of the screen that took forever to disappear. If you left the screen on after the television station went off the air, then the Indian pattern would appear on the screen along with a high-pitch noise.

• Do you remember when the Beatles came to America?

• Remember when Coca Cola was served in a cold bottle with a glass turned upside down over the top of the bottle? Or maybe you were lucky enough to have your Coke served in a glass with a straw. Bradbury Bishop Drug Store had 5-cent glasses of Coke well into the ’60s.

• Was there anything more exciting than those Hostess Cup Cakes with the white and pink coconut icing over chocolate cake … only 12 cents for the twin pack. Or the Hostess chocolate cupcakes with the white swirl down the center.

• One reader recalls that his grandmother knew everything about the neighbors by the way they did their laundry. She knew if someone was out of town, if someone was expecting a baby, if sheets were hung on the line more than once a week, someone was sick or a bed wetter. She kept track of how often someone changed their underwear. This lady needed to get a life!

• I had always heard of people carrying buckeyes for good luck, but one reader said her dad carried his buckeye to protect him from rheumatism or piles (hemorrhoids). It was very bad luck to lose your buckeye. She asked her dad if he was superstitious. He answered, “No, I’m not, I just don’t want to get the rheumatism!”

• Another reader recalled an odd weather phenomenon in the early ’40s. She said her family was preparing for a reunion, and each family was to bring a freezer of homemade ice cream. The weather turned bad and it started hailing, but they finished making their ice cream and headed to the reunion. One of the uncles claimed he had made his freezer of ice cream using the hail from the hail storm. That was quite a bit of hail in one storm.