REMEMBER WHEN ?

[Grantham Forester]

Originally Posted by Steve McCarty

More about the fifties in a small Kansas farm town.

Town was really one wide main street with a block and a half of stores that faced one another across the street. There was a movie threatre, the De Lux and a "sundries" store that had a drug store inside and a soda fountain...and racks of comic books, which we all read and seldom bought. They cost a dime.

A coke was a nickle for an 8 oz glass and you could get a cherry, lime or lemon coke. They'd squirt some of the sirup in there for flavor. We bought malts, or root beer floats which I think cost 20 cents. They had little round tables in the rear of the store and we'd all sit there drinking our drinks while gabbing with the girls, who always had a "crush" on one of the boys. By the time we graduated from high school every boy had pretty much dated every girl in town and visa versa. They married the one they ended up with and then after a few years divorced and married the one they really liked.

Over fifty years later that town is little changed. They are planning to tear down the De Lux, which has been vacant since the 60's and is crumbling. All of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents are gone now and reside in the cemetery north of town. I visit there from time to time to recall those people whom I loved.

Some of the kids I knew never left. Old men and women now.

This appeared in the anthology "The Best of Gray's" edited by Ed Gray. The story is called "The Prairie Queen" written by Jack Curtis. I also read that Yankton, SD (very Eastern part of the State) was one of several areas where captured German POW's were encamped, and put to work on WPA and CCC type projects.