New Fun Begins

The move to town was over. We were all settled in. I didn't have to make new friends because I already had plenty of friends from school and church. I just had to learn where they lived. With a population of only 761 people it wasn't too much of an area to learn.

We lived on the west side of town about 3 blocks from what we called "downtown." There were no street signs and the streets were a dirt-oil mix with some gravel mixed in. There was no home mail delivery. Everyone went to the post office to get their mail. It depended on where you were in town as to whether it was "uptown" or "downtown." Downtown consisted of two short city blocks with a four-way stop right in the middle of town. Town was bordered on the north end by the Grease Palace, a full-service "filling" station. It was bordered on the south end by Shelby Motor Company. I can only remember seeing maybe one or two cars inside on the showroom floor at any one time. I don't think they sold many cars. Downtown consisted of a grocery store, a post office, a drug store (pharmacy and soda fountain), hardware store, funeral parlor, bank, movie theatre, gasoline station, restaurant, dry cleaners, car dealership, a telephone office, and a local newspaper printing shop. There may have been more businesses but these are all I can remember. The bank is the only business that exists today and of course it has changed ownership through the years. None of the other business are in existence.

The "drug store" was on the busy corner at the four-way stop and was my favorite place to go. You could buy a small fountain drink for 5 cents. A scoop of ice cream cost 7 cents. I remember when the cost of a small drink went to 8 cents. I was crushed. It was just too expensive.

You could buy liquor by the bottle at the drug store. The owner had it stored and locked up in a cabinet all by itself. There was a sign hanging over the cabinet that said: NO SALES TO MINORS. I thought that was pretty interesting and curious. I wondered why he wouldn't sell it to minors. I deciphered that it must be because when the workers got down in the coal mines they would get drunk and couldn't find their way out. Then it dawned on me that there weren't any mines within hundreds of mile of Oak Grove. I finally had to ask my dad what the sign meant. He told me. I felt rather foolish.

There was an electric cigar lighter in the drug store that fascinated all of us boys. You could pull down on a lever and it would create a spark that lit a wick and then you could light your cigar. Well, we devised that we could smoke a paper straw or a grape vine, so we would sneek in the back of the store and light a straw and smoke it. It was good for about 3 puffs before fire would burn your tongue.

My fascination with smoking continued. There will be other stories of smoking.