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You Can�t Get There From Here
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For a while in the late 1940's, my father worked as a professional photographer. �Where was your daddy�s photography studio?� a fellow asked me one day. |
�Well, remember the Kresses downtown that had a back door on Dargan?� (Oh, yeah.) �The back door of the bank was next to the back door of Kresses. There were some offices upstairs in that building. Daddy supposedly had a studio up there.�
Notice all the �remembers?� Well, there�s no China Shop downtown any more. No bank on West Evans and Dargan and no Kresses. If that fellow had been any younger, I probably would have had to walk him down the street and show him in person!
Our conversation was sort of like giving directions to get somewhere out in the county. �Remember when old man Kirby�s tobacco barn burned down? Twenty years or so back? Turn left just past there.� Unless you grew up around here, you might not be able to get there from here!
Of course, all that made me remember some other things from the 1950�s. Like the fact that banks in downtown Florence used to close at 1:00 o�clock every day. One day a week, I think it was Wednesday, they weren�t open at all. And of course nobody ever heard of a branch bank.
Or the fact that you could set your watch by the whistle at Florence Manufacturing Company just outside of town. For years nearly every working woman in Florence had a job in that sewing plant, down at the end of Chase Street near the Darlington Highway railroad tracks. Some days they made shirts, other days they made dresses.
Every drug store had a soda fountain and a soda jerk, something you seldom see these days. I can hear some of you young�uns ask, �Soda jerk, what�s a soda jerk?� (Look it up.) High school kids hung out at their favorite fountain after school. One on the corner of West Evans and South Irby Street had black and white hexagonal ceramic tile floors, tiny glass-top tables and bow-legged metal chairs.
Fountain Coke was served in hourglass-shaped glasses and cherry coke came with a real cherry on top of crushed ice. Banana splits were available but few teenagers had enough cash for one of those. We usually made do with scoops of plain vanilla.
Remember �white coat hypertension?� It�s when your blood pressure goes up when you see the doctor in his white coat. When was the last time your doctor wore a white coat in his office? Or a nurse wore a white uniform and white cap? Remember when Dr. Sylvester�s office was in the little house on South Irby? Across from where the Florence Morning News used to be? He was my doctor in the early 1960�s and he was the first one that I�d ever seen not wearing a white coat in his office.
All the businessmen wore suits and ties and hats, and women wore dresses, hose and heels. High school kids did not wear jeans. The guys wore slacks and button-downs, the girls wore skirts with twin sets, penny loafers and bobby sox.
I have a collection of historical and pictorial books about Florence, town and county. Every one of them feature the 100 block of West Evans showing the businesses at various incarnations from the early 1900�s to the 1960�s. Remember what�s at the end of that block? The Lake�s Drug Store building, later known as the McCown-Smith Department Store building used to be. It was a Florence icon, that building. It was probably the oldest continually-used building downtown, appearing in the very earliest maps and photos of Florence. Today it�s an empty lot. Planted with grass, but still an empty lot.
Reminiscing can be contagious and addictive when you run into an old friend, and your speech may be liberally sprinkled with �remembers.� I love those conversations!