You got to go shopping for your whole family, and get whatever you wanted to. Mom would take us downtown, and give me $5.00. I go to get my family and teacher a gift. Such decisions.
We started at Montgomery Wards, I found a wonderful Santa pin, that if you pulled the string, his nose would light up, mom said my teacher would most likely prefer a pin that didn’t light up…so Mrs Ellis got a shiny sleigh pin, and mom got the Santa for me. Just going to Montgomery Wards was a treat, their system of mail was in tubes that zipped along over head,…Now that was amazing!
Then over to Hesteds, so many things to choose from, but first a cherry coke at the lunchenette while we made our plans. Then we shopped…a blue cap with polka dots for my Uncle Mike, (mom said he probably didn’t want a goldfish from Woolworths) some smelly aftershave for dad, the biggest bottle with pretty blue foo foo in it, years later mom said he used it for mosquito spray when fishing. All those bottles of mens and ladies cologne were so pretty, I thought they all must have smelled wonderful.
Then over to Woolworths, to find my brother Casey a hot wheel car, Mom some stationary (when she moved we found about 50 boxes of it…she always made such a fuss, I thought she liked it…seems she never wrote letters!!) and Grama B some yarn. Then on to Coast to Coast, where I bought Grampa & Grama C coasters with dogs on them, then on to Art & Jerry’s so mom could get dad some jeans, and sweet talk him out of a couple boot boxes to mail stuff in. I loved the smell of the boot shop, and couldn’t wait until I was big enough for Jerry to make me my own western belt with my name on it.
Then since we were so close, I still had some change left…..yep….headed for the Kandy Snap…at Christmas, Eloise Hill, would make the biggest popcorn balls I had ever seen..green and red ones. Oh those just made things in the world right! Mom got the popcorn balls, Casey and I spent the coins on penny candy…which meant we each got a sack full for a dime..oh those cinnamon bears two for a penny.
The Christmas street lights popped on just as we were heading home to wrap our great finds!
Now if only we could keep secret what our gifts were…it wasn’t going to be easy!