You know I said that we didn't have a car and many of the neighbors didn't and all the people that did they just sat in the garage 90 percent of the time and the number of people that I have oh we didn't have a car. No. People my age 75 to 80 in that day.

So cars were not the norm at all and rode the bus or the streetcar actually.

Let's talk about the streetcars because I moved across in 1992 and they were long gone for before I moved here.

When did they kind of fall out of favor.

Well they didn't fall out of favor so much as they simply replaced Barry their technology and a bus system and that sort of thing but they were the lifeblood kind of all of us landed on our side because I was the one who made a big circle and one side of that circle was right up George Street and George Street can be accessed from the east and west and the other one I think went up Lumas street to prospect one of those anyway and made a big loop there and came back to George Street.

There was a little hose on the corner with a flat roof.

That's thing I really can remember that house is still there but it's been updated with more space than a regular roof and everything but that's where it made the turn to go south again. Very little was north of that of that time because all letch Shopko Bay Area thing that's created much much much later. But people walk like I said earlier you know in the morning all of the workers at the electric light it looked like the lemmings heading to the sea. Let's talk about the downtown area the north side downtown because now it's kind of considered like Caledonia's street and stuff as it always has always been the case the downtown there is a men's store and a shoe store on the Riviera Theatre and of course the sweet shop and the St. James Catholic Church. And you know a lot of other things there. There's a women's store that was still there when we came back from a military which would have been in 1960 a number of stores are still there. The men's store and McCann's and a shoe store Klinkner and Jenssen. None of us sir anymore. So but you know didn't have to go downtown to shop. We had basically whatever you needed right there on the Caledonia's street. And then there were a few other shops like on George Street. There was a shoe stop in a hardware store that sold a variety of things right across the street kind of from my dad's grocery store and a few other small stores. The buildings are there but the stores aren't there anymore.

Right. What was there to do for teenagers.

The sweetshop turps restaurant where the old Logan was the tennis courts and athletic fields were just to the south of it. But then right on nextstep street Terpstra had the cafeteria and police were kids at the nurse doing well come in sit around have a soda have a dish of ice cream or whatever and hang out and talk. And then there was the sweet shop and walking down the sweetshop was a we didn't go to the main door because there was a restaurant and the sweet shop welcomed us to just go in there hang out get the booze talk and have a loose end.

And then of course being neighborhoods like in the summertime we had a continual bowl game softball game going.

Could you see kids nowadays. Bell actually living the simple life like you did when you were a kid.

No frankly on that simple life left the South Side much earlier simply because the more involved things to do because of the university being there and the the campus school and the terrible with the women's kinds of things and other institutions. Well you the vocational school had that big auditorium and stuff. So there's a lot of things going on there and being a vocational school was a welcoming place. As for. You know youth to go.

Now a lot of times when I watch some of the old school TV shows or you know even like a Lawrence Welk when I was a kid there was you know people that were out there dancing and things like that was there a place or a dance hall or you know a get together for teenagers or maybe between teenager years and being married years wrote.

Hey the schools have with the called the jive high school had a very very good swing band and Friday nights are Saturdays when they're here at Central and Logan.

There was a dance and you'd go and dance and walk around. They were always looking ahead at me because we had that big Jim and it was in the gym and in your room. So the swimming would be set up in the balcony and when.

And the dance floor. And if you were dancing you were with somebody or a guy or gal just walking the pruner this drink and maybe singing.

And there's just a whole different life so similar to like watching some of those Ginger Rogers movies and things like that when they're actually singing and dancing.

I mean the world really was that way back in the day the rose colored glasses were always on the up.

And it was it was wonderful and rehearsed is a word I've used several times. We used to ride our bikes by the way everywhere and we go climb the bluff third by Gillette's roots up. We just ride on a bunch of Gillette's street leaning over against the tree at the base of the bluff KwaNdebele of all day and snow come back down right back in the late 40s or 50s. I don't remember ever worrying about having their Breakstone was your crime back then that you remember the crime.

Yeah it did. It read it could be like a dead woman for instance. Stores weren't rude about shoplifting and stuff because there's immorality in the people also about right and wrong and to shoplift something wouldn't hinder some of that.

I wonder if there is a fear of that of the mom and dad. Because I remember one night when I was a kid I remember taking a candy bar. I got spanked. A stand in the corner. I had to bring the candy bar back and tell the guy that I took it and I think he made me work too. Nowadays I don't think kids have the fear of their parents.

No you are. Well because parents haven't said you don't intimidate your children you'll be nice to your children.

You never touch them emotionally or physically. And so there's no discipline that really works anymore. But if you're a good writer and family discipline and I can remember I'd walk by my grandma and grandpa house and go in there and there was share with them that I don't remember it bad but them cure I remembered as caring about me.

Right. So anyway but you get it right in the head of the way. Yes.

Let's talk about some of the other businesses what are some of the businesses that you remember that used to be there that are no longer around.

Well like I said there was Kyung on your street. I don't remember the name of the women's store but it was on the corner of Caledonia and I'm quite sure on the other end the department store. And then a shoe store coming to them and they were there when Quittner and Johnson and the McCann MEND's.

OK. What about your your your father's grocery store. I know that you said in one of the previous podcasts that he had passed on and your mom ranted after that. What happened to the story eventually.

Well he an electrician was a big electrical contracting business on the north side. He wanted to he moved his business and that sort of thing because there were story Jotan back and all that and he had my mom run the office. After that I went into nothing to remember. But no it's really that big.

They didn't. It's a haircutting Siliguri and it takes up what was a store and was the vacant lot.

So did the store shell get torn down to build that build what's there now. Because I know that the house you grew up in is still there. So there now is that the same look that that house had from the front.

But if you go down the alley it's been handed down and you know there's no yard anymore. In fact we used to have a swimming pool. My dad had when me not a concrete.

That was about three feet deep at its deepest to a Schallert two feet and you're still bleeding. And then in the wintertime we'd have a hockey rink skating rink out there. And that what we call the vacant lot. I mentioned there time about the little hole it was there. Well in that there was a whole city a lot from the street all the way to the alley and a good part of that was vacant. In front there wasn't a basement area in front of that was what would have been going on for that whole set burned down many many years ago. And behind it the backyard is where we have our hockey rink and on the very end of it our swimming pool not just all the friends in the neighborhood would come over and skate play hockey. And of course in those days the goods were brought in wire baskets of lettuce and. And what we do is we take two of those and make those goals for the hockey rink.