Anyone remember the bus driver, Marshall, from all the field trips that we used to take from Mayfield School ( on El Camino Real in South Palo Alto where the soccer fields are now)..........How about "John" the custodian that had his office in the basement area, accessable only by a ladder?Who remembers where the time capsule is buried at Terman Jr.High in 1959????? My very first job was as a counter person at Woolworth's lunch counter on University Ave and I got the biggest tip ever there for serving the Butcher man his coffee..a whopping $1.50...haha...My sister and I joined the Stanford University's Jr.Rooters Club and hooted and hollered, shaked our red and white pompoms and almost went deaf ringing the cow bells we brought........(I'm old now, never thought of that memory in quite awhile..was only about 6 then)..Sleeping on the wooden floor at the Girl Scout house at the Community Center...Getting the roundish scar on my left upper arm from an injection that was given to me in a line at the local library with several other screaming children in the 40's.....dosed again for polio later (this time on the sugar cube) among the masses at school sure was easier... Besides feeding the ducks at the duck pond, remember the old yatch harbor we HAD? And that great looking Sea Scout building..I loved the inside paneling and the feel of the intimacy it HAD.....what's going on with that property, anyway? It SHOULD be saved.......Walking about on the home made stilts my father made for us...Also delighted with the orange crate scooter he made (with the old roller skates on the bottom plank that hauled us full tilt boogie)..we even took that into the May Day Parade one year, all decorated with streamers...still have the ribbon from that event (somewhere!)....Remember the round hamburger restaurant (Pards)that was on El Camino by Arastradero? They had the square metal play for pay (for 25 cents) music boxes on each table....great stop off place, they had a round fireplace in the middle of all the tables and it was usually lit. Kirks. They were across the street and down a block from Pards on El Camino then.. they were serving hamburgers there and you had to stand up to eat them at a table as they had no stools to sit on! Unless you went outside to the bbq area...they moved to Calif. Ave, then to Town and Country Village..There was the sewing house downtown in an old victorian house called Irma Schwables..you could get such great information on how to sew ANYTHING from her, she was amazing!Irish cottage on El Camino at Page Mill..was there for years, moved up to Boulder Creek area I heard..they were located across from Polly and Jakes...did you know Hewlett and Packard used Polly and Jakes back area in the early days? Ask Steve Stagner, Palo Alto Historian...that guy knows EVERYTHING and seemly, EVERYBODY!!!The horses that were at the corner of El Camino and Page Mill where the tall buildings now stand..How about the old funeral parlor home that was turned into the GATEHOUSE restaurant on Lytton? Sorry, but I could never go in there after my mother told me that one.....!S Burger across the street from Mayfield School that had the Indian head neon light, the Juke box and 19 cent hamburgers? Dick's hamburgers a few blocks south of that had great burgers and a huge barrel on the counter that held Rootbeer..and they served it to you in a frozen glass mug..the fireplace there was usually lit..cozy...Movie Theatre on California Ave. 25 cents to get in....Varsity Theater on University Ave. gave away BIKES to the kids on Saturdays only ( if you were the lucky one to get your number drawn!)...had fun throwning popcorn around anyway...! And they had USHERS there and at Stanford Theater down the street who showed you your seats with a flashlight.....They also had ushers of sort at the old Palo Alto Drive Inn out by the frontage road at Amarillo St. If the windows got a little steemy, you would have some guy there who would knock on your window and shine a flashlight on you...(teehee)....Also they started checking the trunks of cars that seemed to be sagging in the rear when it came time to pay at the entrance gate....ah, the pizza was like cardboard, but you got so you kinda acquired a taste for it after awhile...was it really true that they had subliminal messages put inbetween the commercials telling you to go and buy popcorn????!!California Ave Pharmacy, who actually delivered your medications..Midtown Pharmacy did too..did Kenyons on University?The old Purity Grocery Store where the old Keystone Night Club was..Co-Op Market right down a few more stores..plus the Co-Op in Midtown...I think All American was the last market in town to give Blue Chip/ Green Stamps..........The A&W on El Camino Real that actually had the girls on roller skates that delivered to your car you placed your order with a remote box that was by your window in each parking stall.....They had the one in Midtown, too but I don't remember that one having the roller skaters........How about Bonanders Drive In on El Camino? That is where the Olive Garden is today...That was a stopping place (1950's)when kids used to drive and drag their cars all the way from San Jose to San Francisco..They had car hops there also..I remember the girl spilling a chocolate milkshake down the side of my brother's car...YUUCH!I remember a store on El Camino (on the corner of Cambridge) that was called (I think) Jake's..it was so packed with "stuff", had "stuff" hanging off the ceiling..Think it was a second hand store.. The front door opened out faceing the corner instead of one street or another..looked spooky to me as a youngster.....Piers Dairy was located out on Louis Road...I once sat in the milk truck while the owner drove me up to Herbert Hoover's house to deliver...I sat in the truck and ate an ice cream while he talked to him...(I was pretty young and thought he was a "nice old man"..)Frank and Millie's grocery store on El Camino at Wilton Street..and the Chew's smaller grocery store on the corner of El Camino and Fernando...Collecting Monarch butterflies and cocoons on the rag weed bushes by the train tracks on THIRD STREET (now Park Blvd.) where the old telephone poles were kept (by where the Court house is now)....Remember when there were stop lights on Bayshore Highway?!How about the train set up in Rapp's shoe store..the talking bird there, the free ballons they gave you...The old GREYHOUND BUS station on Alma Street that had a lunch counter!Loved to go downtown to the train station...what a wonderful building, full of people with anticipating and anxious wonderments, waiting to go on an adventure North or South.........The Daylight and the Starlight trains.....The circus trains, trains full of working people, trains that carried Presidential parties..What a busy and wonderful world it all seemed like to a youngster growing up here in Palo Alto.....no other place like it..no place like home..no place like home...no place..
When Badday Originally Made Its Way Onto The Net, It Was Thought To Be A Candid Mini-psychodrama Sho
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So glad that someone mentioned the Festival Cinema -- my dad used to take me to Gunga Din and other scratchy old B&W movies there.And fun to see people remembering the mall at San Antonio -- but does anyone remember TIME ZONE? Now that was an arcade! Walking into the dim, electronic noise there and getting a big chunk of tokens and playing pinball and a million video games. Video Games -- I remember that one early video game that's now considered an old ahead-of-its-time pioneer, Space War, could be played at some little comic shop not far from Time Zone and Sears at San Antonio. And yep, those funky 5 cent ice cream cones -- they were cylindical because of the scooper they'd use. We thought we were getting such a deal!And then playing pinball at Tressider Union. It was just one long line of pinball machines against the wall, and some pool tables. I remember one day "What the heck is that thing over there??" and it was the space invaders machine... within 5-6 years of course it was all video games with 3 pinball machines huddled in the corner.Soap suds in the fountian at California Avenue. the old SP trains would go over the overpass, and at the bowdoin park there were monkey bars shaped like two chinese guys made of metal, with chinese hats.Going into Patterson's 5 and dime and I think I had an insanely huge 5 dollar bill for some reason (probably stole it from my mom's purse!) and I realized I had no idea what I wanted to get (with all those racks of stuff to buy!) and all I wanted to do was go back to the counter and ask to change in for another silver dollar.hanging out with my friend at lunch and when Paly's alternating-periods Weds and thurs schedules meant that we had a giant 'prep period' right next to lunch we would go for long, long walks and stop off at the frosty's on el camino (was that its name?) and get crappy soft serve ice cream. I remember other kids in the parking lot would have those white shirts with black sleeves that were sold at concerts... probably like day on the green -- you know how they standardized those concert shirts into those baggy black-sleeve things? man you could get cash from some kid in japan if you still had one now.someone mentioned Walter Hays and the combo teaching of Mrs Meaders and Mr Carey. I remember that Mrs Meaders was supposedly "Mean!" ... she was a tough cookie and maybe once a year when some kid was talking and didn't realize that he was holding up the entire class she would throw a beanbag monkey at him. Of course this morphed into the rumor that she "Threw staplers at the kids."Someone remembered Formico's Pizza way back at that little Lucky/minimall back if I got in our VW with my mom and we drove back on channing... that pizza was AWESOME... the Lucky's was grungy as hell. Why do I keep thinking the formico's was named Fiorello's? where was that?I lived across the street from the very large mormon church on Guinda near Channing. I even climbed the steeple. Now it has been demolished and it's 5-6 houses now. I hung out with EDDIE, the caretaker with the big grey beard and the big Honda Motorcycle, who used to have funky week-long garage sales and was in the local paper (The Palo Alto Times, of course) for being so eccentric to grow plants in old used toilets.The wooden, beige, crowded Channing Market, with the iranian (?) guy running it, and the whole neighborhood petitioned to save it when it lost its lease.What did I buy there when I was a kid? WACKY PACKAGES. stickers with fake products on them. funny. covered my closet door with them.the humble little petting zoo in the community center next to my school, walter hays. buying jolly ranchers at the rinconada park, lying by the pool and reading Young Adult Fiction that I checked out from the children's library.jolly ranchers being the basic unit of currency at Jordan during the reign of Mr Center, mentioned earlier. everyone thought he was the greatest, and sure he did a ton of community stuff. He was always pretty curt with me though.the Vertical Team at Jordan. On one of their communtiy programs, going and playing lawn bowling with senior citizens at the lawn bowling place. fun.enough for now, I could go on. I'd have to say the best is the Festival Cinema though. tiny. 2ff7e9595c
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