Trip down memory lane

We’ve been talking around the office this week about businesses which have come and gone here in Thermopolis and its funny how I remember so many of them, but most I couldn’t tell you exactly which storefronts they were once in.

For instance, we had a bakery on the south side of Broadway. They would decorate their windows with delightful goodies every week, but the best were the holiday displays of treats they featured.

My favorite was Easter. They would fill the windows with these amazing hollow, sugar eggs with little Easter scenes inside like bunnies and crosses, all decorated with piped icing flowers on top.

Next door was the five and ten cent store with its bright red facade over the original storefront. Because of that store I learned to count to 100.

In the summer grandma would give me a dollar and it was my job to go to the five and ten and count out 100 individually wrapped red licorice sticks. While I’m sure it was a pain for them to count them out before ringing up my purchase, I never remember them ever saying it was a problem.

Then home I’d go and count again – 50 for grandma and 50 for me. I had no idea my grandmother was being so sneaky, making me practice math over the summer.

On the other side of the street was the Manhattan Cafe. From the time I was a tiny girl my grandfather would take me with him for afternoon coffee with all the businessmen.

By the time I was in third or fourth grade, a few times a week grandpa would give me a nickel and I walked around the corner from his shop and got an ice cream cone. Yep, you read that right, a nickel.

I do believe, though, that I was most fascinated with the SmokeHouse. It was down on the corner where the dinosaur park is now.

They had these huge, plate glass windows in the front, but you couldn’t see through them because they had green reflective shades, so if you tried to see in, all you saw was your own reflection. I really wanted to know what went on in there.

My little imagination thought of mob bosses playing cards in a back room.

We also had JC Penneys, Montgomery Ward, the Jewel Box and Friedl’s. You could buy anything from clothes and shoes to a washer and dryer or a pair of pearl earrings, all without having to leave town.

When Crazy Days rolled around all the businesses had sale tables out on the sidewalk and all of the business owners and their employees would dress in crazy costumes. Seeing who was wearing what was almost better than shopping the sales.

Businesses may come and businesses may go, but the memories of those establishments never really go away.