The above door handles and welcoming floor tiles are still in use. The McLellan’s door handles & tiled entrance and Saul’s tiled are left-behind artifacts of my formative years.
The Saul’s store was a clothing store where we bought many of our clothes. They also sold material. I think I could walk in and walk to the table that had my pants size with my eyes clothes… in fact, for some strange reason I dream just that, walking in and going to the table to pick out a pair of pants – I was dreaming, I had my eyes closed didn’t I?
McLellan’s 5 & 10¢ Store had just about everything, but off hand the only thing I remember is water monkeys and little turtles with the painted shells. There store big and stretching to Marietta-then standards. It went straight back and had a door to Anderson Street where this the door handle was photographed, which now is the back door to Eddie’s Trick Shop; it had a door going out to Winters Street to almost face the Marietta Daily Journal before they moved, which that section is LaPeep’s Restaurant; and it wrapped around and behind the First National Bank and exited on Powder Springs Street.
It had a long lunch counter. That lunch counter was just right for the first target of an integration lunch-counter sit-in. I forgot if that lunch counter was actually the first or not. Wherever it was, it must have turned out to be no big-deal, or I think I would have remembered it.
McLellans’ came to be in Marietta when I was about 5 or 6 years old. My father and mother became neighbors and friends with the manager and his wife. They lived only a block away, about where Roy Barnes’ law office parking lot is now. A night or two before the store first opened they gave our family a personal private tour of the store. I remember walking slightly behind the group under strict orders not to touch anything when we walked through the children’s clothes and a well-dressed boy mannequin, about my size, was standing on a table. Daddy just saw him in his peripheral vision and turned around and quickly saying, “Eddie! Get down from there!” finding himself scolding a smiling dummy.
I wish I could remember if it was Saul's or Goldsteins where my mother took me to buy shoes. They had one of those fluoroscope machines on a pedestal that you could look into to see your foot in a shoe. The purpose was to see if the shoe was too tight or if the toes touched the end. I used to get on the machine when Mom was not looking. Later they took them out of stores because it was thought that they could cause cancer.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, the shoe store with the foot x-ray thing was Murray's Shoes, and I think he specialized in Floremsham Shoes. I think Florenshine's logo was a duck or something.
ReplyDeleteHis shop was on East Park Square, close to the Courthouse.
After he closed hi shoe shop he went to work for Goldstein's.
Eddie,
ReplyDeleteI remember it being Coggins shoe store on West Park Sq. that had the foot x-ray machine.
Coggin's Shoes and Leiter's were always my two favorite stores in the 70s and early 80s. Even though I was a kids, I still appreciate that level of service - they always knew us by name, asked about family,etc. I especially remember Coggin's getting frustrated with the shoes they sold me. When I was 4-5 y.o., I went through a big growth spurt and literally busted out the seems of two or three pairs of tennis shoes in about 3 months time. They had never seen anything like it, and I am pretty sure they replaced all the shoes for free. It was like the Incredible Hulk only on a size 3 foot!
ReplyDeletej3
A,
ReplyDeleteYou are probably right, my memory feels very weak at the moment.
J3,
I always enjoyed shopping at Leiters. I have never received as much personal service as I did at Leiters and Goldstein's.
Unlike you, they never remembered be from one visit to the next - but an invisible person is hard to remember.
However, their son Eddie remembered me - he usually sat behind me in classes and of course our given nicknames names.
Not to beat a dead horse but.....
ReplyDeleteI checked with me Old Mum and she said it was Saul's that used to sell shoes in the 50's and that is where this particluar x-ray machine was located. Later I on we shopped at Coggins.
Another tidbit about shopping uptown: There was a grocery store behind the Strand Theater on Cherokee St. While Dad was at work, Mom and I would walk to the store, after we bought groceries we would pay a Dixie Cab, 52 cents to drive us home. During the 50's when Davy Crockett was popular, I bought a Coonskin cap at that grocery store. It was a short lived thing. Most of us kids only wore them once or twice.
A,
ReplyDeleteI think you are probably right. I have been out-voted.
It seems that the store behind the Strand was either the Colonel Store or the Big Star Store. But, I am probably wrong.
My uncle-in-law's father worked there... his last name was McLemore and his family lived on a side street across Whitlock, or near, where one would drive into Mountain View Cemetery - I think the name of it is Durham Street.... and Roy Barnes, in the past year or so, bought some property nearby.
I believe it was a Colonial Store. Good catch!
ReplyDeleteEddie:
ReplyDeleteAn enteresting item from one of my experiences at Mcclellens.
Sometime around 1950 I was a helper wrecker driver at Crain's Wrecker, Peewee Powell was the main driver, you probably remember him as Marietta fireman for many years. Any way about 2 am one rainey morning someone stopped at the shop and told us a car was upside down under the canton rd. overpass on the 4 lane. When we got there injured and or dead people were inside and no one but us to help, we were both teenagers. The 4 lane ended at that point. We raced to Marietta to tell Uncle Ed, you know who, upon reaching the square we skidded on th wet bricks and streetcar tracks and the wrecker slid backwards into the 5 & 10 pushing everything to the back of store. I gladely stayed with the damage while Peewee got the police and another wrecker, fun night uh?
Bobby
Bobby,
ReplyDeleteI love to hear old remembrances like that.