TOWN

Saturday, March 31, 2007

I love malls. We have some great ones in Scottsdale and the greater Phoenix area. And they are planning for and building more. People come from all over the country to shop here. Even more will come when the newer models of the upscale shopping areas are built.

I still love the old concept called town. When I was in elementary school we lived in town. Mother had no fears about allowing me to roam the streets. I went to the drug stores to look over the comic books; to the theaters to look at what was “showing” and what would be coming next, and to the Kress store to look at the toys in the bins.

In my early teens, and before I started working, every Saturday my sister-in-law would say “let’s go to town.” She would drive us to town and find a good parking place on a main street—there were two. A “good” parking place was one where the most people were going by. We were people watchers. Most of the time we sat inside the car but sometime the guys sat on the front fenders. We stayed for hours. We had a great time. We knew just about everybody that passed by. My sister-in-law always left the car for awhile to go shopping. Occasionally the rest of us would go “window shopping” or just wander in and out of the stores messing around.

Town was a good place to go. I hope you had a chance to do it. (Young people reading this are saying, “Yea, like I’m going to waste my time sitting for hours watching people go by. When I “go to town” I mean something entirely different.)