With all the Back To School signs in stores, I remembered how different it was in Meridian in the mid to late Forties. Getting ready to go back to school meant a trip to The Paragon. They had all the necessary workbooks and supplies and all you had to do was tell them your grade. The store had a lot of lovely items on shelves and in glass floor display cabinets. I remember the milk glass displays and I still have a piece from there. They were right across the street from the Royal Theater.
I am hoping someone can give me the correct spelling of another store on the corner from the Paragon. Niolen's (sp) Coffee and Tea. In front of the store was a rather large peanut roaster. I believe it was made of copper. Great marketing. Not many could resist the aroma of roasting peanuts. You could reach inside the roaster and get a bag of roasted peanuts and go inside to pay. Of course, this was "back when" there were counter checks in all the stores and some were even blank at the top so you could enter the name of the bank.
In Celebration of MHS Class of 1958
3 comments:
When you really think about all the progress we have made and then think about what life was like "back then", I wonder if we have really made progress. I guess it depends on how you define progress.
Not sure I want to go back totally, but there were lots of things that were certainly better back then - mostly the attitude of people - trust was a lot more widespread as was common courtesy.
Thanks for the flashback.
I was always scared of that lady in the Paragon Bookstore. But I do remember all the pretty things behind glass in there.
The place on the corner was Niolon's Coffee Company. The coffee smelled so good all over downtown when it was roasting. The place belonged to Mr & Mrs A H Niolon and they had a son older than us, Adolph. I think the coffee had coupons in it and you could trade them for their pretty things in the glass counters.
I remember going to the Paragon for school supplies. Part of my memory are the smells of the new fat crayons and the paste. Hope you won't think I'm too crazy, but I also remember the smell of the oil the Witherspoon janitor put on the sawdust shavings as he pushed his wide mop across the old wooden floors. Witherspoon was old then; my father had attended there in the early 1900's. Under the bolted-down wooden desks, little feet had shuffled and made slight indentations in the floor. Remember lining up in the morning by grades and marching in when the teacher rang the handbell? My father remembered that, and said on his first day of school, the bell scared him so much that he ran home and lost his hat on the way! Ha! Poor thing.
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