Downtown Memories

My sister GITSY started a few of us down memory lane with her blog about shopping downtown. We lived in Dayton Ohio. Dayton has a great bus system. We could easily and safely take the bus downtown on the number 9 and be dropped off in front of Rike's, Beermans, the Arcade and McCrorys.

My memories of Rike's are of their Christmas display window. They usually had some stuffed animals and Christmas elves that moved robotically while Christmas music played on the street. Winter downtown was cold and I can remember my nose hairs freezing while watching this spectacle.

One of my sisters and I loved to go to the furniture department. They had small vignettes of decorated rooms and we would dream that these were our rooms. "I have dibs on this room", "This is myyy room". It gave me an experience of glamorous decor that I did not experience at home. We did not buy much from Rikes. For our family that was an expensive place to shop.

Elder Beermans was another store we liked to visit downtown. I remember this store because I had a school chum whose mother worked as a store detective there. I thought that was so cool. She would catch shoplifters. I don't know how incognito she could be as she was six feet tall, bright red hair and large and in charge. I thought she was fantastic. I always wanted to see her in action cuffing someone.

The Arcade was a beautiful building. When I was growing up it was always a bit rundown. That was before the series of renovations and being sold and resold. (BTW buying and selling the Arcade is a scam people) There was a grocery market, a cheese shop, a meat market and a fish market. I would eventually work at the fish market.

One of the entrances to the Arcade was McCrorys. This was a crazy two story five and dime. We liked to go and have our photos taken in one of those photo booths. You would go in with a friend or a sister and it would take about 4 black and white photos of you that would develop in a strip and come out the side of the machine. McCrory's had a soda fountain where you could buy banana splits. They had a balloon popping system where you picked a balloon to pop and it would determine the price of your dessert. My sister and I went shoe shopping one day and were so enthralled with our stop at the soda fountain that we accidentally left our purchases there. Alas when we came back the shoes were gone. Somethings never change as I leave items at stores and restaurants to this day.

Dayton has done a good job of trying to attract visitors downtown. They have renovated much of the area. Alas Rike's was imploded a few years back and has been replaced by a nice Arts center. That block will always be Rike's to me and I will always be eleven years old with frozen nosehairs, looking through the window on that corner watching elf robots making toys.