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52
summer
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fal l
The Hobby Shop also sold Dinky Toys – tanks, half-tracks, trucks
– and our favorites, Matchbox Cars, which came in blue and yellow
matchboxes with red lettering. Once in a great while we would save
up or someone would have birthday money, and we would ride our
bikes there on a weekend and buy a Matchbox car or truck; my prize
acquisition over the years was a Jaguar XKE E type in British Racing
Green. After school however, if anyone had any money – pennies to a
half dollar (the price of a Matchbox car plus 2¢ tax) – it was never spent
at The Hobby Shop. The small grocery store next to The Hobby Shop
was the highlight of our interest – its room stacked with candy bars,
and the last functioning soda fountain in the world, so far as we knew.
The aim of most of our days was a few glorious minutes, amplified and
sugar-fed in those environs.
Where Time and Technology Ended
Looking back now, the world and technology could have stopped
then and we would have been fine. We had penicillin, basic phone
service (though many of us were on party lines), and some families had
just purchased their first TV with “crunch” controls. We had fulfilling
lives despite being without cell phones that take pictures and feature
instant messaging, without 500 channels on the flat-panel satellite TV
and a pricey franchise coffee house every fifteen blocks. We could have
survived. More slowly. But just as happily, I now think.
Moreover, we had penny candy. Most days, 1 or 2¢ was all I
had to guarantee my participation in the high after-school society
shouldering into the fountain, and often only if I had found a pop bottle
to return for the deposit. So, while not near as flush as kids hauling
down LOOKs, Abba-Zabbas, and Milky Ways, I could put my penny
down and come away with
something
– usually two red vines of licorice,
and, back against the star pine in front of the YMCA, spend my time
comfortably sugar-driven and waiting for the day to close above that tree
that was only a dozen steps below the clouds, my late-day companions
there on the edge of insolvency, the iron-on knee patches of my school
pants shining back at their graying edges.
In one room, the tiny grocery was tiered with rack after rack of
candy, like bleachers in a stadium up one wall and in front of the
register, but adjacent was the soda fountain bar with six or eight red
vinyl swivel bar stools, a polished dark wood bar, and all the chromed
spigots, spouts, tubes, and handles you could imagine on the other side.
It gleamed and sparkled, and the air had that dry sugar-bubble gum
smell. They knew we were coming.
Old pops, white-haired and frail, and two younger twin brothers
ran the store. Pops ran the register and kept an eye out for kids trying
to slip a jaw breaker or small two-for-a-penny Tootsie Roll into their
pockets – a practice which would get you run out of the store and barred
from returning. The brothers had oil-black wavy hair, round faces, were
twins, and in their white aprons looked like waiters from 19
th
-century
French paintings. I think one was named Elmer, but you were never sure
which one was working behind the fountain.
Mostly, we watched older kids sit at that bar and sip on cokes or
chocolate sodas, 7
th
- and 8
th
-graders who seemed comfortable sitting
T
he Hobby Shop also
sold Dinky Toys –
tanks, half-tracks, trucks – and
our favorites, Matchbox Cars,
which came in blue and yellow
matchboxes with red lettering.
O
nly a year or so
later, riding home
from high school, we would
notice that the little grocery and
soda fountain were gone, that
some new expensive clothing
stores were being built
M M
ontecito
emories